helsmuth

I've finished Shadows of Amn in BG2:EE just shy of the 2.95 million xp cap, which puts me a bit ahead of the starting value of 2.5 million for brand new characters in Throne of Bhaal. My party looks like this: Gorion's Ward , CE half-elf Fighter 11 / Mage 12 / Thief 14 Korgan : CE dwarf Fighter 19 (Berserker kit) Minsc  CG human Ranger 17 Jaheira : TN half-elf Fighter 13 / Druid 13 Viconia : NE drow Cleric 19 Imoen : NG human Thief 7 / Mage 16 My alignment changed to Chaotic Evil because I succumbed to the sin of greed. I blame Elric of Melniboné (or, more specifically, Stormbringer). Also, I may have kicked Darth Sarevok in the nuts ("Release your anger, only your hatred can destroy me!"). My bad :-) It would have been cool if the Fate Spirit at the beginning of Throne of Bhaal had given you the option of bringing back some of the BG characters who were left out of Shadows of Amn, like Xan or Shar-Teel . I suppose there's probably a mod for that. I...

I've been playing Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition on my Nexus 7 tablet, which is the 3rd time that I've restarted this game from scratch. I didn't have my save game from 2013 when I played BG:EE, since I had to wipe my laptop and the backup is in Australia. I also made a few screwups with my game in the early stage, which I've managed to fix using EE Keeper to edit the save files. You'll see lots of mentions of CLUA Console on the forums, but it's tricky/impossible to get this working in the Android version of the game, even if you use a bluetooth keyboard. Here are the instructions for setting up EE Keeper for Android if you don't have a PC version of BG2:EE installed. Basically, you need to copy the 'main' and 'patch' files from the    sdcard/Android/obb/com.beamdog.baldursgateenhancededition  directory on your device, then extract them using 7zip on your PC. You can configure EE Keeper to use this as the installation directory,...

One of the things that clearly distinguishes life in the Wild West from the "default setting" of D&D is the availability of rail transportation ... and the unavailability of magical transportation. For those who can afford it, a 9th level sellspell would charge 450gp to teleport  3 passengers up to 900 miles in the blink of an eye. In a small city (population > 5000) there is an 86% chance of at least one 9th or 10th level wizard, or 10th level sorcerer (3.5ed DMG, p139). Of course, there's also the chance of a teleportation mishap, but every mode of transport has its downsides. For everyone else, wagon trains and riverboats are still the norm. A long-haul stagecoach can cover from 70 up to 120 miles per day over well-maintained roads. Charles O. Paullin (1932) Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States , the University of Michigan. Michael Graham Richard (2012)  How fast could you travel across the U.S. in the 1800s?

"The power of the sword is more sensibly felt in an extensive monarchy, than in a small community. It has been calculated by the ablest politicians that no State, without being soon exhausted, can maintain above the hundredth part of its members in arms and idleness. But although this relative proportion may be uniform, its influence over the rest of society will vary according to the degree of its positive strength. The advantages of military science and discipline cannot be exerted, unless a proper number of soldiers are united into one body..." Edward Gibbon The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ,  volume the first, chapter V, page 106. Printed for W. Strahan and T. Cadell, London 1776. If each of the Imperial Legions under the Immortal Emperor Drakus Coaltongue numbered 10,000 troops, that would imply that the population of Eastrealm would be at least 7 million. Given that the population of Europe at the time of Charlemagne (9th century AD) was arou...

The majority of what happens in a fantasy metropolis should be "beneath the surface": whether literally (sewers, catacombs and ruins below the city streets); or metaphorically (secret plots and political machinations). I've mentioned the city of Marchion (in Splintered Peace by David Chart ) before. The megadungeon beneath Mage Hill is mostly implied - it is up to the individual DM to populate that location with specific dungeon levels and denizens. The site of Marchion was settled in the distant past, but no one knows by whom. Sometimes strange artifacts are unearthed by people digging foundations for houses, and many think that Mage Hill isn't a natural feature. However, these inhabitants, whoever they were, were long gone before the first recorded attempts to settle the site. Local folk tales tell of the buried complexes they left behind, but no one knows whether these stories have any substance. Aboveground, most of the mages' towers still stand, ...

The "default setting" of D&D is the context that is implied by the Rules As Written. This doesn't refer to any specific fantasy world, like Greyhawk or Mystara. Rather, it takes the "core rules" as a whole and explores the implications and assumptions inherent in such a system. This article in the D&D wiki is a great example: "D&D represents a period in history that is most closely identifiable with the Iron Age: the landscape is dotted with tribes and aspiring empires, the wilderness is largely unexplored, and powerful individuals and small groups can take over an area without having a big geopolitical hubbub about it." In my opinion, it also closely resembles the Wild West (or rather, its fictional depiction) but with swords and sorcery instead of six-shooters. When adventurers reach "name level" they will tend to migrate to the frontier of civilization to establish their stronghold in unclaimed territory. The discovery o...

Cap'n Carver and his crew were smugglers and river pirates who regularly made the journey from Knossos, all the way up the river Brallen from Laveril to Helsmuth. They never went as far as Qualinost, even before the elves closed the border, because elven customs inspectors were known to use divination magic to scan cargo. They wouldn't be as easily fooled by the illusions that the wizard-navigator, Mixail Elets Zaitsev Beloi, cast on the ship and her crew to escape detection. These are the voyages of the pirate sloop Ocean Spray : Captain's log, the 5th of Metageitnion waxing Last summer, while we were docked in Helsmuth, a fresh-faced band of young adventurers hailed the ship, seeking passage downriver. They didn't look like they had much worth stealing, but they might fetch a good price in the slave markets of Knossos. We told them to meet us at the Saucy Wench, a tavern by the docks, at midnight. The bosun, Max the Ax, took a group of swabbies with him to set u...