Is there a general idiots guide to this somewhere (short of reading the manual)

[Iamezra313]

Hi all,

In short - kind of want to like this but am not sure I'm completely feeling this yet (feels similar to Dawn of War but not set in the future, and not turn based like an XCom or Shadowrun). Have got a team of 4 and am running round the beginner dungeon but broadly have no idea what I'm doing (e.g. am probably an hour in) such as I'm now picking up weapons but can't figure out which does the most damage and who can have what (as at least one of the people I've got doesn't seem to want to do blades and stuff - am assuming she's a magic person or something). Probably a hell of a lot of nuances/subtleties that I am missing as well etc.

Basically is there a general "you haven't played a D&D game before/are in an idiot" here's the general basics of how you should play etc.?

Have got to a blind golem who has something to do with a sewer on one side, and on the other side of the dungeon bit that I have open there's a locked door at the top of a ramp.

Am sure I've missed a door somewhere but that's how far I am in.

Thanks in advance for any advice or suggestions.

[red255]

So....you don't need a beginner build advise? cuz i'd go with a dwarf fighter/cleric with my stats respeced to max STR,Dex, and Con.

probably start with Bg1.

you go past the guy in the glass jar, and theres a table with an activation stone for the sewer golem, press the button on the side of the screen to highlight containers. so you won't miss them. anyways go to the golem with the activation stone and he opens the door.

[Zotliatlicor]

Righ clicking items, objects yield info on them. And you 4 characters ahave a character page, there it tells what weapon types they are proficient with.

Generally, Warrior types can use most weapons, and spellcasters are very limited. And Clerical (Divine) magic users have Ethos restrictions. Cleris cannot use any bladed weapon, only Blunt.

Weapons are sub-categorized in 3 types, Edged (slashing) Blunt & Piercing. All swords & Axes are edged. All Clubs and mace like weapons incl Staves are blunt. Spears and Daggers are piercing, as is ammo for Bows and crossbows. Sling stones are blunt.

Minsc can use anything, but he has his proficiencies and you should use those. He has two ** in Maces (Blunt) and two ** in Two Handed Swords (edged) and 2 ** in Bow (piercing).

A normal Mage can only ever use 4 meager weapons, those are Dagger, Dart, Sling and Quarterstaves. But Imoen has started life as a thief and switched to Mage, so she can also use any weapons that Thief can use, like Short bow and regular swords (long, short, Scimitars).

Jaheira is a Druid and a Fighter, but her Druid Ethos overrides the use all weapons of warriors, so she must use only weapons useable by druids. Scimitars, Staves, Daggers, Clubs, Slings, Darts are some.

You get a lot of info if you spend some time going through the various classes in Character Generation. You do not need spend time on rolling a superb toon, just click ahead and see what each major type can do.

And play slowly and explore carefully. After 2 hour you will likely m aster it. Remember to set up your casters spellbooks and rest afterwards.

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

Uhm, with regard to the rules implemented in the game, you ought to start with the first Baldur's Gate game and its level 1 characters.

And yes, the PDF manuals are pretty much essential, because you must understand the basics like THAC0, Armor Class, bonuses from attributes, protection spells and counter-spells, implications of multi-classing and dual-classing,...
--> http://files.beamdog.com

Since the original games are ancient, there is a lot of documentation on the Internet. Guides, walkthroughs, FAQs, the Wiki, maps,...

[Iamezra313]

Oh think I went human Paladin or something in terms of the build.

Yes - had found the glass jar room and found the stone so figured that's what was needed next. Was just a little surprised a lot of the online YouTube videos on it just assumed that you knew what you were doing and stuff (I'm assuming it's because they all came from BG1 rather doing a me and just jumping in on 2).

[Zotliatlicor]

You need not play BG1 first. After completing the starter Dungeon you are good to go. Just dont choose the hardest difficulties until you get the hang of it

[Iamezra313]

Got it - from the other two comments that happened in between me posting to the 2nd one; I can see the answer to my question is pretty much BG1 by the look of it lol. OK duly noted.

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

Zotliatlicor님이 먼저 게시:

You need not play BG1 first.

The rationale why starting with BG1 is a good idea:

- Since you start with level 1 characters and end up at level 8-10 depending on class, you can experience character progression all the way up from a rookie adventurer to a hero. You
don't need to worry about the high-level stuff like level 5-9 spells or even HLAs. And you don't need to worry about the most fearsome foes that you can encounter in BG2. Like liches with innate abilities & immunities, dragons, and more.

- The main player character can gain some worthwhile bonuses in BG1, which transfer into BG2.

- BG1 is where the story starts, which also introduces you to your main player character's special background. It also explains why your main character gains special abilities. And you get introduced to story companions and NPCs, some which reappear in BG2.

- BG1 continues into the Siege of Dragonspear expansion automatically, if installed, where to gain some more levels, and one can choose any time to quit and import the savegame into BG2 as to continue there.

[Iamezra313]

D'amarr from Darshiva님이 먼저 게시:

Zotliatlicor님이 먼저 게시:

You need not play BG1 first.

The rationale why starting with BG1 is a good idea:

Was on sale - just bought it so let's see where we go from there ;-)

[Wicket W. Warrick]

D'amarr from Darshiva님이 먼저 게시:

Zotliatlicor님이 먼저 게시:

You need not play BG1 first.

The rationale why starting with BG1 is a good idea:

Yes and not. I agree with everything you say, but the very beginning of BG1 is very tough, while the beginning od BG2 is not and is actually a long tutorial, expecially if played a low difficulty.

Actually lost in time I started with BG2, somewhere in the middle I stopped and played all BG1 with another character and finished BG2 later (with both new and old characters).

@Iamezra313 So you don't need to play BG1, also if it is the natural way to enjoy the full experience.

I think this guide is quite good. You don't need to read it all, just until gameplay. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=195290864

And, a final suggestion, don't worry too much about min.max, just play and enjoy, everything will become more clear in time, and you can maximise your characters later. The game is fully enjoyable also without max power of the characters (in fact a party too powerful can cause a boring walkthrough from middle to late game).

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

stef.corsi님이 먼저 게시:

but the very beginning of BG1 is very tough, while the beginning od BG2 is not and is actually a long tutorial, expecially if played a low difficulty.

The beginning of BG1 in Candle Keep is even more of a tutorial, although all the errand boy tasks can be skipped. There's even a house with an instructor offering training fights.

Compared with that, the initial dungeon in BG2 is a maze filled with riddles, traps and some tough opponents.

Btw, the difficulty can be turned down for both games. The extra Story Mode makes characters invincible and can be toggled any time.

[Iamezra313]

stef.corsi님이 먼저 게시:

D'amarr from Darshiva님이 먼저 게시:

The rationale why starting with BG1 is a good idea:

And, a final suggestion, don't worry too much about min.max, just play and enjoy, everything will become more clear in time, and you can maximise your characters later. The game is fully enjoyable also without max power of the characters (in fact a party too powerful can cause a boring walkthrough from middle to late game).

That's just me - I don't have a great deal of time to game so when I do I try to be relatively on point (e.g. if I'm playing a Rogue Lite I won't always go for objectively the best build, but did you say that's the max damage per second option? - excellent, I'll take that option please). Weirdly I've heard min/max referred to at least a couple of times (e.g. can't remember for the life of me the name of the game, but you had to min/max it in a very specific way and that just isn't how I played it lol so I'm not sure if that's something I do anyhow).

[Iamezra313]

D'amarr from Darshiva님이 먼저 게시:

The beginning of BG1 in Candle Keep is even more of a tutorial, although all the errand boy tasks can be skipped. There's even a house with an instructor offering training fights.

Sounds like precisely what I am after lol.

[6h0$t942]

Ok..so a basic rundown of combat in BG


APR-Attacks per round
THACO-To hit Armor Class zero
AC-Armor class. An AC of 10 means a n@ked person with no +/-
Casting time
Resistances
Round-6 seconds
Turn-60 seconds

Characters have a set number of APR depending on their class. Warrior classes (ranger, paladin, fighter) will end up with more APR than wizards for example.

THACO. This is your attack score. A lvl 1 fighter iirc starts with...idk 19-20 THACO. If you were to swing at a guy in some full plate variant with an AC of 0 (keep in mind that in BG lower AC is better).... you would need to roll a 20 on a d20, which means you have a 5% chance to hit.
If you swung on a naked dude, AC 10, you would subtract their AC...

THACO: 20
AC: 0
20-0= 20=05% to hit
20-10=10= 50% to hit

So lets say ye olde warrior has grown up a bit and has a THAC0 of 12. If, as is the case 90% of the time in bg2 for both your party and your enemies an AC value is NEGATIVE...

THAC0: 12
Target AC: -3

12--3= 15= 25% chance to hit "i must roll a 15 or higher to hit jaheira" (algebra. subtract a neg is a positive.)

Since a roll of 20 is a crit your chance to hit will never be less than 05%
-------------------------
Casting time. Some spells take longer to cast than others. Typically this correlates with the spell's magnitude or length but not always.
Magic missle: 1
Draw upon holy might: idk 2-3
Fireball: 3-4
Armor: 9
Call lightning: 7-9

I have seen this be a point of confusion before. Because you can only cast 1 spell per round regardless of speed, people will be confused as to why their caster casts a fast spell and then wont cast again until after a delay, whereas after some spells they immediatly cast again.

Resistances. Straightforward if you've ever played a game before. 50% fire resist= 50% less damage taken. Very helpful for not dying, and if you enchant a warrior and have them draw attention you can bombard the area from a distance and it will take longer for jaheira to die. Which is a mixed result since we want her to die but oh well.
The only nuance is that magic resistance and resistance to magical damage are different.
Magic resistance is a base chance to straight up ignore a hostile magic effect. Magical damage resistance (yellow text, magic missle) acts the same as fire resistance.

Saves. Spells and effects let entities roll a save to reduce effects. You have minimal control over these values. Just know that if an item says "save vs [category] +y" its increasing your chances.

Classes. With a few exception just play what you want. This isn't an mmo, there is no farting to be done online about how gud your DPS is. For a first game I would counsel you to avoid bards, monks, shamans, sorcerers(very strong but need metagaming), triple multiclasses. A paladin is more than fine. All of their sub classes are good. Are there some classes that over perform? For sure, and i use a few of them. But you don't have to care.

Weapon proficiencies. Just read them. Bonuses to damage, THAC0, etc. You mentioned "finding weapons that do the most damage". Well...not really relevant. ALL weapon categories WILL have good options...but some are MUCH harder to find than others.
Some categories in which it will be difficult to screw yourself over are
maces, axes, lsword, greatsword(especially for paladin..), staff, flail, sbow, lbow, ssword, dagger
Less common/maybe dont focus :
bsword(there are 2 good ones in dlc, one is paladin specific.
katana (ok there is one infamously fkin powerful one but its basically the ONLY one..),
spear- 1 good one, 1 verrrryyy nice one that is hard to miss on the main story
halberd- 2 very nice ones. One is impossible to miss on main story
Avoid: darts, scimitar,

Again LESS COMMON doesnt mean BAD. It just means it will be harder to find. My favorite weapon is a halberd, and darts get an APR bonus. But there is only 1 enchanted dart. Good consumable darts though. Stunning and poison.

Thief skills and max values needed. One of the core BG characters is capped at 9 lvls of thief so the values for locks and traps are sort of based on her by the game devs imho. These values are based on my experience. You can find a better reference easily.
PP: 90-200 chance to steal from npcs and to steal from merchants. It needs to be 90 to do anything at all. At 200 its nuts. Lots of save scumming.
Pick lock: ~100-125
Find traps: ~105-140
Hide in shadows: 45-x
Move silent: 40-x
Hide in shadows effects your chance to go invisible (must be out of enemy line of sight)
Double check this statement, i read this a long time ago: Move silently effects how long you stay invisible after breaking conditions to be invisible (fail a roll, fail an attack). HIS is more important than MS overall.
Set trap: Its a %. So you only need 100 to always succeed.
Detect illusion: A %. Dont use it myself but it could be helpful? Wouldnt take it over anything else though.

Spells. read them Some stand outs
Haste, slow, skull trap, m missile, armor, mrror image, skull trap, minor globe, otiliuks sphere, spell thrust, STONESKIN, resistance spells, BREACH, SPELL IMMUNITY, non detection, shadow door, invisiblity variants, LOWER RESISTANCE
Cleric
Draw UHM, Chaotic commands, holy power, various cure status spells
Druid- iron skin, fire elemental, insect plague, call lgihtning, resistane spells

[Iamezra313]

That's a hell of a lot of information but definitely handy to have and has given me a better idea of where I'm going with this and how I'll approach BG1 (as I'm going to go backwards before going forwards `i think). Feels like I've gone for the trying to run before I can walk option.

[Wicket W. Warrick]

Iamezra313님이 먼저 게시:

That's just me - I don't have a great deal of time to game so when I do I try to be relatively on point (e.g. if I'm playing a Rogue Lite I won't always go for objectively the best build, but did you say that's the max damage per second option? - excellent, I'll take that option please). Weirdly I've heard min/max referred to at least a couple of times (e.g. can't remember for the life of me the name of the game, but you had to min/max it in a very specific way and that just isn't how I played it lol so I'm not sure if that's something I do anyhow).

That's up to you, but you need a lot fo pre knoweledge in order to have max damage, max defence, max everything.... and not only of rules, but also fo the game. Anyway if you want to play like I suggest you invest some times in understanding the main mechanics (so, not only a brief tutorial, but also reading the manual and the wiki), then search in forums for good builds and follow them while you advance.
Try to find a balance between playing the perfect character(s) and invest hours in studying boring rules. Playing an "easy" class would help (for example a warrior class, but also a rogue class).