I hope you enter a dungeon filled to brim with traps and locked doors without any rogue skills! You will also miss every locked chest in the game.
I think you are mistaking D&D for Diablo. (not to mention probably much of your gold going toward healing pots)
I don’t ever want to play a D&D game like that. More of a handicap/challenge run as you are missing quintessential verbs.
I was mostly thinking of Icewind Dale. That’s the only major D&D game I’ve played.
In that game, we played as 3 friends, multiplayer, each with our own character. I had a Ranger, one of my friends was a Rogue, and the third was a fighter/mage hybrid. We ended up relying almost entirely on potions, and the Rogue was the only one miserable throughout the game. Yes he disarmed a lot of traps, but that wasn’t a fun activity for him, especially since the game has a lot of triggers and traps that go off anyway, even with a rogue, even with successful disarming because the dungeons are designed that way. Eventually we found this kick ass sword for a Paladin and he changed characters, and then he had a great time. Yes, we triggered every trap from then on, and took more damage and had to quaff more potions than ever, but that was something we were doing anyway.
The other game I’ve played that’s D&D is Baldur’s Gate, which was miserable, I don’t like thinking about that one, and the other good one I’ve played is Neverwinter Nights 2. I did enjoy buffing my whole party before every fight in that one, but often they would trigger a cutscene, and most of our buffs would wear out by the end of the cutscene in that one.
Anyway, despite my comments, I loved, loved, loved Icewind Dale. Really fun. Because I didn’t play the Rogue.
Yeah, I don’t play the Infinity Engine games multiplayer controlling just a single character…that is highly unorthodox, and Iove Baldur’s Gate so I suspect we won’t be agreeing much on anything.
Playing as just a rogue is of course, really a bad idea in those games, which is why you play as the whole six member party that includes a rogue…in single-player…
I think going without a cleric is more viable in 5e. In battle healing spells are a bit less potent than previous versions, lots of characters have options to recover hitpoints in battle and healing from short rests is pretty generous.
A friend and I played through a Solasta campaign with two characters each and without any magical healing. It was a bit tough but not as bad as I thought, particularly with heavy damage mitigation on the barb.
Divine healing. Magic (I meant to say Arcane) doesn’t typically heal…
My only experience playing 5e was playing with some characters that could heal. My Paladin and a…Culinary Bard. And I had to use my Lay on hands (self) mid-combat a few times as I did take some nasty crits not to mention friendly-fire. My party were kinda dicks. All ranged except me. The Culinary bard mostly buffed the rest of the party but had some essential spot heals for the others in combat.
The bard also doesn’t use divine magic for its healing, just magic magic ;-)
Yeah, I forget what Bards healing source was. Bards are weird. I’ll just take a page out of Tolkien and say music is undefined primal magic.
And yeah, I should have used Arcane vs Divine since they are both “magic.” That’s what I meant, as in Arcane typically cannot access healing.
It is. I play most of these games single player. These were my Diablo II buddies and also pen and paper D&D buddies. It ended up being just a surprising amount of fun. I’d still recommend Icewind Dale to you if you haven’t played it. I did try it with a traditional party in single player at first, 2 tanks, cleric, wizard, rogue, and something else. But I couldn’t even get past the first dungeon challenge. I was reloading the scenario over and over when they came over and asked what I was playing. They wanted to join in, so they we created one character each and off we went. They had a lot more knowledge of D&D than I did, so their help was appreciated. I’m really bad at low level D&D, but luckily in Icewind Dale you don’t stay low level for too long because of all the insane stuff you have to fight. If you do end up playing it, I recommend quaffing lots of potions. It makes the game really fun.
Edit: Oh, and the point of the unorthodox scenario wasn’t to point out the unorthodox scenario. It was to point out that through the unorthodox scenario, we actually discovered that you don’t need the traditional D&D party and a game that’s as hard as Icewind Dale is very do-able even with an unorthodox party. Just showing my support for Equisilus’ point about having to make tough choices as to a 4-person party sounds good to me.
Sounds fun for sure, and a pretty damn unique experience with the game.
But for me and my party, I want all the verbs. All of them. And more besides. Sorry not sorry.
“I am willing to go thermonuclear on this” -Steve Jobs.
In properly implemented D&D quaffing a potion takes your action on a particular round - they’re no replacement for a dedicated healer.
And I reiterate - the problem with a 4 person party is that’s it’s NOT a tough choice nor is it an interesting choice. It’s a choice with a very narrow collection of right answers, which is about the least interesting design you can have in an RPG.
The funny thing is in all my sessions of D&D at the table I don’t think I have drank a single potion.
Should I plan to play Baldur’s Gate 2 before getting to 3? Or if there’s not many references to the events of 2, maybe I can play 3 first?
No. The original Baldur’s Gate Sage is done. Capital FIN!
This is a just a new game by a totality different company over a dozen years later capitalizing on the brand to make a brand new RPG.
Just an fyi that there are multiple people in this thread who have played EA and can confirm that your party makeup doesn’t matter as much as many fear.
There are some recurring characters from previous BG games, but this is mostly for fan service and you won’t need to know the story beats.
Although, if you haven’t played BG2, one of the best RPGs in history, then you should set aside some time before it’s too ancient. Fair warning, I tried to play BG1 again and it didn’t grab me a few years ago when I made the attempt, even enhanced for today. If you’re sensitive to that, be wary. I’m now satisfied to sit with my glorious memory of the good ole days rather than try to recapture them.
After the success (?) of D:OS2, I’m wondering whether Larian even needed the name of Baldur’s Gate to make their next game a hit. You’d think they could ride the coattails of D:OS2 into another win. I’m thinking it may be helpful to have the backing (i.e. money) of a big name behind them to help with development and that’s the only reason to decide on the BG name as opposed to the Divinity name.
YMMV, but I fired up the enhanced version of BG2 recently and it was already too ancient.
Having loved the game when it was released, I did the same thing a few years ago and came to the same conclusion. There is no enhancing/polishing that stone at this point, at least not for me.
I just played the EA version of this again, the last time i touched it was when it was first released to EA. Its a far different game than it was at launch EA. I bounced off it back then, but now, it could be a BG2 beater!
I played BG2 last year, and it was very dated, but was miles ahead of my first experience of BG3. Now? Especially with Minsc in the mix…this could be THE BG game to play.
Hopefully, they rethink, or at least make if moddable for the party size to increase to 5. The discussion here is a good point on the topic and my sole sour note so far (albeit one that doesn’t diminish that this feels like BG ampled to 11).
Jason Isaacs!
