Just wondering. I'm on the fence with this one.

On one hand, I think to myself, "Ya know Klorox, you've beaten BG1 so many times over, why shouldn't a game you feel like playing in BG2 reflect this?"

On the other hand, I think to myself, "Yeah, but this new Fighter/Thief hasn't gone through BG1, and if you want him to have those bonuses, you really should play the entire game over again."

Which way do you go?

BTW, for the record, if you complete BG1 and TotSC, your starting XP willbe higher (161,000 vs. the standard 89,000), and you'll have +1 to all of your stats, except WIS which has a +3.

I did. For example, long ago, I continued BG2 with my Conjurer character from Baldur's Gate I.

Sometimes I do it when I solo BG2 with the hard mods (Tactics,Ascension,etc.).

It gives to my PC the feeling that he is something special :D

Baronius, I'm not talking about actually importing a character. I'm talking about improving a new NPC as if he did go through BG1, without actually doing so.

I was under the impression that most returning npcs from BG1 had improved from their experiences.

imoen, jaheira, minsc, viconia & edwin all have better stats than they had previously in BG1.

I've never seen the point. The extra 80,000 XP is meaningless for all points that matter (and I don't own ToTSC). Think about it. It's pretty easy for a six person party to hit the level cap. Why would 80,000 XP matter?

The stat increases, likewise, make little difference to your character's performance in game.

I do not own BG1 or ToTSC so a big no. I do play the game as it is supposed to be.

I do sometimes (most times) improve stats, but that's more because I don't want to reroll for hours (don't got that much spare time). IE when creating a multiclass, I usually pretend, that I went through BG1+TotSC. And when I edit stats I also edit xp.

OTO I use tweaks to nerf spells and NPC stats, IE Minsc and Jaheira also.

I like to think my PC as some sort of godlike being :)

I'm a shameless SK abuser, and I don't care who knows it. :p

Every now and then, though, I feel pangs of guilt, and want to take a character all the way through BG1, so I can play SoA without "cheating". I can usually resist the urge, but EasyTutu has made that much harder. I'll probably be playing the entire saga much more, now.

Nope. Most of the time I play through BG1 anyway because I like it more than BG2, but on those rare occasions when I start from BG2, I don't change a thing about my PC. It may be 'only' 72K XP and +1 to every stat (except +3 to WIS), but I figure if I haven't gone through the trouble (though I'd hardly call enjoying BG1 "trouble" ;) ) to get the tomes, I shouldn't have them.
imoen, jaheira, minsc, viconia & edwin all have better stats than they had previously in BG1. Though I hadn't really thought about it as a justification, yes, four of those five do get bonuses. Jaheira gets +3 DEX, Minsc gets +1 to DEX & CON, Viconia gets +3 WIS, and Edwin gets +1 to STR & WIS. Imoen is the only one who doesn't get changed, though honestly she's the one who ought to. All that torture would change anybody.

Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don't. See I like BG1 too but sometimes I'm playing my 50th warrior and don't feel like dragging it through BG1 again or I really want to play a monk, barbarian, or sorcerer like I'd gotten to play them through BG1 and don't want to download something like TuTu because it has aspects I don't care for. When i want to play BG1 I want to play BG1 and not BG2 through BG1 areas. I'm wierd like that.

When I do make one of the regular classes that are in BG1 I usually make it in BG1 and then use the console to boost it up as if I had played through the game and then import it. It's my little way of feeling right with myself.

There are plenty of times though where I just play the character through BG1 and then import it into BG2. I'm doing that with a Cleric currently.

The only times I ever went through BG2 with a character that hadn't gone through BG1 was with BG2-only classes (Wild Mage, Sorcerer, Barbarian). On these occasions I did up the stats, simply because I couldn't go through BG1 with these classes though I would have loved to (that was before TuTu and BGT)

When you put a normal mage through BG1 and import it to BG2 instead of making it a specialist wizard then you can turn it into a wild mage when you import it. Going through BG1 without the extra spells of a specialist wizard though is sometimes a pain.

Imoen is the only one who doesn't get changed, though honestly she's the one who ought to. All that torture would change anybody. I agree with Fel on this, the only one that I change/improve on BG2 is Imoen, as Fel metion she had gone many experiments. So, I change her intelligence to 18 and wisdom to about 13. Is not much but I like it that way. Other than that I don't change nothing else.

I do, but not always. If I'm playing a kit, I won't.

If anything wouldn't the torture weaken the PC and Imoen, not make them stronger!?!?

@Pseudo - Friedrich Nietzsche said, "That which does not kill me, makes me stronger." I think that's where the idea of Imoen/PC having improved stats comes from.

Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker.
- What does not destroy me, makes me stronger. ;)

There are alot of things which won't kill you but weaken you to point where a gentle walk or stiff breeze might (heart attack, aids etc).

I still don't buy it, the immense physical and psychological torture they are put through would only have a negative effect. You gotta remember during the torture the death sound is used by the PC, ok he doesn't die but thats how close he is brought to it.

A change of alignment perhaps but a stat boost, definetly not.

My original argument was that the events of BG1 have made the few carry over NPCs stronger. A boost in stats would reflect their increased levels. Time spent rotting in a jail cell and being tortured would have weakened them. So only Edwin and Viconia would be justifiably stronger.

:rolleyes: Sorry for not knowing German better.

How about psychological/mental strength then? No one knows what Irenicus did to PC and any of the NPCs in his 'care'. We only know that Khalid and Dynaheir died.

If we go by your argument, then Viconia would be weaker as she is slowly loosing her drow abilities the longer she remains on the surface. Certainly, her magic resistence should be lower than 50% from the first game.

Edwin could easily get ahold of magical texts (much like was done in BG) to up his strength and wisdom.

Heh. what gets me is that the NPC's boosts, even if you shared the rare magical books(very rare in fact) they wouldn't have the kind of boosts they have. I do believe in Second Edition that those books when you did study them and manage to get the stat increase you could never get another boost from a book for the same stat again. Though the computer game doesn't have that limitation.

As for Imoen I have the feeling that their excuse for not boosting her stats was "But we made her duel class. She's got lots of extra nifty abilities to exploit and extra XP so that you can use them right away. We didn't give other characters that."

Always change certain stats. Not with the protagonist, though, but with the NPCs, since it makes sense that if you played with them through BG1, then you should also get the skills you want. Minsc, for example, wouldn't have two-handed weapons and/or bows. Jaheira can swap her spear-skills to something else. Imoen's thieving skills could use some tweaking. Usually change Viconia's class to a sorcerer too.

Yes - Wordplay - I also change profs for npcs, I forgot. Minsc with bows :p

@Pseudo:
Ah, but you see, it wasn't straight torture. They were just experiments that had an "unfortunate" side-effect of pain. The experiments themselves could involve growing new muscle tissue, which by itself would be incredibly painful if done too quickly, but would still have a positive effect in the long run. (And yes, I do up Imoen's STR from 9 to 10, mostly because I can't stand the carrying capacity of 50 lbs. But I subtract from her CHA twice as much to signify just how much less fun she is. :p ) The same can be said for psychological torture; sure, Immy was traumatized by the things that Jon-boy made her watch, but in the end she's got more knowledge about the human body. And once she gets over the trauma (post-Spellhold), she's got that knowledge at her finger-tips.

I also figured he also tried out a method to increase CON on Minsc, first getting it slightly wrong, resulting in a DEX increase instead. Then he perfected that method on Jaheira, before he subjected Imoen to it. (I up Immy's DEX from 18 to 19, again subtracting twice as much from CHA.) Eventually he got back to the CON increase on Minsc, and finally succeeded, but before he could apply it to the PC, he was interrupted and the game's events begin.

I don't like Edwin getting the increases he does, particularly because it makes him so bland (10's across the board :rolleyes: ), so I blast his DEX and CHA a couple points to make him look more even. It doesn't affect gameplay, but it's more of an aesthetic thing. Viconia I figure should have had the WIS from the very start.

I do believe in Second Edition that those books when you did study them and manage to get the stat increase you could never get another boost from a book for the same stat again. Not quite. The limitation was that you couldn't get an increase from the same exact book again. Different tomes had different methods inscribed in them, it was just that the same methods could not give you the effect again. There was also a clause that the book's instructions had to be dutifully carried out for a full month, which could, at the DM's discretion, take the player out of the campaign for that long while he practiced. (You could, however, wait as long as two months to start, as the knowledge would only disappear in three months time.) And then there's the thing about only gaining one-tenth of a point over 18. But naturally, none of this makes for easy coding...

I wish I had My big Magical Item Compendium still. I'm pretty sure that each one of the books said that it was a matter of you could never get another boost to a particular stat from a book of that kind again. Not just the one specific book. The month long Regiment was a lot of different activities but once you had the boost that was that. You had to get any further boosts in other ways.

Checking the DMG... p.231 for the physical stat Manuals, p.240 for the mental stat Tomes. The INT Tome states that, and the other Tomes reference it. The Manual of DEX says it, but the Manual of CON isn't clear on it and STR references that one. All in all, I'd say you're right. There's also nothing I could find about the one-tenth thing. :bad:
(!@#^%*&#^!%*%! passing off house rules as canon back when I was too new to know the difference... :grr: )

EDIT: Oh, and how hard would it have been to code local variables for using a WIS tome? It's not like you would get more than one of any other tome, so there's only one to worry about.

Dont' worry about it. I have a couple house rules that I still get messed up as game rules. Without half of my materials it makes it even harder to remember all of them.

The 1/10th thing I think may have been an optional thing in one of those many rules suppliments they released at one point like the high level campaigns stuff. the army and siege campaign stuff and just plain the what seems like a dozen other different ones. Or it may have been caused by the misunderstanding that sometimes occured in the Exceptional Strength Percentage that warriors got for 18 strength.

As for the game. Even if one game stopped it you just load your character into a new game and applied them all over again so there was no real way to stop it. Though when you consider just the origional game you were really meant to only get one and give the second one away. Why there was one put into TotSC I can only guess people felt jipped that they had to give the second one away until we all eventually figured out how to keep all three. By then the problem was already too far along to be fixed.