Sword Coast Stratagems II - Gameplay Tweaks

These components could equally well be called "miscellaneous tweaks".

Remove unrealistically helpful items from certain areas.

Vampires do not stockpile stakes in their lairs; magic golems are not usually found near stashes of nonmagical weapons; demons' lairs are not usually stocked with books explaining how to eliminate their defences and wands stocked with the requisite spells; trolls are not generally found in places filled with fire and acid arrows; cities under siege do not generally have large quantities of +3 weapons for sale in bars. But in BG2 all these things occur. Presumably this is intended to reduce frustration, but I just find it spoils my suspension of disbelief. This component tries to remove all such implausibly-placed items. (Obviously, things like stakes and fire arrows are still plentifully available, but you can't count on just finding them lying around where you want them.)

Remove unrealistically convenient ammunition from the game

Similarly, the game has vast stashes of ammunition lying around for the taking, presumably because the developers thought you'd be bored of having to buy it. This component removes all the nonmagical ammunition from containers, for those who find things just a bit too convenient to be realistic.

As of version 8, this component can be fine-tuned. You can choose to remove only the non-magical ammunition, to remove all the ammunition except those nice +3/+4 items you find in Throne of Bhaal, or just to remove everything.

Faster bears

"If you're in the woods, and you run into an angry bear, don't worry about it. Bears can't move very fast, you can outdistance it at a brisk walk".

It's unrealistic that BG2 bears can't catch up with the party. This component tweaks their movement rate until it's about the same as for humans. This also makes the druid's bear shapeshift less annoying.

Increase the price asked by Gaylan Baele.

This component aims both to make it more realistic for the player to linger in chapter 2 of SoA (which in gameplay terms is often rather tempting, but is hard to justify on roleplaying grounds) and to add an extra challenge by restricting the player's wealth in the first part of the game. As everyone knows, in the unmodded game Gaylan asks the player to provide 20,000gp. With this component installed, he will want more - between 40,000gp and 120,000gp, depending on which option you choose during installation.

Make Freedom scrolls available earlier.

Scrolls of Freedom (the spell that reverses Imprisonment) are fairly thin on the ground early in SoA, whereas Liches love Imprisoning people. This component makes a few scrolls of Freedom available from Athkatlan stores (the Coppor Coronet and the Adventurer's Mart, in fact.)

Make Watchers' Keep accessible between SoA and ToB

In roleplaying terms, the natural time to explore Watchers' Keep is between the end of Shadows of Amn and the start of Throne of Bhaal. Before chapter 4 you're probably too weak; in chapters 6 and 7 of SoA you're in a desperate race against time; in ToB, the way the start works makes it difficult not to take random time off from urgent business to explore Watchers' Keep.

This component moves the start location of Throne of Bhaal to Watchers' Keep, so that you're moved there immediately after the end of SoA. You can then explore WK to your heart's content. When you want to start ToB, just leave WK via the world map. You can still return to WK after leaving, and you can still explore it in SoA if you prefer to.

Be warned: you don't have any stable base, or any way to change your party, as long as you're starting at WK. If you find you need either, you'll need to do the first part of ToB. Similarly, although you could start a new game of ToB using this component, this is only a good idea if you're masochistic enough to want to solo Watchers' Keep with a starting-level ToB character!

This component is only available on Windows versions of SCS II.

Recover lost items from Hell

Because you're transported directly from Hell at the end of chapter 7, any items on the ground (notably, those dropped by slaughtered companions) are lost in the lower planes. This component (suggested by the bigg) fixes this problem: your items will be on the ground waiting for you when you start chapter 8. The component is compatible with the "Make Watchers Keep accessible between SoA and ToB" component, and you can install them in either order.

Prevent party members from dying irreversibly

This component prevents "chunking", the annoying permanent death of your character when you're reduced below -10 hp. Characters who get reduced to 0 hp or below just die in the usual fashion and can be resurrected. It isn't possible to prevent quite all forms of chunking (massive damage from fire, in particular, still seems to cause chunking fairly reliably), but this component should make it a rarer occurrence. This may be useful in the later stages of the game, when melee opponents often do 30-40 hp damage per blow - that 10 hp safety margin starts to feel slender.

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Baldur's Gate I (1998), Tales of the Sword Coast (1999), Baldur's Gate II (2000), and Throne of Bhaal (2001) are ©BioWare. Dungeons & Dragons material is ©Wizards of the Coast.