Solica wrote...
Close to disaster.
Close to reloading an autosave, actually.
My point was that accepting, say, a 5% chance of an unacceptable result is OK in either game. Your PC blows a save, a TPW, whatever. Just reload and do the same strategy again and you'll win.
Understood.
Whether that is a "disaster" or not is a matter of perspective of course. If you are playing No Reload style and losing a battle means rolling up a new character in Candlekeep, some might say it qualifies (I'd hesitate to use the word "disaster" at all in the word of gaming though
).
Personally, I never enjoyed playing with reloads. If getting as second chance at life (and then another, and then another, and then another) isn't God Mode then I don't know what is. If my characters can't do it without reloading, they can't do it. From that viewpoint, a 5% chance of losing a battle (or in BG a comrade ) is unacceptable. Solica may have a similar way of looking at it.
Once you understand Pierce Magic, Breach, and True Seeing, you're golden until ToB. And even through most of that.
Edit: Overstated it a bit. There are a few more things to remember. Chaotic Commands is a must to neutralize all kinds of enemy abilities. Stoneskin /Iron Skins, while not necessary, is great. Protection From Evil helps against save-or-die stuff. You should probably carry around Secret Word instead of Pierce Magic for when high-powered spell defenses show up. AoE spells and things like Insect Plague can get through some spell defenses. Dragons and some outsiders have Fear abilities. And Beholders have a bunch of nasty abilities that don't work on some summoned creatures, notably elementals.
Out of all of these, most are explained in the manual. Breach, True Seeing, and Pierce magic are explained on loadscreens too. The value of Stoneskin will be demonstrated to the player the first time he fights a mage with it. About the only things a player needs to discover for himself are dragon fear and beholders' inability to ray summoned creatures. The first is self-evident the first time you fight one. The latter is more obscure, and beholder fights will be hard until the player discovers the trick.
It's just not a big list.
If you are refering to spells that you "need" to complete the unmodded adventure, then I agree that it isn't a big list. In truth, there is no list at all: it's perfectly possible to complete the adventure with a solo Thief or Fighter. And with a good understanding of your class and the item set, you can even pull if off without reloading. Again, the scripting in the unmodded adventure belied the richness of the underlying system.
In the umodded adventure, you didn't "need" to take advantage of the spell systems complexity but it did grant you a number of means of accomplishing goals. For example, above you mentioned that a caster can fight Beholders with Summons. That works without mods. But you'd have a number of other options at your disposal. You could use Spell Shield + Spell Immunities + Globe of Invulnerability, Spell Shield + Specific Protections, Polymorph Self: Mustard Jelly + Wands and those are just a few flavors you could choose from. It was nice to have so many options- there was a lot to explore if you took the time to do so. That was fun.
Of course, personally, I found the game more enjoyable with intelligent scripts that leveraged the spell system, but I appreciated the flexibiity in the unmodded adventure as well.
Best,
A.
Btw.
You should probably carry around Secret Word instead of Pierce Magic for when high-powered spell defenses show up.
You may have thought of Secret Word here because I mentioned it when discussing that hypothetical buff regime but it isn't especially helpful against high level protections: it only works on Spell Shield and the Minors. It was only relevant in that situation because of the Spell Shield- an exceedingly rare spell in the unmodded adventure. You may have been thinking of Ruby Ray of Reversal.
The reason that earlier buff regime is tricky is because it foils conventional debuff strategies. SI:A stops Dispel Magic and Improved Invisibility would prevent targeting via Breach, Pierce Magic and the like. The intuitive thing to do would be to run True Sight, however, SI:D would foil that leaving you turning to dispelling weapons. Alas, the dispelling weapons wouldn't work either due to ProMW + ProNM. A clever player might try using Malison + Glitterdust to make the mage targetable -or even think of tossing an item on the floor to provide a target for Insect Plague- but SI:C would stop that cold.
Protection From Evil helps against save-or-die stuff.
I'm guessing you were thinking of Death Ward here- that's the Divine Spell which protects against FoD and the like. Pro Evil grants some helpful bonuses against evil critters which aren't as common in BG as many would think (As an example, try checking Irenicus's alignment the next time you play unmodded BG...). It's perhaps best used to protect against Gated Demons: they'll ignore you.
So you know, I'm a bit rusty as a BG player to: it's been a few years for most of us...
Modifié par Alesia_BH, 28 juin 2010 - 01:36 .
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