Kind of a difference to pen&paper

Chris Boney · Post by **Chris Boney** » Fri Nov 17, 2000 7:20 am

I know, a lot of people are going to hate me for that, but I think I must say once that Baldur's Gate is not very close to Pen&Paper, really. The most obvious difference beeing that you never know how powerful an enemy is before you start fighting him. Unlike PnP where your DM showed you your enemies AC, Tac0 and other kinds of info like "If you are going to try to fight this enemy, he will try to grab your head every second round blablabla and you must roll a d20 lower than your strength to evade this and that blablabla", well unlike PnP you only see the same animation of the enemy all over the game. I merely point out that in BG-type of games you never know, if the mage whom you are evaluting to whether you should attack or not, will cast magic missiles and fall utterly to your party's wrath, or will destroy your party in a *Snap* with spells timestop, maze, imprisionment or the like, just by examining him.
Maybe they are going to implement some divination spells similar with info as "detect evil", just that they display enemy thac0, or available spells, who knows.

Chris

PS: Could anybody give me a useful advice how to hit clay-golems with weapons? I already upgraded my hero with roseblade +3 and another fine +3 artifact katana, but it nevertheless still says my weapons are ineffective. Thanks for reading.

------------------
Archimedes, the Greek, said 'All Grecians always lie'.
Later in the afternoon he corrected himself and corrected this:
'All Grecians always say the truth'

Sourced · Post by **Sourced** » Fri Nov 17, 2000 7:26 am

Try doing some crushing damage (maces and stuff).

Daemion · Post by **Daemion** » Fri Nov 17, 2000 7:31 am

If you have Cromm Faeyr (warhammer) you will be able to kill clay golems in one single blow.

Nighthawk · Post by **Nighthawk** » Fri Nov 17, 2000 10:09 am

Sounds like your PnP DM tells you a lot more than mine ever did. All we would get would be a description of what we could see and maybe a general idea of what capabilities we could remember hearing about. I think he even used Int and lore to determine who would remember what.

If we were going up against a mage, we would probably have known the mages race and any mages in our party might have gotten a general feeling of the mages power...if it was obvious enough other characters might as well...but that's all.

I think this is MUCH better than a GM (or the game) telling you everything about the creature you are encountering. It's more fun to find out through experience.

King In Yellow · Post by **King In Yellow** » Fri Nov 17, 2000 2:51 pm

Have to agree with NightHawk here.....I never played with a GM that gave all that info out. Why bother playing if you know all the ins and outs before the fight happens....I like the BG games because I do not know what each creature is going to do the first time I meet it....

Chris Boney · Post by **Chris Boney** » Sat Nov 18, 2000 4:42 am

I have to disagree. In real life you'd never come on the idea to attack Muhamed Ali in a boxing duell?! Unlike in BG-series we have two eyes to see if your opponent has muscles which are able to blow up the T-shirt or if he is about to drop under the weight of his own armor.
King in Yellow, I did not mean to hand the info what your opponent is going to do, but the difference to another one of his group.
Could it be that this fighter looks much stronger than the last one, for example.
So if the party had little problem dispatching the last fighter they might decide to give it a try, but if the last one was almost able to hack the party in pieces they probably have the option decide other choice.

------------------
Archimedes, the Greek, said 'All Grecians always lie'.
Later in the afternoon he corrected himself and corrected this:
'All Grecians always say the truth'

bullions27 · Post by **bullions27** » Mon Nov 20, 2000 10:09 am

Heh, what kind of GM did you run with for your games? No GM would ever reveal that much information to a PC unless of course the PC himself makes proper roll checks for information. I find it rather funny though how you can encounter a npc and just know right off the bat all of his attributes. Sounds like a rookie GM.

bullions27 · Post by **bullions27** » Mon Nov 20, 2000 10:12 am

Actually Chris, you can't determine a person's skill just by appearance alone. Don't you know the old saying, "don't judge a book by its cover"? How can you tell if this muscular fellow looking T-ed off is a good fighter or a complete klutz? You can't actually. Only if you KNOW his reputation would you know and that would call for a Intelligence check. THAC0 is a huge part of how responsive you are and you simply can not tell who is quicker and who is not simply by looking. You might be able to guess based on looks, say a difference between a fat man and a slender joe, but to know precisely is impossible.

[This message has been edited by bullions27 (edited 11-20-2000).]