What would you count as cheating?

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Thought I'd open this one up because there's been a lot of debate on what constitutes cheatng in the game.

Obviously, using the cheat console and codes is, but what else? I know some of you were talking about certain spells but surely, if using one particular spell is cheating, then surely all of them are?

Well, here's a chance for us all to argue and fall out about it without me ranting at you for getting off subject!!

 

say cheese!

Otiluke's Resilient Sphere tactic is often seen as a cheat, because it can distract enemies endlessly. Tactics4IWD2 takes care of it, by separately disallowing enemies to target it, and adding invisibility. I tried to restore it by removing EFFORS1 from Override, it removed the invisibility effect, but enemies still won't target.
ORS tactic is what's referred to as CHEESE. Fair play - cheese - cheat. Basically you're taking advantage of game mechanics to give yourself an unfair advantage. But that would be assuming that game designers meant ORS to be a protection/enemy disabler, and didn't expect it to be used as a diversion.

A gray area would be 'reimagining' a character. That means you replace an old character with a newly created one, because the new one is better. You then cheat him up to exactly the same XP amount as the removed character. It's an elaborate use of cheats and character creation, but most people would see this as a major cheat.

Many people use summons, especially in HoF to save themselves from damage (guilty), and there's a point when this becomes cheesy too. Again, Tactics4IWD2 designed a way to reduce this cheese: All summons, even the enemies', start at 10-20% HP in HoF - Near Death, so to make the most of them, you'd need a (Mass) Heal. Casting them during combat becomes less useful, but the 6-summon army can still be buffed to clear out an enemy-infested map. Mass Heal becomes a buff spell, handy to combine with just escaping your last map badly beaten up.
Some people refuse to install the patch, because they want to keep their Apocalyptic Boneguard and Festering Drowned Dead summons. Playing like this gives you an unbalanced game advantage, so I'd say this is a cheat. Guilty by negligence!

Using Dalekeeper to edit your character is a cheat too, especially if your edits are advantageous.

Continuously clicking a bard song, then a spell, then a song, then a spell, etc. Enables unlimited Lingering Songs for two rounds, by definition it would be cheese, but it's a downright cheat if you ask me.
Continuously clicking wilderness lore while paused, that's cheesy.
5-bards-gameplay is cheesy.

Certain mod and fix options fall under this category too:
Setting favoured class to ALL and disabling ECLs is a cheat.
Monk robe fix is cheat, or improvement, depending on your opinion. Same goes for adjustments to monk and paladin order's approved classes.
All items identified is just a cheat.
Additional Druid Spells is a much needed improvement.
Alternate Druid Shapeshifting is quite cheesy, i try not to (ab)use my power too often.
Certain mod items, especially the ones you install separately from bbellina, are cheesy.
Unlimited stacking is just an improvement to micromanagement.
Max HP on level ups - a cheese everyone uses?
Non-Combat War Chant o/t Sith - cheat?
Armour and Shields provide Damage Resistance - cheese.
Skip battle square - time reduction improvement.

 

If you think carefully on that statement, you'll realize the answer is a big, resounding "NO". Spells like Otiluke's Resilient Sphere, Improved Invisibility, excessive Animate Dead (unpatched one), Infinite stacking of Bard Song do constitute as cheating IMO. Reasons-:
1. ORS completely encases the char, and makes him/her safe from ANY kind of harm. Unlike Sanctuary, creatures still target the encased character without doing any damage. Thus it enables creation of decoys. Send in the char, cast ORS, and while monsters try to kill it, blast them to pieces. IWD 2 tried (and indeed, succeeded) to make combat interesting, by incorporating different enemies with different abilities, and varied use of strategy and tactics. This ORS tactic tosses that out of the window and allows you to win pretty much any battle without any great effort.
2. Your whole party is on Improved Invisibility, it goes in and slaughters the enemy, cutting them open while not being attacked in return, casting a whole arsenal and never being targeted. Again, WAY cheesy.
3. Ok, this is not really as big a deal as the latter two. Summons are required in IWD 2 with even the best parties, if only for extra fighting power. But an unpatched Animate Dead is truly overpowered. 6 Festering Drowned Dead or Apocalyptic Boneguards? I think even HoF Slayer Knights would quake in their boots.
4. Infinite stacking pretty much means that nothing will ever touch you in the game. Every hit you make will be a critical. Every critical will do maximum damage. No skill will ever fail. This is even cheesier than the 3 above.

These I regard as cheating, aside from cheat codes themselves of course. Now things I DON'T regard as cheating that other ppl might, and why-:
1. Creation of unhittable chars exploiting game mechanics: Some may claim that the above 3 spells are also exploitation of game mechanics. True, they are, but they are cheesy in a way this is not. These unhittable characters take a great deal of time and spells to become fully unhittable, and even then only 1 or at max 2 of them can exist at a time in utter earnest. The rest can never be unhittable, always having AC lower than 72. And even with such characters, combat is not exactly a pushover beyond Dragon's Eye. You still need to know how to use them properly, and need to protect your other characters.
2. Casting forbidden school spells by including another caster class: This might be a bug, or might be intentional. Personally I look at it this way: Arcane casters from a certain schools can't cast spells of an opponent school. But if they take another caster class, they'll have to cast spells from all schools again. Hence the restriction must be lifted. Of course IWD 2 developers could have chosen to block opposing school spells in the new caster class as well, but they didn't.
3. Min-maxing stats: Oh FFS. 3 INT does not necessarily makes the person a vegetable. IWD 2 is a roleplaying game, and the most important thing it offers is freedom of choice. I assume 3 INT as too stupid to count properly, and 20 STR as professional heavyweight champion. Somebody else might take 3 INT as drooling cabbage and 20 STR as a stronger than average athlete. Its your bloody choice. Think about it, unless you wanna make him a diplomat, what does a Barbarian need 8 CHA for? 1 CHA would suit him just as well. It wouldn't make enemies out of everyone he speaks to, much as that might make sense to some. You hate min-maxing so much, play something else.
4. Powergaming and real DnD: Its related to #3. To all fervent roleplayers, powergaming never killed anything. It was just another way of looking at the game, choosing to focus on winning rather than writing lengthy biographies of characters (which I do, even tho I consider myself as a big powergamer). If you use your imagination, even powergamed characters can have an interesting story behind them. Isn't that what DnD is all about really, using your imagination?

I'm sure many will agree with all I've said, and many more disagree. You're free to do either. That's what roleplaying is about, freedom to choose.

Edited to add:

All that is downright cheating I believe, as it absolutely and totally destroys game balance. ECLs and favored classes are an essential part of character creation, removing them is nonsense. Allowing Monks to wear Robes is also a cheat if you look at the kind of abilities some of the better Robes can give. All items identified... do I really need to specify? Damage resistance is likewise a cheat, making the game far too easy.

 

In this case, is it possible to cheat as it's all freedom of choice?

hmmmmm...........dunno what happened to the quote thing there...........

[You missed an / with the closing QUOTE. -Tal]

 

What's this?

I doubt it's intentional. If this isn't a cheat, it's very smelly blue cheese, and I wouldn't eat it. But I am considering this in Icewind Gate 2, because my additional druid spells won't work, and I want more stoneskins.

I see roleplaying as a challenge in backstory writing, after you've designed a character. But since I reimagine characters so often, and can't transfer my old stories to replaced chars, I gave up on this.

Yes DR is an unbalancing cheat in normal mode, but in HoF it tastes more like a very mild cheese.

 

Does the Hans() code class as cheating if you use it solely to navigate around areas quickly (not using it as an easy way to get out of trouble?)

 

Silvery, your end quote is missing the forward slash: [/QUOTE]

Is hans like the ctrl+J jump, or more like the movetoarea("ar1234")?

If you would have explored the map meticulously with a rogue, then it only saves you time.

 

Of course its possible. People do it all the time. You just asked our opinions on what counts as cheating, and we told you. Now whether or not you should go ahead and do it anyway is up to you.

The hans() cheat I only use when I'm traversing an area I've already cleaned through. Just saves a few seconds of waiting for the party to walk the distance.

@coiny: Stack War Song like hell, and nothing will touch your chars. Stack Tymora's Melody like hell (=19 times), and every dice roll goes maximum, including attack, damage, and skill checks.

 

I don't think I could play this game without cheats anymore. It's been years since I have!

 

i admit i have cheated some. when my cleric dies and i have no way of raising her. i use the ctrl + r to bring her back to life. but then i cast raise dead on another party member so the spell is used anyway.

 

I consider installing mods cheating.
If you install a mod like tactics or undead targos you get more XP from some encounters or better items, which make some parts of the game easier.
The ease-of-use modifications are also cheating, even the bigger item stacking. It makes the game easier if you can carry around more ammo for example or if you pay less for buying ammo because the stacks you get for the same money is bigger.
If you had a mod installed, you can't claim to have beaten IWD2, only something else.

 

I just realized, what many people forget, is that this is applied to the enemy too. You have to fight against loads of monsters with undroppable armours, and this severely cuts into your damage dealt.
Not all my party members get DR from armour, because they don't all wear armour, similarly, some enemies will and some won't get a huge DR bonus.
I was under the mistaken impression in the past that HoF enemies got huge DR because of the game itself, but I didn't realize that it was because I'd just installed DR component. This also explains why ranged weapons become less useful for me.
I still like the DR feature, because battles stretch out a bit more. Melee and spellcasting is more fun.

 

So, is it cheating if your enemies have the same advantages as you?

 

not cheating: altering

No, not IMHO. It's altering the game.
There are so many ways to adjust the game with mods and difficulty levels, that everyone is playing a slightly different game anyway.
I started normal mode with no mods, easy or normal difficulty, then started installing a few by the end. In HoF I went insane difficulty and I'd installed a lot of mods, but Ease-of-use didn't work properly, because I hadn't updated my WeiDU. I think enemy Damage Resistance was working, but my own wasn't for a lot of the game...
And I've installed the latest mod, Tactics4IWD2, in chapter 6. So most of the game I used cheesy tactics like Otiluke's, but it's been disabled now.

I'm looking forward to starting over the game with my most up-to-date 'versatile powergaming' characters.

 

My opinins is that adding mods that provide you with critical combat/skill advantage is cheating.

Stacking Bard songs definitely is, and absing game mechanics/bugs also is.

But most of all, it ruins all the fun of the game. You are not obliged to complete the game with every party. For me the most interesting is not winning, but developing my characters and the process itself. So why in hell I would play a cheat/cheese tactic that will not get me killed even If I do not use my brain at all and that does not require an effort whatsoever?

I play with no mods at all, just official patch, and try to beat every battle with a carefully planned tactic, and doing it step by step. I would rather reload and try again than resort to a cheat to win.

As Jukka said, carefully planned UPPs are also a cheat =) They have a miserable chance of dying if properly played =)

 

Is using the pre-set scripts (Guardian, anti-caster etc) cheating or do you think that it's ok because it's part of the set up of your character?

 

Stacking bard songs with only one Bard definitely is, though I really wouldn't mind if both my Bards were singing Tymora's Melody. You don't consider a 100 HP goblin a cheater, do you?
Seriously though it depends on whether you view cheating as something based on the game (ie, the its-all-part-of-the-game arguement), or something based on the game mechanics (ie, the but-its-against-the-"spirit"-of-the-game arguement).

Personally the only things I'd consider cheating are the console cheats, programs like Dalekeeper, and a few mods.

 

Sorry for updating such an old topic, but now I'm reading some of the older topics for the first time and there are interesting points.

Would you consider pre-buffing your characters before tough battles as cheating? If so, under which circumstances?

For example, would you think pre-buffing before summoning the guardian as a cheat, considering the clues you get in the temple and outside area?

 

Nope. If I expect battle, I buff. There are very few times playing though (first times) for the IE games where I've gone "oh bother, really screwed that up, better reload and get the ol' protection muscles working" and even more times I've gone "There's something round this corner, *poof* shields up!" *charge* "... well, nevermind... Hopefully these will last to the next encounter >_>"

 

No of course not. First of all, some spells are so long-lasting that you can have them cast for most of the game. Bless, Bull's Strength & Magic Circle to name a few.
Secondly, if your stealthiest character could have scouted ahead and located the enemy, you don't need any further justifications for why you are making preparations.