I'm a loser... and you can too! --BG bad habits thread
FinnTheHuman
Member Posts: 404
Hi all,
I love BG series, but sometimes I can't help but think that playing it is just reinforcing some bad personality traits. I'm flawed, no big deal. But just for fun, i thought we could share our bad habits that BG brings out. I'll go first. Hope I'm not the only poster.
Charname always seems to be the biggest baddest character in the party. All +20 stats, cheese tactics galore. I don't really want a challenge. Just looking for some fantasy to stroke my fragile ego. How bad is it? Well, while in a romance with Viconia, Aven the Human would never let her cast energy blades, because there is a bug (on the ipad at least) which would keep her APR at 10 after they were used up. So after she was done mowing down enemies with the blades she'd keep mowing them down with slings and maces. Usually I'm fine with cheese. But when a NPC is it's wielder? No, not cool.
I love BG series, but sometimes I can't help but think that playing it is just reinforcing some bad personality traits. I'm flawed, no big deal. But just for fun, i thought we could share our bad habits that BG brings out. I'll go first. Hope I'm not the only poster.
Charname always seems to be the biggest baddest character in the party. All +20 stats, cheese tactics galore. I don't really want a challenge. Just looking for some fantasy to stroke my fragile ego. How bad is it? Well, while in a romance with Viconia, Aven the Human would never let her cast energy blades, because there is a bug (on the ipad at least) which would keep her APR at 10 after they were used up. So after she was done mowing down enemies with the blades she'd keep mowing them down with slings and maces. Usually I'm fine with cheese. But when a NPC is it's wielder? No, not cool.
3
Comments
I can relate to the notion that you want charname to be the most powerful character.
I usually try to play characters that relies on their abilities more than items, and care more about their ethical values than getting cool magical items.
It usually comes creeping in gradually, but somehow, it always ends up with item micromanagement and loot hoarding OCD to the point where it doesn't make sense anymore, sprinkled with vague RPG excuses that allows me to make the choices that gives me a crapload of expensive and rare magical items. I'm about halfway through ToB right now, and I have close to 200 000 gold, most of the best weapons in the game(including the ones I have no use of, but gotta catch 'em all).
To let go of all meta/powergaming crap, and play Baldur's Gate in a zen-ish non-materialistic RP-ish fashion, that's the dream.
CHARNAME gets the best gear? Check.
Gets all the stat boosts, even when they would be far better elsewhere? Check.
Does everything? I generally play Mage/Thief, so yeah, literal check. Jack of all trades, master of at least two, CHARNAME scouts, trapfinds, wrecks face with spells, and periodically turns into a sexy elven god of war for melee. He sometimes shares his ring of regeneration, making him about as useful as any cleric which wastes spell slots healing.
It's got to the point where I barely even optimise my other characters, and almost never control them beyond clicking an enemy then letting the terrible AI do its thing. They're basically minstrels, there to wield pompoms, carry loot, and talk about their dramatic personal lives while CHARNAME progresses steadily through fights he could solo alone, sharing out exp to the five hangers on and periodically wasting money to raise them, frequently because he didn't bother to tell them to get out of the way before cloaking the entire area in flesh eating acid that he's the only one immune to,
although when I play, when it comes to item management I always even everything out on my characters,
all the melee guys have the same AC ( if not, then their AC is off by one point between them)
some items will always go to certain character classes regardless of charname or party make up ( amulet of power/ robe of vecna/ cloak of mirroring always go to the "main mage" of the group)
one party habit I have is I always use the same team make up no matter what my team is made of and it goes as thus:
3 melee guys of some sort, fourth guy will be the "cleric" using sling, 5th guy will be the "rouge" using bows, and 6th guy will be the "main mage" using throwing daggers
I had 1000s of play throughs and ever since the beginning 99.999% of the time, this is how my teams are made up
next, im a silly hardcore power gamer, 75-80% of the time I make my own 6 PCs, I like the customization I have to make my own team, and plus every once in a solar eclipse if I want to commit mass BG genocide I will have a team better adapted at surviving the constant harassment of law enforcement ( had a BG2 run wear I killed absolutely everyone in chapter 7, - to make up for the fact that I had no mage and I wanted an XP boost- and unfortunately I didn't find any cool items, although I made around 500 000 GP from all the full plate mails and treasure from the law enforcement ninnies)
even when I play a single player game, I will do my best to power game my team up as much as possible, although I think everyone does that anyway, but even with that being said I do my best to share all the goodies along the way so no one gets hit too hard and suffers greatly for it ( although charname ALWAYS gets the ring of gaxx, but back in the vanilla bg2 days when you could get 2 of them I would always give the 2nd one to another melee guy whose saves were suffering a bit )
another bad habit is the "even though im a good guy, if I can have your XP without losing REP, your XP is mine" if I play teams with good alignment I will take down anybody who doesn't drop my REP, must power game......
I always kill drizzt, and its quite simple for why I do so
1- its a huge XP boost when you are level 1
2- those items are so damn good, especially when you are level 1
after when I learned how to kill drizzt years ago, I have killed him in almost every game I have ever played for the above two reasons, but once in a huge while I will actually let him go, if im not mistaken, out of the 1000 or so runs that I have played where I have slayed drizzt, I only let him live twice from what I can remember, once back around 8 years ago or so, and once again I believe around a couple years ago ( because now a days having characters that are going to export over into SoA having proficiencies in scimitar are going to miss out on some of the easier access, earlier, better weapons in SoA, so the urge isn't as high as it used to be)
in bg1, I 99.9999% give all the tomes to my charname, and in reality why wont you? SoA and ToB are much bigger than bg1 so in terms of usefulness you might as well give them all to charname anyway, especially when the select PCs who do go over to SoA wont have the stat upgrades anyhow, but then there is that 0.0001 % and who is that you ask? its when I play sorcerers, in reality the only real stat a sorcerer needs is WIS, INT and CHA don't effect spell casting what so ever, STR is only useful if you are using throwing daggers or slings and even then STR still isn't useful unless you have 19 or higher, and its quite possible to live without CON or DEX as well ( if enemies cant damage you, then what is the point of HP or AC?) so if I play a sorcerer I give some love to the other (N)PCs for the lols and give out the tomes to them
when it comes to 2 handed weaponry, I ALWAYS choose two handed sword, because A- they look cool, B- they are slashing weapons and C- they seem to get more love than other two handed weapons when it comes to neat attached abilities, now every once in awhile at the tail end of ToB I will use the ravanger+6 but for the first 95% of the series im using the two handed sword the whole way, I tried using the halberd a couple of times, but it just doesn't have the same feel as the two handed sword does for me for some reason
I don't know if this is a bad habit or not, but every time a party member starts a romance with me, I shut them down hard and fast right away, I remember back in the day when I was 13/14 and stumbled upon a romance ( I think it was with aerie) I thought that was a neat little game gimmick back in the day, but now adays, I couldn't be bothered with PC simulated 1s and 0s trying to give me a love interest, if people like that stuff, then by all means have fun with it, but now adays PC romances make me feel bloated and I couldn't be bothered, as a great warrior once said; less talk, more fight
in ToB especially, I always try my best to see how much gold I can achieve in the game without using outrageous exploits or cheating, and usually I will hit somewhere around 1.2+ million GP, I remember once back in the vanilla days I hit 2.1 million in ToB, but for the life of me, I don't remember how I did it, right now as it sits in bg1ee I hit 610 383, and in ToBee I believe my best so far is just a hair over 1.5 million, although that genocide team might be able to topple the 2 million mark, and the question is; why do I do this? maybe its to OCD, maybe its for the lols, or maybe its just a reason to play the series again and again just to see what number I can hit
if I can remember more then I might add to the list....
Heaven is a place.
A place where nothing
Nothing ever happens
--Talking heads
I always give the tomes to the party member who draws the biggest benefit from it. That can be my charname or not.
However, I never do this to Nizidramanii'yt or any of the dragons that come after him. I feel like by that point in the game, if I don't think I can beat a dragon fairly, I should not trust my thoughts.
My biggest worst habit was using online walkthroughs to help me find the best loot easiest. I never did that with icewind dale. i just couldn't resist the urge to find the greatest items out there. All my closest npcs wondered about me... Minsc and Viconia often asked, "what is wrong with you?? It's like you're psychic or something...are you a stalker?"
Then, after following these terrible urges of the natural man, I often wondered back to athkatla in shame, just to mindlessly defeat the local red man, or other graveyard scum. Aerie wondered for my health. Minsc wondered at my butt kicking luck. Edwin wondered at my guilt.
Finally, after painstaking effort and long, sleepless nights, I swore off online walkthroughs. I stopped using. I am no longer a slave to the addiction of sorcerers.net! I spit in your face, gamebanshee! I am proud to be free to make my own choices and mistakes!
I am mashedtaters. Hear me roar.
Quick Save
Rest
"You were awakened by monsters."
Quick Load
Rest
"You were awakened by monsters"
Repeat 10 times until healed
Carry on
It's bad, I know. But I play solo, so having access to a lot of my abilities and spells is usually very important.
I don't know if that's a reflection on me personally, but I know it's a reflection of the way I play all video games. I hate being weakened or handicapped, unless I purposely handicapped myself to make the game harder.
I share loot very fairly. I even give it for chars who are out of the party (using EEKeeper mostly) "just in case" I need them eventually.
I never sell potions and scrolls and named magical items. Except for the Infravision ones.
I always recruit every NPC even if I don't play with them.
Also, snuffing dragons can be challenging.
I have to confess that after having found a tactic that work for me for these two type of foes, respectively, I have not really bothered to try to find alternative ones.
This said, I am a passionate hater of the "modern style" scripted fights, which would have a single workable tactic, more or less.
I also like to give my PC every stat boost available, even if they don't benefit from it. If I'm going to be the next God of Murder, you better damn well believe I'm going to be as stacked as possible.
I cannot get past needing to open chests/doors myself. I tend to start the game solo to get some quick leveling up in BG.