I think so because every second enemy has a magical weapon or armor, you get 30k gold easily, nothing is TRULY difficult, you get tons of potions, you are easily capable of having your whole party equipped with +3 weaponry and armor and having negative AC's(In 2nd edition this is GOOD),


Off topic of the post(Contains a few minor spoilers).

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They have also messed up some things, for example: Golems don't have magic resistance(not according the 2nd edition MM anyway), and dragons have huge hoards, Firkraag didn't even have 100k gold for gods sake! Drow cities have thousand of citizens, the one in BG2 didn't even have 100 drows in it!

Baldur's gate is a large city. It was the size of a village.
I agree, you want godlike chars to have fun in these games, wheras usually (espec now 3rd ed) you can have fun with merely good chars.

1. Would you want a city full of thousands of drow! The game would run so slowly that you wouldn't want to play it!

2. If dragons have 100k on them you would have too much money and wouldn't bother doing the side quests!

3. Golems would be too easy if they didn't have magic resistance

4. How could I kill that many drow! Trust me I don't like drow!

5. Goodbye Monty

The games has to appeal to people who dont play Pnp as well though, so you have to give powerfull rewards etc as incentives otherwise people just dont wanna play. Baldurs gate also has a very limtied scope compared to the Pnp game and so items assume a much more important place than they would otherwise. To creater a drow city with thousands of people would mean loads of commners wandering around with nothing to do except takeing up processing time, the computer game is very inflexible, and thier is no rolepaying really. also the orignal plan was to have l1-7 in 1st game 7-14 in 2nd 14-21 in third, But the will of the people dictated that we must go from 7-21. This massive leap in exp, means that all the powerful items etc which would normally be spread out over 2 games have to be crammed into one, no wonder its bursting at the seams with magic items.

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Noldor,Blood is on your hands
Your Bane's a Tearful Destiny

[This message has been edited by Dramnek_Ulk (edited 06-01-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Dramnek_Ulk (edited 06-01-2001).]

i think the main reason you see so many magic items in the game is that the computer can't make the decision of what items to include, with the very specific weapon prof's the game designers had to try their best to get a good balance of itmes in the game, how much would it suck to choose clubs as your char's main weapon only to find out there are monsters you can't kill b/c you chose a stupid weapon.

granted the field is pretty thin at club, flail, katana, ect but they tried (and did a pretty good job) of covering all bases.

result - > too much magic compared to a pnp campaign, but i think it's pretty cool that you are not forced to pick certain weapon proff's due to lack of choice.

1) Well, a city with a thousand Drow could be made into several sections(Like Athkatla or Baldurs Gate from BG1), and it would be a good reason to actually sneak and be sneaky instead of just hacking and slashing your way through all of the Drow(Hey! Thats just how I sometimes do it, it's the easiest way),

2) The dragons are far too easy anyway, my Sorceror chopped up the black one alone, Minsc handled the red one alone, I never even had ANY trouble with the shadow one, Jan killed that one.

3) Well, a Stone Golem deals 3d8(3-24) damage, has a Thac0 of 7 and 60 HP/ 14 hit dice, if that isn't trouble I don't know what trouble is,

Iron Golems have a Thac0 of 3(They easily hit you), 18 hit dice/80 HP(They can take a lot of shots unless the players have Monty Haul style equipment) and deal 4d10 damage(4-40!).

The only reason magic is so good against them is that Sorcerors have so many spells, and that the party is so big(I hardly ever have more than 3 PC's and 1 NPC in more adventures) that you have a wall of warriors and thieves protecting them while they cast their spells.

4) See 1)

5) ?

Actually, golems are not supposed to have mr. They are supposed to have total magic immunity except for 2-3 spells depending on type of golem it is. This means lower mr spell should not affect them in any way. Therefore, golems are ULTIMATE mage-slayers! AIEEE!!!!!

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People keep saying what the AD&D rules say, but they forget the most important one, THE RULES CAN BE CHANGED. Monsters can be altered (explinations could range from 'this is just how it works' to 'because i said so' to 'His master decided to make him special and made him differently. Now he is a real boy') and Rules (dragons hoards) can be changed, and the rules given are assuming you kill the dragon in its Lair, the black dragon was definatly not in its Lair, the shadow probably was, but it wasn't there long enough to find anything really cool (except Crom Feyr Scroll), and the red could have just move in to mess with Windspear and your char, (remember Windspear said Firkraag didn't come from there).

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"Life is like shoving a grenade up a chickens ass and seeing how far it can run before it explodes"

But anyway, the main topic was: Dosen't anyone but me think that BG2 is overstuffed with magical items?

I think the Items the Red Dragon was guarding would be considered a "horde" and it was that much better because it wasn't just straight gold but something interesting.

Neb: That's kind've the point. The engine limits any actual RPing, but, heh, you can have a plus five hammer! Wow! Look at all the shiny goodies!

"The engine limits any actual RPing" Notice that it's called an RPG not a 3rd person shooter, maybe you SHOULDN'T make an RPG with and engine that "limits any actual RP'ing", but why didn't they just make BG2 more like Planescape:Torment? Which was more of a true RP and less of a Monty Haul RP, I think the best weapon in that was a +4 weapon, and there were only 1 or 2 of those, I think the most money I ever got in Planescape was 20k, and in Planescape you REALLY needed to use your healing items, not like BG2 which I have completed with only 1 dead char and without using any healing stuff.

Actually bg2 is a rpg. it is what is commonly referred to a monty haul campaign. I have,unfortunately, played in that type in pnp. BG2 has just as much rp in it as PS:T believe it or not.

Yes Baldur's gate is a magical treasure trove, normally in a D&D game, getting a powerful weapon like a holy avenger sword or the hammer you'd have to take on major quests and such to get those, and you wouldn't get them until you were well into your 20's in power. They wouldn't be something you just find lying around in a dungeon or have a dwarf smith put together for you.
Plus the experience in BG2 is out of whack. The experience you gain for doing things is easily 2x as much as it should be, so you can level your characters to 295,000 experience early in the game, same as BG1. WHY? I don't know i didn't make the rules up. I maxxed out my levels before I even reached the Underdark, I was just crusing the rest of the game gathering up the powerful items and finishing the quests.
As for gold, wasn't too bad. I had about 100k gold during the main parts of the game, paying some for scrolls, etc. I didn't have alot left at the end. SO there wasn't alot of gold about, but there were too many powerful magic items. Heck I had a bag of holding full of them I just collected. All the special swords, daggers, etc. Tons of rings, etc.


But lastly, you have to remember that A video game like BG2 has to emcompass a smaller area and less time than a major D&D game universe. When I played D&D in the early days, I reached level 21 with my mage, but that was over about 5 or more years of playing with my friends, I didn't go from level 7 to level 21 in a few weeks as with BG2. So you have to include alot more items and such in the smaller game to make up for what you would normally be doing.
Its a video game, the rules have to be adjusted.
If they had dropped the experience in the game by half, and didn't have such powerful weapons like the equalizer/wave/avenger/etc in the game, where such weapons like the Celestial fury and Hammer of THunderbolts were the quest artifact items instead of the more powerful +5 weapons, it would have been alot of fun.
But I think they got the job done right? Look at all the people running about gathering up the +5 holy avenger swords and such <grin>.

"If dragons had 100k gold you wouldn't have to do any side quests" not to get the money for Gaelan Bayle no, but maybe for the magical items, to this you will say: "But I can just buy the magical stuff in the Adventurers Mart", however, some of the information/advice in the DMG is that you should definately NOT have magical item shops.