Originally Posted by Stabbey
Originally Posted by SorcererVictor
Is bad in ANY game.

At least make it OPTIONAL!!!!

Eg - "original AC and HP (not recommended)" on settings.

So people who enjoy having to hit an spider with 30 crossbow bolts can enjoy their slow and tedious fights and people who enjoy deadlier encounters can enjoy their fights.


That's not an example of something which could reasonably be an option. HP/AC has to be consistent - at least per difficulty level, otherwise the permutations for balancing become too difficult.


The excessive focus on balance is what is killing modern RPG's, but that is another discussion. The main point of a game is to be fun and entertaining. Balanced or not, seeing all your cool weapons/spells being ineffective against an enemy is not fun IMO.

Originally Posted by Kendaric
Originally Posted by Eugerome
I don't think the HP bloating is that bad in this game, considering the generally lower AC.

I think it is a viable approach to the encounters that makes classes that attack the AC a bit more reliable.


The HP bloat is problematic, regardless of a lowered AC value. Simply due to the fact that fights, especially the larger ones, take longer and use up more resources than they should. I'm not saying that every goblin must have 7 HP, but neither do they need 15+ HP like some in the Selune temple/Goblin camp. It also devalues spells like sleep that are affected by the HP of the enemies.


Or just put 2x more goblins but maintain their P&P low HP.

Originally Posted by Anfindel
(...) But 100+ hp spiders (unless they are handmaiderns of Loth or such specialized 'boss' material) do seem to be overboard, and leading to 300 hp tigers, 500 hp ogres, 2k hp hill giants and the like. As pointed out, a 15th level fighter could have close to the 184 hp Firkaag the red dragon possessed in BG2, but numbers and tactics were still needed to overcome all those delicious dragon offenses and defenses. Firkaag didn't need more hp than the total hp of your entire group to be a good opponent.


Yep. He had a lot of nasty abilities and defenses. This is why he was a hard battle to take mainly on chapter 2 so most people left him for later chapters. He was not hard cuz you need to spend minutes spamming the same abilities over and over to kill him.