this is cheating ?
I have a Fighter/Cleric (Dwarf) and i just finish the game, I want to finish the game again but with the same character, in my last gameplay i used all tomes in the game, so i need to know, if i finish the game more and more times and take all tomes is cheat? for example: this is the end result (Note: I forgot to take the tome of strenght, I exported the game 2 times with the same character ( dwarf ), I did not export the items of my character with him) My Dwarf Fighter/Cleric stats:
Str: 18/00
Dex: 18
Con: 21
int: 10
Wis: 21
Chr: 11
(Sorry my bad english, the english is not my mother language) thanks to all!
Str: 18/00
Dex: 18
Con: 21
int: 10
Wis: 21
Chr: 11
(Sorry my bad english, the english is not my mother language) thanks to all!
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I assume you have an XP cap remover installed, otherwise I'd say there's little point. But even so, if it stays fun for you just going for multiple tomes, go for it!
As someone else said, if you're having fun, do whatever you like. You may enjoy the game just for the story and the NPC interactions and starting with a higher level character certainly will allow you to go through it a lot faster.
Am i a cheater? If everybody in this forum would say it, i will not give a f**k
Just have fun, in single player you will not hurt anyone.
I'd just want to suggest to use the xp cap remover, when i hit the level cap in bg1 im annoyed, i like the continuity with bg2 like they are the same game.
Sorry for the bad english, im italian
Perhaps "cheating" is a strong word, because it is a single player game, so you are free to do whatever you enjoy, but is it a "good idea"? My answer would be no. I especially disagree with @hispls' suggestion to disable the xp cap as well.
Games are designed to be played in a certain way, most games, including Baldur's Gate, gives you a fair amount of flexibility regarding how to enjoy it, but if you deviate too far from expected behaviour, especially for a first playthrough, you will distort the experience, and likely diminish its overall enjoyment and satisfaction.
If you repeat BG1 with an over-levelled Charname, all your companions (who scale to your main character) will also be over-leveled, and your party will completely over-level the game. It might be fun a for while to stomp on enemies that gave you trouble the first time around, but it's gonna get boring pretty quickly. If you enjoy playing BG1 and want to do repeat runs, why not start a new character so that you can try out different classes? Different companions, different approaches to the same quests, etc...
I personally think it is a bad idea to make your Charname way more powerful than your companions, because they feel useless in comparison, but that's a personal choice, perhaps you like having Superman leading a team of Green Arrows. But even if you want a godly character, why not just use EEkeeper to give yourself whatever stats you want? It'd be much more convenient and no less "cheaty".
If you are finding the game too hard and don't want to spend the time learning tactics, you could just dial down the difficulty instead of playing through all of BG1 again for a stat boost and some more xp (which doesn't actually matter that much for BG2).
My point is that whatever you can achieve by redoing BG1 again by importing the same character back to start, there are better ways of doing it. Just my opinion of course, it's your game.
However, I would argue that export/import is exploiting a game mechanic to play the game in a way that was "not intended", and since you can replay it once, why not do it twice, three times etc? And if you do that, functionally, what is difference from just EEkeepering whatever stats you want?
A "legal" character (according to community posts) is one that has abilities and items which can be gained through a single play through of the game. Multiple tomes is not possible so it is cheating.
If you don't mind using import/export then just export the character before reading the book and then import multiple copies of the book. In your own words it is intended in the game without the headache of playing through the game with a max level character.
I keep a character that I can import that has 1 copy of each book (3 wisdom ones) so that I can make a "legal" minmaxed character if I so desire (i did this once but it turns out I prefer to speed solo bg1 and get everything legally before transitioning to bg2).
With ToTSC installed it's hard to get motivated to do a lot of the stuff in BG1 after you've hit the XP cap. Even though you'll probably pull more XP just out of memorizing scrolls and disarming traps in the first dungeon in BG2 it's the principal of getting some reward for your efforts.
I'm one that never liked the XP cap since the sheer lack of XP to be had in the game limits on it's own.... at least with a party of 6. I can't comment on smaller groups.
I agree though. I personally enjoy discovering and adopting different strategies as a result of different developmental stages from having a character from scratch, all the more so if you suspend meta-knowledge. I have made a godlike character just to see what it was like and I made a Drizzt replicant that had higher-than-normal stats to play like a legend. Different strokes... That's what makes this perfection.
But then I don't really farm experience either. I just do a single play through for each character/party before moving them on to BG2. A full party of six will gain just slightly more than the cap. A smaller party might get an extra level.
I just see BP as something wholly different. I wouldn't move any character from BP back into an actual BG campaign. Again, I see no reason why someone couldn't do so if they found it fun. But I've just kept it a separate thing.
If you want to think of BP as canon within the BG storyline, I think of BP as taking place before and concurrently with BG1, so they are different groups of adventurers. My reason is that the BP party goes from 0 xp to BG1 endgame xp by the end pf BP1, so it goes to reason that they underwent a similar number of challenges, over a similar period of time, as the BG1 party does in the main game, only some of the more routine battles took place "off screen".
Thus given that you encounter Baeloth somewhere in the middle of your BG1 playthrough, and he has just been defeated, it reasons that the BP1 party were captured before the BG1 adventure began, and freed themselves at the moment you meet Baeloth.
I disagree with "think about it as a bonus mini-game because it was added later" rationale, not because that's not true, but because whether it was added earlier or later, it's *now* a part of the story. Rather than debating canon, I just embrace changes and try my best to make sense of them in the most charitable way possible. That's part of the fun and wonder of an alternative reality, learning new things about it and watching it expand.
But I love your in-game interpretation as both chronologically prior and concurrent. I wish there were a way for my hero to have been involved in both, but it's pretty clear in light of that that this is like the difference between Dash Rendar and Kyle Kattarn. Maybe the two will team up some day.
To take a classic example, do you cheat at patience (a.k.a. solitaire) with cards? That hurts no-one else, but nevertheless the fact that you are pretending to yourself that you've "won" (when in fact you've lost according to the rules), has for centuries been taken as a pretty clear symptom of weak moral character, of being unable to face up to reality (i.e. that you lost) even when it doesn't matter at all, and therefore of being the sort of thoroughly dishonourable person who will probably lie and cheat in the most disgraceful manner about everything which actually does matter. If you somehow knew that someone else cheated at patience, would you still believe him to be a decent upright citizen whose word is his bond ... or would you more likely regard him as a shifty and deceitful character whom you couldn't possibly trust because he even lies to himself?
Exactly the same principle applies to playing computer games - they're merely a lot more complex (and a lot more fun!) than playing patience with cards. If you win a game fair and square, according to the rules of the game, then that's fine. However, if you "win" by cheating, and then pretend (to yourself or others) that this actually counts as having "legitimately" won, then you've shown (to yourself, and to anyone else who knows of it) that you are a person of weak moral character, a defective human being.
The ability to differentiate between an inconsequential past-time and a serious situation which can affect people's lives.
It is very often through the hints and tips given by the little everyday things in life that we must form our opinions of those around us. By the time we get to the occasional big issues, it's usually too late to say "I'll wait until I see the outcome". For example, it'd be thoroughly stupid to say "I'll just give this guy all of my money, and I'll know whether or not I can trust him by waiting for the results". No, a sensible person instead uses whatever hints he can, from an accumulation of little things, to decide whether the guy seems like a good bet, before making the big decision to trust him in something which matters.
Knowing that someone cheats even in a single-player game is a pretty good indicator, so far as these little things go, that he may well be a desperate self-deceiver. That's exactly the sort of indirect evidence which real people use all the time in real-life situations to guess whether someone is straight or crooked, because such minor details are frequently the only hints we have about what's really going on in someone else's head.
I tried a Google search to find out who all these people are but I couldn't find much in the way of evidence to support your point of view. I did find this interesting article that has a mixed view on the subject: https://books.google.com.au/books?id=YYiFAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT77&lpg=PT77&dq=cheating+solitaire+character&source=bl&ots=94k0rLTr5J&sig=UAmt_4BENUJUKC__igGVTzUF0nE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=pcwYVY_1FJaE8gWP6oDQBg&ved=0CDIQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=cheating solitaire character&f=false
In an absolute black and white sense it is obvious what is cheating and what is not however the same logic would suggest that any mods to the game are also cheating even if the mods increase the overall difficulty of the game rather than decrease it (ala SCS). The above linked article actually addresses this very point quite nicely and contextualises it in an understandable way.
@Gallowglass do you have any other evidence that you could share with us to support your statements?