Is BG2 "Monty Haul"-afflicted?

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Is BG2 plagued by the Monty Haul syndrome or not? Does it tell us something that you need a Bag of Holding to carry all the stuff?

Sure, at mid to high levels you're "supposed" to have good magic stuff. I agree with that, but is it too much?

Your characters are finding magic items and other goodies wherever they turn. Every box and jar seems filled with stuff in some places. The treasure should IMHO have been given as reward for defeating monsters/solving quests. I dislike it being strewn around in a seemingly random fashion everywhere.

My opinion is that BG2 does suffer from Monty Haul.
But how should it have been made different?

 

Yeah, it is pretty Monty Haul. Any game where you can put together multiple artifacts, buy +4 weapons at a store, and face multiple liches has the hallmark of a Monty Haul campaign.

Part of it comes from the nature of computer games, though. It is a lot easier to program harder monsters, and powerful weapons, then to give players more intangible rewards. My strongest character ever in PnP gaming was instrumental had a custom built stronghold, many followers, rank in the empire, a means to directly contact his diety and travel to other planes, and was able to make strong societal changes. However, his best weapons were +3, and he was 13th level. Admittedly, a low magic world, but the rewards he was getting were of stature in society, and fulfillment in his following, which are things that need to be highly individualistic, and are therefore hard to do in games. Strongholds, and romances, and personal quests for characters are all steps in the direction of better roleplaying, but physical rewards seem to be the most common.

 

I had the same feeling after looking through the goods carried by an Imnesvale guard that was slain by the animal attacks before I could save him and finding an 8th level spell scroll. I guess he just didn't know what he had. Had he passed it to the Militia Wizard standing right behind him, he might have lived.

 

I understand the point of this thread but what is "Monty Haul"?

 

This to me is a very interesting question.

On the one hand it is, due to the overwhelming number of items available and the power of some of them.

On the other hand, you do so many "dungeons". This is the curse of creating a computer RPG. You want an epic, quest and treasure-filled world but you do not want characters to have to wait for months to train, heal, travel, play politics, wait, search for henchmen, and so on. How many PnP campaigns would you have had to play in order to encounter 5 dragons, 5 liches and a demi-lich, ~15 demons, a drow city, hell, numerous adamantite golems, a vampire cult led by numerous elders, dozens of beholders, dozens of mind-flayers, a lost diety, a stronghold, etc... (Far more than the sixty or so game days it takes in BGII).In my opinion you earn most of your rewards, but the compressed time frame and plentiful questing make it seem more "monty haul" than it is.

So where , IMO, could BGII become less monty haul...
1.) Remove some of the unbalancing uber-items: Crom Faeyr, Carmosyr, Cloak of Mirroring, Bracers of Defense AC3, Two rings of Wizardry which affect high level spells, Two bows and a Sling that require no ammo, Robe of Vecna come right to mind.
2.) Make mage spells harder to come by for both friends and enemies. I can pretty much obtain almost every spell in the game for two mages! This is not even counting the numerous spells known by EVERY mage I encounter.
3.) Make strong items EXTREMELY rare and difficult to get. Good example: Red Dragon Scale, Ring of Gaxx, Staff of the Magi, Bad Example: Celestial Fury, Cloak of Mirroring, Lilacor
4.) Remove powerful magic items and spells from stores. They should only sell mundane items, weapons and armor with weak enchantments and a few low level scrolls, potions and miscellany. Rarely a store might have one valuable and expensive item.
5.) Require more costs (taxes, excessive stronghold upkeep, fees for information, fees to level up, etc.) for the character to eat up the excess gold.
6.) Make full identification of items difficult and expensive. For instance, it could take me lots of effort and money and perhaps some heat of battle experimentation and failure to figure out and therefore use all the powers of some of the more powerful rings, armor and weapons. (Similar to the powering up of Planescape characters as more avenues are explored)
7.) Continue with the piece at a time build strategy, but make the minor pieces useful in and of themselves.

Of course, all that being said,I am not sure that everybody would want this because for many CRPGers, the items and power are as important as the story and the role.

 

Oh come on guys! You're seriously going to put Black Isle at fault becuase you think that items are given too easily?

If every magical item was the result of a tough quest or for killing a tough enemy then there probably wouldn't be many magical items in the first place, as there would be no quests/monsters to accompany them.

Part of the fun of BGII is the picking and choosing of items to give your characters, so that would seriously wreck the game.

Another thing, in the spirit of Role-Playing, not all magical items would have belonged to quests you know. Irenicus is a powerful mage and could have dropped a magical item in his dungeon or spellhold, or may have been encumbered and put it there for safe-keeping. For example, in the bonus shops a load of balduran equipment was buyable by a shopkeeper in the Adventurer's Mart, and it said that the collection was recently stolen from a museum, so obviously they would try to sell it off.

I mean no offence by this post, but would just like to state this is Black Isle's defence.

Herr'Don

 

Part of why it seems like you get so many items is that you start off with none. You find yourself in the beginning salivating over a +1 dagger, an item which a 6-8 level character would under normal conditions already be on your equipment sheet.
Just my 2 cents...

 

hey thats right, when i 1st started the game, i got very excited that i had found a +1 wepon, then i found out that you could get +5s and felt a little bit silly...

 

A few +1 weapons and some other stuff to satisfy most class choices is quite ok in Irenicus Dungeon.

When you get out almost every street merchant sells magic items and weapons - to quote Minsc: "That ain't right!"

IMO it would have been better if the merchants were still there for standard stuff and consumable magic stuff like +1 arrows and the occasional +1 weapon.
Ribald could sell a few select better magic items to elevate him from the rest of the merchants.

The point would be to have to fight for the magic stuff practically all the time.

The stuff you get during your quests didn't have to be in such great quantity. Getting scales and a sword for killing a dragon we all know is what I think is right - and lots of gold of course since it's a dragon.

 

It's something that is expected in this type of game. Is it too much? I don't think so. If all of the merchants only had low level stuff (and most of them do), they would be unnecessary (and most of them are).

I remember playing Daggerfall. I ended up owning a ship and a house (the biggest one available) and stockpiling them with supplies and stuff that I would never use.

 

Personally, I do find that getting, allocating, and using the magic items are among the most enjoyable aspects of the game.

Nonetheless, I agree that it all seems a little too easy in BG2, especially as compared to BG1.

When I played BG1, it was my first experience with AD&D in more than 15 years. Back then, I played pen & paper with a bunch of friends, and all of us were, as DMs, WAY too generous. We had fun (for a while) but the game was no challenge at all. We eventually developed contempt for those DMs who went too far even by our loose standards, and soon after the game stopped being fun.

So, upon playing BG1 I was at first shocked at, A) how rare relatively rare even +1 weapons were, and how downright scarce +2 weapons were; and B) how expensive they were! I came to appreciate that, however. Magic items were treated with the respect that it seemed to me they deserved, given the context of the Forgotten Realms.

I finished that game still using the Spider's Bane--the best 2H sword in the game, and only +1 against everything but spiders! I also had the best armor in the game--again, only +1. And, in my opinion, the best weapon in the game was the light crossbow of speed--again, only +1.

By the way: I love the term "Monty Haul." We had our own term for it, but this is much better.

 

Hey Manton, it's very nice to meet another "oldtimer"! I also played most of my AD&D back in the mid-80s.

Your observations on BG compared to BG2 is right on the mark. The higher levels in BG2 is justification to flood us with magic items. I've checked an item list from ToB and as expected +5 weapons are as common in ToB as +1 weapon were in BG.

 

I will say one thing, at least the high magic items for sale are pretty much in Trademeet and the main city, where it is a given that in Amn, everything is for sale. But, no one would have such high powered magic in their general inventory. They might at least had some dialogue options to unlock the good stuff, require some kind of reaction roll or the like.

My DM has a general rule, that the way you get powerful items is to pull them off the dead bodies of your enemies. Or as rewards for great deeds. (My characters have gotten more of the latter, but they were religious types, and couldn't use the stuff taken off that dead evil priest very often.)

I understand some of why the game is the way it is (want great stuff for all character types, and something to spend money on that you get for selling the stuff you don't need) But it is pretty easy to heavily equip a party if you aren't playing too moralistic a character, and don't worry too much about roleplaying. (Load up on master thieveries, steal and sell items to a thief multiple times for money, steal what good items you can from stores, and buy the rest.)

In any case, I still enjoy the game, but when I consider dropping +1 magic weapons because it is too much trouble to make space in my inventory to take them to a store, it tells me that the game is a bit heavy on the magic.

 

Earl Grey: two things:

Remember the great old time modules like White Plume Mountain? (I always loved that one.) Magic weapons and items were SCARCE and COVETED! And you had to go through hellfire to get them.

I remember designing a dugeon, the goal of which was to get this item I made up, the "Hat of Leomund." It was an ordinary looking pointy mage hat (though mages were called "magic users" then), except that it had all these unbelievable powers. I made the finding and getting of it quite an ordeal. All my friends whined and wailed, so I dumbed the dungeon down, and one mid-level wizard character got it, and he dominated the games from thereafter. That was the beginning of the end, I think.

Also: remember those tables in the original Dungeon Masters Guide? The percentile tables that you were supposed to use to generate magic items? Man, for something like a vorpal blade, you had to roll double zeros two or three times in a row. They were meant to be rare as ice blue diamonds.

 

Magic weapons are so plentigul, IMO, becuase monsters that require magic weapons to hit them are so omnipresent. Think: In BGI there were Kobolds etc that could be hit with normal arrows and pretty much obliterated in one or two good shots. I have yet to see a kobold! Now it is shadow fiends and elementals that obviousky require a bit of the +something to make contact. They Monty Hauled this game to keep me from falling asleep or getting massacred. If they had put only +1 stuff that sold for 80gp I would just keep walking on by it once I found enough +2 gear to equip my people. Now they have various magic stuff that I hate to sell cuz one day I might come across a "one handed pickle eater" and need that special sword that has +5 against them only!