Racial Stats in BG Fixpack

Remove all ads!

I use baldurdash now, but am interested in the fixpack. So I had a question from the discussion on this thread (which was going off topic):
http://www.sorcerers.net/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=10&t=005739&p=2

BG2 Fixpack

Fellinoid:

Camdawg:

I would tend to agree with Fellinoid on this one, as the D&D rules are quite clear. But my question is to Camdawg - where is the BG2 description of dwarves and halflings does it say that they do not have maximum charisma and wisdom respectively? I've found nothing on this in my manual, and I don't remember seeing anything on the character creation screen. As I recall all that it shows on the creation screen is the racial bonuses, not their maximums and minimums. I don't think there is any particular documentation on racial minumums in the game either. What about the racial minimum scores (like 8 strength and 11 constitution for dwarves, 10 constitution, 7 dexterity for halflings)? Are they also removed? If not, why are the maximums treated differently in fixpack? I looked on the G3 forum but couldn't find the discussion.

[ September 21, 2006, 16:15: Message edited by: ister ]

 

The dwarf charisma and halfling wisdom caps are the only changes on this front. Within the game itself, the racial descriptions are pretty clear and consistent as to which stats receive penalties and bonuses. (We're treating the caps and penalties the same because Bioware did the same. Dwarves are set to have a max of 17 dex, but no penalty which, if I understand your point, should be an 18 max with a -1 penalty.) The description of halflings within the game is this (emphasis added):

Halflings were altered because they were the only race that had an undocumented cap/penalty.

On the dwarf front, it's looking increasingly like we've gotten that one wrong. Their description mentions a charisma penalty but not how much. (See, this is why we love feedback. It's impossible to get everything right--precisely why we actively encourage folks to tell us otherwise. ) It'll be withdrawn in the next release.

On the P&P v BG2 front, developer intent remains our most important criteria for determining if a) something's a bug and b) how to fix it. There are numerous places where BG2 broke deliberately from P&P--the best known example is, again, grandmastery rules. As such, any argument of 'x was like this in P&P' is not weighted as much as, say, an in-game description, simply because the latter is more likely to reflect developer intent.

 

So what about the minimums? Halflings for (example) cannot have strength or dexterity below 7, constitution below 10, or intelligence below 6. Just like the fact that they cannot have a wisdom above 17, none of this is documented in the game (AFAIK). Why change the maximum wisdom without changing (say) the minumum intelligence? This decision looks inconsistent.

I certainly agree than P&P rules are only relevent where they can be used to divine developer intent. And I understand that deciding what is a bug and what is WaD is a very tricky problem that calls for lots of judgement calls.

The reason I'm asking is not that I'm terribly concerned that halflings under the fixpack can have wisdom 18 or intelligence 4. It's rather that this question provides some insight into how those judgement calls have been made.

 

Actually, that's what you've been saying to try to make your point. I've been saying the opposite.

To put it plainly, I've seen the 2da files (even messed around with them to fix half-orcs), and the way they do it is perfect as is. To speak to intent, I'll point to the half-orc, which is a carbon copy of humans on the requirements (far from PnP half-orcs), only with adjustments. They didn't have to lower the maximums of dwarves and halflings if they didn't want them lowered, they could have just left them at 18 in every stat like they did with half-orcs. But they didn't, because they were following the rules for those races.

To be blunt, I think they did it the way they did it because that's how they wanted to do it. It would have taken zero effort to do it a different way, and arguably more than zero to do it the way they did. That speaks, I think, quite largely to intent, and as such, changing this no more belongs in a generic FIXpack than my PnP Half-orc adjustments do.

Actually, no. A penalty, you'll notice, reduces both the minimum and the maximum. Meanwhile, a maximum affects ONLY the maximum. That's why they built it with two files, one for requirements and one for adjustments, instead of simply making a single file that dealt with minimum values and maximum values. Heck, mechanics-wise they didn't have to do that, and could just have applied the penalties directly to the requirements and left it at that. That they did make two files to keep the things separate says something; something I think you shouldn't ignore.

[ September 21, 2006, 18:28: Message edited by: Felinoid ]

 

Ah, now I see my misunderstanding. Based on the points you've raised, I'm now convinced we're wrong on both of these counts. It's likely you won't see either of these in the next release.

This is extremely tricky and, frankly, impossible to get right. Anyone who's attempted projects like this (with the enviable exception of Kevin Dorner) has not had access to the developers so there will always be some degree of subjectivity.

We've attempted to guard against this with two key processes: the team approach and transparency. The team was about 20 folks from six different modding sites during development and contained some radically different viewpoints. (Everyone was invited and we took all that accepted.) For example, some of the Kish-SimDing0 discussions were, uh, rather spirited as we discussed what to include and best ways to fix stuff.

Transparency is the other key component. I don't think players should be getting a mystery bag of what we think are fixes with a simple 'trust us' note. (I've often joked that with the sheer number of fixes included I don't think it's possible for any given player to look through the docs and not have at least one "they've got this wrong" moment.) Feedback and criticism is actively solicited. Put another way, the transparency allows us to extend the 'team' idea to anyone who's ever played the game, multiplying the collective wisdom in the decision-making process. BG2 Fixpack may not be your choice, but we're going to do our best to make sure you have all of the knowledge to make an informed decision--and that knowledge includes what's fixed and why.

In this particular case, it was the inconsistency in the racial descriptions in-game that led us to believe these were bugs. However, Fel has driven home that the racial min/maxes are different thean the penalties and we've just misunderstood the issue here. The min/maxes are not reflected in any of the descriptions, only the penalties (which are indicated and correct). This is a good example of the benefits of transparency--the team approach in general protects against such events, but that certainly doesn't mean they don't happen.