I'm curious, for all you veterans who play BG2 on insane difficulty - when creating a character, do you have the difficulty slider initially set to "normal" to ensure your character starts the game with maximum HP, or do you play like a man and have insane right from the very beginning? I've recently been doing the latter, but it's a little demoralising when my warriors with 18 CON start the game with HP in the 50's.

I'm kinda torn between weather to carry on creating my characters with a realistic Dx of hitpoints, or to create them on normal to get the most HP possible out of them (generally because they abolished class hit dice + CON bonuses after levels 9/10).

Thoughts/opinions?

Edit: Spelling

[ 11-26-2003, 06:18 AM: Message edited by: Jim ]

Definitely play like a man with insane difficulty right from the get go. Otherwise your not really playing on insane difficulty are you? Its kinda cheating really.

[img]graemlins/doh.gif[/img] I just remembered I created some characters (using multiplayer's create character - easiest way) for a mod when i was on insane difficulty. I thought the HP looked a little low.

[ 11-25-2003, 08:58 AM: Message edited by: dragon_lord ]

The way I see it, if your going to play on insane, you stick the slider all the way up and leave it there for the duration. If you generate the character on easy for extra HP, then thats fine, but its not playing the game on insane. Its playing partly insane.

Hmmmm... I seem to be the odd one out then. I always use MaxHP for my characters. A slight advantage when you consider that all enemies have MaxHP and double damage.

Still wishes BG2 had HoF mode... ...

Hey, I'm not too confident when I play on insane. ;)

I use max HP "abuse" every time when creating and leveling up my char.
But maybe sometime in the future ...

The only time I switch from insane to easy, is when Imoen learns scrolls. Then I switch back to insane.

The reason I play on insane though is because I give my characters good rolls and start with 3-4 characters. In addition to that, I find the best weapons for them, and cloak of mirrors; no bonus CD though. So I don't think I am playing "like a man".

I've never played on Insane and I probably never will, because I'm of the opinion that battles are won and lost by the decisions that you make, not by the amount of damage done. If I die, I want it to be because I screwed up, not because my purist-rolled Bounty Hunter with only 48 hitpoints was unable to withstand Deirex's 'Enemy Sighted' Chain Contingency with 2 ADHWs, for a total of something like 56D8 damage.

I say, Give me the hitpoints. If I play well, they won't make much difference anyway, but they give me a comfort zone. If I play badly.....they won't make much difference anyway.

I pretty much always insane, just for the heck of making it a little tougher, but I like having max hitpoints, and rightly so: If my character is going to be the child of Bhaal, he should at least have some useful attributes, besides cure light wounds, slow poison and DUHM (maybe that's not a great acronym). I usually try to roll a set of attributes that I feel is fitting (not 18,18,18,18,3,3) for my character class, and I try not to play with it too much, so I feel that hitpoint max-ing is fair. Plus, I'm soloing a F/M/T right now, and if you don't do things right, you can start the game with like, 32 hit points :D

EDIT: Bhaal, not bhall. You'd think I'd never learned how to spell.

[ 11-26-2003, 05:14 AM: Message edited by: ryaldin ]

I play on Insane and i use the maximum HP option.