Randomness of level ups

[Space Dog]

How do people feel about these?

I hate it how getting 1-16 HP and a random stat increase can ruin unlucky characters. E.g. getting 2 HP and IQ for a Warrior, or 1 SP and ST for a spellcaster. Why does a caster who doesn't fight get physically stronger anyway? And 1-16 is a huge window for randomness!

That combined with the ease of reloading makes you reroll the awful level ups and I hate that too since it feels like cheating and takes time away from exploring.

Could there be an option for a fixed average HP/SP increase, and being able to choose which stat to increase?

To add insult to injury with the attributes, all characters soon end up with 18/18/18/18/18 anyway, making the initial rolls and the whole attribute system rather meaningless. Maybe it would be a good idea to give less attribute increases or cap them at some point?

Or are changes like this beyond the scope of a remaster?

[Buddah Stalin]

i agree 100% , infact this issue is keeping me from playing this game. (which i want to play very badly)

[Wakawaka]

This was suggested by a lot of people. Maybe post this same post in the BT3 sub-forums.

I think the concept was more that you were kind of a force leading your the adventures, and especially in BT1, if you ended up with a mage who spent all his time in the taverns fighting (thus the str increases), then you should just dump him off a the adventure guild and pick up a mage who hit the books.

Maybe there could be an option that changed the rolls to like 8-16 for the fighters and 2-4 hp for mages (before the constitution bonus). Maybe the stats should have a priority table so you are most likely to get a stat bonus that is relevant to your class. Mages would have int as #1, str as last.

[LordLancelot]

Good idea this should be an option.

[Darkmoor9]

This again? :)

After a while, your characters will have all 18s, so I really never saw a problem, either back in the day or now. Min-maxing may be important in other kinds of games, but not here, IMO.

Still, this gets asked so often, that the devs might want to move random stat increases to Legacy mode, and allow players to choose the increased stat in normal mode...

[Brandon]

I never saves scrummed and while it sucks your warrior gets 1 hp on a level up. But the way the game works it isn't all that important. This game has a tendency to be "all or nothing" meaning, you're going to lose big, or you're going to win battles. My warriors die more by critical hit, stone, etc than being beat down on HPs... In the end, I don't think HP matter that much... Same thing with spell points. If you need your spell points, you just RUN every battle and save them. The battles again, either you're going to win big or lose. You won't run out of spell points and be "oh damn, if I only had 10 more sp I could have won it!" That doesn't happen in Bard's tale really ever...

Just my experience.

[ryric_1999]

It's not really important. Even 18s have such a minimal effect on your random chances, and the hp thing tends to work itself out over the course of 20 levels. A warrior type getting +1 IQ and 2 hp at level 2 isn't by any means "ruined." I guess you can save scum for the best stuff if you feel compelled to, but it isn't necessary or expected by any means.

[<>]

Whether or not it's important is up to the individual. For me the character attribute increases are not important because they will max out over time. However, HP/SP ARE important later on and I will (and have) spend plenty of time reloading to maximize my gains. I consider it a part of the grind. It's certainly much less bother today than it used to be. Remember the absolute agony of reloading on a C64 back in the 1980's just to get a few extra HP's/SP's? I sure do.

The simple addition of a Reroll option similar to the one used for character creation, maybe for 500? 1000? (more?, less?) gold pieces per reroll might do the trick.

[annhwi]

call it a "re-evaluation" for 100gp/lvl your going to...

[Dragon20070]

This issue is already fixed by putting a level up fixed at 200k per level after the13th so you will level up as long a you like in dungeons. Never had any problem with randomness thanks to this.

[Kobor]

What I would like to see when increasing Constitution it should be increase those HP bonus back to level 1.

[Space Dog]

All stats ending up at 18 isn't very good either. They don't really mean much when everyone has the exact same stats across the board.

I'd really like to play new BT adventures with better stat / class / level / equipment systems.