Hello, all,
Thanks for your previous answers.
1) Just out of idle curiosity, what is the upper roll limit in the character creation screen?
If I understand how AD&D works, the upper limit should be 108 (6 X 18), but I wonder if the game algorithm really allows rolls that high (maybe the RL game doesn't either, due to rules I have no knowledge of). The highest roll I've gotten is 92 (but I've gotten 3 of those in my playing around with char creation).
What is the highest you've gotten? I've read a guide which mentions a main character which had 96 points at the end of the game, and I think only one of those points came from books, but I'm not sure; maybe more than one pt. come from other sources.
2) How limited are healing potions? I thought that my current 6-member team was being pretty conservative on using healing potions. Ajantis and my created character both have 'Lay on Hands' (the latter now twice per 'day'), and Jaheira has several 'heal' spells memorized. I even use Goodberries often to 'top up' part of the last few unhealed hit points. Sometimes when resting at an inn, I rent the best rooms to gain a few extra hit points. I pretty much reserve heal potions for emergency healing in combat, and even there if I can use a spell or lay of hands, I try to use those first.
Yet, I've already bought all of the 'Potions of Healing' available at the temples in Nashkell, Beregost, and the FAI. At two of those, I've bought all of the Elixirs of Health available, and at one of them, I'm no longer offered antidotes either (heh, now only Flesh to Stone scrolls from them). Admittedly, each char still has 5 healing potions in a quick slot, and most of them carry a few Elixirs. I think I may even have 5-10 healing potions stashed in Beregost, plus a bunch of elixirs, and the team has now cleared everything outside of BG except for Durlag's Tower, so I have access to new stores in BG and Ulroth's. But still, I was a little surprised to find an apparent limit.
This concerns me especially for a solo char, such as a fighter-mage-thief, who would have little innate healing ability (I assume all avatar characters get the 'Lay on Hands' ability at some point in the game - maybe not true?). On the other hand, since you only have to heal one char, maybe there is even more to go around. Comments?
3) The same question in regard to magical projectiles, to what extent are they limited? Again, my team is conservative and uses mostly plain projectiles (arrows, bolts, bullets, the occasional dart or throwing dagger). Most opponents die to one or two volleys from my group, even with plain projectiles, so I've reserved the magical ones for really tough opponents. And, yes, I've picked up all of the magical ones found on the battlefield - I've actually got lots of magic arrows stashed in a couple of places. So, I was amazed when the smith in Beregost quit offering magical bullets for Jaheira's sling - I didn't think I had used that many of those at all. There are still some at Thalantyr's & in Ulgoth's, and, I presume in BG proper (I haven't yet gone past the first sector in BG), but it makes me wonder if I will quickly exhaust those. And, I only recently started using crossbow bolts, so I have no idea if magical versions of those will be very abundant, as arrows seem to be, or limited like sling bullets appear to be.
4) Crossbows and thieves - what gives?
On page 86 of my manual (under discussion of classes), it says thieves "can only wield... crossbows,..." but on page 91 (discussing weapon proficiencies), it says "Mages, druids, and thieves... are restricted to slings and darts."
Huh? Imoen, at least, can use Light Crossbows, but not Heavy Crossbows. :p
Anyway, Immy is now using the Light Crossbow of Speed. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I usually don't like crossbows, but I recently took another look at the LCoS (heh, there isn't much magical equipment left in the smith's inventory - at least, that's useful to my team). I realized I had sort-of forgotten about the "extra shot per round" feature. So, when Imoen turned clvl 8, and had another proficiency to choose, I chose missle weapon, and bought the LCoS for her. It seems to make her a more effective ranged attacker, gaining an extra shot per round, plus plain bolts do more damage than plain arrows. There don't seem to be as many types of magical bolts as arrows, but I'm not sure that's all that significant (I bought a few Bolts of Lightning from Thalantyr, but haven't tried them out yet). Is there something I'm overlooking, that makes the LCoS less effective than it appears to be? So far, the only magical short bow I've come across in the game is short bow +1. Is there a better bow that Imoen can use somewhere along the way?
5) More on the Cloak of the wolf - thanks to the tip (from Doc, IIRC) I was able to invoke it. But, my char couldn't seem to change back to human form. The description of the item says 'change at will.' But elsewhere it mentions some kind of problem with the cloak. So, how does this work? Can you only change back once per day, while sleeping, or something?
Also, I thought the wolf might work as a scout - but when I entered an Ogre's range of view, it was immediately hostile. So, are Ogre's hostile to all creatures, hostile to wolves, most/all creatures are hostile to wolves, or Ogres/most/all creatures can detect that you are who you are, even in wolf form? Most of those possibilities would make the wolf not of much use as a scout, either, so, if true, this item seems to be just, all-around, not very useful.
6) I have BG ver. 1.1.4315; & ToSC ver. 1.3.5512, plus I've added the patch for DX 8. As far as I can tell, those are the latest versions. Correct or not?
Some oddities:
1) In my games, Imoen does NOT have a Wand of MM when she joins after leaving Candlekeep (at least in single player; I didn't remember to check MP to see if she does there).
2) I can't get the Quick Load to work. The ToSC manual says there has been a Quick Load feature added; the original manual says use Control-L, while the readme file says that won't work, change it to something else with the configure utility. I've tried several things, and can't get any keys to invoke this. Has anyone else gotten this to work?
3) Hmmm, maybe a touchy subject, but I also can't get the cheat console to work. I can't help but wonder if it wasn't disabled in later distributions. I don't need it for just playing the game, not very many battles so far have been actually hard, but I did kinda want to see the exploding cows and herds of killer chickens, at least once.
Heh, I've already got a few other questions bubbling through my mind, but I guess this is enough (too much, maybe) for now.
Thanks in advance.
Regards,
Dako-ta