This is the second of a series of posts designed to assist the complete AD&D newbie in playing Baldur's Gate.  To avoid making this into the online version of the Player's Handbook, I'm not going to cover everything - just the bits that most new players will want to know.  In other words, all the things I had to ask Digit about.  This second instalment deals with the some of the core mechanics of the game, and is (thankfully) much shorter than the first.

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The famous d20 (now 3.5cm across and in brushed steel!).  Image courtesy of Warehouse 23; click for information and to purchase.

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THE d20 SYSTEM

For a comprehensive explanation of the d20 system, click here to read Wikipedia's take on it, or ask any D&D fanatic.  They'll be only too happy to explain it to you.  I'll be running over the absolute bare basics.

As mentioned in my first post, AD&D specifies character abilities or attributes by using a 20-sided die.  In tabletop gaming, you actually have a 20-sided die to roll; in the PC games, the computer simulates rolls of the same.  But the d20 system isn't restricted just to making player characters.  Each creature in the AD&D universe has a certain number of hitpoints (health points, essentially); each weapon does a certain amount of damage; and both of these also rely on the d20 system.

You'll see, in the Monster Manual or in-game, references like 1d4 or 6d12, etc.  Taking the first example - 1d4 - you would read that as 1 x d4.  d4 is a 4-sided die, thus 1d4 = one 4-sided die.  If 1d4 was the amount of damage listed for a given weapon, it means that this weapon can deal a random amount of damage up to a maximum of 4 (unmodified by any other factors), depending on your attack roll.  If our second example, 6d12, was the amount of health listed for a given monster, it would have a maximum of 72 hitpoints (6 x d12).

Each outcome of a d20-based amount is dependent firstly upon what die is being used (d4, d6, d8, etc.), then secondly upon how many of those dice are being used (1d8, 10d20, etc), and thirdly upon the attributes of the creature involved (if any).  A character who has high Strength, for example, will do more damage with a melee weapon than a character with low Strength if their rolls are identical.

SAVING THROWS

When one creature attacks another, the defender must make a saving throw.  There are different types of saving throws (e.g. magic, poison, etc.) for specific attacks.  If you fail your saving throw, you will take the full brunt of the attack, whatever it might be (minus any resistances you might have from potions, spells or items).  If you succeed in your saving throw, you can sometimes avoid the effects of the attack altogether.

The usefulness of saving throws varies depending on the type of attack.  Every spell in the game specifies, in its description, what a saving throw will accomplish against it.  For example, I could cast the level 5 mage spell Cloudkill at someone.  The spell description specifies "Saving Throw: None", meaning that you cannot save vs. this spell at all, and your only protection against it is to run away or resist some of its effects.

If I cast the level 5 priest spell Flame Strike, on the other hand, it says "Saving Throw: 1/2", meaning that if my target successfully saves vs. magic, they will only take half damage.  If any spell says "Saving Throw: Neg", it means that a successful saving throw will completely negate the effects of the spell.

ARMOR CLASS

Unlike in most other games, 2nd edition rules (which is what Baldur's Gate uses) specify that a high armour class is a bad thing.  If you have a low armour class (preferably negative), you're doing well.  Fighters will usually have low armour classes; so will powerful monsters.

2nd edition also used a construct called THAC0, short for "To Hit Armor Class 0".  I still get confused over this, and I wasn't the only one (they took this out in 3rd edition rules, I believe) but basically all you need to know is that to be successful, your THAC0 should be as high as possible, and your opponents' should be as low as possible.  Anything that lowers your opponents' THAC0 is a good thing; anything that lowers yours is a bad thing.  Weapons...

This is the first of a series of posts designed to assist the complete AD&D newbie in playing Baldur's Gate.  To avoid making this into the online version of the Player's Handbook, I'm not going to cover everything - just the bits that most new players will want to know.  In other words, all the things I had to ask Digit about.  This first instalment deals with the very beginning - what to buy, what to install, and how to create characters.

STARTING OUT

Stuff you can buy to help you navigate through the AD&D realms (if you want to):

* Player's Handbook: This basically tells you everything you need to know about the basics of AD&D.  If you don't want to buy this, you can still play fine, but you'll need to read either all of the posts in my series here on gDNA, or similar articles explaining the various main facets of the AD&D universe.

* The Monster Manual: This lists all of the AD&D monsters for a specific ruleset (the linked one is for 3rd edition rules), and includes illustrations as well as information on what kinds of creatures they are, their society, attacks, attributes, etc.  If you're playing the tabletop games, this (along with the PH and the Dungeon Master's Guide) is invaluable; but for the PC games it's more for people who are just interested in that stuff, you can do without it.

Stuff to install, in order:

* Baldur's Gate
* Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast (this is the add-on)
* BGTutu: This is a mod that allows Baldur's Gate to be played using the Baldur's Gate 2 engine and tweaks, which includes extra sub-classes when you create your character.  It comes with decent documentation, and if you have any questions or problems, they have pretty good forums as well.
* Any other mods that you wish to add (there are plenty - some have extra quests, some do balance tweaks to the game, etc.)

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The character generation screen in Baldur's Gate.  Screenshot taken by myself; click for larger image.

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CREATING A CHARACTER

In some other games, all you do when making a character is pick a class, a gender, and its appearance.  In BG you have a few more options.  The following is a brief-ish (trust me, it could be far, far longer) explanation of each of the options within the Character Generation screen (which I sometimes refer to as the 'character creation' screen).

GENDER is self-explanatory.  Only two choices; no ambiguity, I'm afraid!  When you pick either male or female, you will automatically be shafted along to the sub-option which allows you to pick an avatar.  BG comes with a whole host of pre-made avatars, or portraits as they're called.  They're of no particular use except in identifying which character is which in the party list - your portrait will not affect how you actually look in-game.

RACE allows you to pick from Human, Elf, Half-Elf, Gnome, Halfling, Dwarf and Half-Orc.  Each race has specific pros and cons; read the descriptions carefully.  Some get bonuses or penalties to various abilities.  Humans are a good all-rounder race if you can't make up your mind, as they have no penalties or bonuses and are free to advance as they wish.

CLASS allows you to pick from 11 different classes; again, read the descriptions carefully.  Depending on what character you want to play, both your race and class can help or hinder you, so choose carefully.  The general by-word for the entire BG character creation process is: Take your time.  Digit (a D&D veteran) suggests that a first-timer to BG should pick a Fighter, as it's generally harder to f*** things up and you're a hardier sort of creature that can withstand beatings.  If you've installed BGTutu, you will also get the choice to pick a sub-class (called a 'kit') after choosing your main class - if you wish.  As usual, the descriptions are useful.

ALIGNMENT allows you to pick from any combination of Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic and Good/Neutral/Evil (Neutral Neutral is more smoothly named True Neutral).  Think carefully about your alignment.  It determines what sort of person you are in the ga...

My swashbuckler in Baldur's Gate (and now BG2) is called Ankhara.  She's a halfling thief with a voice like an emphysematic grandma (is emphysematic even a word?).  I'll have to upload some voice clips sometime, but imagine a really cranky old woman snapping, "You will REGRET facing me!" and "I grow TIRED!"  She never sounds happy, and Digit always seems to think she's yelling at him.  But she's good at picking locks and finding traps, and has a kickass crossbow that fires unlimited fire bolts as well as any normal ammunition I dump on her, so we don't mind too much.

As a swashbuckler, she can't backstab - one of the D&D rogue's primary skills.  Instead she's meant to be more of a tiny warrior - hardier than a normal rogue, but mostly just a versatile character who can fight, flee or scout as needed.  So I hadn't put many points into stuff like Move Silently and Hide In Shadows, as it wasn't essential for her to sneak up on people.

I hadn't intended her to be a scout, though, so I hadn't been pushing points into Set Traps either - an attribute that allows the thief to, well, set traps - which is a good backup plan when you're scouting and something goes wrong.  I think I put maybe ten or so points into Set Traps really early on in the game, and it wasn't enough to set even the most basic snare - I tried it once and it backfired and hit me, so I decided snares were stupid and punched all my points into Pick Locks and Find Traps instead.

Now, at level 24 the thief's feat pool opens up.  I mentioned feats in my other post about Hyperia (A Whole New Druid), so won't explain them again.  The thief has ten feats to choose from.

Alchemy allows her to make random potions from a select pool.  Scribe Scrolls allows her to do the same thing, but using spell scrolls instead.  Neither of them is terribly useful BECAUSE it's random.  If you could pick which one you wanted to make, it'd be much better.

Avoid Death, Evasion and Greater Evasion are all about damage control when you fuck things up, essentially.  Good for the scouting purposes I mentioned above.  I think I have one of each of them - they allow you to do various things like increase your speed or armour or saving throws for a short period of time so you can get away.

Assassination is pretty cool - makes every hit for the next round count as a backstab (backstabs do much greater damage than normal hits, and are determined by your backstab multiplier).  Unfortunately, I can't use it because I can't backstab.

Use Any Item is also a nifty one - once used, it permanently allows the thief to use items that were previously restricted to other classes.  I don't think that includes armour, but weapons, wands, etc. are all free for use after that.

And then there are the trap feats.  There are three: Set Spike Trap, Set Exploding Trap and Set Time Trap.  All three have a huge radius (not that I knew that before).  The Spike one does a lot of damage, the Exploding one does a bit less damage but has a chance to knock people unconscious, and the Time trap stops time for everyone except the thief for 10 seconds (great if you can backstab; not so great if you can't).

Quite a few levels ago (I'm around 26/27 now) I realised I was rapidly running out of feats to choose whenever I levelled up, so I started putting attribute points into Set Traps.  I mean, I put 20 points into Set Traps (out of 25 that I'm given each level) for six or so levels straight.  At the time, I wasn't sure if it would be worth it (it's so easy to be scarred at low levels by stuff like your own traps snapping shut on your fingers) - but I recently started choosing the trap feats, and used them for the first time yesterday.

Oh my God.  Okay, I could have made this post much shorter - but basically, they kick ass.  They have (as I mentioned) a huge aggro radius, and can often kill people we can't even see yet, through doors we've just opened.  Even the basic Set Snare is hilariously powerful now.

... not much point to all of that, except, my thief is suddenly amazing again, and I'm very happy.  </geek>

This will be a more personal gaming post, about something so truly nerdy I'm almost ashamed.  Almost.

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I'm not in denial.  Image courtesy of J!NX; click to purchase the t-shirt (link goes to women's tee).

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Digit and I have, as I've mentioned in various places now, been playing Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn (with Throne of Bhaal installed, but we haven't hit the chapter where that begins, yet) for the past... er, well, a while.  It's hard to judge how long we've spent on any of the FR titles thus far, as Digit works full-time at Transmission Studios and doesn't get home till about 7 every evening, so we make the most of our gaming time then.  Considering the length of games like BG and BG2, playing through the campaign co-op (with multiple saves/reloads) can take months.

Our party (fully PC) is composed of all good characters - a halfling swashbuckler, an elven archer, a human wizard slayer, a human cleric, a human mage, and a half-elven avenger.  The leader of the party (the avenger, Hyperia) killed a major enemy figure last night and subsequently reached level 15.

The day before yesterday, Digit and I were having a read through the Throne of Bhaal manual, which talks about the new skills, abilities and spells that are added via the ToB expansion.  I was quite interested by the feats, which I hadn't encountered before - Digit had to explain them to me, and said that they're also used in Neverwinter Nights (which we haven't gotten to yet).  I thought they were pretty nifty, and spent a little while reading through all the feats available and checking out the levels at which they would become available to our party members. 

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QUICK MID-POST GLOSSARY

Feats
Top-level spells or abilities.  Usually very powerful.  Feats become available for choosing at different levels depending on your class.  For example, a mage that reaches level 18 will be given, as part of her level-up procedure, the ability to choose one feat from the 'pool' of mage feats, whereas a fighter has to wait until level 20 to choose his first feat.

Spells
These must be 'written' into a spell book, then 'memorised' in a spell slot.  Each spell level contains a given number of spell slots.  The number of slots determines the number of spells of that level the character can cast before having to 'rest'.  Spells that are written into a spell book can be cast as many times as they are memorised, and indefinitely when taking 'rests' into account.  Spells can also be cast directly from scrolls, but this is a one-use only method - scrolls are destroyed when they are used in this manner.

Abilities
These are available to the character from a different menu and do not need to be 'written' or 'memorised'.  They can usually only be used once a day, but there is no limit to the number of abilities a character may have at any one time (except the limitations of their class or the plot).

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A screenshot of Storm of Vengeance (a druid/cleric feat) in Baldur's Gate 2.  Image courtesy of Silmarillion; click to browse his other Throne of Bhaal images.

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Our party members were all over the place in terms of XP - Ankhara (the swashbuckler) was five levels ahead of everyone else and had more lore than the mage (!), and Hyperia was lagging well behind everyone and was actually kind of wussy and useless (a fact that had been bothering both Digit and I for some time).  So I hadn't been paying a great deal of attention to levels until last night.

Then Hyperia, the low HP, not-so-great-with-spells-OR-weapons druid with a predilection for dying over and over, gave a major enemy its final comeuppance.  Simultaneously, three things happened.  One, Ankhara leveled up (not so surprising - she was levelling up pretty much every time we played because each of her levels require less XP than everyone else's).  Two, Hyperia leveled up (much rarer, and a cause for celebration in itself).  Three, Hyperia hit level 15 - in which she gained access to something like twelve extra spell slots, and eleven brand-new feats of epic proportio...

First let me state clearly, I am somewhat biased when it comes to WOTC. I miss TSR I will always miss TSR. The D&D manuals they produced had elements of fun in them. WOTC made them far too businesslike and serious. They took a lot of the Roleplay out of RPG in my opinion and made it nothing more than statistics and numbers for many. Luckily most players of the table top games ignore that and put it back in. But when it comes to the RPG genre on stand alone games that is all most can do. Rill the dice (or the randomizer) and go from there.

I loved the old Westwood studio games for TSR. So when the Baldur's Gate series began to be published, I was excited. Except the PC versions hated my machine. So I sighed an watched enviously from the sidelines as others played. When we got a Game cube a number of years back, one of the first games I got for myself was Dark Alliance.

First let me state I am an old gamer to me that means lots of saves and many versions of the same game at possible branch points so I can go back and take the other path in case I am missing something. Baldur's gate required a huge amount of space to save, around 30 blocks. so much for multiple copies on one memory card - at least not as any as I like.

So I made my first character. I took the human archer. Bad choice for me it turns out. The isometric view is a pain when targeting enemies within your range but off the viewing screen. Yes you get a trajectory line (and your arrows do NOT arc as they would IRL) But what use is a line when you cannot tell where the target is? Luckily the character is competent with a sword as well so that is a plus.

I made it through the first part of the in town game then I hit the part that has been described as 'It sucketh mightily'. A series of dropping platforms, the last set kept beating me. I spent ages trying to cross that, then gave it up for other games. But every once in a while I would return to that spot and try again. I found cheat codes that would get me past that spot, but I REALLY hate doing that so I kept trying. Finally about ready to give up and cheat I challenged my daughter.

I am almost embarrassed to write this, but it shows what lateral thinking can do. She tried it. She failed. She tried again and failed. Then she did what I should have thought of from the get go. She remapped the controller so that A was my jump. She made it across and still harasses me about it.

So on I go. The story is pretty standard, except I run into the beholder boss that anyone can figure is coming from the first scene in the tavern, much sooner than I expected. My daughter is watching as I run panicked around the room, certain I am about to die from the a spell at any moment. Then I decide, what the hell, go into berserker mode and as she says flailed to a win. I was shocked. When she asked what I was worried about I yanked out the old TSR book and had her look up the Beholder entry. She was equally incredulous that I won first time and with no deaths.

From there you go off to discover what exactly is rotten in the state of Faerun. It proceeds much like a normal crawler. But then I hit the problem. I don't know if the cube is dying or if there is a problem with the disk, but I started getting system errors. At first it was as a new area loaded. I suspected the Cube. It is old. But then it died in the middle of a level with nothing in particular happening. Then again in a boss battle, then again in the same battle. Maybe a disk problem? I researched on the NET, nothing about an issue that I could find. The error occurs in the same area but not always in exactly the same spot. I check with the local alpha geeks at the gaming store. They don't remember any issues and can;t find a copy of the game. I am not amused.

Today I walk out into the living room to see my husband playing Animal Crossing on the cube (the PS2 hated me last week as well btw and went blank in the middle of /.hack: Infection) It was running fine. A few slow downs on the gameboy advance link, but seemed fine. So with trepidation I loaded Baldur's Gate. I made it through the boss battle and 2 more. Then I got the error as I headed into the swamp to investigate the tower in part 3. I turned the machine off and will try again tomorrow.

So far my rating on this game is a solid 6. It is good, but WOTC breaks their own rules on monsters out of their own books. Characters regain hits over time, monsters do not. And who ever heard of taking out a beholder by running around a room flailing or a dragon alone? I hate the point of view for range attacks. But on the plus side. It is a great dungeon crawler, the closest I am going to get to Eye of the Beholder or the Lands of Lore series now that Westwood is gone. There are not too many side quests and the story moves along quickly.

If the GameCube and the disk allow, I will finish this game. It has bugged me for ...

I entirely enjoyed the game for all of it's great characters, and with the voice acting in this game, for it's time. Absolutely superb game.

But let's face it, we all enjoyed the barbarian minsc who always carried around Space Hamster Boo, as they went on their own little adventures in his mind. In the end, the whole thing caught you off guard as this well written, and very well made game that still blows away some of the games being released today. (see future work mass effect for details on what a badly finished game with a poor storyline turns out.)

BG, BG2 and ID have all made me really, really appreciate the value of good storytelling in games.  In no other games that I've ever played have the storylines been so compelling, or so morally challenging.  Over and over as Digit and I have played through these games, I've found myself thinking really freaking hard about how to respond to a single line of dialogue.

Do I try to get on his good side?  Do I pretend to be mad?  Do I bluff my way through his questions?  Do I come back later?  Do I whip out my trusty ol' bow and shoot his face full of arrows?

In a lot of other games, the dialogue options are black and white, the kind of obvious multiple-choice that you get in really badly-written tests. This is the Good Option. This is the Bad Option. This is the Obligatory Other Option, Which Nevertheless Leads To Either The Good Option Or The Bad Option. I hate being led around by the nose like that, and the Forgotten Realms games never pander to that sort of gameplay - a fact for which I am eternally grateful.

Digit and I have a party composed of good characters - all of mine are neutral good and most of his are lawful good - so it stands to reason that we'd always pick the option that keeps our reputation high (it's currently Heroic, apparently) and helps the good guys. But whilst our end goal is clear-cut, the dialogue options are still, very often, totally ambiguous.

There's a subquest in Baldur's Gate 2 that cropped up recently - you meet a group of young boys in a town, they're all fired up about the idea of the adventuring life, and they ask if you can buy them ale and swords (since they can't buy the items themselves) so that they can feel like they're "real adventurers".

You have the option, when they've finished speaking, to either say: A) I'll get you the ale, but not the swords, B) I'll get you the swords, but not the ale, C) I'll get you both, D) I'll get you neither.  Nowhere in the dialogue tree leading up to that point are you informed as to whether this group of boys is important or relevant to any other quest, so you go into the scenario without knowing what you 'should' do.

In a few FR quests, denying people everything they ask for can lead to hostility, or slam the door on the possibility of further quest trees.  So when we faced the scenario above, we weren't sure what to do.  We sat there and actually talked it over for about ten minutes.

"If we give them the swords, they could hurt themselves, and their parents would probably get mad."
"Yeah, true... I don't know if getting them drunk would be a better option, though?"
"What harm could they possibly come to if they were drunk?  They'd probably just get told off by their parents and that would be that."
"Yeah, but what if their parents get really mad at us and throw us out of the town?"
"True.  But then, should we be encouraging them to be adventurers at all?  It's not like people have had a great opinion of adventurers so far, except when we save their miserable asses from marauding monsters."

It went on like that for a while.  At the end of it, we decided to buy them the ale but not the swords, thinking they'd just drink it, fall asleep, and be woken up later by their parents.  What ACTUALLY happened was that they thanked us, moaned about the swords for a bit, then said, "Okay, let's go and drink this stuff.  I know a great spot." - and then they all ran off and disappeared.

We were like... "Oh, shit."  Considering the town that they lived in had asked for our help in dealing with a series of inexplicable murders, and there'd been reports of ogres in the hills and a roaming pack of wolves, we were convinced we'd just sentenced the idiots to a drunken, unarmed death.

I should point out, here, that that was probably two weeks ago in game-time, and the quest is yet 'unresolved' - we never did find the boys. :(

But it's a perfect example of the kind of effect these storylines have on our moral consciousness.  We began, pretty early on, to feel responsible for our decisions - to actually feel great when we'd done the right thing, and to feel terrible when our actions led to the death of various characters, even if we couldn't help it.  We recently buggered up a quest in the Athkatla Docks district which saw us refusing a quest (technically a good decision, as we're a 'good' party and the quest involved murder for no good reason) and thus being unable to progress in an undercover investigation, so we ended up having to just kill the guy we were investigating.  It solved the problem, but our employer wasn't happy, and neither was I - I didn't want to kill the guy without knowing for sure that he was the sort we ought to have killed.

We didn't have a savegame from before we'd buggered the quest up, so there was nothing we could do.&nbs...

so ya the first game was.....well one of the first games i ever got for my pc was the first rpg i ever really got in to i still play it to this day when i can find the time to... this game has a truely indepth story line that sucks you in from the start to the end and the 2ed one dose it just as well.

I must have died a thousand times playing this game. The original Baldur's Gate was hard core and it was hard to stay alive. It's a special, timeless classic that should be respected.