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[nenjin]

I developed a similar compulsion. Eventually I just cheated to get the resources I needed. It's not like settlements have a huge impact on gameplay so I didn't feel like I was fucking myself over.

[MCreeper]

  Finally decided to try out "mother of all RPGs" Baldur's gate. Overwhelmed by urge to minmax, made chaotic evil human necromancer (what do you mean, "no elf necromancers"?) with max intelligence-charisma-wisdom and min constitution that acts like a paladin just to see what "consequences" it will bring. And i didn't looked at stat descriptions very carefully...
  In an effort to clear out five ordinary rats out of a basement, i did shoot at them 20 stones from a sling, 10 darts from a hand, and broke two daggers against their abnormally tough hides (at a rate of one rat per one dagger), then finished off 2 remaining ones with a staff.
"MCreeper attacks the rat x ad nauseam.
MCreeper crits! Rat dies."
 Then there were two guys outside that want to spar. I can't deal damage to them because i just can't, they can't deal damage to me because we are sparring. So they runned around all fortress with me, bashing and shooting me ceaselessly.
Also, it turned out that beginner mage can cast grand total of 2 spells per day. And that first companion has 8 hp, while a freaking wolf deals 4 damage to her, if it manages to hit. So, i'm literally one hit wonder. Who would have thought that constitution is both for HP and for damage. 

[Kagus]

CON is not for damage, strength is for damage (and your chance to hit). But yes, welcome to being level 1 in 2nd Edition! You either die, or you make it to level 2 through the grace of RNGesus.

Also, the weapons breaking are explained ingame. There's been an iron "disease" and so all metal armor and weapons will be fucky. The quarterstaff you start with is not made out of metal, and therefore doesn't have a chance to get ruined. Makes great sense, I know, but them's the breaks (hah). All enchanted (+1 or otherwise special) armor/weapons are also unbreakable.

Furthermore, as a mage, you've got piss-all base chance to hit with weapons, and I'm guessing your strength score wasn't that hot either. AND I have no idea what you put your weapon proficiency point into, so you quite possibly were also swinging with a non-proficient penalty... It's entirely possible you hit such a horrendously bad THAC0 that you simply can't hit a single damn thing without critting (which is an automatic successful hit).


Also... You don't really need CHA as a wizard. Or a lot of WIS, except for the saves. I'm sure you had your reasons, though. And since it's TRUE TO THE AUTHENTIC EXPERIENCE, you're legitimately rolling individually for stats when you're making a character... Which means that your total number of all stat points will vary wildly, and those ranges will also vary by class. Try and get a high total roll. 90 is pretty snazzy, but anything 86+ is perfectly decent. Bards can hit 101 or higher.


I happen to find your choice of a chaotic evil human necromancer wildly entertaining, because roughly a screen's distance up the starting road towards the northeast you will find two new party members, one of which happens to be... A chaotic evil human necromancer!

Xzar is also fabulous, and you should click on him repeatedly.

[MCreeper]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Well, that will be the worst one in current party, and i'm not hitting anything that doesn't have at least 6 AC with non-crits, however much that is. Also noticed "Hp per level -2". Which means i'm staying at 2 hp forever, i assume. If not on 1 hp. Well, Xzar is not that much tougher. And from where the hell (in-game instructions) i must know what stats are better? In Planesacape Torment all this stuff was amazing.    Missile weapon mastery, by the way.

[xaritscin]

i returned to Dwarf Fortress after getting inspired by Kruggsmash videos. it was hard to find a tileset that worked because my PC cant handle TWBT for the cool sets like Meph's and the like. i also added Taffer's Revision mod.

first fortress was being planned in a Savannah but forgot to survey the elevation maps so ended scrapping the embark. trying to do some kind of surface fort with an artificial Oasis but that means i need to survey a world with cool deserts and Aquifers. and there's also the thing with Windmills, not sure at which latitude they are supposed to work as the game doesnt show any info about winds before embarking.

[Kagus]

In Planescape Torment, you're an overpowered DM's pet who completely cheats through the game's systems (at least, if you make the right choice and pick mage).

Baldur's Gate is a PC game for peeps who played 2nd Edition D&D, which is the source you're supposed to learn about stats and classes and terminology and stuff from. Also the miracle that is percentile strength.

Anyways, 10 strength isn't as bad as it could be, you neither have penalties nor bonuses to your melee attacks and damage. THAC0 is an incredibly bizarre way of describing accuracy, but that's just Gygax and Co. for y'all... Basically, it's an acronym. "To Hit Armor Class 0", meaning that in order to hit an enemy with an armor class (AC) of 0, you need to roll (number) or higher on a d20. Since your THAC0 is 25, that means it's physically impossible to hit anything with an AC of 0, since you'd need to roll 25 on a die that only goes from 1 to 20... Or you could just roll 20 and get that automatic success that is a crit.

The relationship between THAC0 and AC is a bit funky to describe, but I'll try.  If we consider THAC0 to just be your general accuracy, AC is the number subtracted from the enemy's THAC0. You've got an AC of 10 (really? That's not as bad as I'd thought with the -1 DEX) That means if you were to attack yourself, you'd have to roll (25 - 10) 15 or higher on the d20. Yes, this means that a lower AC is better, and it does indeed go into negatives.

Also yeah, 3 CON is... Fuck, dude. There are cutscenes that could kill you. You could die to cinematography.

I'm pretty sure BG uses the hit dice system though, which means that each time you level up you roll your class hit die (d4, in wizard's case) and then take that number as new hitpoints. This is then modified by your CON mod, which means... Well, it should mean at least -3, if not -4. Which means you'll only be getting 1 hitpoint per level. Not sure why it says "-2 HP per level", there might be special considerations in place. I think selected game difficulty also plays into it.


As an aside, there are no real penalties to picking an evil alignment and then being a good guy. Alignment vs. Reputation conflicts only result in affected party members getting pissy and eventually deserting the party. Since you cannot break ties with yourself and leave your own party, you're stuck with your cognitive dissonance.

[Radsoc]

"Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic"

A mix of Factorio, Tropico and Transport Fever.

[Hanslanda]

In Planescape Torment, you're an overpowered DM's pet who completely cheats through the game's systems (at least, if you make the right choice and pick mage).

Baldur's Gate is a PC game for peeps who played 2nd Edition D&D, which is the source you're supposed to learn about stats and classes and terminology and stuff from. Also the miracle that is percentile strength.

Anyways, 10 strength isn't as bad as it could be, you neither have penalties nor bonuses to your melee attacks and damage. THAC0 is an incredibly bizarre way of describing accuracy, but that's just Gygax and Co. for y'all... Basically, it's an acronym. "To Hit Armor Class 0", meaning that in order to hit an enemy with an armor class (AC) of 0, you need to roll (number) or higher on a d20. Since your THAC0 is 25, that means it's physically impossible to hit anything with an AC of 0, since you'd need to roll 25 on a die that only goes from 1 to 20... Or you could just roll 20 and get that automatic success that is a crit.

The relationship between THAC0 and AC is a bit funky to describe, but I'll try.  If we consider THAC0 to just be your general accuracy, AC is the number subtracted from the enemy's THAC0. You've got an AC of 10 (really? That's not as bad as I'd thought with the -1 DEX) That means if you were to attack yourself, you'd have to roll (25 - 10) 15 or higher on the d20. Yes, this means that a lower AC is better, and it does indeed go into negatives.

Also yeah, 3 CON is... Fuck, dude. There are cutscenes that could kill you. You could die to cinematography.

I'm pretty sure BG uses the hit dice system though, which means that each time you level up you roll your class hit die (d4, in wizard's case) and then take that number as new hitpoints. This is then modified by your CON mod, which means... Well, it should mean at least -3, if not -4. Which means you'll only be getting 1 hitpoint per level. Not sure why it says "-2 HP per level", there might be special considerations in place. I think selected game difficulty also plays into it.


As an aside, there are no real penalties to picking an evil alignment and then being a good guy. Alignment vs. Reputation conflicts only result in affected party members getting pissy and eventually deserting the party. Since you cannot break ties with yourself and leave your own party, you're stuck with your cognitive dissonance.

Oh Ohhh shit, you playing BG. I grew up on that game. I first beat it at 12 years old.

Bro, be a fighter in BG1. Multiclass to mage. Or be a dual class fighter mage.

Or! Be a cleric and pretend you're half fighter, half buffmage.

[Telgin]

Picked up Kerbal Space Program to try an Apollo style munar landing for the first time, which took quite a few more tries than I expected.  The orbital rendezvous from the munar lander back to the munar orbiter was harder than I expected, but mostly because I kept being dumb and tried to return to orbit and catch up to the orbiter instead of just waiting for it to loop around and attempt an intercept on its next orbit.  Things went much more smoothly that time.

[Kagus]

Bro, be a fighter in BG1. Multiclass to mage. Or be a dual class fighter mage.

Or! Be a cleric and pretend you're half fighter, half buffmage.

I'm thinking that for someone's first time through, especially if they're not entirely familiar with the mechanics, they should probably stay well away from the hilarity that is dual-classing... Regardless of how ridiculously broken the ol' Berserker/Mage combo is.

Clerics are definitely major beef though, doubly so considering the Turn Undead mechanics. Blade bards are also pretty snazzy, especially in BG1 and especially-especially in the enhanced edition with that one funky halberd.

[Iduno]

  Finally decided to try out "mother of all RPGs" Baldur's gate. Overwhelmed by urge to minmax, made chaotic evil human necromancer (what do you mean, "no elf necromancers"?) with max intelligence-charisma-wisdom and min constitution that acts like a paladin just to see what "consequences" it will bring. And i didn't looked at stat descriptions very carefully...

Quick and dirty info for stats:

Mages need int, melee is strength, dex is defense and ranged, con is survival (hp), and wisdom is cleric's spell stat (although they also want melee).

Better information here, but you need to click on each stat to find out what numbers are good. If you're not a thief, a 6 and a 14 appear to be functionally identical dex scores. You also don't want to be a thief in the first game, because you are low-level, so your chances of failure at any given thieving action are much greater than your chances of success (you're around 20-30% chance of success, and failure generally means guards come kill you).

Also, the biggest secret to BG: rest everywhere you can, probably after every major fight. Your level 1 mage can only have 2 spells memorized at once, but they can rest and regain them all repeatedly, and time doesn't matter.

Edit: and I spent an hour-ish last night trying to get a friend into a MegaMek scenario to teach him how to play. Never got that to work (he could only be an observer), but generating armies and shooting a bunch did work after I got port forwarding turned on in my router.

[nenjin]

On a whim, fired up Space Hulk: Deathwing to play with a friend.

Meet some randos who turn out to be WTF uber l33t veterans of the game.

Get thrown in to max difficulty games with FF turned on.

Holy shit. The tactical depth of this game, relatively understated at lower levels, comes alive at the highest difficulty. It starts to feel like a real FPS adaptation of the board game where some of the same rules, logic and strats apply.

TFW a game you thought you understood surprises the shit out of you.

[spazyak]

I've been playing lot's of Rogue tech (mod for battletech) using nothing but Urbies.
So far it's been fun and challenging. I got one built for speed and melee with stuff to stop drop from above self damage (flinging the mech at another mech with jump jets) and managed to take out an assault mech with it.

[itisnotlogical]

It turns out Mass Effect 2 is even more awesome when you can play it with the graphics turned up and an acceptable, stable framerate. It's as gorgeous as ME1 was ugly, all these years later.

[lemon10]

  Finally decided to try out "mother of all RPGs" Baldur's gate. Overwhelmed by urge to minmax, made chaotic evil human necromancer (what do you mean, "no elf necromancers"?) with max intelligence-charisma-wisdom and min constitution that acts like a paladin just to see what "consequences" it will bring. And i didn't looked at stat descriptions very carefully...

Quick and dirty info for stats:

Mages need int, melee is strength, dex is defense and ranged, con is survival (hp), and wisdom is cleric's spell stat (although they also want melee).

Better information here, but you need to click on each stat to find out what numbers are good. If you're not a thief, a 6 and a 14 appear to be functionally identical dex scores. You also don't want to be a thief in the first game, because you are low-level, so your chances of failure at any given thieving action are much greater than your chances of success (you're around 20-30% chance of success, and failure generally means guards come kill you).

While it is true that 6-14 are equivalent given that higher dex then 14 gives you a significant AC bonus it is probably worth it if you plan on going single class (or even some dual/multiclass combos) to pump it up all the way to 18 for the sweet -4 AC bonus which is *very* significant.

Also note that for a mage both wisdom and charisma are pretty much dump stats, so you probably don't want to throw any points into either.