Bulbasaur Gate II Thread

[Toaster]

Decided to install it because everyone's always ******* themselves over how great it is. Then I realize it's D&D based, and the character creation aspect alone is enough to intimidate me.

I could use a little help I think. My initial inclination was to make a half-elf assassin with neutral chaos tendency because that sounded so kewl but wtf do I know.

[marcus]

Re: Bulbasaur Gate II Thread

Half-elf isn't the best race for assassin but your race doesn't really matter much unless you're an ultra min/maxer playing on the hardest difficulty setting.

Assassin is a pretty good class. They can set traps (and traps in BG are really, really good), their backstab gets ridiculous, and they have poison. They're effective mage killers because their poison lasts for a few rounds meaning you can attack several different targets at once and poison all of them. This is devastating for spell casters because their spells automatically fail when they periodically take damage from your poison regardless how weak it is. You can also coat your blade multiple times to stack the poison effect and backstab with it.

Basically, you backstab once and everything dies. Some things (like undead) can't be backstabbed but stuff that can is ****ed.

Your attributes should be focused on dexterity, constitution, and strength in that order. When rolling your attributes, keep rerolling until you're able to subtract points from intelligence, wisdom, and charisma so that they're equal to 10 and you can bump your str, con, and dex up to 18 each. Intelligence only affects wizards, wisdom only affects clerics, and charisma only affects your prices which is only important during the beginning of the game when you're strapped on cash (and one of the earliest quests gives a reward of like 10,000gp so it's a moot point).

For your skills, you can only afford to focus on hide in shadows and move silently. You'll have to recruit other thieves in the game to do stuff like pick locks and disable traps.

For your proficiencies, I recommend longsword, shortbow, single weapon style and one other of your choice. Katana's are powerful with a high crit range but unfortunately magical katanas are rare.

Your alignment is unimportant although it does determine how long certain characters stick with you based on your reputation. Having a high reputation makes evil characters leave the party unless you're also evil in which case they give you some leniency. Some spells have no effect if you're evil so there's really no point in playing an evil aligned character.

Overall, the assassin can easily outclass the fighter when it comes to pure damage output. The class involves a lot more micromanagement because you have to pull him to the side, hide in shadows, attack, pull him to the side, hide in shadows, etc. However, give him magical support (like improved invisibility) and he becomes an absolute beast.

[Dallas Alvis II]

Re: Bulbasaur Gate II Thread

Also, be aware that any non-human race cannot duel-class (taking another class to eventually be able to use both classes). So if you create a half-elf and want to drop Assassin and pick up Mage or something like that, your s.o.l. Also, you can't multi-class with class kits like Assassin. Multi-class is different from duel-classing, something non-humans can do at character creation where they advance two or three classes at once) If you plan on being just an Assassin all the way then don't worry about any of this stuff I told you.

Here's the link to Caciss's thread with some other info that may help you out regarding the game...as well as pavillionite banter goodness and stuff. Er, most of the info there pertains to BG1 but Marcus supplied a link and a quite breakdown of the 2nd Edition AD&D rules that's easy to understand.

http://www.pavilionboards.com/forum/...ad.php?t=21737

[Ryner]

Re: Bulbasaur Gate II Thread

Realistically any race-class combo should get you through the game, the more important thing will be filling your party with NPCs who form a strong party. Just pick whatever you think will be most interesting/fun.

[Karim]

Re: Bulbasaur Gate II Thread

Something you should know before making an assassin, or any other kind of rogue: at this point in D&D they were absolutely terrible in combat outside of their initial backstab. Rogues are so frail and terrible in combat most people end up using them as archers.

While yeah, that single backstab you can do will mess one enemy up; you cannot do it again until the next encounter, and the rest of your offensive ability is rather lacking. Many of the stronger enemies in the game are also immune to backstabs since they can see you while you are hiding.

Rogues are primarily useful for setting traps and disabling them, picking locks and stuff before combat starts. And both of these things are very easy to do in this game. To give you an idea, any lock that can be picked, can be bashed open by a fighter wearing a belt that grants a strength bonus or by a mage casting a spell, and it is possible to make any of the mage/rogue npcs that join capable of disabling any trap or opening any lock.
The whole using/disabling traps also requires ALOT of micromanagement and may potentially be overwhelming for someone who's never played this type of game before.

Like I said in Cassis' topic; fighter-hybrids are the way to go. Fighter/rogue is really powerful since it allows you to still do anything a standard rogue can do; you may not get as high of a backstab multiplier or any of the other kit bonuses but you do get a rogue that can actually contribute during a fight.

[Denmo]

Re: Bulbasaur Gate II Thread

I thought this topic was about Pokemon.

[marcus]

Re: Bulbasaur Gate II Thread

Something you should know before making an assassin, or any other kind of rogue: at this point in D&D they were absolutely terrible in combat outside of their initial backstab. Rogues are so frail and terrible in combat most people end up using them as archers.

While yeah, that single backstab you can do will mess one enemy up; you cannot do it again until the next encounter, and the rest of your offensive ability is rather lacking. Many of the stronger enemies in the game are also immune to backstabs since they can see you while you are hiding.

Rogues are primarily useful for setting traps and disabling them, picking locks and stuff before combat starts. And both of these things are very easy to do in this game. To give you an idea, any lock that can be picked, can be bashed open by a fighter wearing a belt that grants a strength bonus or by a mage casting a spell, and it is possible to make any of the mage/rogue npcs that join capable of disabling any trap or opening any lock.
The whole using/disabling traps also requires ALOT of micromanagement and may potentially be overwhelming for someone who's never played this type of game before.

Like I said in Cassis' topic; fighter-hybrids are the way to go. Fighter/rogue is really powerful since it allows you to still do anything a standard rogue can do; you may not get as high of a backstab multiplier or any of the other kit bonuses but you do get a rogue that can actually contribute during a fight.

Rogues can backstab multiple times they just have to successfully hide then sneak up on an enemy again. The game actually forms a 'hotspot' around every single in-game shadow (you'll see your character grow darker when you're standing in a shadow) so a lot of new people don't understand that you can't be standing out in the open and hide-in-shadows with great success. As for the rogue's THAC0, it may be subpar (same as a cleric's) but they get a +4 bonus for attacking invisibly which really helps. Golems, undead, oozes, and plants (basically any creature without a nervous system) are immune to critical hits but those guys are rare. If a creature can be critted, which is nearly all of them, it can be backstabbed.

But yes, it does require a lot of micromanagement. The snares are pretty powerful but require you to draw groups towards the party and having to keep track of your rogue throughout combat can get frustrating for a new player.

[Red Dragon]

Re: Bulbasaur Gate II Thread

Just play sorcerer with high Wis and Cha.

Wish is just an overly-powerful spell.

Sorcs in general are really OP in BG2. To the point were you can solo the entire game on the hardest difficulty with one.

In BG2 traps are broken. You can stack them until the cows come home, then just have a boss walk over it. Bam, they're dead in 3 seconds.

[marcus]

Re: Bulbasaur Gate II Thread

Just play sorcerer with high Wis and Cha.

Wish is just an overly-powerful spell.

Sorcs in general are really OP in BG2. To the point were you can solo the entire game on the hardest difficulty with one.

In BG2 traps are broken. You can stack them until the cows come home, then just have a boss walk over it. Bam, they're dead in 3 seconds.

1. Spam skull trap.
2. Lure enemy to skull trap.
3. ???
4. Profit.

[Ryner]

Re: Bulbasaur Gate II Thread

Toaster don't listen to these people just play a god damn Assassin like you want and you'll be fine.

[Red Dragon]

Re: Bulbasaur Gate II Thread

Marcus kinda hit the nail on the head with his initial post so theres really nothing left to do but reccomend some other stuff to fool around with.