Baldur's Gate: The Zero Reload Saga

Well once more we play catch up, quite a long post this time if your actually reading these comments? Still you shouldn't ask questions if you don't want an answer because I WILL provide it if I know it. Now onto the comments.

1) Yes slow poison is a balance issue to do with the game design (I suspect) that shouldn't remove the effects of poison as it does, it should just prevent them getting worse (see below) if it hasn't been neutralized in the Pen and Paper (pnp) game by the time slow poison wears off you are immediately subject to the poisons effect.

Poison in the PnP game is set up as follows

Class: A to P
Method: How the player gets it, normally injected but there are contact or ingested variants
Onset: How long till the effects hit the player ranging from immediately to hours (slow poison MUST be cast in this time period)
Strength: What it does usually X hitpoints on a failed save and Y on a succesful save although there are instant death, paralytic or debiliative ones

So for example a class E poison could be coated on an arrow and shot into a person, it takes effect immediately (so no slow poison) and if you fail your save you die, if you succeed you take 20 points of damage

Of course there's nothing on the table for a continuing damage of 5 points of damage every round so as I said its a game balance decision or at least that's the explanation I'm going with.

2) In real life poison effects can include such things as irritation, coughing and choking, nauseua, diarrehea, urinating, headaches, dizziness, confusion, depression, coma, convulsions, tiredness, rashses, infertility, miscarraiage and so on.

so I'd guess convulsions, coughing and choking or the like are the symptoms generated by the hobgoblins poison and why you can never get that spell off.

3) With regards to thieves your right low level thieves have great difficulty in different areas but that's partly a roleplyaing decision you have to make and partly a difference in the game vs the PnP version of DnD.

Are you a pickpocket, a sneak thief, a trapmaaster? At higher levels you can fill in the weakpoints though. You also need to consider race/dex in the set up so lets say we wanted a good allrounder . . .

we could have the following
Skill Base Score
Pick Pockets 15%
Open Locks 10%
Find/Remove Traps 5%
Move Silently 10%
Hide in Shadows 5%
Detect Noise 15%
Climb Walls 60%
Read Languages 0%

Good Race (elf) Great Dex (18)
+5% +10%
-5% +15%
- +5%
+5% +10%
+10% +15%
+5% -
- -
- -

Skill Total
Pick Pockets 30%
Open Locks 20%
Find/Remove Traps 10%
Move Silently 25%
Hide in Shadows 30%
Detect Noise 15%
Climb Walls 60%
Read Languages 0%

Then you need to factor in a 1st level thief has a discretionary 60 points to spend (1 point = 1%) in skills as they see fit and another 30 points (instead of the 20 you get in game) per level. Plus if they aren't wearing armour (which most non-adventuring thieves would be, not wearing it that is) you add the following . . .

Pick Pockets = +5%
Move Silently = +10%
Hide in Shadows = +5%
Climbing Walls = +10%
So if you were an elf with 18 dex if you were to assign say 20% to each sneaking skill a starting thief could hide in shadows and move silently of 55% and still have 20 points to spend.

Also I personally mistrust the "die rolls" the game uses to determine success in these matters.

Incidently most DM's I played with made the rolls themselves so you never actually knew if you'd succeeded or not unless you got spotted

The flipside of that is they'd gve bonuses/penalties based on situation e.g. hiding in a thick wood on a overcast night would give bonuses to hide in shadows while trying it in the middle of a brightly lit room in full view of everyone would be pretty much a guaranteed failure

4) On the subject of the throwing axe I guess its because it slamns into a person rather than cutting along them. Its a piercing blow its just that its a really big piercing blow.

5) I suspect Otyugh's were included as a neat creature but the stuff that makes them really dangerous (striking from ambush, 20% chance of a FATAL disease and using opponents as a shield against incoming attacks) couldn't be implemented in the game.

6) No idea on the naming thing since in the pen and paper game we also have crystal ooze, grey ooze, ochre jelly, olive slime and a bunch of others.

7) With regard to the hand, quallo, the lovers and all its just that you jumped the gun instead of waiting for the riddle that would give sticking your hand in that grate meaning.

As for an explanation remember ancient beings with immense magical power need to get their entertainment somewhere and some of them would have a soul as black and twisted if not more so than Vespro's.

I'm sure there are some who'd find it funny (and easy to achieve) to encase two still living people in stone and fuse their mouths together in an eternal kiss

8) As for the monsters in the sewers all I can really say its a game with limited space and lots of quests to squeeze into them.

I expect normally they aren't all down there at once you'd just have an occasional otyugh living happily in the filth or an evil cult using the forgotten sewer systems.

Afterall even in real life there's a lot of room down there, I know of subway stations with a dozen floors below anything used by the public that are just abandoned and there's a massive amount of sewers and tunnels under major cities that's in the same state of being walled off and forgotten.

If it helps think of the games sewer systems as a condensed version wherein your skipping the hours of trudging through sludge looking for what your after with no success.


9) Actually goodberries are a permanent item so i've found it handy to have 20 of them in Jaheira's inventory for that little extra healing.

Also in the PnP game they can substitute for a full meal (and have a limit of 8 points of healing per day) but with no need to ever eat in the game that wasn't included.

Actually maybe that's why the Kobalds want the staff. Its not because it can heal them but because it their source of clean safe food. One berry is a full meal and you can get 5 (or in the PnP 2d4) per casting.

If I lived in the sewers I'd probably feel 2 thousand gold for my only source of clean, safe food (especially when I couldn't trade with the humans above me) wasn't a good deal either.

and now once more I'm caught up with the comments you'll never read (grin).

Just for the record, I do read all the comments, even if I don't necessarily respond to them. You should probably bear in mind, though, that while I do appreciate you answering the questions I ask in my entries, they are purely rhetorical more often than not, or a case of me intentionally feigning ignorance for the sake of comedic effect.

Glad you're enjoying the read. Don't take it too seriously.

Apparently I'm the only one who finds Lilacor amusing, even still....

No actually I find it rather amusing as well I just never have a character who uses that particular type of sword so it just sits in my inventory occasionally being asked questions.

dead.

Or else really busy with real life. Afterall we got an update saying that updates would be intermittent so I'm sure we'll get one if she decides to abandon this.

She?

"The whimsical tale of one man's struggle to complete Baldur's Gate II without dying once."

He, I think you'll find.

Guess I was thrown off by the day 5 hour 18 update where they refer to being pregnant and a rough period in their life. Guess it could have been a girlfriend though.

dead.

Sadly I'm begining to agree with you, unless your the author of this in which case my agreement is meaningless.

Dormant, ladies and gentlemen, but not dead.

I haven't lost any desire to update. However, I'm also in the process of trying to learn three and a half programming languages and one actual language, increase my drawing skills from the level of "Five year old retard" to "Ten year old retard" (I aim high) and I have a lot of other things to write.

Unfortunately, this blog simply suffers from being a low priority. I do have some plans for it, though, so try not to give up on it just yet. I won't.

I hate to say it, but definitely dead. I'll miss it, RIP