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Weeeell, I like gem bags, too But yeah, the scroll cases and any other containers you can buy are a must.
Oh, and Vhailor's helm is another thing I never pass. Say what you will, but a simulacrum for anyone except mages and thieves seems... just too good to pass by
Ah, and the best anti-undead recipe - simulacrum+daystar. Then another sunray from the other character... and voila.

 

I buy nothing from the added cheese merchants.

The boomerang weapons are must-buy: Azuredge, Firetooth, Tangeron's bow, but not the throwing hammer because dwarves fight in melee! Even if an NPC only has one slot in Axe, it's very useful. For instance, I equip Keldorn with Azuredge, even if he has no proficiency yet, and drop his damn crossbow. I hate to pick up ammo and reload ranged weapons. And those weapons are all +3! They can hit 98% of the enemy forces.

You will want a shield +4 Sentinel.

The Str 19 girdle is somewhat cheesy, but I usually buy it for Jaheira or Valygar. It can also make the Sling of Seeking more useful.

The AC 3 bracers are too cheesy, but I gladly equip the found AC 4 ones...

Also very useful: Glasses of Identification, Nymph Cloak, girdle of bluntness, in some cases Helm of Charm Protection.

Generally, you will buy no armour, and not many melee weapons (maybe Club +3, Blade of Roses).

 

Whoah- thats the strictest attitude to cheese I've seen yet, Cptn Massacre. AC3 bracers are cheesy? What do you think of the Staff of the Magi?

 

It's extremely powerful, but you find it on the ground, not in a shop, so it's OK! The same with the Cloak of Mirroring, I wouldn't want it if it was sold by the added merchants, but I don't mind equipping it after an easy battle.
I know, sounds strange...
It's adventurer spirit vs capitalist greed I guess.

And also, it's difficult for me to see how those 'magic' bracers could deflect hits as efficiently as a plate mail. Jedi like? Deflecting arrows, or giving great speed to avoid 'em?
It seems too convenient for the cheesy player. So I'm a mage, or a fighter/mage or a kensai, but I don't want to face advert sides of these classes, such as high AC. Hey, there are cool bracers in the Mart! No problem, thanks Bioware!

 

I don't like the idea of using those girdles since I think you were given your strength by God and you should only be able to increase it with God-type events (eg. one of the evil tests at the end, I forget which one), not by just putting on some kind of girdle. That's a good point about those bracers too. Maybe you can parry blows with them?

By the way, I do buy the Blade of Roses. I like roses and I like when my characters have high charisma 'cause I have a lot of friends in real life. (My last fighter / mage character had 15 Dexterity and 11 Constitution so I could have 15 Charisma.) Plus OKCupid said my own charisma score was 16.

I also like Tansheron's Bow - the no ammo thing is a lifesaver. I used NearInfinity to make a longbow that doesn't require ammunition so I could have Minsc actually use his longbow proficiency for a change.

 

If you have the Item Upgrade mod, you can have the Heartseeker combined with one of the bow strings to create a +4longbow which does not require ammo and can confuse the target.

As far as AC is concerned, we all know that its interpretation in D&D can be called odd at best. Does a plate clad fighter evade being hit or does he ignore the hit? A high dex fighter and a plate clad fighter will defend differently, yet they get the same AC class. As such it makes more sence that bracers, which might allow for easier and faster movement, provide AC rather than plate.

 

Yes, AC is strange, you're not supposed to absorb damage with your armour but to "avoid" it.
In real life, if you were hit by a sword, your armour could absorb part of the damage, but in D&D, it's all or nothing, a D8 is a D8.
Another view:
If someone shoots in your back, like it often happens in BG2, you can't see and avoid it, but your armour can save you. Or if several arrows are fired at you from different directions.

 

I think of Bracers of Defense as the defensive version of the Gauntlets of Weapon Skill/Expertise. In this case, the Bracers would give you more skill at parrying attacks with your weapon, or failing that, the Bracers themselves (which presumably have magically enhanced toughness).

Heavy armor is considered to deflect glancing blows that otherwise would have skinned you. (Hey, there goes your bicep.) Since such attacks would be ineffective against your armor, the enemies must search for the weak spot in your armor in order to hit you, thus increasing the difficulty. This also applies to crushing weapons, as a glancing blow that would have caused a serious bruise might outright BOUNCE off of plate armor.

AC isn't so much a measure of how hard it is to hit you, it's more a measure of how hard it is to hurt you. That's one reason that Strength gives a to-hit bonus. With truly great Strength, you can try to ignore someone's armor, and instead just bash it in. Without such strength, you must rely on precision strikes to bypass someone's armor.

More like all of it. Consider a long sword (4 lbs. of thin metal with a cutting edge) hitting plate mail (50 lbs. of thicker metal of the same type formed into curved sheets). Now, if the sword hits the sheet directly, there is next to no chance of it slicing through. Indeed, the sword is more likely to break than the armor. Crushing damage would even be maximized in that situation, but you've still got 4 lbs. versus 50 lbs., not to mention the padding that is put on under all metal armors. (You have no idea how much un-padded metal armor chafes. )

(If you don't want to see the math, just skip the rest of my post. ) Looking at the physics, the weight of the sword times it's velocity squared will equal the weight of (the sword, the armor, and the victim combined) times the square of the new v of the combined mass. (I know it's .5mv*v, but it balances out in an equation.) Assuming an average weight human male weighing 174 lbs. (by 2e rules), the equation looks like this:

{iv is initial velocity, ev is end velocity, ivs is iv squared, etc.}

228 * evs = 4 * ivs
evs = ivs / 57
ev = iv / ~7.5
ev = 13.245% * iv

Thirteen percent is minimal. Another way to think about it is a tiny little compact car running into a tank.

 

Interesting point, though the heavy armour would prevent anyone from moving quickly, i.e. running, climbing, etc. some knights needed a crane to get on the back of their horses... Still I'd like to have your opinion Felinoid on arrows and bolts: crossbows were banned in European medieval warfare; the Welsh longbow was one of the most efficient ranged weapons in the Hundred Years' War and decimated the French knights.

 

Knights needed cranes because they had specially reinforced plates. Turneys with lances(I have no idea how it is called) were practically a sport, no sense in risking your life. As Felinoid said, average full plate weighted 50lbs, that's 25kg... sure you couldn't even jump in it, but it would be enough to walk and swing a sword. As for crossbows and Longbows, well, crossbows took forever to draw, and longbows? Two years of training led to arm deformations. Not pretty.

Now I sound like armor fan, whilst it's the contrary: I believe unarmored and agile fighter could defeat armor tank... somehow, heh. But in a battle, with hundreds of knights, going in without an armor is a suicide...

Look what you've done! You derailed the thread!

 

The only way bolts and arrows would work against plate is if they found the gaps in the armor at the joints. In a larger scale battle (Welsh bowmen vs. French knights), different tactics are used. Blanket fire is surprisingly effective at finding these weaknesses. The more arrows that come raining down, the better the chance that one or more will find those weak spots. And even the relatively small impact of a single arrow can be enough to topple a surprised man from his horse. (After all, they're wearing armor; they should be invincible. ) And with full plate weighing 70 lbs. or more, it can be difficult to get back up before you get killed by either more arrows or a mop-up crew with swords. (Not to mention the weakness brought on by loss of blood and possibly shock.)

 

Whats interesting in the rules is that Dex bonuses stack with uber-heavy full plate. Try dodging a blow with a 120lbs piece of metal around your body.

Oh well I just changed the subject of my own post

 

@Stu: you've done it this time!

Back on topic, I don't like the bonus merchants' items, I think they are overpowered and weird. The Sensate ring feels odd in the game (that is before doing the quest for Raelis Shai) and the Shield of Balduran is one of the items that according to me spoil the game (look I'm going down the Beholder's lair now, easy as pie!) the Robe of Vecna is worth mentioning since I believe it is the kind of item that should be earned the hard way and not bought with a little "more than a few gold pieces rubbed together".

 

Felinoid not all arrows need to 'find' gaps in armour, for example have you ever heard of 'Armour Piercing Arrows'? The Welsh Longbow men had arrows for many different occasions, eg they had arrows that pierced chainmail, which broadhead arrows would ignore. Armour piercing arrows pierced even platemail and 'openup' upon impact ot cause greater wounds.

Full plate mail was not that heavy, just cumbersome and expensive. Chainmail is the heavy one.

 

@Cuchulainn:
Also true, but arrows such as those in a D&D setting would have bonuses to hit or damage. It falls under the strength bonus category a little bit (with the arrow itself having the bonus).

Maybe not that pansy crap they make nowadays, but back when it was actually used to protect people, they didn't have light-weight metals, and they didn't take any chances on thickness either. It may not seem that heavy while you're on the horse, but that's because the horse is supporting the weight. Once you're on the ground, it magically becomes a LOT heavier.

 

My favorite is the blade of rose and the the stupid 2 handed sword that I always give to Minsc. (Can't think of it's name)

 

Armor piercing arrows often didn't work as advertised. It's important to note that the most prominent example given for why archers were so great (Agincor) didn't have the archers practicing archery. The heavily armored french knights had a problem with their metal armor forming a seal against the mud while charging from a large area into a smaller valley in the rain. It formed a bottleneck. England's unarmored archers hit them with clubs and (and whatever other weapons they had on hand) as the French knights fell due to the crowd pressure behind them. When the mud sealed to their armor the french knights were often unable to get up and suffocated to death. It wasn't a victory for longbowmen as much as it was a display of tactical stupidity on the part of France. They failed to take the terrain and it's effects on mobility, especially while wearing heavy armor, into account.