/vr/ - Retro Games

>what are the best DnD cRPGs

Bards are amazing. They're like wizards that level fast and can identify literally everything by level 10. They lose out to evokers as they only get access to the 6th spell level but the best spells in D&D are all about buffs and crowd control.

Play a Skald for buffs, or a Blade for a warrior/mage who dips into thief. A Blade with lots of attacks per round is a force to be reckoned with.

>>4725879
Yeah, I have plqyed ToEE for ten minutes, but it bored me. I was astounded by the combat, though. Also, I loved VtMB and Arcanum, so maybe I should try ToEE again?

question about IWD
is your MC supposed to have high charisma?
does it matter if my highest is at 16?

also Is half the game really undead?
I cant seem to use my sorcerer or mage often because undead cant fall asleep last I checked

>>4725912
Whoever is in the leader slot is the "MC", unlike Baldur's Gate IWD doesn't have a concept of a "main character", so I'd put the highest charisma person there for certain dialog options.

And yes, IWD is very heavy on the undead. Mages get the shaft early on because of this.

>>4725901
I have totally forgotten about dual-classing, and I'm playing a Skald in a DnD campaign. This sounds good, and I know there is a +3 harp in bg2 early on. This is what I like about the game - almost everything is viable, but you will still get fucked, it's not like poe, where anything will get you everywhere, it's simply boring. The game reminds me of Ultima VII or Fallout 2, but with DnD ruleset, there's always something fun to do.

>>4725912
Yeah, like the other guy said; It's not important, IWD is all about hack and slash, but it still manages to be fun, the whole campaign is good, and it feels like a journey you could imagine being written by J.R.R. Tolkien. You just have to use your imagination.

>>4725935
>>4725920
how does iwd2 rank compared to baldurs gate 1 & 2?

currently playing thru bg ee. at chapter 3 looking for the bandit camp up north.
also playing IWD. still at valley of shadows

>>4725862
>Bards always suck in rpgs
No they don't.

>>4725947
IWD2 is 3e in the Infinity Engine, it has a lot of serious problems because of this, especially in balance and combat. I'm not sure if anyone has made a patch to fix these issues but it's quite bad compared to 1.

If you're not in the loop, D&D 3rd Edition is fucking horrible and had major balance problems right out the gate, especially for martial classes.

>>4725947
Iwd2 is somewhat bad, it's simply boring, but if I had to rank infinity engine games ot would be:
BG2, PT, IWD, IWD2, BG

>>4725947
IWD2 isn't fun at all and has annoyingly durable enemies long before HoF. It's the worst of the IE games hands down.

>>4725957
>bg last
I only installed PT never actually played it. I have it sitting somewhere in some HD.
I plan on going bg, bg2, iwd, iwd2. pt. should last me a few months before im done with all this

Beamdog is a guilty of a number of different crimes. Here are the major ones.

1. The Enhanced Editions are essentially a collection of free mods that had existed for nearly twenty years. Beamdog gathered them all up, slapped "Enhanced Edition" on it and resold it as a new product. There's very very little in the Enhanced Editions that wasn't already out there, and most of it is stuff you don't want (like obnoxious character outlines).

2. The games didn't sell so well and the originals were still far outselling them, even twenty years after their release, so Beamdog had EVERY digital distributor stop selling the originals and ONLY sell the Enhanced Edition. If you want to buy a digital copy of the originals now, they're "bundled" into the Enhanced Edition. Now these scumbags can claim sales from people just wanting to buy the originals as their own.

3. The infamous 600+ bugs on launch. The game is still riddled with bugs (as even a perfunctory glance over their forums show) but the fact that it took nearly two years for them to get a game that had been working fine for 20 years to reach playability after launch is telling of their wild incompetence.

4. This is where we get to the ones that really piss people off. Beamdog couldn't just remaster the game, they had to fuck with the content too. New dialogue for existing NPCs like Jaheira, Viconia, Safana, Kivan, et cetera was written in to make the characters more progressive and leftist friendly. Beamdog shills will argue that "adding content isn't changing content XDDD" but it is when the new content changes the core personalities of the existing characters. This is in addition to adding a slew of their own LGBT (hitherto there were none in Baldur's Gate) NPCs, all flooded with OP attributes and magic items to encourage people to play them despite their cancer.

5. Siege of motherfucking Dragonspear.

The only thing I like about bg1 & 2 ee is the fact that you can put so much ammo without having to put any extra mods.
you used to waste so much space carrying ammo in bg 1 only to be depleted and being forced to melee everything before you got tired or needed rest.

at least when I play ee the game flows better
casualness really. I remember the beginning being a lot more hardcore than the recent version.

>>4726090
>There's very very little in the Enhanced Editions that wasn't already out there
I'll give them credit; the zoom feature is something I've wanted for a long time. Everything else is unforgivable though. Among tabletop gaymers, Amber E. Scott is a four letter word.

>>4726119
Nah, the difficulty is consistent. The beginning is just you being at the whims of the random number god because you have 6HP and bows do 1d6 damage.

Friendly reminder to ignore the tenacious anti-Beamdog autist who religiously shitposts in these threads. I know it's hard, but please use the report function and resist the temptation to reply.

Thank you.

Blade is perfectly fine. A very strong class that doesn't suffer from the slow xp gain of Fighter/Mage or having to basically played a gimped character for half the game with Fighter Mage dual class. In fact, I never recommend playing a dual class. The journey is the fun part.

>>4725879
It isn't. It is more linear and has less gameplay variety than the Baldur's Gate saga. Ran like shit at the time and basically requires 3rd party mods to run. Actually, the first time I tried to play it, the game wouldn't launch no matter what. Finally got it running with a later (unofficial) patch version some years later.

Despite this, its still in the top 10 D&D games. So its good. But not even close to taking the crown.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVrHeOMVdqM

Currently playing as dwarf defender as mc on bg1. Im easily ripping thru the game killing everything in my path as a lvl 4. Just finished nashkel mines

>>4726189
Dwarf Defender is one of those classes that really trivializes the first game by giving you an advantage the enemies can't really overcome (massive damage reduction). You can still die, of course, from magic, but being a dwarf, you get great resistance against that too.

The Shadow Dancer, or whatever they called the new thief class also trivializes it. I beat the game solo run with it without dying. Hard to die when the enemies can never even see you.

Can still be fun to steamroll though.

>>4726182

Despite ToEE shipping out as an obvious beta, I really did enjoy it more than the BG saga. The game's technical issues are pretty moot these days since you can just grab the GOG release if you don't feel like patching it yourself.

>>4726204
I pretty much took him and made him based on bg2. I only got halfway thru the beholders lair as a kid. Now i know what im up against.

>>4726189
Beamdog's EE is worse for this franchise than the novelization was.

>>4725904
Part of what makes DnD so much fun is social interaction. When you take that away, and leave only the mechanics, you get something that is way too complex to be fun.

I'd say it doesn't deserve a second try. It was a great idea on paper, a brilliant one even, but it just isn't much fun at all. And there's nothing worse than a boring video game.

>>4725879
this game needed a really fast cpu to run decently how can you make pathfinding so heavy plus its so bugged you need that circle of 8 mod. i still have low fps ptsd.

coulve been perfect but instead of comfy turn based grid battles it came out glitchy 3d save erasing random encounter party wiping game. i like getting owned from time to time just kidding.

is there really no implemented difference between church resurrection and the one jaroo does? because i always feel like im cheesing for not reincarnating in a different body but its ok the games asking to be cheesed

>>4726402
It is the opposite, really. A computer doing all the math for you is what later D&D seems to be designed for. Which is part of the reason it is weird they stopped making real D&D games.

I remember disliking 3e almost immediately because of how tedious it was to create a character.

>>4726189

Dwarven Defender is the strongest fighter. I had one in IWD. At the end of HoW he had 100% resistance against physical attacks.

>>4727432
I have an undead hunter whos unstoppable

Is it worth putting points in both shield +1h and single hand combat for the added crit?

>>4725862
>How viable is a Bard run in BG2?

Perfectly fine.

You can use NPCs to fill in the gaps; you've got an NPC for pretty much every use out there.

>>4727410
>I remember disliking 3e almost immediately because of how tedious it was to create a character.

>Oh fuck all these feats I have to pick 1
>What am I going to spend these 12 skill points on
>Fuck I wish I wasn't a retard and let all my rolls be determined by 4 charts I have to cross reference every fucking time I level up

3e might take slightly longer to set up a character but 2e is far more cumbersome to level up, especially for rogues and wizards.

>>4727432
The final battle of IWD is such bullshit that even my Dwarf Defender was getting raped. I've beaten the original disc version, which has no fancy classes at all, but fortunately I don't remember how frustrating it was in that, with vanilla classes only.

Aside from BG, BG2, IWD, IWD2, PT, and ToEE, are there any other DnD games worth playing? There are a ton of Forgotten Realms games on GOG that are frequently on sale but I've never heard of any of them.

>>4728961
The Gold Box games are good.
The three Eye of the Beholder are good too, same with Dungeon Hack.
And nobody ever mentions it, but Spelljammer is worth a try, though it is more of a simulatiin game with rpg elements.

>>4728961
Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 obviously.

what bg1 ee mods should i get?

>>4729018
>>4729028
ty, i'll check these out

>>4725862
Bards are actually one of the greatest under-the-radar powerhouses in the game.

BG1 goes really smoothly, because you have access to all the mage wands (with all the cheese that entails), you can competently fire a Reflex Long Bow (and bows, with their 2 Attack Per Round no matter the class, along with all the bullshit magic arrows in BG1, rock), you have pickpocketing (also used for shoplifting, you can also imbibe Potions of Thieving Mastery before going on grand heists) and bardic lore for convenience.

BG2 is where Bards unlock total powerhouse mode. Blade is one of the best single-classed characters in the game, being basically a hyper-fast advancing Fighter/Mage with UAI. Jester's AoE disruption is actually really, really strong, especially in fights full of trash (it's thus even better in mods that throw a LOT of trash at you, such as Tactics) and transitions into a strong, regular Bard once you unlock the ToB Enhanced Bard Song, and Skald is just a fantastic support class throughout the entirety of the game, the only caveat is that by end-game your Skald song gets overridden by the Enhanced Bard Song from ToB, so the net gain is some THAC0 and losses to Pickpocketing (but you really don't care for pickpocketing anymore by ToB levels, and it's easy enough to enhance with Potions of Thieving Mastery, which are common in BG2).

Overall, Bard is very strong in both games. It's just that it's hard to note their obvious strengths because the original Bard Song doesn't seem to be doing anything at all and you can't do anything while singing, and they don't seem to have anything going for them. So yeah, pick them, but unless you're a Jester/Skald or a late-game bard, expect not to sing much at all.

FYI, Bards are good in IWD1 (free 2500 XP early on plus strong Bard only items) and NWN1 (it's a strong, solid class) as well. Hell, even in Wizardry. So Bards being bad is a meme.

>>4729154

If you'd ever solo'd a bard you would know they don't hit anything and have no attacks per round. They don't compare to a F/M in the slightest.

>>4725904
circle of 8 fixed it. try it with temple+

>>4728961
>are there any other DnD games worth playing?
Since Gold Box was already mentioned, I'll pitch Warriors of the Eternal Sun. It's a Genesis / MD exclusive, and I think it was developed by the same studio behind the Eye of the Beholder trilogy. It's also one of the few video game adaptations of classic (pre-AD&D) rules.

>>4729154
But they're crippled as fighters. Having access to a fighter's repertoire of weapons doesn't mean they can use them just as effectively as a straight up fighting class. Bards are intended to function as more of a support role.

>>4729171
>If you'd ever solo'd a bard
I did. Paul Kinski on Youtube also has documented defeating really tough (basically bullshit mod fights) with a Jester.
>you would know they don't hit anything
They do. As a Blade, you have your Offensive Spin for this purpose. Even the other kits don't suffer much in combat with some buff support. Throughout BG1, your Bard will be hitting just fine with a bow, too.
>have no attacks per round
Kundane + Belm = 3 apr on any class, this is a staple on Swashbucklers, or just regular Thieves that want to switch it up with some melee brawling.
Offensive Spin to make sure you can hit, on top of that plenty of buffs (DUHM stops existing once your soul gets sucked out by Irenicus, but you can make up for it with shit like Tenser's).
Later on Improved Haste doubles your attacks per round, you can also just quaff Oil of Speed as that stacks with Offensive Spin (though its questionable if it should).
You have 6 APR (cheesy 8 APR with Oil of Speed trick) that you can stack buffs on top of to hit harder.
When Use Any Item shows up, you switch your Kundane to a Scarlet Ninja-To, which has a better enchantment, retains the 1 APR, and adds an useful intrinsic to fight Mages with.
If you need to fight something with a higher enchantment, you toss Energy Blades at it or even just whip out the Carsomyr or Ravager you can use because you have UAI and you can fuck everything.
Not to mention that all shapes of Bards simply advance extremely fast and get ridiculously good scaling on damage spells. You get your UAIs faster than a F/M would as well.
You also have a wide repertoire of bullshit ToB traps.
You are also easily rendered hard to kill with all of the buffs and spells you can cast on yourself. Stoneskin and Defensive Spin alone make you a powerhouse, and you don't have to do a ton of prebuffing beforehand to be viable in a fight.

>>4729171
They have two. Bows have 2 attacks a round, Dual Wielding has 2 attacks a round.

But he's clearly talking about the Blade kit there, which has several use per day buffs to attacks.

>>4729171
>>4729267
Also, I'd like to really stress that Bard is one of the easiest classes to play BG1 with.
>all armors available
>can use the Composite Long Bow (at early levels you will hit only 5% less often as a regular ** Bows, 18 Dex Fighter)
>can use arcane scrolls
>has better THAC0 and HP than mage, so has better utility in touch spells, and he can cast those from scrolls too early on, Chill Touch et al. are very useful for nuking those assassins in taverns and so on
>can use spells in general
>can use wands (and wand cheese is huge in BG1, there are freebie wands in secret spots all over the Sword Coast)
>can use all types of weapons (Enhanced Edition, though I don't personally use it, adds the Chesley Crusher, which is a dream weapon for bards - they can't get more than 1 APR in melee anyway, so they take no drawbacks from this weapon, plus it has reach in case you have a meatshield to hide behind) including just using them for the special intrinsics they have (e.g. running around with Spider's Bane just for the immunity to Hold)
They start out as flat out the strongest class in the game, and only fall off slightly later in the game, but their "jack of all trades" status still allows them to drop a Cloudkill into a room or knockout everyone with CC, so they're still top tier.
BG2 gives them the Blade, which is 'nuff said. Even without Blade, the HLAs are fucking broken - you have a class that can use level 9 spells from scrolls to synergize with Spike Traps and bullshit effects like Simulacrum (Bard synergizes stupendously with Vhailor's Helm cheese, as you can even use the Simulacrum to sing to yourself to fight better).

>>4729296
Correction: you only have Mail and not Plate, but that matters little since Mail + Mirror Image is still superior defense compared even to an Ankheg Plate Mail. When Stoneskin jumps into the mix, it's gg.

>>4729296
All classes are easy to play BG1 with, except pure thief. I think the game is telling you something by making every other NPC a thief of some sort.

>>4729307
Pure Druid is pretty bad, too, mostly because their level 2 spell circle is fuckingnothing.jpg. But you can get by with Entangle.
Point is, Bard has a readily available answer to pretty much everything in the game, all by himself, and can generally be more versatile than other classes.

>>4729327
I keep forgetting druid is even a class, to be honest.

>>4728961
PoR, and, of course, EotB 1&2 (we don't talk about 3).

>>4729362
IWD1 really does them justice.

>>4728961
Knights of the Chalice.

>>4729505
Oh yeah, that one's excellent. But it's pretty much a turbo autist version of ToEE with Ultima VII inspired graphics. Very tight and awesome turn-based combat with so many options and possibilities, but little to no story/waifus/escapism stuff. Very fun to crunch them numbers and see if you can make it or what you can get away with.

Link this post if you're good enough to beat the secret boss.

>>4729505
>>4729513

It's not retro, and it's basically a shitty fangame. Could you be any more blatant with your shilling?

>>4725904
>I was astounded by the combat

I still believe TOEE has the greatest RPG battle system after the Gold Box games one. The Baldur's Gate style real time with pause just isn't for me - it always ends up as "smash pause, choose target, hope the pathfinding doesn't bite me in the arse".

>>4729527
You can just micromanage and microadjust the pathing by pressing the pause often, you know.

>>4729535
Aye, but if it devolves to that, I'd rather have the old school turn based system instead of RTWP.

>>4729538
The turn-based system is much worse at resolving one particular type of combat encounter - namely, encounters against trash. Too often the combat resolution against nameless opponents that are often not really an issue, or just a small drain in resources, just takes too long. RTWP allows you to go through those faster. The best turn-based game that resolved trash combat quickly, that I've played, was Might & Magic 3-4-5.

>>4729520
I would prefer if you'd pirate it because I really don't like the developer and think the game is way overrated, but it's exactly what they were asking for.

>>4729549
I feel it depends on game type: in TOEE or Gold Box, it's a matter of firing one fireball into the trash mob or, in the latter, wading in with your fighters if the opposition is 1-1HD (you get as many attacks against goblins and kobolds as you have fighter levels). In Baldur's Gate 1 I simply put the party in a T formation, put three fighters with bows as the crossbar, and as soon as a some minion appeared from the fog of war, hit pause, targetted and fired a three-bow salvo into it. Any enemy up to and including gnolls usually went down in one broadside.

Yo i wanna play Eye of the Beholder on android.
What's the best way to do it?

>>4729557
On the flipside, you have classics like Fallout, where even with speed set to Max the actions of every single little civilian that has to run around in panic while there's a shootout in town get rather grating, and Wizardry 8, where you need Wiz8Fast to make it bearable.

>>4729327
Druids have some of the most broken abilities in the game though. Best spammable summon (elementals), an undispellable stoneskin, and the insect abilities render even the most powerful spell chuckers completely worthless. Not only do the higher ones do damage, they also fear, break apart stoneskins, guarantee spell casting failure with a 100% modifier, and to top if off, there's not even a fucking saving throw for it. Druids get fucked with the xp gap in bg2, but that's pretty much it. Most mods you find to make the game harder like SCS nerf the shit out of druids because they're so damn strong.

>>4729987
Yeah, which is why that entire post chain specified BG1. I don't deny that BG2 Druid is pretty bonkers. On top of all you said, Jaheira makes for possibly the sturdiest and most efficient NPC tank in the game, solely because slapping on an Iron Skin every day and then turning GWW on with a Staff of the Ram is ridiculous.

>>4729987
>>4730010
Also, it's worth noting that, for all of the druid's undeniable power, the no-reloading community finds solo druid a tough challenge simply because they lack fear removal.

Insect swarm is powerful. But it isn't a silver bullet.

>>4730010
>Yeah, which is why that entire post chain specified BG1.
They're even better in 1 lol, at least in 2 they have some weaknesses.

>no-reloading community finds solo druid a tough challenge simply because they lack fear removal
Hmm. This wasn't an issue for me at all during my playthrough, but I've done so many runs with mods now I almost forget just how easy the base game is.

Skeletons are the best spammable summon, by far.

>>4730058
Yeah in bg1, but it's arguably the only spammable summon considering how horribly nerfed summon monster was.

>>4730051
>They're even better in 1 lol, at least in 2 they have some weaknesses.
Non-existent level 2 spell school is pretty firmly a BG1 weakness. Clerics have a faster powerspike and better level 1.

>>4725862
Should I get Baldur's Gate1 and 2 from gog right now?

YellowCab

>>4730669
>paying for repacks

get a legit ISO

>>4730669
Why not? You're going to get both the OG versions and the updated remasters that will work hassle free out of the box.

Played Divinity Original Sin 2 those couple days and it really reminded me of Baldurs Gate 1 and 2 where I always had to come up with some absolutely scummy tactics or RNG strats to beat a boss way over my level. Damn I love this feeling of devising strats bordering cheesy. I remember btfoing Firkraag with Yoshimo setting up traps and Jaheira engaging him with a wand of lighting which triggered the battle and the shitton of traps which Yoshimo planted. Fuck I should replay this game

>>4729060
NWN OC sucks balls, it's basically a demo of the toolset. Just google best nwn modules or something, (or just check liliura1's blog, the search is gonna lead you there anyway). Also: play A Dance With Rogues

>>4733037
But the NWN OC has the best elf in all Forgotten Realms in it, so much may be forgiven.

>>4733042
scottish planescape tieflings > forgotten realms elfs

>>4733107

Which is the best Tiefling companion?

Baldur's Gate 2: Haer'Dalis
Planescape Torment: Annah
Neverwinter Nights: Valen Shadowbreath
Neverwinter Nights 2: Neeshka

>>4733913
Haer'dalis for sheer power level, I'd wager. Blades are versatile characters with decent damage potential, and Haerry gets 2 ridiculously good swords and a lot of innate tiefling resistances, including +15% physical damage resistance.

Also: I'm thinking of running a party game with full SCS+Ascension install (including all the broken fights), but I can't decide on the protagonist and I don't want a Kensage. I was thinking a Fighter/Mage (dualled in BG1, mostly for the purpose of firing bows and higher HP total), Berserker/Cleric or Berserker/Druid, or a Halfling F/T dual. Could also run with an Undead Hunter. I'm trying not to go with the absolute cookie cutter stuff, but I've seen how brutal SCS fights get so I'd not also mind having a nice, soft cushion for when shit goes wrong. Anyone here got SCS+Ascension experience?

>>4725862
>Bards always suck in RPGs

If you're talking about Dungeons and Dragons the Bard is one of the top three classes in the current edition.

>>4734117
Also pretty damn solid in 3.PF, as a tier 3 class ("decent at everything") by the most popular tierlist.

>>4734114
Go Human fighter/thief with scimitar and dagger and a grey colour scheme for the 100% Grey Mouser feel.

>>4734125
That's a pretty solid idea, too. It's just that I've also figured out a party for this setup for the set of bants that I want:
>Minsc (early-SoA carrier with his excellent Strength, he also wields a shitload of different weapon types, I like him for versatility, possibly replacable with Sarevok or Keldorn)
>Mazzy (i just like her, she can likewise be versatile and archery is really nice in SCS environment for a while, maybe will replace with Keldorn)
>Viconia (possibly best tank in the game due to innate spell resistance, I also want the romance)
>Jan (SCS features a lot of dispel cascades and you need a lot of arcanists, plus thief/mage is a strong combo)
>Imoen (virtually a single-class mage for quick level progression and fast access to good spells)

So the F/T is actually a solid idea (could make it a Berserker -> Thief to also have a rage button for dealing with shit), but I'm not sure if I need two thieves in my party, esp. since a lot of SCS components involve backstab-immune enemies.