11-18-2003, 01:10 PM | #1 |
Elite Waterdeep Guard
Join Date: March 21, 2003
Location: Namibia
Age: 72
Posts: 26
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After a few games of maxing out the stats and hitpoints of my groups, I decided to play BG by accepting the first roll of the dice when creating the characters, and also when levelling up.
My PC was a mage who got 9 INT on the first roll (ouch !), but in the spirit of the game I decided to accept that without redistributing any of the stat points and to venture forth regardless. However, when my NPC "tank" got 1 (one) measly HP on the first level up, taking him from 10 to 11 HP, it was more than I could take. I decided to abandon the game, since I did not relish the thought of facing Sarevok with a "tank" that would have 16 hit points or so ! Are there any players out there who actually accept the first roll of the dice in all cases (from character creation to levelling up), as would be the case in a "pen and paper" game ? |
11-18-2003, 04:13 PM | #2 |
Ma'at - Goddess of Truth & Justice
Join Date: June 3, 2003
Location: New York
Age: 39
Posts: 3,302
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I don't accept the first role, but hardcore players do. But that's just too extreme for me
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11-18-2003, 08:26 PM | #3 |
Dracolisk
Join Date: September 16, 2001
Location: Bellingham, WA, USA
Age: 46
Posts: 6,901
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Well, there's really no such thing as "playing things like a pencil & paper game," or to be more precise, there's really no ONE thing. Different DMs do different things: A dyed-in-the-wool, hardcore purist DM would force the players to rigidly accept the first dice roll, no changes or exceptions. A wishy-washy munchkin DM, in contrast, would let the players to roll the dice as many times as they wanted to, and allow them absolute freedom in removing points from certain stats and putting them into others. You can see for yourself which path the BG games take. There are, however, some popular "middle grounds:"
There are similar "shades" of the hitpoint rolls as well: 1) You must accept the first hitpoint roll you get. No exceptions. 2) You may Save the game, Level Up, and then Reload, 3 times, and then take the best hitpoint result of those three. 3) You may Save, Level Up, and Reload, until you get a hitpoint roll that is at least 66% of the maximum gain you could have gotten. 4) If you're playing BG2, you may move the Difficulty slider down to Normal (which automatically makes all hitpointrolls be the maximum) during the early Level-Ups. I confess that I'm no purist when it comes to hitpoints: If I'm going to lose a battle, I want it to be because of an error on my part, not because my party simply isn't healthy enough. Having a high-hitpoint party also decreases the odds of us suffering one-hit kills or getting chunked, which are just plain no fun. In BG1, I use #2 or #3 to determine my hitpoints, and I use #4 in BG2.
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11-22-2003, 02:57 PM | #4 |
Elite Waterdeep Guard
Join Date: March 21, 2003
Location: Namibia
Age: 72
Posts: 26
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Thanks for your explanation of the different approaches to "rolling the dice", Six !
I guess one does have to be a bit of a purist to accept the first roll, no exceptions. For character creation, your first option seems pretty close to being "honest", i.e. rolling the dice 6 times and then putting each roll in one of the stats, as is best suited to the character being created. For levelling up, I guess it is OK to use your option 2 or 3 if the first roll is too low. Then again, maybe it is possible to take the purist route, because one might not get all bad rolls on each level up, resulting in at least a decent number of hitpoints. But that is quite a chance to take. Alternatively, one might have to change the character's role if and when its hitpoints are too few, and then use different tactics to survive the battles ? Unfortunately, the monsters and other baddies do not seem to have been "rolled" in a purist fashion ! As Lord says, playing BG strictly in a purist manner is possibly too extreme, but then again, that is a challenge in itself. Maybe I'll try it that way again sometime. |
11-23-2003, 01:35 PM | #5 | |
Ma'at - Goddess of Truth & Justice
Join Date: June 3, 2003
Location: New York
Age: 39
Posts: 3,302
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Quote:
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