Adding Difficulty Without Adding Cheesiness

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I can think of a couple simple ways to make the game a bit more difficult. One is to limit the weapons that you use. Try a game without using Celestial Fury, the Flail of Ages or Crom Feyr.

The other would be a bit more of a mind game with yourself - try pretending that you *don't* know where and what every enemy is. For example, the Slaver Compound isn't very hard if you pre-buff, but would be rather harder if you just walked into the room and "reacted" to Captain Haegan and his (many) cronies...

 

The idea of roleplaying it more really WOULD increase difficulty substantially if you roleplay a character that really cares about Imoen a lot, because said character would pay off Gaelen Bayle the second he could raise that kind of gold, instead of doing every quest possible. Maybe just do your stronghold quest and one other then move on to the next chapters.

 

Good idea: go through quickly so you skip alot of subquests, and the associated items and XP. Then, hit all the battles in chapter 3 on at a much lower level than normal.

Also, don't buy/steal magic items from stores. pretend Amn isn't so saturated with magic items that every corner store has epic level weapons. Actually, a "nerfed store mod" or "nerfed items mod" might be fun...

Finally, roleplay, don't powergame, your party. Why assemble the standard 2.5 warriors 1.5 cleric 1.5 mages .5 thief party, just because you know that makes battles much easier?

 

If you want to roleplay, make constraints. Like if you think certain items are too powerful, then don't use them. There are enough items in BG2 to suit any player's fancy without resorting to nerfing anything.

As to how to make the game more difficult, install certain parts of tactics, and raise the difficulty to hard (setting it to insane doesn't make it challenging, but ridiculous). You'll need the opinion of other RPers as to what parts of the mod you should install. Finally, don't resort to cheesy tactics. There is logic in what you did against Improved Torgal. It may seem cheesy, but a real Sorcerer might have el

[ July 16, 2005, 03:33: Message edited by: Scythesong Immortal ]

 

....so in the end it all comes down to disadvantaging yourself.

Don't do all the quests, don't get the uber items, don't level-up like crazy. Better yet hit your head on the monitor a few times till you forget how to play BG

Perhaps a different approach might be to cycle NPC's, don't play with the same bunch retire them for a chapter or try an unbalanced combination.

 

Not really, it makes sense, instead of taking one's time to complete a quest (when you know the enemy is going to wait for you to come and beat his sorry hide) you can act as if it time was of the essence.
In most cases the story makes it logical that you should hurry: you don't have much time, yet you well know that you can take days to complete a quest it won't matter. What you can do is rush in and try to save the day, no need to go back to rest or a temple to get your guys healed/resurrected or to a shop to pick up the right scroll/item... That should increase the difficulty without feeling like you're crippling yourself, you're just compensating for the limits of the game, that's all.
RPing can also mean that you're not going to pick all the shiny goodies, think about it a Paladin is not going to be paid, nor is he going to collect jewelry (wooow that's so heroic) and waste time while there are still monsters in the vicinity.
Another idea is to use inns, I mean that instead of resting in the sewers your characters are going to want to go to the best inn in town if they can afford it (not the crooked crane inn please!) by the way after a few games who is still sampling drinks in the inns? A paladin might be a teetotaller, but most characters will enjoy a drink from time to time (just think about Minsc and Jan in a bar... scary) it isn't much but it can be funny too: Minsc fighting some creep after having too much to drink (disadvantaging yourself? sure, but you told him not to drink the entire keg!) besides when you need the cash it can make things slightky more complicated.

 

In the opinion of this RPer, the Improved Sahuagin City is strong in roleplaying terms. You're forced into a bloody, convoluted guerrilla campaign where survival involves liberal use of Physical Mirror and cloud spells. It makes sense to me because you are, after all, on the Sahuagin's home ground.

 

I killed Improved Torgal with the VERY SAME tactic, is it cheese? NO, I casted a FARSIGHT and SAW Torgal, LOTS of other species of Trolls AND yuanti-Mages. We were LOW on level. (9-10) Charging them will be SUICIDE. Yet Nalia wanted to take revenge for his father. AND we ambushed them with Webs (courtesy of Nalia and Aerie), Entangles (Jaheira) plus slow to turn of their regenerations (Nalia and Aerie) and then, finally BLASTED away all of them with Cloudkills(Nalia and wands) fireballs(Nalia and Aerie) and Holy Smites(Aeire and my PC) the wretched creatures did not even understand what was coming and quickly died as they SHOULD.
Funny, it was my PC'S MOST HOLY smite that killed Torgal. It feels good.

As you can see, with proper RPing it is NO cheese anymore, but only a swift ambush for a most bloody REVENGE! Hehehehe...