How do you do a hardcore playthrough?
BuffaloSolider95
Member Posts: 25
I'm planning on doing a "hardcore" playthrough, but I was curious what rules you apply to yourself for the challenge.
I assume for everyone its:
Core rules or higher difficulty setting
Accept consequences of bad rolls, (spell learning fails, party member dies, etc. Just keep playing)
Only save and load if you have to leave the game.
If charname dies, start a new game ( I imagine this is optional for most people)
But what about:
Resting? I think resting should only be allowed in Inns or in certain "safe" locations where this is maybe a campfire and after you have cleared the area. Resting in dungeons should not be allowed.
Starting ability scores? Most people I have seen say they just start with whatever the first roll they get is. I think an extra challenge would be to pick a maximum total score of 75 (the lowest it will allow), or perhaps even lower. Assuming 9 is an average ability score for humans, a total of 54 would require to make some hard choices and play more like an average person. I find it hilarious that so many people on these boards complain that chars with a 16 in something is "crappy." If you ever played tabletop gaming, having more than one 18 was rare, having a total score in the high 80's or 90's was almost unheard of. If you didn't get a good enough roll to play a paladin, tough luck, you didn't get to play a paladin. Part of the appeal of this game when it came out was how closely it adhered to 2nd edition rules, but it definitely made it easy to be overpowered compared to the actual tabletop experience.
I assume for everyone its:
Core rules or higher difficulty setting
Accept consequences of bad rolls, (spell learning fails, party member dies, etc. Just keep playing)
Only save and load if you have to leave the game.
If charname dies, start a new game ( I imagine this is optional for most people)
But what about:
Resting? I think resting should only be allowed in Inns or in certain "safe" locations where this is maybe a campfire and after you have cleared the area. Resting in dungeons should not be allowed.
Starting ability scores? Most people I have seen say they just start with whatever the first roll they get is. I think an extra challenge would be to pick a maximum total score of 75 (the lowest it will allow), or perhaps even lower. Assuming 9 is an average ability score for humans, a total of 54 would require to make some hard choices and play more like an average person. I find it hilarious that so many people on these boards complain that chars with a 16 in something is "crappy." If you ever played tabletop gaming, having more than one 18 was rare, having a total score in the high 80's or 90's was almost unheard of. If you didn't get a good enough roll to play a paladin, tough luck, you didn't get to play a paladin. Part of the appeal of this game when it came out was how closely it adhered to 2nd edition rules, but it definitely made it easy to be overpowered compared to the actual tabletop experience.
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Comments
about the dungeons it depends, it surely has no sense to sleep in the beholder or mind flyer areas of the underdark, if those areas are not cleared before, but in other areas i don't see a problem to do it.
as for most of the dungeons it is possible to leave them and sleep i would find only annoying to have to do it, so i don't think that it would make the game harder. in bg2 probably only the planar prison, the unseeing eye area and the mind flyer area of the underdark are not possible to leave until the enemies are killed, also the planar sphere but there as you clear a part it should be safe enough to sleep.
i don't abuse sleeping and usually i do it only when some toon start to be fatigued, in the past i used to continue to explore and fight also in that condition, now i don't do it any more.
about not reloading if charname dies or to accept the death of the npcs that is no reload, at least we call so that way to play on the forums, why to call it hardcore?
i usually accept bad rolls, or better i try to play in a way that makes bad rolls not catastrophic, but i reload if a npc is chunked or if charname die, i am not a no reloader.
about the stats i usually use values similar to the one you suggest, 75 not 54, and i think that also the hp gain on leveling up should not be the maximum one, but the one that uses the roll, according to my experience to play without that added hp is much more challenging as it can be the difference between to die or to live in many situations, like failing the save against a spell.
Trust me, no platoon is able to rest for 8h within enemy territory.
Edwin has a stat sum of 74. He gets more arcane spells than anyone, and that's all he gets.
Minsc has a stat sum of 75, but he's an illegal build (explained in-game by a past head injury). Raise that wisdom to the Ranger minimum of 14, and he'd be at 83.
Then there's Anomen, at 79 - another illegal build. Increase his wisdom to the minimum 17 required for his dual-class, and he'd be at 84.
Next up: Cernd, Clara/daytime Hexxat, and Korgan at 80.
The median score among recruitable companions is 85. In BG1, it's 82. Many companions also come with unique personal items or abilities. Limiting yourself to 75 means making yourself deliberately weaker than most of the party members you can recruit, unless you seriously min/max with dump stats.
It is at least possible to roll any race/class combo with a total of 75. Some will be more limiting than others; an elven ranger takes up 70 of those points with mandatory minimum stats.
Actually, now that I think about it ... here's an interesting idea to build a playthrough around: a low-stat challenge. The protagonist starts at 75 total stat points (or a few more if starting in BG2; BG1 has tomes to boost stats). No long-term companion may have more than 82 total stat points in BG1, or 85 in BG2.
Short-term companions with higher stats are OK; we can have Imoen, Yoshimo, and Jaheira in Irenicus' dungeon, or Nalia for her keep, or Keldorn for the Unseeing Eye quest.
Checking the list - there are enough companions still there to fill out any role, so the protagonist shouldn't feel required to be anything in particular.
A better comparison might be with special forces. They can be inserted and remain in enemy territory for extended periods. If you wanted to emulate their skills you could think in the game of stealth and invisibility - I can't see any problem at all in resting anywhere if your party is invisible.
Personally I don't really see why you shouldn't rest within the framework of the game anyway. There are areas in the game which specifically ban resting, while for most others you have the threat of being interrupted - so the way in which resting should be allowed has clearly been considered in detail by developers.
Yes, they are inserted and remain active. A SF operation usually don't last more than 24h between insertion, movement, action and extraction.
Also there's a difference between being in a, let's say, jungle controlled by the enemy (where a platoon can get 4h rest tops) and inside an enemy's headquarter (that is basically what a dungeon is most of the times).
Today it is easier to collect data about the enemy's movement inside their territory - but it is also easier for an enemy to identify a patrol inside its controlled area. This should yeld, luckly, a total of 6h of rest.
If someone below me at the chain of command states that he/she was able to rest for 8h behind enemy lines I send him/her to martial court and buy him/her a lottery ticket because either he/she is aligned with the enemy or is the luckiest person I know.
I know little about military operations, but I've seen stories of special forces being active behind enemy lines for months at a time, rather than just going in for a specific mission and being extracted.
I don't though think the comparison with enemy lines is a good one anyway. Wilderness areas are just that, wilderness. There's no reason to think that any enemies are specifically searching out your party, though they may happen to come across it.
Dungeons will normally be much more populated, but even in those most of them don't have a central command structure or patrolling guards (though some do, like the Cloakwood Mine). Rather, you have different groups of enemies (often antithetical to each other) living in close proximity. In that situation I don't think it's unreasonable to be able to rest in bits of the dungeon you've cleared of their inhabitants, even without the help of invisibility.
I also know a thing or two - trust me - and the kind of mission you're saying is not comparable with the one of a D&D party. They are more related to constructing maps, black propaganda, installing bugs, small sabotages. A cell of Intelligence.
I've never received a mission or even training to go full plate and packing steel into enemy's lines and stay there for more than 48h. And even this time was for "the extraction messed up, stay low and hang on". We couldn't even carry the amount of gear necessary to stay longer as that would jeopardize the mission.
Never heard of a fellow in either Army or Air Force that had this kind of instruction (I was at Navy). This would be pretty much a suicide mission. But here I may be wrong.
That's pretty different from pushing back an enemy line, of course. This kind of action is pretty standard and can take week, months or years (as happened in WWI). The unit keep moving forward in coordinated action with other units and being replaced from time to time. The enemy territory is conquered inch by inch or at least is turned into a no man's land.
But I think we are way off-topic by now. If you want to keep this conversation in-box, feel free to PM me.
Like I said, the most powerful mortal beings in all the realms have gone out of their way to come up with stuff to help adventurers out with their adventuring; from creating food/water to removing all traces of their presence/passing to summoning freaking portable mansions out of thin air. It's just the way the D&D world works. If we were to take the armed forces thing as a comparison then every country in the world would be like a modern Sparta.
We are supposed to take the details/logistics of this kind of thing for granted in BG2 (along with stuff like spell components) but they're kind of implied (there's even a loading screen reminder about how you need food even though your characters don't).
rl modern solders have limitations in bringing food, ammunition and whatever is needed that our parties don't have.
as it has been told they can also go invisible, but i add they can set traps or cast spells that work as traps and they are not in an enemy occupied jungle or in a enemy occupied town, if not in some specific situations.
i already told that to sleep in the mind flyer's place in the underdark is unrealistic and it should be avoided, but there are other situations where even in a dungeon it can be done relatively safely. let's take the planar sphere, there 3 knights from solamnia are trapped in, and they don't have any problem in sleeping, why should you do? the enemies there seem to occupy specific places, not to patrol the whole sphere, and they are not all from the same faction, once a faction is defeated to sleep in their place should be safe.
in the nalia's keep it is not credible to sleep with some trolls in the next room, but after clearing a level probably it is safe to sleep there, and it is possible to retreat and go outside to sleep where the surviving soldiers and the captain are, so to don't sleep in that dungeon is only annoying for the player as he has to move the party around for no reason, but it don't make the game more difficult.
as there in no reason why clearing the beholders place in the underdark a party should not go to sleep in the durgar tavern or the drow one if they become fatigued as that area has no restrictions on getting in and out of it, to not sleep there would only be annoying for the player, not make the game more difficult, rl time is precious, better to use it to fight and have fun then to wait that the party cross 2 whole areas 2 times because your toons are fatigued and your casters and thieves are out of spells and traps to deal with the last couple of beholders.
but as you can reach a tavern and sleep there i see no reason why in that situation a party should face beholders with tired fighters and mages with no memorized spells.
also as fatigue is depending on con and there are npcs with very low con that start to get fatigued a little after a long trip to forbid to rest in the wilderness would unbalance the game, making the high con toons much more viable.
you travel to some place, let's say the temple ruins or the area where there is the druid grove from trademeet and your low con toons get fatigued little after but you are not allowed to sleep there, while a party with only high con toons can clear the whole area before it happens.
an other one is the place where you find yoshimo, the mephits don't open doors and if some shadow thief would come he would find the mephits and you would be alerted.
anyway when i solo that dungeon with my casters and tactics mod i don't have any problem to sleep there, even if tactics try to make it impossible as, past the first time, that has the purpose to let you memorize some spells and eventually change imoen and jaheira ones, each time you try to sleep you are ambushed by a party of 1 or 2 mages, some fighters and sometimes some war dogs.
like @grondo told invisibility is long lasting and let you sleep safely in many situations.
i don't know exactly at which point the use of the rest becomes abuse, it is really subjective, what is not subjective is that the party composition affect it.
parties with many high con fighters can survive on potions and items that give regeneration, their main way to deal damage, using the weapons, will allow to remain effective for a long time, even when the fighters are fatigued if there is not a boss battle.
a party of mainly casters and low con people, let's say a monk charname (with the proposed less then 75 total stats), jan, aerie, neera, cernd and haer dalis once the spells are used and the toons fatigued has to rest. and in the 90% of the situations they can rest, even if resting outside the taverns is not allowed. it is only annoying as they maybe have to cross a whole area, travel 8 hours to reach the tavern and then 8 hours for the trip back and again cross the area...
in early bg2 such party has only haer dalis as physical hard hitter, the monk and aerie will be very strong in mlee, but later in the game, and if jan can stab whole dungeons he can not do it in all the dungeons.
i prefer to rest there, and to go to battles without the needed spells memorized is not the way to play casters imho.
even if i don't abuse of resting with my caster heavy parties, i don't overbuff and i try to use the spells efficiently so usually i can clear 1 or 2 dungeons before i have to rest, if not for fatigue problems. but i probably want to rest before fighting the dragons i find at the ends of 2 dungeons, they need specific spells and can not be fought with the leftover of the spells usually memorized for a typical dungeon.
i would consider a silly thing to go to trademeet or umar hills to sleep, then come back to fight the dragon with the correct spells memorized, so i can call hardcore my run, if i can sleep in the dungeon or in the wilderness near by and fight the same battle with no increased difficulty at all.
to try to earn the money to have the collaboration of the shadow thieves or the vampires and then going to spellhood as soon as possible, so loosing quests, xp and key items makes the game more difficult.
it does it because the way the enemies scale is not adequate to compensate how the party becomes powerful in a completionist run and because the key items lost make the things much more easy, no ring of gaxx, who has time to fight liches in the town if there is a joung lady to rescue, no robe of vecna or shield of balduran, we need money to pay the passage to spellhood and so on.
also after spellhood there is no time to waste in optional quests, an elves city is under attack and there probably you can find the mage that stole your soul, there is no time for side quests.
this would make the game really more difficult to beat, much more then not resting in dungeons and in the wilderness.
much less xp and levels and only few of the items you can loot bring REAL challenge to the game...
challenge carried over in tob as the party starting level there will also be much lower, even if there the plot is so linear that there is no relevant side quest that can be skipped with some real consequence.
So your plan to not rest or rest sparingly in dangerous areas is actually smart for trying to succeed in this kind of run! A big key is buying loads of healing potions and other consumable items so you can push through a lot of the dungeon crawls without having to rest midway through.