Baldur's Gate 3

[Eacaraxe]

Ah yes, I've tried to wipe NWN from my memory, but that issue with meeting both skills and combat requirements is familiar.

I thought the main intention was to make NWN as a platform for people to design their own campaigns. The default one they attached to it was junk - genuinely one of the most uninspiring, uninventive, mediocre RPG gaming experiences I've ever had - and consequently I didn't bother with any of the expansions/sequels.

The story was pretty much typical BioWare fare of the day, complete with the now-broken nostalgia goggles gamers have with it. The mechanics and difficulty were the bullshit; the campaign was, to be honest, fairly well-designed and CR-appropriate. For a party of four.

Because CR was designed around a balanced party of four PC's. But, NWN didn't have a four-character party, it had a two-character party which meant the campaign needed to be designed around CR-2 encounters. Then BioWare stuck that stupid fucking +1 CR template on the monsters which meant that basically every encounter in the game was "deadly" by pen-and-paper standard. The sheer stupidity of it strains credulity.

Now if you really want to experience Kentucky Fried Bullshit, try Pathfinder: Kingmaker. That game's difficulty was so overtuned it may as well have not even been a d20 chassis game and had practically zero semblance to an actual Pathfinder game in play; you had to customize story mode to have anything approaching a pen-and-paper experience. Literally every monster in the game had the +3 CR advanced template stuck onto it, and that was before party damage, critical hit, and condition coefficients, and attack/saving throw weighting to favor monsters and NPC's.

Kingmaker was already a notoriously difficult Adventure Path, probably the hardest 1e Pathfinder AP Paizo ever published other than Reign of Winter.

 

[CriticalGaming]

ow if you really want to experience Kentucky Fried Bullshit, try Pathfinder: Kingmaker. That game's difficulty was so overtuned it may as well have not even been a d20 chassis game and had practically zero semblance to an actual Pathfinder game in play; you had to customize story mode to have anything approaching a pen-and-paper experience.

I heard Kingmaker was a good game though. It is really that busted difficulty wise?

 

[Eacaraxe]

I heard Kingmaker was a good game though. It is really that busted difficulty wise?

My first TPK in my playthrough was a full level 9 party of optimized characters versus a single owlbear. It straight one-shot both Amiri and Valerie. So...yeah. It really is that busted in terms of game balance.

It is really good once you get into the difficulty options and fix it for yourself, though. But it's a big game, it's the ENTIRE Adventure Path (and the AP is freaking massive). I'm talking like 150-200 hours just to complete the AP itself, not including side quests or DLC. It's also, like the AP, designed with time pressure and branching subplots such that it's impossible to have 100% completion on a single playthrough.

 

[CriticalGaming]

My first TPK in my playthrough was a full level 9 party of optimized characters versus a single owlbear. It straight one-shot both Amiri and Valerie. So...yeah. It really is that busted in terms of game balance.

It is really good once you get into the difficulty options and fix it for yourself, though. But it's a big game, it's the ENTIRE Adventure Path (and the AP is freaking massive). I'm talking like 150-200 hours just to complete the AP itself, not including side quests or DLC. It's also, like the AP, designed with time pressure and branching subplots such that it's impossible to have 100% completion on a single playthrough.

Sounds like something I would play with an infinite health cheat tbh.

 

[meiam]

I heard Kingmaker was a good game though. It is really that busted difficulty wise?

Yes and no, there's a lot of massive spike in the game, where you just randomly come face to face with enemy that are much tougher than anything else with little to no warning for the player. At the same time, the character creator let you do crazy class combo and a ton of stuff stack, so you can very quickly make completely broken character that can easily solo the game. Plus there's like a millions consumable that give crazy buff and weird way to interact with them. Like you can use a scroll to transform creature to make random critter around the world into end game monster and just have them kill everything for you.

The game also let you rest whenever you want, so you can spend 10 minutes before a fight stacking 15-30 buff (not even exaggerating), faceroll an encounter, rest and repeat every fight.

It has show both the positive of adapting PnP stuff (tons of material to adapt) but also the downsize (most of it isn't really balance and need a GM to fine tune moment to moment).

 

[Satinavian]

I heard Kingmaker was a good game though. It is really that busted difficulty wise?

It is, if you expect by-the-book pathfinder difficulty. Nearly all enemies are more powerful than they should be.

However, you have six characters in the party, not the regular four. And you have vastly more powerful gear. It is not that hard a game on the recommended difficulty. But you do need to understand the pathfinder rules and optimize quite a bit to have any fun at the higher difficulty levels. But overall i would not say the fights are more difficult than in BG3.

 

[CriticalGaming]

It is, if you expect by-the-book pathfinder difficulty. Nearly all enemies are more powerful than they should be.

However, you have six characters in the party, not the regular four. And you have vastly more powerful gear. It is not that hard a game on the recommended difficulty. But you do need to understand the pathfinder rules and optimize quite a bit to have any fun at the higher difficulty levels. But overall i would not say the fights are more difficult than in BG3.

I barely know the basics of character creation in PF 2.0 lol

 

[sXeth]

As long as it's not fucking NWN, where BioWare completely misunderstood how CR works while simultaneously throwing the advanced creature template on half the monsters in the game, forcing PC's to simultaneously be min-maxed combat monsters and skill monkeys, while players have to metagame to keep power levels on the inadvertent curve. The only time I genuinely enjoyed a playthrough of that game, was as a rogue/druid/shifter.

Ah yes, I've tried to wipe NWN from my memory, but that issue with meeting both skills and combat requirements is familiar.

I thought the main intention was to make NWN as a platform for people to design their own campaigns. The default one they attached to it was junk - genuinely one of the most uninspiring, uninventive, mediocre RPG gaming experiences I've ever had - and consequently I didn't bother with any of the expansions/sequels.

Yeah, the bulk of NWN fans basically loathed the official campaign and played user created modules (a couple of the modules created by the community that bioware picked up to sell as "premimum modules" (yeah they basically inventeed that a solid 12 years ahead of Bethesda and others) were alright. The campaign is both just a tour of all the monsters and tiles essentially, and kind of goofy from any kind of actual setting perspective (boy there sure are a lot of (usually CG, with their own gods) elves serving the LG human law god)

NWN2 was similar nothingsauce until they got to the DLCs (probably because by that point it had become very obvious that they'd screwed the pooch on the NWN2 toolset by overcomplexifying it)


I wouldn't put it entirely on NWN though. BG2 and Torment both had terrible problems with traps that could instakill you (and in BG2, there was no pure rogue to fully handle that). Torment is the famous nostalgia one for letting you play how you want.... but has an entire chapter in Baator where every step is punctuated by crossing an area where high level fiends constantly respawn and come at you. Both Baldurs Gates had the previously mentioned in thread tendency to walk into super-mages and such that would instantly obliterate you without the right cleric/mage protections. I'm sure Icewind Dale had its share as well, but it was more honest about its nature as basically a combat fest then trying to be a "true" D&D game and gave you all six characters to create yourself.

 

[Dreiko]

My first TPK in my playthrough was a full level 9 party of optimized characters versus a single owlbear. It straight one-shot both Amiri and Valerie. So...yeah. It really is that busted in terms of game balance.

It is really good once you get into the difficulty options and fix it for yourself, though. But it's a big game, it's the ENTIRE Adventure Path (and the AP is freaking massive). I'm talking like 150-200 hours just to complete the AP itself, not including side quests or DLC. It's also, like the AP, designed with time pressure and branching subplots such that it's impossible to have 100% completion on a single playthrough.

Is it supposed to be harder than the second pathfinder game? Cause while there were some hard bits here and there I didn't really find it too hard, and once I got the top tier mythic power and became a literal golden dragon I could basically solo everything easily.

 

[Satinavian]

Is it supposed to be harder than the second pathfinder game? Cause while there were some hard bits here and there I didn't really find it too hard, and once I got the top tier mythic power and became a literal golden dragon I could basically solo everything easily.

It is not harder, they are similar.

However it doesn't have mythic powers at all and the enemies are weaker. It is overall far more grounded.

 

[Dreiko]

It is not harder, they are similar.

However it doesn't have mythic powers at all and the enemies are weaker. It is overall far more grounded.

Yeah if so, I think the only hard bits were the optional stuff that would grant you special loot, and it also was a matter of when you encounter them. Oftentimes you can leave some things for later when you have a level and some better gear with you. The mythic powers while pretty epic were mainly a thing for the player char, and everyone else also packed quite a punch too, and while you did share some passives with them too, they weren't that big for the most part.


Also I think golden dragon is more busted than the rest, having immunity to everything and bringing up your minimum stats up to like 14 or whatever it was. With buffs applied my strength would get to around 50 lol. And that breath was a unique type of damage that couldn't be resisted or fully avoided too. Some fights with stupid high AC enemies would become very easy due to that alone.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Shadowheart is dead.

 

[Eacaraxe]

It is, if you expect by-the-book pathfinder difficulty. Nearly all enemies are more powerful than they should be.

However, you have six characters in the party, not the regular four. And you have vastly more powerful gear. It is not that hard a game on the recommended difficulty. But you do need to understand the pathfinder rules and optimize quite a bit to have any fun at the higher difficulty levels. But overall i would not say the fights are more difficult than in BG3.

Kingmaker's WBL isn't far off the norm, especially as compared to the PnP AP. You're expected to sink gold into your domain and on those NPC missions. The artisan mechanic and being able to custom order items optimal to class, build, and role was what threw itemization balance off.

That said, six adventurers compared to four isn't as big an action economy shift, as four to two. The recommended APL adjustment for six adventurers is +1, opposed to -2 for two. Even then, the simple advanced creature template would suffice; instead, what we got was the variable advanced template, set to +3 CR (+8 all creature stats, +2 universal bonus to attack rolls, skill checks, and saving throws).

Like I said, Kingmaker was a pretty good CRPG, but it bore basically no mechanical semblance to a PnP Pathfinder 1e game. Which was pretty disappointing, given one of its main selling points was fidelity to pen-and-paper mechanics.

...and in BG2, there was no pure rogue to fully handle that...

There was Yoshimo whose trap skills were decent, for what that's worth. Other than that, you had Jan who was an absolute beast when it came to the rogue stuff. Multi-class thief/illusionist is amazing on its own, but he also got his unique equipment which put him well above an equivalent-leveled pure rogue.

But honestly, the best anti-trap characters were Haer'dalis and Viconia. Buffing them up and just face tanking the traps always worked.

Both Baldurs Gates had the previously mentioned in thread tendency to walk into super-mages and such that would instantly obliterate you without the right cleric/mage protections.

I never had a problem with it, but I'm also an OG pipe-hitting wizard-playing ************. 2e mage dueling was always about having the right sequencers and contingencies set.

 

[sXeth]

There was Yoshimo whose trap skills were decent, for what that's worth. Other than that, you had Jan who was an absolute beast when it came to the rogue stuff. Multi-class thief/illusionist is amazing on its own, but he also got his unique equipment which put him well above an equivalent-leveled pure rogue.

Yoshimo isn't permanent though and most notably had left before you could actually hit the max DC traps (I believe I've heard tell enhanced edition cranked them down so you could actually do them without a pure/maxed out rogue)

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Finally got some time in with the game. So far so good, I haven't gotten far enough to really be loving it or hating it yet. Feels very Larian but with more production value. I think what sets Larian apart from other devs in the RPG space is that they kinda also make their games into immersive sims, chances are if you can think of some solution to a problem, you can probably do it in their games. There's so many different ways to going about each conflict. The one thing I kinda don't like is that you don't know the DC of checks beforehand (unless I'm missing where it says that), sometimes it's just a 5 DC and I'm contemplating whether or not to try it and if I knew it was 5, I wouldn't even think about it.

Shadowheart is dead.

Shadowheart disapproves

 

[CriticalGaming]

Shadowheart disapproves

She shouldnt have stood so close to the cliff then

 

[FakeSympathy]

Well, after 50 hours I finally finished act 1 at level 6.

I am blown away. 50 hours in other games usually are the main game + side contents and collectibles. This game feels like I barely scratched the surface. There were a crap load of stuff to discover; The underdark, gyrmforge and making mithrill gears, exploring the mountain pass, etc.

Act 1 already felt massive. I am dying to know what's ahead of me

 

[Ag3ma]

Now if you really want to experience Kentucky Fried Bullshit, try Pathfinder: Kingmaker. That game's difficulty was so overtuned it may as well have not even been a d20 chassis game and had practically zero semblance to an actual Pathfinder game in play; you had to customize story mode to have anything approaching a pen-and-paper experience. Literally every monster in the game had the +3 CR advanced template stuck onto it, and that was before party damage, critical hit, and condition coefficients, and attack/saving throw weighting to favor monsters and NPC's.

I played Pathfinder:WotR most ways through, before eventually its absurd and tiresome length (and broken campaign system) wore me to boredom.

My abiding memory of it is casting spells at creatures, all of which roll and pass save throws, and then take basically no damage. Fireball from a level ~8 mage hits 5 ghouls? 14 damage combined: enjoy! Hold person/monster - LOL! - may as well have asked them politely to stand still.

Seriously, devs: if you're going to make a load of your spells functionally useless, don't bother including them.

 

[Ag3ma]

I'm just going to point out one thing about BG3:

I have picked up loads of that classic, dungeon crawler, equipment staple, rope. I have never yet been able to use rope.

 

[FakeSympathy]

Interesting statistics. Didn't know half-elf paladin was so popular. Guess smashing enemies with different ice cream flavors helps?