Does It Get Harder? - Spoiler

[VonDondu]

[QUOTE=davfrahen]This time around, I did almost everything before getting ready for the final showdown. My fighter is level 18 - almost 19. You would have thought that Firkraag and the Kangax would have been easy meat, but they weren`t. I had to resort to using simalcrum and the slayer to beat them.
Previously, I had beaten them at a much earlier stage without too much trouble. I`m playing the D & D level, but surely it shouldn`t make that much difference?[/QUOTE]
Firkraag and Kangaxx were never meant to be easy, at least not for the average player. I used to visit the largest BG2 message board in the world before it went offline, and it took at least a month after BG2 first came out before "master players" were bragging about how "easy" it was to beat Firkraag and Kangaxx. They had to learn the right tactics and exploits just like the rest of us before it became "easy". My guess is that the game designers made fighting Firkraag and the rest of the dragons optional because they figured most players wouldn't be able to defeat dragons on their first run through the game. I know it was hard for me. Even the NPCs express reservations. I had to reload about ten times the first time I fought the Shadow Dragon, and I didn't even meet Firkraag or Kangaxx the first time I played the game because I wasn't using a walkthrough or spoilers and I didn't even know they existed. I think that Kangaxx was intended to be practically impossible to beat. "Kangaxx" is a name that should strike fear in the heart of any D&D player, and the Ring of Gaxx is supposed to be a fabled prize that is practically impossible to attain. Surely the game designers never intended any player to get two. I finally found a way to make beating Kangaxx almost trivial, which is not to say it isn't dangerous. (Improved Mace of Disruption +2 and Berserker Rage or Scroll of Protection from Magic.) But my technique requires you to finish the Temple quests and start working for one of the rival guilds, so I'm not going to brag that it can be performed by a 9th level character.

The biggest difference between the Core Rules setting and the Normal or Easy setting is that your characters are weaker (unless you cheat), since they won't have full hit points and they might fail to memorize a few spells. At the two highest settings, the monsters hit harder, and that makes a difference.

Usually, if a person plays the game several times, the game seems a lot easier just because his playing skills have increased. I know mine did. So in order to keep the game challenging, it's a good idea to raise the difficulty level or install mods that spice up the game. I'm not sure why the game was harder for you than you thought it would be, but think of it as a way to get more experience as a player and learn better tactics.

[Celacena]

I'm Double-Hard, Me

let's get this straight - playing the game and getting wiped off the map 15 times in a row whilst you refine your tactics is 'normal'. when you have found that way of dispatching an unwelcome end-boss, then next time, you use it - perhaps with a bit of variation - first time. I left the game for a couple of years and had to re-learn some encounters rather than jumping to the 'obvious' solution.

boosting a dragon's MR to over 100 is exploiting a 'bug' but the steal-sell technique is a 'ruse'. beserking to avoid imprisonment is a ruse. blanketing an area with cloud-kill is a ruse.

I use the un-modded game and try to defeat all the enemies using tactics, strategies and ruses as well as brute force. I have killed the dragons in combat, losing half the party and surviving by the skin of my PCs teeth. I have found ways to kill Kangaxx in combat and often had to wait to do so. the only 'bug' I am using is simply that the AI of the monsters is not good enough to defeat somebody who can reload and try again as much as it takes to find its Achilles' Heel.

importing uber-PCs is a way to finish the game, but that is not my way or the way of many others like me. However, to infer that there is something inferior in our game play because we don't mod or console or import is taking a cyclopian view of what the game is about.

Almost anybody can walk through the levels designed for level 8 characters with a well-equipped level 15 one and breeze it, but there is no shame in exploiting AI deficiencies to win the same battles at level 7. we are intelligent, we learn and we use our learning to survive as PCs - well-designed games work in a number of ways and have a number of solutions, but if you don't enjoy applying a variety those solutions it is time to move on.
(hence expansions, mods etc)

[Gaal Dornik]

Celacena
You are missing one obvious fact. Games are made to sell and get money. And a bugged game sells same. So in a sense you are correct. Once the game is out, its time for devs to move on. Which they do They _could_ pay a little more attention, if there would not be ppl who assume every bug is a god's gift tho. Nowadays community makes better patches than devs. TOEE w/o Co8 patch? forget it. BG2 w/o Baldurdash? forget it. There are some mods ofc, which change the game, yes, but playing an unpatched game makes little sense.

we are intelligent
intentionally playing a bugged game i can hardly call intelligent.

[stramoski]

[QUOTE=Celacena]boosting a dragon's MR to over 100 is exploiting a 'bug' but the steal-sell technique is a 'ruse'. beserking to avoid imprisonment is a ruse. blanketing an area with cloud-kill is a ruse.[/QUOTE]
Now this is getting really OT, and if you want to start the cheese/tactics argument, we'de probably best do it in another thread... But I just want to point out that an exploit that couldn't work on any "real" foe is usually considered "cheese." Now this is open to interpretation, but I'd probably say that the MR technique would definitely not work on any intelligent enemy, because casting Magic Resistance would not work, because the dragon would see you doing it, and recognize it as the attack it is. (BTW, is SETS MR; it doesn't raise MR over 100.)
On the other hand, a role-player may simply say that the dragon doesn't know that specific spell, and the priest can simply try to pass it off as a general benign enchantment.
So any tactic can be justified, if you work hard enough.

And why bother? It's just a game. If that's fun to you, then go for it! Have fun! That's the whole point....
Just remember, that the community may not be impressed by your "boasting." You shouldn't let that get the better of you, but keep in mind that not everyone may want to hear it.

[fable]

Guys, first post. Question. Answer it, or don't post.

[Celacena]

On-Topic Who moved my cheese?

The discussion on the difficulty of high-level opponents can fairly be said to incorporate the philosophy of gaming to the extent of debating whether high level opponents such as lich and dragons should be fought only in ways that an intelligent adversary could succumb to or whether using weaknesses in the AI engine or a programming error is fair game.

The whole environment is artificial and I think it depends on the level of artificiality that one accepts in a game. in pnp, the DM controls the situation and the players have entirely free choice about their verbal handling of situations - furthermore, in pnp, the DM would almost never say "you must gather your party" before entering a room or small building - those contraints, which are almost inevitable in a computer RPG are artificial - for example, if a player might be sent ahead by a party as a scout - say in Firekraags lair via a route that the dragon could not follow, due to sheer bulk - why should a party that are all obliged to be there, rather than having the weaker ones safely around a few corners to avoid blasts, not use ruses on him that are based on artificial constraints too?

using my favourite dragon-killer technique as an example - if a dragon is sitting in an enormous darkened cave and starts to choke on fumes - why should it be assumed that the dragon would immediately locate and run towards the spell-caster or be able to find a way out of the cloud? in a cloud of poison gas, even intelligent creatures would be disorientated and given that a wand is pouring layer upon layer of poison gas into a confined area - it is not unreasonable that a dragon could be killed by that.

with Kangaxx - all the party are obliged to enter a confined space, even though some of them would be cannon-fodder - it is not unreasonable for a character suspecting the powers of such an enemy, would protect themselves against magic and use a powerful magical weapon to hack away at it - indeed, it is more unrealistic that the lich doesn't suffer spell-casting failure when firing off so many high-level spells under a rain of blows. if the lich chooses to target a particular party member because they were the one he saw first and that turns out to be pointless because that is the one protected from magic, well so be it. a monomaniac and over-confident creature like that or a dragon deserves what they get if they assume that all opponents are vastly their inferiors.

I argue that it is very difficult to assess what a 'live' opponent would do and bearing in mind the constraints on player action, using the opponents' contraints levels the playing field much of the time. AI and monster levels have to be balanced to allow the game to be playable yet provide some challenge - if a player has certain tactics that often work, so be it - when do parties ever leave survivors to run and tell other monsters how their kin succumbed?