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Let's play BG2! Planar Sphere - the sequel to Planar Cube
Brolo
BroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered User regular
BroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered User regular
This is the story all about how
My life got flipped turned upside down
I'd like to take a moment just listen to me
About how I came to save a town called BG
In West Candlekeep is where I became a PC
In the libraries was where I earned my xp
Saving, reloading, replaying all cool
and doing some fetch quests to and from the school
When a big armored guy, who was up to no good
said "I can teach you how to use your wrath. You can control the taint, direct it, summon it at will. You can become the Slayer at will and become the weapon of murder that you were meant to be! So think of me. Think of how I destroyed your precious Gorion, how I plundered the lives of your Candlekeep. Summon your rage, stir the depths of your black heart! Summon wrath. Summon wrath and become it, for if you cannot, then you are not worthy of Bhaal's blood. It should have been I. It should have been I! ATTACK ME, WORM, IF YOU DARE!!!"
My life got flipped turned upside down
I'd like to take a moment just listen to me
About how I came to save a town called BG
In West Candlekeep is where I became a PC
In the libraries was where I earned my xp
Saving, reloading, replaying all cool
and doing some fetch quests to and from the school
When a big armored guy, who was up to no good
said "I can teach you how to use your wrath. You can control the taint, direct it, summon it at will. You can become the Slayer at will and become the weapon of murder that you were meant to be! So think of me. Think of how I destroyed your precious Gorion, how I plundered the lives of your Candlekeep. Summon your rage, stir the depths of your black heart! Summon wrath. Summon wrath and become it, for if you cannot, then you are not worthy of Bhaal's blood. It should have been I. It should have been I! ATTACK ME, WORM, IF YOU DARE!!!"
Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn
I am going to play through Baldur's Gate 2: SoA, and then ToB.
Here are the basic rules:
- Where at all possible, no saving/reloading malarkey. If a character dies in combat, either through standard death or being perma-killed, well that's it. They snuffed it. I can ressurect them if possible to bring them back, but if that's not possible I just have to live with the results. If the main PC dies, then I'll allow myself a reload, rather than restarting the game from scratch. Think of it like playing Diablo II online - there's no real saved games that you can revert back to if you screw something up.
- No precognition - while I'm not exactly roleplaying here, I am stopping short of using knowledge of previously played games to take advantage of scripted loopholes. So no setting up traps for demi-liches, or pre-buffing for NPCs that haven't given any indication of being hostile, unless it makes sense in the context of my character.
- I'm playing with the Ascension, Bonus Merchants and Dungeon Be Gone mods installed. Ascension because it's much more interesting, especially towards the end, and I'm skipping Irenicus's dungeon because seriously, fuck that shit.
- My party consists of six custom-made NPCs created in the game's multiplayer mode. At times I might let one of my custom NPCs go to take on one of the game's characters (Minsc, Jan, etc).
I MUST GATHER MY PARTY BEFORE VENTURING FORTH
We're ignoring Chateau Irenicus altogether. I got jumped by some guys yadda yadda yadda but then I escaped the dungeon and here we are coming outside!
Thank christ I've made it out safely, but it looks like we've stepped in some serious shit here.
He's an angry man, but damn, what a voice! I could listen to him magic the shit out of Shadow Thieves all day.
Okay, well it seems someone's not making friends with the local authorities. He finally surrenders to them, but when they grab him, they also grab Imoen too. Which is a shame I guess? Really I'm kind of relieved to see her go.
We decide that after a harrowing experience like that the most important thing is to get our collective krunk on, and head for the "Den of the Seven Vales" which sounds like it might have hookers in it. I have noticed that in the five minutes of playing this game hasn't had many hookers in it at all, and I'm really hoping to rectify that situation.
Instead we head inside and find that the place is infested with pricks.
Okay, some angry people upstairs. Celeste decides it'd be a good idea to call downstairs and get everyone ready for action. My priest leaps into action with some low-level buffs.
There we go. We're ready to fight. Buttkicking for goodness! Everyone charge the stairs!
Slash hack slash hack slash. My cleric/mage manages to summon some ogres with a wand we liberated from the last fight, and they make a good buffer between my party and their support mages. We quickly manage to focus-fire their dwarf warrior to death, but their thief backstabs my monk something fierce.
Finally we manage to resolve the situation like adults. My archer seems to have a knife growing out of his stomach. We grab his stuff and remember that we saw a temple next door.
My god will grant your life back, but only with two easy payments of 799.99 GP! We're a little poorer now but at least we have some corpses to loot.
Brolo on
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Posts
Venture forth.
I'm warning you.
I know, but when it comes to Ascension and ToB, I really want to have a custom party capable of taking on the enhanced bosses. Unfortunately, the default NPCs are lacking my favorite classes (Kensai, Archer, Monk). I might end up taking on a few select characters later on (Edwin, Korgan), especially since these original guys can be perma-killed.
Remember that my first dude, Khadgar, really isn't a fighter. He's been dualed at seven to boost his HP and get him good with his staff, but he's going to surpass his fighter skills a few quests into chapter two, and from there on out it's pure magic.
Generally my fighters are doing the majority of the work against mobs and higher level characters. Mages are largely support characters, casting some damage spells but mainly in the party for status effects and special situations where my fighters are unable to damage opponents.
I've also picked most of these classes as ones who improve dramatically the further you get into the game. The kensai, archer and swashbuckler get AC/THACO/Damage bonuses every few levels, which means they'll keep up as we get closer to ToB.
Are you using that improved epic level monk skill mod when you get to ToB? It's a little bit cheap, but not too much more broken than the monk already is, and the skills are a hell of a lot more interesting and fun to use than standard lolgreaterwhirlwind.
Pretty much this. I'm feeling cautiously optimistic here, don't dash my hopes. The rules you've set for yourself should definitely help the quality of the LP, and hopefully you can make it entertaining enough to make up for the lack of the good playable characters. Good luck!
I don't think so... I'm allowing the Ascension Mods because Gainer originally worked on the game, but I've never really been a fan of user-mods, especially not ones that tweak or change skillsets. I'm sure there are good ones but the chances of finding cheap tricks that make the game too easy always scare me off.
Also some people just don't know how to balance a mod - 'this one makes the holy avenger so that anyone can use it, the dispel is at 100% and each hit heals back character damage'.
It's not possible.
Gaider. David Gaider.
noooooo
I've played through the game with them so many times. I find Jan a little more annoying than funny, although when he's interacting with other characters it's always great. As classes go though, I'm not a huge fan of either. Jan is too inaccurate to hit anything with his weapons, and as an illusionist he can't cast necromancy spells, which limits his uses there.
Minsc has decent strength, but rangers can't go beyond specilization, racial enemies are too specific to really bank on, and his okay dex and con scores mean that's he just outmatched across the board by Sarevok, or Keldorn if you get him the Gauntlets of Dexterity or the Holy Avenger.
1. I kind of wonder why there's so much hate for Irenicus's Dungeon, other than it being the obligatory dungeon crawl that all RPG sequels and expansions must begin with. I don't recall it taking that long to get through (I think I might have skipped past a significant portion of it, if that's possible), and the most annoying thing about it for me was a bug I ran into involving the Golems that needed patching.
and
2. I'm working on my first playthrough of TOB right now (about to go fight Yaga Shura), and was wondering if I should use the Ascension mod? Honestly I'm afraid to even read through all of the readme notes for fear of spoilers.
This problem is compounded a hundred fold if you are the OCD type.
Also, Fresh Prince made me giggle.
steam
I actually want to finish working on my BG2 NPC mod.
You now own BGII. There is no downside to this.
WTB more free time plzkthx.
If I had wit, I'd really think about doing a quest for glory LP
For PA LPs, wit is entirely optional.
...And yet, what if this time I play as a... No, no ... NO
oooooohhhh
steam
The fact that I always insist on following every sidequest I find through to the end before doing anything that might advance the main plot probably doesn't really help either.
Also my irrational love for druids. But mostly the multitude of quests thing.
So it will be nice to watch this thread, so that I can see what would have happened if any of my characters had actually gone into the game world.
Staff of the Magi is in fact the best item in the game, simply due to the infinite invisisbility.
Do you find the game easy right now? Because Ascension really cranks up the difficulty. The final fight is ridiculous with it.
This is the kind of thinking that ruins the game for me. If I try to maximize my party effectiveness, I find myself not enjoying actually playing with that party. I would suggest setting up a vote for the main party of only the in-game NPCs, and using them through the majority of the game. And try to keep the party together.
One of the best parts of BG2 is trying to keep a real party of different dudes together. It is what makes me come back again and again. Walking around with no character interaction between created NPCs is really boring, and is why I don't play BG1 anymore.
You don't need a party of custom NPCs to take on the enhanced bosses, if you are willing to try different tactics. I would say that you should ease up on the no-reload aspect of you LP and focus more on the dialog and the choices you make in-game, which can radically change the path you take.
But the interaction between characters is basically pointless in this situation because of the Let's Play format. He could theoretically screen cap every time a dialogue comes up in the game between characters, but most of the people reading this have already played through most of the game and are probably familiar with most of the banter and scripted sequences that occur. The real entertainment is coming from Rolo's narration and seeing how the battles play out.
The no-reloading approach is going to be a lot more novel and fun, from my point of view, and he'll probably need much better characters than just the NPCs to do it, so there.