I have rewrote this 5 times because I am non too happy with the extreme game balance problem.
Is there anyway to tone down the power and or numbers of the nuclear skeleton warriors I am facing (at 9th-10th lvl) that does not include playing outside of core rules!

HOLY FAK!

You see I really hate having to cheat.

(PS,,, Vlad what were you thinking)?


(EDITED TODAY GO TO PAGE 3)

Don't cheat either, cause I think there is an anti-cheating ghost that makes weird things happen.

What else do you have installed?

@Bereth Darkides
When I first started playing NEJ I would have agreed with you. Way back when it was only at 4.2 and part of the Mega install you were dead meat if you didn't know some tatics. It is difficult but doable. The walk thru has some tatics for those difficult areas. Remember they are undead use other tools then just hack 'n slash.

It was meant to be difficult and different, not a walk in the park. That is why better players want the tactic mods. I have to laugh about the first time I tried one. I thought what the h--- has happened to me?

Also remember it is your game and who are you cheating when you're playing the game the way you like it or set it up. The computer doesn't care and your the only player. I follow my own rules and play it the way I enjoy it. It is my virtual world and I get to be god in it. I ctrl-y'd many of the enemy till I got better, now they are not that tough but still lose to them now and then.

Try this instead of complaining. Step in the room if you can not take on all six or 10 yet crtl-y 3 of them, now it is set up for what you can handle right now. Next time try it with more and so forth but each to their own. Have fun.

Actually a good process that helps is clear one cave at a time. After each cave leave back to Kuldahar to rest. Keep stocking those yeti pelts and loot to sell. After each cave you can stock some gold for Prot. against Undead and other items in the shops. Once Hrothgar gets that nice throwing axe (?) vs.undead, it will be a bit more on your side. Keep your distance also so you can go in and then back out of the caves to lure 4 or 5 rather than have all 10 or 12 see you.

Well, it's challenging, for sure, unless you use Protection from Undead scrolls. Like Sikret mentioned, this scroll is the real cheating. So, instead of CTRL-Ying your way and loosing XP, try use those scrolls. Good luck!

Lol,,, Challenging...pretty funny there Vlad.. I actualy fealt like a big "T-Bone Steak" who just walked into the SFS 49ers barbeque celebration.

Umm,, Ya,, I had only two three fellows with magical weapons at 9-10 lvl.. vs 13 Skeleton Warriors.. ya ok!

But you know what, I won...Why......because I know how to fight,,,,and run.

:-)

BRING IT ON B****....lol

I have, SoA+ToB+Patch+Baldurdash+TS7.02+Patch+NeJ2+Patch, eh!

Cannuck,, the home of WWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPP,
beer, hot women, and more beer!

Um,,,,,wait a minute,,, isn't this considered,,,, um,,, cheating lol.
I actualy won the battle by being very, very fast on my feet. ANSWER:

Double hasted, Stoneskin,Protection fr. Evil 10' rad., Defensive Harmony x2, Turn Undead, Flameblade+Holy Power, and a few other little helpers. oh,,, and a LOT of running!

:-)

Since when does Protection from Undead scroll protect you from simply being hit? lol.
It only protects you from effects, not from getting hit. That was my initial problem....I'll put it too you this way.........


SLAPP....PIFF..arg...SMACK....boo noooooSPLAT......You basta...BOOM....analnathrak uthba speth...KAPOW....heeelp me!

I had to avoid the SLAPP, PIFF, SMACK, SPLAT, BOOM and KAPOW! times 12!

It required a lot of ducking.

@Bereth Darkides
Cheating?????
Why would that be cheating and by who's standards. It is all in the game. Bone Cleaver could be called cheating then because when Hrothgar throws it at the Undead it can kill them with one hit. The more I play it is not how I can kill the most but some times what is the worst crew I can have and still win the battle.

I would call it a damn good stategy for what you faced. And congratulations for getting by the first group. Don't get to cocky or the next group just might take ya out. (haha)

Running - I always heard "Learn to run to live and fight another day."

Well with my strategy I was able to clear three caves before I had to sleep. I managed to get the Axe which helps for sure (got it from clearing the first cave). I'll be going at it tonight.

Should have seen my party by the time I went to sleep. All portraits were 95% red..lol!

I hear ya. I tend to rest more. After awhile you just hate red. Crud the monsters in the open do enough to at first when your not looking for them.

Oh, you just started wait till you go down, down and down deeper into the caverns. I tend to like NEJ alot and am waiting for the next installment. Glad to to hear your having fun.

when you get really good, let us know what it is like on INSANE

Since BIS decided it is so. Didn't you that? It makes your presence completely ignored by any kind of undead. You may hit them, crash them, do what you like - they just simply do not react.

Yep, I had to laugh about that one at first. I kept thinking it was Protection from Evil and kept thinking it wasn't working. I would cast it and walk in the room and run back out half dead.

Here's the Id for it:
A Protection from Undead scroll invokes a 3' radius circle of protection around the target. It protects the person within from all physical attacks made by undead such as ghasts, ghosts, ghouls, skeletons, wraiths, zombies, etc. It does not offer any protection from magical attacks, however, and will wear off with the passage of 10 turns.

I like a stituation that finally makes use of a spell, that normally you might toss, in order to get through it.

Not sure if I like that. I still prefer the norm Protection from Undead. It protects you from magical effects but not damage. I guess I'd rather be slapped around a bit rather than getting level drained.

Been playing D&D for a very long time. I even DM'd at Gencon once many years ago.
(Classic Gazeteer if you remember what that was).

:-)

I pretty much agree with everything said here. Cheating is definitely a sensitive subject, especially since EVERYONE has a different opinion on what constitutes cheating. Multi-player aside though, this is a one-player game. The one and only thing that matters is personal enjoyment.

I personally love frustratingly hard battles, play on Core exclusively thanks to my oldschool DnD background, (only gain 1hp from that level up? Sucks to be me!) and pretty much play w/ a no-reload policy if possible. (level-drains, deaths, unsuccessful scribes do not get reloads) However I use ctrl-J all the time. I don't find any enjoyment whatsoever watching my characters walk back out of a cleared dungeon or taking the long way to a point that I know has nothing in between. Does this make me a cheater? Hell yeah it does! Do I care? Not one bit.

If this Mod ends up being too difficult to enjoy, do whatever it takes to make it more enjoyable. I'm sure Vlad and the rest would have it no other way.

My Idea of what cheating is: (Pretty self explanitory)

1 )Shadowmastering Items, scroll, skills/attributes, spells, etc. anything not found through hard arduous adventuring.
2) Consoling in goodies to help or remove enemies during/before battle.
3) Downgrading the game to anything less than Core Rules.
4) Unballanced battles by Creator/DM that might seem funny at first, but in all reality, if he were to try that with paper and pen he would find himself playing alone very, very quickly!

5) CTRL-?
6) Anyhting not earned or obtained through normal game play,, as what finishes this entire point; Why else do you play if not for this exact reason.

By no means is this a complaint, I am having fun since I was smiled at by big bad skelly's looking for new skins, for use for a new coat!

OK,, I'm at Dragons Eye;

Well..man oh man. Honestly. This is slowly becoming tedious and very much less fun than I hoped. First off, the ice trolls.
I arrive surrounded and they can cast slow (every round "oh and I get NO SAVE, + they do a lot more damage etc.) and ability score drain = souped up.

Next; Lizards.. a lot tougher,, quite a bit tougher.

Next; the Beatles= WTF...they have their original power + poison and stun + immune to certain area of effect spells.

Honestly, having to sleep after every single battle, is ridiculous. Guys, WTF ever happened to game balance. Has anyone here ever DM'd a paper and pen Dungeons and Dragons game? Sorry to say this but I'm not enjoying it.
Doesn't this defeat the purpose of making a mod that people will enjoy?

Don't get me wrong, I'm gonna play it, I'm stubborn enough for it, and I'll get through it, but only because I'll want to play a normal core game with respectable game balance, ie. now I just want to play the original game. Sorry Vlad. What else do you want me to say? What did you expect man? Why not just put a Dragon in front of every door, I mean hey why not? I'm sure eventually after reloading and reloading that it will eventually fail a saving throw.

Right? I mean, in essence it is what you've done. You realize this right?

Tactics? nah you can't use this argument on me. I know more combinations of spell effects than most would even think to do. I memorized every DM guide ever made. I was recognized by TSR years ago for my extensive background and knowledge. I know some people will get quite upset with me making any kind of negative comments it's ok I fully expect it, (ho hum). Some people will even consider me a noob (if only they knew how long and how much experience this dude has. In fact I bet I've been playing this game longer than some of you have been alive).

I'm a Solid 31 year veteran of DnD. I know more about AD&D than most creators of the game. I had memorized 50% of the entire Magica Arcana made in the 90's dudes.
I'm "almost wasting" hours of limited time (because of my love for the game itself) trying to play something that should take me 1 hour and it's taking me 5 hours of game play.

This is a complaint of sort. This brings me absolutely no joy in it's saying. I'm truly sorry, I'm so very, very sorry!
Somewhere along the line some part of the modders mind, I think was to "test" people on each battle. But in so doing, forgot about game balance.

Here, and I do hope you take this next point very constructively.

This is game balance:

At 10 lvl, a character is only then becoming skilled enough, to almost get out of any scenario alive "Based on" balanced creatures on a one to one basis. ie 10 lvl barbarian with a +2 weapon could take on a Shambling Mound (*Monster Manual 2- 1984 release for lookup*), This battle would come down to blows with one of the victors left very bloody but yet still alive.
Consider a Wizard at the same lvl vs 10 normal "Bombast Beatles". Still a doable battle but will get desperate once saves are made and wizards offensive spells start to run out.
You see, this is game balance, and it's a lot more fun.

Lastly and my most important point, consider the original game. It wasn't just superb in it's creation, but WOW, it was PERFECT in it's game balance. The right lvl characters vs enemies. Honestly this is an indisputable fact, and also lends to it's EXTREME success and popularity. BG, is and was and still is the most perfect game ever created for it's accuracy.

Why did you forget or choose to ignore these facts?

I want to play core rules, but your creatures aren't core rules set! By no means Vlad and to others, is this an attack on your efforts and work spent in doing this, but rather a point of fact that questions simply; why didn't you just base it on AD&D stats for balanced game play? You could have, but you chose not too. I think you made a bigger mistake than you realize. The success of this mod, could be better in doing so. Heck I could even give you some REAL tactical challenges to create that would still be balanced without souping up anything.

PS,, I really appreciate all the work and effort, so I hope you realize how badly and how long I've waited to play it. I know on the other hand that TS isn't quite this bad in it's game balance (unless you recently souped up everything in that as well) so I'm eager to play that again. (still your best work).
So please do not take my words too hard please. I'm still a fan!

Anyway,, back to the game!

PS,, I'll continue reports on bugs (no not beetles) etc, but not on game balance as I believe I've pretty much made that point well enough, lol.

I will Venture on :-)

This is not true. The battles in the original game are too easy and totally laughable for any serious player (no need to be a tactical guru to realize this) and that's why most players look for mods which enhance the game's difficulty level not only by improving creatures AI to make them behave more intelligently, but also by adding diverse categories of new types of creatures and abilities to the game to make the player think during battles to solve tactical puzzles.

I remember that you were eagerly waiting for the release of the TS_IA compatibility patch. With the viewpoint you have expressed in this thread (= thinking of the original game's battles as being perfect), I don't think that IA is for you to play. The reason is not that you are not skilled enough. Less skilled players can also play IA if they prepare themselves for drawing a learning curve and improve their skills. The reason for which you can't play IA is that you *think* that you are already skilled enough:



With such an attitude, you won't even start to improve your skills.

The bottom line is that computer-game opponents based on what would be a balanced fight in AD&D are always going to be a push-over, because the computer-game opponents are laughably stupid. This isn't even a comment on the original game's AI. It's possible to improve lots on it, but the best AI out there (whatever it is) is still laughably stupid, compared to a human opponent. We currently have no idea how to simulate the intelligence of a human - or indeed a worm - on the best purpose-built parallel-processing hardware, let alone in the Infinity Engine scripting language.

If the original BG2 was AD&D, the party would be wiped out. They systematically go up against opponents much higher level than them.

I found these guys easy, just use Web and Entangle and then kill them with arrows and fire balls.


A bit tougher but winable.


Also easy, see lizardman tactics.

Do you have Dar in your party? He is useful!

Good luck!

It wouldn't be needed to simulate human intelligence to make powerful enemies in games, including the Infinity Engine games. Artificial intelligence has serious achievements, and these are applied in computer games as well. In case of the IE games, we're just talking aboutt the decisions of managers, developers and/or others.

Including financial decisions (budget, schedule etc.) For example, writing much better AI takes more time and project resources. On top of these, if a game is too hard, weaker players or those who play it for other reasons won't be satisfied. This is profit loss. So creating a difficult game even probably wasn't a goal in advance, or at least, not for the final version (requirements may change during the project).

I'll reply tonight..

Sure, opponents could be way brighter, and thus way tougher, than the vanilla-game creatures; I'm not denying that (I write AI mods, after all!)

What I am saying is that for an opponent who's the same strength as the party on paper to be a match for them (which they would be in a pen-and-paper RPG) it would require human-level AI (or at least real goal-directed intelligence), and we're nowhere near that. I don't want to knock AI as an academic discipline: it's made great progress, clarified its conceptual territory, and contributed en route to problems ranging from philosophy of mind to missile guidance, but the underlying problem is amazingly hard and we're still scratching at the surface.

Absolutely. On the other hand, many AI experts believe it doesn't always have to be the primary goal to reproduce (or even to follow) how human mind and intelligence works. In very many cases, it isn't known whether trying to mimic human abilities (or the real world) is the way to go, or not. There are examples in the history of AI when the key of the success wasn't based on such things (and, of course, there are examples for the opposite as well). Of course, as you've said, it's undoubtful that the possibilities offered by (the relevant fields of) AI are far from human intelligence yet (I said "relevant fields", because AI itself comprises much much more than most people would believe). Discussing all this exceeds the scope of this topic, so I didn't want to mention concrete examples and more details.

P.S. just for fun: it is believed that a (biological) neural network solves nonlinear differential equations in analogue form, in real time. Think of your brain, dear reader, it's solving equations at the moment when you're reading these lines!

Bereth, you won't believe but Imoen is capable of dealing with ALL that beatles alone, even without using her spells. Indeed, you need only one Imoen, one short bow and good arrows.

[EDIT] In fact, NeJ2 is much more tactical than you think. There are many different tactics used in the mod, for example those mentioned by Chev. Of course, brute forcing hordes of undead, trolls and lizards is not a good idea. Moreover, when I played the plain BG2/ToB for the very first times, I have never thought about tactics because it was really plain and simple, your enemies just become harder with your levels, so one single paladin or good dual-class character like kensai/mage or cleric/ranger could make his way through the game solo. I don't think this is called "ballance". In fact, that was the reason why I started modding the game. It was too simple and boring to me. Anyway, thank you for your feedback. I value it a lot.

WOE, there Sikret. there is no need to lecture me regarding my experience with D&D. If you knew the people I knew, they would be laughing at your comment. Just because I don't Mod, means absolutely nothing. I know this game like the back of my hand.
All I'm saying is that I don't like having to take forever. I don't mind tough battles, heck I'm one of the very very few who killed the shadow dradon at lvl 9 in the orriginal game. (and some had said it earlier to make a point); "Do one cave then go back to Kuldahar and sleep before the next cave".

It's this aspect that I do not like, and is reminis of the games unbalanced creatures. Regarding any "Serious Players" as your comments suggest, answer me one question; The first time you played it completely through, from start to finish, did your main character ever die?

My point is realy to the point of elongating a game by means of creating unbalanced creatures (vs your lvl to enable you to fight continuosly or at least more than a couple of times before having to sleep). Perhalps you don't believe I'm not just some Shmoe off the street, with little to no experience with the game. Not entirely sure, but regardless, my argument isn't agains't making it more challenging, as you could put different types of elementals together for example (go ahead and try some area of effect spells with this combo), or Wyverns with Ancient Ankegs. Certain core creatures when put together are insanely lethal. There are a multitude of ways to make it more chalenging without making creatures up and giving them new powers that may seem unbalanced.

Not unlike my "Ollerand's Exploding Centipede" spell I had years ago (9th lvl spell combo with Creaping Doom)...
Talk about overkill!

Like I said, my experience is vast!

Therein lies one of my problems..... I ran out of arrows,,,,

Well, well... The mighty Bereth Darkides forgot to stock his arrows, or may be dropped his bow after drinking three cups of ale in a tavern... It's not a sunday walk in Firkraag's dungeon, but the Dragon's Eye!

Not having arrows would make the game seem unbalanced.

I played the older version of Nej with IA 4.2 installed. Finished the Ice wind dale areas and got to Halrua. The only real problem I ever faced was running out of spells and then having to fight monster spawns while trying to rest. If it wasn't for that, it would have been very easy to use hit and run tactics to thin the enemies.

There's a lot of time saving shortcuts in the BG2 engine that can take 5 hours and reduce it down by a lot.

I haven't played the newest NEJ yet, so I can't say what changes Vlad made to it, but unless it is somewhere along changing the resistances, or increasing the number of monsters that spawn when you try to rest, it shouldn't be a problem.

<B>The battles in the original game are too easy and totally laughable for any serious player (no need to be a tactical guru to realize this)</b>

What made the battles in the original game tough for me was because I assumed spell trap would absorb breach, so I would always try to ruby ray the spell trap first and then use breach.

Also, with the help of good scripts, a party of 6 essentially fights by itself against all vanilla BG2 enemies and you don't have to do jack.

What made BG2 vanilla "hard" in some respects, was that I had to micromanage and use up the round times of all six of my characters. That got tiresome and oftentimes I would forget that I could now cast a spell and what not. And clicking on six characters that all more or less look alike when the spells are flying, wasn't a help either. I really wanted Planescape Torment graphics where each individual model was detailed and easily distinguished on screen. Didn't even need to be scruntched up like in PST either, but it would have really been nice if they could make static models for the player characters.

That's probably what would make a one hour game into a 5 hour slog, similar to what Dark was saying. My solution was to write my own scripts after I stole most of it from uScript and eSeries. Fun and realll useful.

<B>I know this game like the back of my hand. </b>

CRPG AD and D and paper ADD is not the same game. They may be trying to use the same rule sets, but a CRPG provides many many ways to exploit AI retardedness.

Paper CRPG gives you a human dungeon master to fight against and pure mathematical dice rolling as "combat" or simply tasks and challenges setup by the human dungeon master. Rarely does luck with a dice roll make a large difference in tactical mods for BG2. Unless you really want to see how many times you can roll successfully against insta death on a 50/50 percentage basis. Then you'll be reloading.

<B>All I'm saying is that I don't like having to take forever.</b>

A good tactician, as opposed to a good ADD paper player, will always stack the odds against the enemy so that he doesn't have to die or reload or what not. If you use Ctrl+J, that saves up most of your traveling time too. Combine the two with flawless execution of victories, and it won't take up much time at all.

<B>"Do one cave then go back to Kuldahar and sleep before the next cave".</b>

Sleep in or around the dungeon maps. Why are you going back to Kuldahar to sleep?

<B>The first time you played it completely through, from start to finish, did your main character ever die?</b>

Given that my main was Berserker/mage, no. Maybe once to an insta death spell or trap, but not to enemy mages or melee mobs.

<B>It's not a sunday walk in Firkraag's dungeon, but the Dragon's Eye!</b>

I found the dragon's eye easier than the Kresellar's tomb. I started with a brand new BG2 party, no BGT, and it took awhile to get everybody set up and working together the way I wanted to.

BG2 tactics can be split up into some easily recognized groups. Physical range damage is one of them. Magical ranged attack is another. Healing capacities. Physical damage rate.

Not having any archers mean you have to get your melee guys to go in and melee. This can be very damaging and dangerous if you have poisonous bugs.

Using additional scripts for individuals and parties can get improved results. Uscripts and gbscripts work well and are easy to install/uninstall although support with them does not exist. They usually support all items/spell/innates including those from ToB. I think they work well and have used them in combinations of mods.

Ya OK.. OK... lets all have a BIG laugh at my expense


Big Dummy award goes too......The idiot with the green shirt (don't ask,, getting enough flack at work for the color choice)

Having stacks of 200 arrows instead of 20 would also eliminate the ammo limit from having multiple stacks of 20 arrows in inventory. The money certainly isn't an issue.

Regular uScript and eSeries does a couple of things with melee and ranged combat choices that are either tedious or not wise if you want to maintain a certain level of tactical control over your party.

You might want your mages to sit still and only use darts and slings, instead of the script moving them to combat range. Or you might want your characters to auto switch to melee when attacked with a ranged weapon equiped, but return to ranged if you order the party member out of range.

Since scripts are supposed to save me time, even having to hit a key to stop auto move or weapon preferences gets to be too much once you do it over and over again. This is why I've modified uScript to avoid these little problems. You would probably have to do something similar if you plan on using scripts to coordinate all your party tactical actions.

Yeah, the uscripts were a bit tedious. I give a lot of praise to it and indeed it could be modified. One of my projects is to take uscripts and make them also spell supportable for NeJ2 and TS and for characters as well. Maybe IA too but contacting anyone about them will be top priority.

When I was deciding which script I was going to read through to figure out how to modify, I had the eSeries or the uscript as my choices. Since eSeries has multiple scripts for different classes while uScript only has one main script for the player, I settled on uScript. The lack of large amounts of comments in the uScript baf was also a help, so was the tabbed text alignment when I read it and edited it with Bg2 script. Much more aesthetically appealing.

I'm currenting editing uScript as I play IA 6. I have it set so that if you turn off spellcasting with S key, the mages would spam magic missiles and flame arrow until the spell was depleted. Good for sorcerers and for when you need to have your mages chain cast damage spells but don't want to constantly pause and tell the mage to cast again.

Once S is on the off mode, defensive spells and other spells are automatically disabled for the mage, which means they'll usually just cast damage spells and without checking the enemy's stats that might have precluded a cast.

In vanilla or even tactics, many of the enemies don't have resistance, physical or elemental, so it was better to put more stringent requirements on the script for casting damage spells. in IA, it is far better for casters to focus fire their damage spells to get IA mobs out of the way, since they take a lot of killing.

When I was palying Tactics, I modified uScript so that it wouldn't waste magic missiles and flame arrows, except on golems and what not. Many mobs could be killed by my archers or melee guys, so there was no point to wasting a spell on them.

Mind You VLAD;

You guys say tactics,,,, uh hu ya right..... Beatle does: not miss + Blindness + Sickness +Poison damage.. gfaw(this means to laugh)

Lizardmen... I love these guys... are now as lethal as a Tarasque so don't let them touch you ... they also never miss,, what did you do, give them a thaco of -8?

Not to worry, I cleared it just fine,, but my FAVORITE part of that map was the never ending spawning of lizardmen when I was Ty-Ty and all I wanted to do was f***** sleep.

May a horde of mind Flayers crawl up yer arse the next time you get sleepy,,, eh,,, eh..!

What were you saying about your knowledge of Balance? You see,,, I know for a fact that these creatures don't exist in ANY monster manual.. wink!

It's ok though.. I'll kill whatever you throw at me bi***!

I have two theories
1) Monster Manuals are DnD and ADnD. Copyrighted and perhaps they can not be reproduced exactly?
2) Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 are based on ADnD rules. Loosely or Tightly? Who knows, use your imagination.

No it was surprisingly accurate. There were in fact very, very few errors vs actual core rules of AD&D (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition *which is still the best rules set existing, and the most played, and the most referenced of all RPG games of all time. It also has by far the most material available for it's system).

As apposed to the slap in the face Wizards of the Coast is showing it's proprietary appreciation for all it's fans for releasing yet another game rules set (4th Edition) making the current one redundant, yet again!
Nice eh!
They are a joke IMHO.

Even if the games are very close, I am sure there were some modules made for AD&D that were crazy hard . People want the challenge sometimes and enjoy that for what it is worth. I think modders use a little freedom and artistry in creating new creatures or pushing the limit a little. After all, rules were meant to be broken, right? .

If you want to talk about high powered enemies, play Drizzt Saga for BG1. It is a fun mod and very hard. Even try the Grey Clan episode for BG1, that is my favorite. You will think you are playing SoA with that firepower.

Oh Absolutely Hoppy, I couldn't agree more in many ways. But I will say, experienced DM's know how to create balanced creatures. For experienced DM's this is a no brainer situation. It takes years of actual play to learn it. A DM's teacher for example is with the dudes he's playing with and weather "they come back" for another session! ie. you can't constantly kill the party and let them start over time after time and ever expect them to come back, because ,,, they won't!

HINT

lol

With the idea of a video game on the other hand, balance doesn't matter as such (obviously) so long as there is a trick involved in succeeding, but like I said, you can use legit balanced ceatures and situations to create the illusion of difficulty so much so that it could boggle your mind. I for example have DM'd over 120+ extreamly large modules over 20 years, not to mention the amount of smaller modules. I have created oodles of creatures and magic items, etc. etc. and have even had my work published in Dragon Magazine.

Imagine this scenario; With a combination effect, you can create a vampire that constantly regenerates (all through legitimate means without breaking of rules). Imagine it,, you kill a vamp and you see them turn to smoke. You would naturaly think you've won and you have time to finish them off. But pay attention now. The MMG states if they lie in their homeland dirt, they are instantly regenrated right so........Give them the Bag of Holding and place the casket in side it (it hold up to a 10'x10' space) with the homeland dirt.

Now THAT is nasty, and this can only be defeated in about four or 5 ways. So, to those with experience, according to AD&D rules, with all your experience, how would you defeat a creature like this?

Try not to get too imaginative, the answer is easier than you may realize, it's the availability to solve it that translates into the balance. Trust me, you wouldn't want to face a creature like this unless you were very very high level. You may kill them once or even twice, but, eventualy, you will die! Nothing worse than an unkillable enemy on his ground.

(Like I said, I know more decieving tricks than most of you would ever dream of, ALL based on legitimate rules)

OK.. sisnce nobody could guess the answer above I'll give it to you.

ways to Killl the vamp.

1) Wand of negation (retributive strike, look it up if needed). It's a final strike move with the possiblity of killing the weilder too but, the negative planes will destroy each other.

2) 9th lvl spell, Mordenkainen's Disjunction or Wish spell.Noguarentee that it will destroy the bag of holding because of the randomness of the spell, but it's can do it!

3) Bottomless flask of Holy water. Make sure your in a closed room, and can breath water for this. A druid is awfully hard to kill when cornered in a closed space and is deadly to Vampires with these two items.

4)Any other void, disc or black hole magical effect. Mind you, not everyone carries these around. Merely touching the myst (vampire) would cause an explosion that could kill you and your party. So yes it's a risk.

5) Mace of Cuthbert.

6) there are a few other artifacts (including i believe the fourth part of the staff of wonder) that have similar powers that can destroy negative planes within magic items as well. Note though do not get confused between killing the creature and utterly destroying the creature. In the above scenario the Bag is needed to be the target. Else, mr blood sucker will say,"is that a Djinni with a Bikini over there" CHOMP!

NOTE: I'm typing these at work so these are coming out of my mind and my memory. Pretty good eh. I told you, my knowledge was vast.

PS; sorry for the ego stroke,, lol.

The lizard men suck yeh and they are real tough but it gets far, far worse as you progress NEJ. Does require creative techniques, my favourite kit is assassin so with the party at a safe distance, sneaky, sneaky, backstab, dead, run away (cos they are slow) sneaky, sneaky, backstab, dead, anyway you get the picture.

It’s all doable and sure it’s tough I’d even go as far to say that horred’s portal move should be an option on install. We all understand that uncle vlad wants it in CI and its way too tough for its level but right or wrong that’s the game he designed.

Just hope that the BP lot don’t manage to make it compatible now that really would be scary. Do you remember BP vale of shadows.

I think BP tune ups will be for playing nice and be itself along with the other mods without NeJ (4.2b). If people manage to find it (4.2b) and download it, well then they can deal with it. I would rather stick with 691 since it is more enjoyable and the most finished anyway.

However, you may try NeJ691 with SCSII and see how that goes. I am not sure if anyone has tried that yet.
Improved Anvil and NeJ2 (besides the charming rogue Imoen getting changed), that might be doable. Ymarsakar said that it worked well.


Those are just some suggestions if you want to make things more challenging. When it is all said and done, I am sure there will be compatibility issues.

Maybe I just love pain, but I actually enjoyed the "frustrating" aspects of the mod. If there is anything about BG2 that I dont really care for is taking advantage of resting. I personally think resting should be banned in many parts of the game.

I didn't really have much of a problem w/ the difficulty. However, if you are taking suggestions Vlad, the only thing that I personally would like to see is a Mage NPC (Joinable in either CI or Easthaven). I personally like to keep Imoen a rogue. (Never really liked how Bioware made her a mage in BG2) However, if there actually is a Mage NPC, and I just missed them somehow, ignore this completely

A mage would be nice, but for NeJ part 2 the PC needs/is best to be some type of mage. The way I see the NPCs that have been added by NeJ are to be a support for a mage.