f13.net forums - Baldur's Gate: The Baldening

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June 25, 2025, 12:17:48 PM

we're back, baby

This thread continues to deliver.

Another update coming tonight or tomorrow. I need to play a little more before I have enough material. Let me just say right now, having two single-class thief types in the party? Awesome. With Garrette having all the sneaky/trap stuff covered, Alexia can basically steal anything not nailed down. She walked up to that Shadow Thief vendor on the second floor of the "Coo!" guy's house and just blithely cleaned him out for all sorts of magic weapons and armor.

It also means you can do all kinds of wacky trap laying tricks on dragons and such (just make sure to do it out of sight of them.)

this thread is no lie

Quote from: Ingmar on July 07, 2009, 05:55:33 PM

It also means you can do all kinds of wacky trap laying tricks on dragons and such (just make sure to do it out of sight of them.)

Hur hur. At least he doesn't need to stress over it, since Carsomyr would just be vendor trash.

I don't have any points in Set Traps with either of them. Gar is all Hide in Shadows, Move Silently, and Disarm Traps, so he can ninja around the dungeon without catching every trap with his face. Lex is 100 Open Locks and everything else in Pick Pockets, and even so had to chug a Master Thievery pot to clean out the Copper Coronet guy. (Stole back Gar's exact crossbow from BG1 instead of having to pay 9k for it, yay!)

I don't have any real idea how this shit works, except that 100 is all I need in Open Locks. I do have a savegame editor that I use for various purposes (Fixing weapon proficiencies when I modded the system and everyone ended up masters of "not used", etc) and no objection to using it to respec, provided I keep the same total number of skill points. So if someone has any tips that would be great, bearing in mind that Gar is an Assassin and only gets 15 points per level.

I'm thisclose to shitcanning the whole thing because of how awful BG2 combat is. I never played tabletob D&D, and there is absolutely no way any normal person would intuit that Greater Lesser Breach Dispel #487 removes Protection From Everything With A Vowel In The Name.

Rocks fall. Everyone dies. This fighting is just Not Fun.

Quote from: WindupAtheist on July 07, 2009, 11:54:42 PM

Yeah, there are some mage fights that can get massively annoying, especially toward the beginning when you don't have top of the line gear. I often used two mages, just so I had enough damn "peeling stuff off the mage who is currently invincible" spells.

Yeah pretty much every combat begins and ends with Breach against Mages.

As far as tabletop combat though things can get annoying. I remember in 3rd ed druids were fucking invisible artilery platforms.

Step one: Wait until nighttime.
Step two: Shapechange into an owl.
Step three: Cast "Change Weather" until you get stormy weather.
Step four: Cast "Call Lightning" on random people, laughing as you do so.

Quote from: WindupAtheist on July 07, 2009, 11:54:42 PM

Well damn. Not that I blame you in any way. Bummer, though. Nythrax was going places!

I did look at some guides and stuff.

Quote

Breach will strip out any elemental and physical protection, and almost nothing stops it…spell trap will not stop breach, spell turning will not stop breach, only spell shield will stop breach, but only once, and the spell shield is consumed by stopping breach. However due to its nature as a single target spell, you can stop enemies from breaching you by being improved invisible. It is a single target spell, after all. Liches are immune to breach, since they are immune to spells below a certain level, and breach is one of the spells liches are immune to.

[...]

Unfortunately, dispell magic will also dispell YOUR protections, so this is not good…however, spell immunity abjuration (which does NOT stop breach) will protect a mage or sorceror from an inquisitor’s dispell magic, so your inquisitor can cast dispell magic all day long, and your protected mages and sorcs will not care.

[...]

Remove magic does remove lich protections…you noticed it is a 3rd level spell, so liches should be immune to it, however remove and dispell magic are EXCEPTIONS to lich immunity… it will remove a lich protections if you make the roll. However it is stopped by spell immunity abjuration… sounds complicated? Actually its simple.

[...]

Attention: only Pierce Shield, Ruby Ray of Reversal and Spellstrike get rid of Spelltrap! Plus all spells require targetting so you’ll have to get rid of the invisibility problem first. You cannot dispell illusions if mages cast Spell Immunity: Divination. But on the flipside, there’s also an exploit here, without the need of Spell Immunity. Cast mislead and stuff your image out of sight of the caster. True Sight will only dispell illusions within RANGE so you’ll be still improved insibile. Some enemies (dragons, beholders, etc) can see through illusions, so don’t bother. High level mages (18+) have True Sight set on casting as soon as you enter the area with at least one illusion spell active (Mirror Image, mislead, …). You’ll need the Immunity then.

At which point my brain exploded and I decided that a playthrough of BG1 was enough for one thread. I don't really want to write The Adventures of Mordak and His Five Meat Shields: A Study in Tabletop Gaming Minutiae.

The funny thing is none of that ECM/ECCM/ECCCM spell stuff is actually in the pen and paper RPG, in any version. Breach, spell thrust, all that stuff is only in BG2. As far as it ever went in the RPG was the first tier kind of stuff like globe of invulnerability and dispel magic.

That said I don't really mind it. Oh ho ho ho. Reallllly?

Quote from: Ingmar on July 08, 2009, 03:53:47 PM

Yeah, I seem to remember that when the mage-buff shenanigans started I just memorized buffing spells instead of fireballs/lightning bolts and just tore through them with melee.

I seem to remember it gets worse in throne of bhaal too - I had 2 mages, 1 was full-time debuffer. Thats all she did, remove this, dispel that, breach the other. Combats came down to her casting 5-6 debuffs in a row, until finally the previously-invincible mage was mortal, whereupon they would get torn to shreds by the rest of the party.

Maybe theres a user mod out there that fucks these spells right off? Dunno - I too would miss the cool kids.

Somehow I don't remember having a bitch of a time with the spell system. Then again, I ran with 3 mages, and not just because of the spell system.

Does it really come up That often?

There's nothing that can't be solved by Haste. Lots and lots of Haste.

During BG1 I had to remind myself to stop playing and write, whereas after a couple of giant adventurer barfights that boiled down to incomprehensible mage duels I really just found myself slogging through BG2, waiting to get enough material for an update. (Which reminded me why, after starting this kick with BG2, I went back to play through BG1 again in the first place.) Hey, maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm too dumb for this game. I like the characters and loved writing in this thread, but I can't wade through the longest RPG in the universe when I'm not having fun.

Anyone have any suggestions for other party-based RPGs? If there were one that let you make up all your own guys, I'd have the kids take a left turn at Albuquerque and pillage an Ultima or something just for laughs.

There's the Icewind Dale games, but they tend to contain a lot less story stuff, so they might not lend themselves as well to this.

Whole thing eventually leads to Neverwinter but I don't remember that being a particularly deep RPG at any point despite being OMG 3D. I've not really noticed the mage combat thing so much, I've been running with Edwin and Imoen so there's been people to throw around a load of dispell stuff but I've never really bothered to work out what works on what. Mostly it's been throw random dispells at the mage while keeping everyone else alive and dealing with invis spells if they come up. In retrospect while typing this that doesn't sound like any fun but it's not really overly phased me so far except for the odd time when the mages get feared and you just need to accept that everyone's now going to die. Which sucks.

I was kind of looking forward to Nythrax getting his own demon butler though.

If it means getting more writing, I wouldn't blame WUA for just using a kill command on pointless mage battles.

Quote from: NowhereMan on July 08, 2009, 06:09:31 PM

NWN1 doesn't really have a party system, you pretty much just play with the main character, and maybe one henchman.

Quote from: Rasix on July 08, 2009, 04:59:24 PM

There's nothing that can't be solved by Haste. Lots and lots of Haste.

I seem to recall that was my solution, too. My Paladin, the DE Cleric, Minsc, Imoen, Jaheria and some mage was my BG2 party and I don't recall things being unbearable. I do recall casting a shit ton of healing spells, however.

You know, there's a Blackguard kit out there that grants the Inquisitor uber-dispel. And while the kit Nythrax was using was pretty good in late BG1, with the Animate Dead nerf it was pretty worthless in BG2 anyway. Hmm.

He hates magic anyway. Come on.... awesome, for real

The other thing to remember about spell protections is that almost all of them can be defeated through the brilliant strategy of waiting until they run out. There's very few that have a duration longer than a few rounds. Melee protections are even easier. There you basically deal with increases to AC and such, as well as the everpresent Stoneskins, which just mean you need to hit the enemy a bunch of times. Tip on stoneskin: it doesn't matter how much you hit for. Hitting for 1 HP will strip one skin. Hitting for 200 HP will also strip one skin. Darts, if I remember right, get three attacks per round in Baldur's Gate II, unhasted. I think there's magical darts that increase that to 4 or 5, then haste can double it to 10, so you're basically a rapid-fire dart cannon and can strip stoneskins in a round or two.

You can be fairly evil in arcanum, semi-similar game, maybe you could do that?

Holy fucking shit. After a huge pain in the ass routine that involved copying Nythrax's file, cloning him, putting both in the same multiplayer game, transferring gear, writing down his stats and using an editor to recreate them, then moving the save file back to the single player folder (in order to skip the multiplayer character select screen) I've changed his kit from the Sword & Fist mod Blackguard to the Tactics mod Anti-Paladin. It's basically an evil version of the Inquisitor with a 'dispel magic on melee hit' ability to compensate for evil parties not being able to use the uber-sword that does the same thing.

Why would anyone EVER not have an Inquistor (or equivalent) in their party? This 'AOE dispel as if you were double your actual level' thing is ridiculous. awesome, for real

Edit: Seriously, I've gone from not being able to kill some mage in a bar fight to cockslapping a lich. Now I have the Daystar sword. Ho ho ho.

Edit2: Ok, I have enough material for an update. Will probably write it tomorrow in the AM. Seriously, I dodged a bullet here. Being able to simultaneously dispel on a whole room full of guys as if I were level 16 is huge and makes life a lot simpler. I'm immensely glad some modder realized evil parties were getting cockstabbed to infinity by not having access to it. So does anyone know anything about how to distribute thief skills?

Glad to hear a solution has been found! Looking forward to the continuing adventures of the cool kids.

Quote from: WindupAtheist on July 08, 2009, 11:08:44 PM

Ok, I have enough material for an update. Will probably write it tomorrow in the AM.

Sweet Baby Jesus on a raptor! DRILLING AND MANLINESS

I think Lex is enjoying our newfound poverty. With our little band in need of everything and an entire city of merchants before us, she's never been so busy. Armor, weapons, potions, scrolls, she's been stealing everything not nailed down. I'm pretty sure she pried up a few things that were nailed down and stole them too. Good thing, because it's making life a hell of a lot easier.

With Irenicus and Zombie Imoen locked up who knows where, we decided to explore the city and see what sort of trouble we could get into. We had no sooner begun to pass through the slums when we were accosted by this inbred dipshit who apparently has some sort of brain damage that compels him to start every sentence with the word "Coooooooooo!" Which isn't a word, but whatever.

I'd have diced him into giblets on the spot for being that irritating, except he knew who we were and introduced himself as a member of the Shadow Thieves. Okay, they don't like Irenicus and we're powerful adventurers who don't like Irenicus either, I can see where this is going. He wanted us to follow him back to his house, which didn't seem very wise, but then plot fairies made me do it anyway.

It went about how I expected, except that this guy seemed to think Zombie Imoen was with us and that we'd be hot to rescue her. I told him I didn't give a shit about that, I just wanted to get my hands on Irenicus. He seemed to think this was for simple revenge, and I let him go on that way, because I don't really need the thieves knowing that there's even Two Hundred Thousand Mother Fucking Gold anywhere in this picture.

Anyway, Gaelen and the thieves can apparently get us to Irenicus, who's being held prisoner by the Cowled Wizards, the guys who enforce that idiotic no-magic law. Only thing is, they want twenty thousand gold to do it. I'm not keen on that, and we don't have that much anyway, so I just tell him as much.

Oh well that's no problem, he says, since we can just make the money doing the standard adventurer bullshit. He says he'll have his nephew or whatever show us to the Copper Coronet, one of those slummy adventurer dives that are always full of people looking to have monsters and shit killed. Yeah, great, I just can't wait to start doing the usual "go into the sewers and kill poop monsters" routine on behalf of this syphilis-addled cooing moron.

We began our fundraising by stealing everything out of his house. He's a professional, he'll understand. There was even a guild fence working out of the upstairs, and Lex robbed him blind for a bunch of equipment.

Once we got outside, Kor gave Gaelen's little ragamuffin of a nephew a kick in the ass and told him to get lost. We all agreed that there was no way we were paying that asshole twenty grand, and that we were officially looking for a way to fuck him over while still getting what we want. We found our way to the Coronet ourselves, and sure enough it was just what I expected. Specifically, it's the sort of place where six heavily-armed mercenaries (namely us) will pile in, and some hapless suicidal mook will immediately decide he doesn't like their faces and that he's going to do something about it.

With the obligatory "Hey a new pub!" murder out of the way, we got down to business. Lex went up to where the barkeep was and started stealing all sorts of weapons and magic arrows. (Gee, you think all the barfight deaths have something to do with the custom of drinking establishments doubling as arms vendors?) Vaere got into some sort of religious debate with this ridiculously poncy priest of Helm, he demanded she renounce her evil ways on the spot, and I'm pretty sure she and Kor clubbed him to death with bar stools.

I wasn't sure because I was busy chatting up our would-be employer. This broad Nalia was short on details, but her entire demeanor screamed "I HAVE TOO MUCH MONEY!" almost as loudly as it screamed "I AM A NAIVE DIPSHIT!" Those are two of my favorite characteristics to find in the same person. Seems she's the filthty rich daughter of a filthy rich family, and she's one of those fools who feels guilty about being so well off while having no idea what it's actually like to be poor. She was bumbling around asking for help and not grasping why "But I've helped so many of YOUR KIND!" wasn't making her many friends.

Seems her family's keep is overrun by... something... and if I help her by killing off this something, I'll get... something else. She was kind of a moron, and I don't usually like such vague deals, but the real thrust of the situation was thus: As long as the invaders hadn't finished looting and moved out, all of the family's rich-ass stuff should still be inside their keep. If we can kill off whatever is in there, we should be able to pillage ourselves silly without anyone knowing any better. "Where's your stuff ma'am? I don't know, maybe one of the badguys snuck out the back door with it!" Haw.

She wanted to join our little crew, but I told her to go ahead and just wait for me outside the keep at a safe distance. She's frankly insufferable, and keeping her in our company would only result in someone hacking her face off prematurely.

So off we go. To kill some vague ill-defined enemies to make some loot to (hopefully avoid having to) pay the Shadow Thieves to get to Irenicus to make him tell us where our THTMFG is. Man, why is shit always so complicated?

Except it's never that easy, is it? First we get attacked by slavers while while making our way between the slums and the city gate. I have no idea why everyone thinks we look like soft targets, but we easily gave them an education to the contrary. I didn't mind that part, because they had some nice stuff.

The part I mind is where we have to double back to the promenade to sell some of the stuff we don't need, and my delusion of leading a crack squad of adventurers instead of babysitting a pack of violent children takes a boot to the crotch. Everyone was too tired and excited and covered in Cowled Wizard giblets to notice the circus tent last time we were through here, but now Mordak sees it and everyone completely loses their shit except for me and Garrette.

Mordak, Lex, and Kor take off like rockets, elbow a couple of Amnish soldiers out of the way, and are inside the tent before I can even finish screaming at them that we have fucking business to take care of. Loot related business. Vaere started dragging me toward the tent by one hand, telling me that I should just mellow out. Then Garrette told her I probably would, if she could explain to us why heavily armed government soldiers were guarding a circus tent. Ha, at least someone else around here has some sense. Of course we went in after them anyway because, well, what else were we going to do?

We get in there, and suddenly we're in another dimension. Kor, Mordak, and Lex are all standing there slackjawed looking around this... this... enormous space with a stone bridge leading up to a building that looks sort of like a giant circus tent. One larger than the tent we walked into to get here. It's a bit mind-bending. Naturally, there was no way back out to be seen.

I had to lecture. I couldn't help it. Here we are on our way to a sweet deal where we get to rob an entire keep, and these nimrods have to go "WAHAHA CIRCUS!" and get us sucked right out of the universe. It HAS to be us. This sort of shit can't POSSIBLY happen to everyone. Mordak just flapped his arms and told me to chill, everything would probably go back to normal if we killed whoever was responsible for this. Probably.

So we marched on ahead toward the building, until we were confronted by an ogre with the voice of a little girl telling us to get away, please get away. I don't know what the hell the point of THAT was, but a shower of arrows and a sword through the neck made it all moot. Then there was this asshole genie who wanted to ask us questions about math before he'd let us through, and just... yeah.

Anyway, eventually we got into the building and found it decorated like a mansion. A mansion full of shadow monsters and werewolves. (Or is it wolfweres? What sort of stupid name is that?) Yawn. Hack, slash, chop, so far this was actually pretty easy. We kicked our way through everything in front of us until we finally came up to the guy in charge, this big ape of a dude who wanted everyone to kneel before him and blah blah blah. He summoned up a bunch of his useless minions, but we ignored them and all jumped on him and started hacking him to bits.

As soon as he hit the floor, everything snapped back to reality and suddenly we were standing inside a normal circus tent. The big evil guy had turned into some helpless little gnome. Apparently he worked for the circus in some little bitch of a role that he resented, somehow was given magical power by some outside entity, and this whole caper was his idea of a good way to use it. Maybe it was supposed to be the genie?

I don't know, I didn't want to hear the exposition. I just stabbed the little fucker to finish him off, and when the circus owner started crying about how that girl-voiced ogre had been his magically transformed daughter I just told him to cram it. What a huge waste of time.

On the bright side, once we got outside, the city guards thanked us for our benevolent service. Public goodwill can be a very useful resource to burn at times.

By now it was getting late, so I figured the day was shot and we may as well waste the night too and turn in before leaving the city. I should have known that when it rains, it pours. We're sitting in some stank-ass pub near the city gates, when Garrette taps me on the shoulder, points to a nondescript section of wall in a dark corner of the room, and says "That's a door." His ability to spot a hidden door has come in handy more than once, so I know he knows what he's talking about.

So we all move to the corner table closest to the secret door. Garrette gets up for a drink, and when he gets back, leans against it as casually as possible. Nobody is even looking at us, and I'm wondering if any of them even know it's here. He pushes something on the molding with his foot until it clicks, and the section of wall slides away silently. I can hardly believe it, but none of the broken down old drunks in this dive are even looking in our direction. So fuck it, we duck through!

It has to be us. This shit can't happen to everyone.

The doorway leads into a crypt, and in the crypt is a lich. Sure, what else would there be? Alternate dimension in a circus tent, lich in a pub closet. I'm not going to be able to take a shit without worrying that the outhouse is the hidden portal to a red dragon's lair. Anyway, some would tell you that a ridiculous game ensued between us and this lich, of running in and out of the room, waiting for it's spells to wear off, hitting it with my own dispel, swatting it with a weapon to set off contingency spells, and repeating the whole schtick ad nauseum until the thing was largely defanged. I tell you that we leapt in there and heroically cleaved it in twain whilst it shat it's undead britches in terror of our awesomeness. You weren't there, so you can't say otherwise. Heh.

We gave it's ring of invisibility to Garrette for when he's out scouting, there's nowhere to hide, and he really doesn't want to be seen. Lex broke into it's chest and found a sword that Mordak identified as Daystar. Apparently it's some uber holy sword that belonged to an order of paladins, and is exceptional for killing the undead. Touching it made me feel itchy, but Kor didn't mind, so now he has that in one hand and this sword of fire that Lex stole for him in the other.

Oh, that reminds me! Just to backtrack, when we hit the Copper Coronet and Lex was pilfering the weapons? We found Garrette's old crossbow from when we killed Sarevok. Fucking barkeep wanted to sell it for like over 9000 gold. How about zero gold, bitch? Haw! Garrette was quite pleased to have it back.

Anyway, in the morning we're leaving for De'Arnisse Keep come hell or high water. Unless we fall down a sewer grate and end up on the Elemental Plane of Fire or something, which at this point wouldn't fucking surprise me.

(Nythrax ding 9, Kor just a few XP from the same.)

I have the de'Arnise thing to write up, then I'm dropping everything and going off-track to get the Lilarcor sword. A fucking talking sword that says shit like "Murder death kill! Muahaha!" with a voice actor and everything? YES PLEASE. I'd have gone for this straight out of the first dungeon if I'd known it existed.

I cannot wait for the hilarity to ensue.

Evil talking sword? That's a win. This thread continues to be the most awesome thread ever*.

*Hyperbole combined with sycophancy to feed and fuel the WUA Creative Core.