Replaying Baldur's Gate

It’s actually not. 3.0 was a godsend. The death of THAC0 should only be celebrated.

The internet is the death of sarcasm. Sorry, should have put in the /s

THAC0 is natural to me, but only because I spent so much time on it through the years.

It started with spending hundreds of hours reading and poring over the 1st Edition AD&D books. I never really played any D&D campaigns with people, but would do plenty of simulations on the rules and do many scripted battles and dungeon runs myself.

It continued with many more hundreds of hours playing and finishing all of the Gold Box games, and others through the years. I believe the Dark Sun games were still THAC0 and I played through those.

I also spent hundreds of hours coding and testing my own C64 game that was based on 1st edition rules and was sort of a randomized dungeon simulation complete with dungeon levels up to 10, random encounters based on the tables in the AD&D books, and treasures given based on the tables there also. It was pretty fun actually, but I couldn’t continue adding things like more special attacks and spells as I ran out of memory and my coding efficiency wasn’t the best!

I really should do another playthru of Baldur’s Gate with the EE versions. I believe I finished the first long ago, but couldn’t get through the high end battles of BG2 as things just got to chaotic for me with all the enemy magic to try to process and control. I had a great time with IWD again in recent years.

I hear you. I was almost always being terribly sarcastic about it.

80-stack arrows is the best thing since potion cases!

I’ve finished BG1 for the first time yesterday. I’ve played BG2 back when it was released a couple of times shortly after release but now I see I didn’t get the rules at all. A lot of RPG fans don’t care about actual gameplay and would probably get more from Telltale games. So I remember BG2 having fun epic stories and good writing, but even though more than 15 years have passed I still remember annoying level drain and the fact that every freaking mage had layers of magic defense you have to take off.

Now that I actually understood how BG works I’m impressed by what an improvement 3E was. It’s still a mess that should never have been digitized in this form (same for Pathfinder) but it’s a decipherable mess. Consistent rules for stats and multiclassing are god send. Also it makes so that even fighters have something to do in the fight.

Come to think of it, I’d call Knights of the Old Republic a decent take on d20. It still had a problem with fake attack animation and primary stat 12 being functionally the same as 13 but it worked much better for videogame.

This is how THACO worked in the old red set Dungeons & Dragons game. You rolled a D20, and looked on this table for what Armor class you hit.

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What is the problem with fake attack animations? Also, is there a page that summarizes the more arcane parts of 2nd edition rules?

Fake attack animations were more of a problem for me in real time action games like the earlier Elder Scrolls games.

[I was just going to leave it at that, but then Discourse says that posts can’t be empty. So I added this. But really, the post still is empty, isn’t it? Aren’t we all just staring into the abyss?]

The real issue is that lower AC is better. If higher AC was better, as it is in D&D 3E and beyond, you don’t need a THAC0. The number you need to roll is the AC.

So why are lower ACs considered better? Found this on Reddit.

Now I want to know if Destroyers got DEX bonuses.

Nothing in the game (BG or KotOR) tells you how long the round is but you’re told how many attacks per round you do.

Nothing in the game tells you that all rolls are d20.

The result is that even if you get that there’s d20 happening in the background you’ll see that you miss twice as often as you should. Or when you get addditional attacks per round you see no difference.

Thanks for sending me down this path. Looks like fake attacks are pretty easy to disable in the EE.

Ok I started this when it was released way back when. I bought the EE on Steam and started. Now this thread has me starting again. I always escape the dungeon and peter out in the city, we are talking double digits amount of times. I got out of the dungeon last night and now will start exploring the city.

THIS TIME I WILL STICK WITH IT. (wish me luck, gulp)

Only go into houses with pins on the map. The rest are just scenery.

This is me. I bought this first in 1999 or 2000 and have never gotten beyond Chapter 2. I’m determined to keep going this time.

I posted the other day here that I suck at combat (which is true) but now I realize the battle that stymied me is on the main plotline and my repeated failure is probably a signal that I need to do more side quests. Which is often my problem – I’m always in a hurry to move the plot along. I think the point of the breadth of Chapter 2 is that you should take your time.

Some quick tips for BG2 combat:

-Two mages in the party is so much better than one! That’s why I had three. (Jan counts right?)

-Cast Greater Malison then cast Chaos into a group of enemies
Result: -8 saving throw penalty on everyone versus running around like idiots. Easy to land on a lot of enemies.

-Use Wizards Eye + Summons to scout ahead of your party with your summons. (Summons don’t give you line of sight and become uncontrollable once they leave your parties LoS) Allows you to cast nuke and control spells from a safe distance!

-You actually need to mind wizard magical protections and use the appropriate removal spells in order. It is generally a two step process. Casting Breach at a wizard with Spell Turning will send the Breach back at YOU! Also if they have Spell Shield it will straight up absorb it. Spell Deflection and Spell Immunity also stops it.
-You should cast Secret Word FIRST for each of these types of protections if they have any THEN casting Breach will strip off all the rest of their combat protections: Immunity to Magic weapons, Stone Skin, Spirit Armor, etc…(you won’t get a better version of Secret Word until you get access to level 7 spells. Pierce Magic is better for lowering magic resistance since it only affects 6th level or lower. Spell Thrust only affects 5th level or lower. Secret Word affects 8th level spells)
-Remove Magic wipes potion buffs, items buffs, and some spells but it only works based on the spell level of the caster. Basically useless for duel/multi-classes.

-Use Melf’s Minute Meteors. 5 Attacks per round! Ignores magic resistance. Does piercing and fire damage. Super good.

-Mislead is basically permanent invisibility even while attacking as long as your clone is active. It is very powerful.

Don’t need to do that dungeon again.

Great tips, though, I’ve always considered mages to be nearly useless.

Everything gets a save, and against anything that counts, it’s gonna save. So why bother?

Just cast Haste + Improved Invis on my fighters and try to die while they do all the work. And against an enemy mage, just chain cast Breach until my fighters can hit him.

Probably not ideal, but it works.

This is opposite of true. You can lower the magical resistances and saves of a dragon enough to polymorph them into a squirrel.

Imagine this:

As a Wizard I can cast Project Image, which is a 100% copy of my wizard with all of its spells, item powers, consumables…have the Projected Image cast Simulacrum which makes a copy of itself at 60% power…walk both of them into a group of enemies, have both cast Mislead so that the Projected Image and Simulacrum go invisible with a decoy…at this point the enemies are attacking the decoys of Projected Imagine and Simulacrum so they can freely cast spells unhindered…time stop, dragons breath, comet, summon 5 Mordenkainen’s Swords which are 4+ swords that are immune to nearly everything…destroy everything.

Then I can do it all over again because I just used ONE spell. ONE.SPELL.

Wizards are the most powerful class in the game by far.