Starting Wisdom

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Provided you're not playing a Cleric, Druid or Paladin I'd like to know what you think is a sufficient score for you to start the game as a young newbie adventurer. I already know the score means nothing other than lore bonus if you're not playing a character above. I'm thinking between 8-10.

 

Rangers need a 14 or above as well.

i try to keep it above 8, but thats for roleplaying only. If playing on a higher difficulty and using the more advanced options of SCS, min max away, you may need to.

 

Oh yeah, I thought I missed one. Thanx

 

This is the BG1 forum, but

• if you are planning on taking a sorcerer or wizard into Shadows of Amn or Throne of Bhaal, you'll also want a reasonable wisdom score for casting Limited Wish and Wish. Those are two of the most powerful spells in the game, and don't have the XP penalty they do in P&P (just like Stoneskin and True Sight don't have costly material components like in P&P, making them far more useful by virtue of not having prohibitively high costs to cast).
  Of course, for some wishes you'll want to quaff a potion of insight.
  So magic-users and sorcerers won't want a wisdom below 11.
• Monks also get bonuses based on their wisdom, so they too won't want to go below 10 and preferably around 14.
• Bards might want to keep it at 8 or higher for lore purposes.
• Fighters, thieves, and barbarians can use WIS as a dump stat.
• Clerics, Druids, Paladins, and Rangers use WIS for casting, and should NOT be below 14.
  Clerics and Druids should try for 18 or higher.

 

Er ... not quite.

Yes, WIS is useful in BG2 for Wizards to cast Wish or Limited Wish (but as you suggest, a Potion of Insight temporarily boosts WIS sufficiently for those spells, so investing precious stat points in WIS is pointless unless you intend to cast those spells frequently). If you're playing BG1 only (or BG1ee+SoD only), then Wizards have little use for WIS.

No, Monks get nothing for WIS (except the Lore bonus which everyone gets). (Although PnP is different.)

Yes, if you're relying on a Bard to identify stuff, then avoid Lore penalties by having WIS 8 or higher.

Yes, Fighters (inc. Barbarians) and Thieves gain no advantage from WIS (except Lore).

Yes, Clerics and Druids get extra castings-per-day for extra WIS and therefore should maximise their WIS, but NO, Paladins and Rangers don't get that bonus - they have a minimum WIS required by the class but get no benefit from going above the minimum.

 

I might have confused IWD2 rules where you need 10+spell level in the casting stat so paladins and rangers need 14 wisdom, and where monks get wisdom bonuses.
Sorry.

 

Mostly except Pallys need Wis to cast spell levels. At creation Pally only needs 13 Wis but he still needs 14 Wis to cast 4th level spells in BG2. Ranger requires a 14 at creation so he doesn't run into this issue.

 

That doesn't apply in the BG series. It's based on AD&D 2e rules, but it's not a full and exact implementation of AD&D 2e - some details were deliberately changed because they weren't suitable for RTwP on a computer, some details were too difficult to program in the Infinity Engine, some were omitted in error. The EEs have implemented a few more PnP rules than in the original versions of the series, but not these additional WIS bonuses.

 

Not so, it's exactly what I said before. A Paladin with WIS 13 can cast level 4 spells in BG2ee, so there's no benefit (except Lore) to exceeding the minimum WIS.

I think there was meant to have been some such restriction as you suggest, and I think there was even a version of the game documentation which mentioned something of this sort, but nevertheless it wasn't actually implemented. (Just to be certain that I'm remembering this correctly, I have just now created and tested a high-level Paladin with WIS 13 in unmodded BG2ee v2.6.6.0, which is the current version at the time of writing this - and yes, he can cast level 4 spells.) However, there are probably mods out there which implement this restriction.

 

Given that they included regeneration for high CON, it wouldn't have been any more difficult to program immunity to spells for high wisdom. So it was either an oversight or deliberate omission.
The magical defense adjustment on the other hand would be tricky as they would either need a lookup table for mental spells or a flag in the spell, and a check for the bonus. I can't think of any conditional saving throw bonuses implemented in the IE games.

Also the above would slow down all spell & spell-like effects handling as the check for WIS and if the spell applies is performed. This might have been noticeable on the 1990's computers still in common use when BG was released. It wouldn't have been as popular if it only worked on high end gaming rigs. Heck, even having requirements in line with BG2 might have killed the series with the first game due to 3 years of tech advancement when Moore's Law was still very much in force. (I got a 300mhz computer in late 1997. I got a 1ghz system in 2000).

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IIRC, in 2E there were no minimum stats for divine spells, but if you had less than 13 WIS you had a chance of spell failure, similar to mages in armor in IWD2.
Also keep in mind divine casting classes had minimum stat requirements. Clerics needed a minimum of 9 WIS to take levels in that class or would be forced to duel-class (with the downsides that entails) as they could lose access to their class abilities until they recovered the minimum stats needed. Ability drain could be scary. Paladins needed 13 WIS.

 

A risk of divine-casting failure for low WIS is another thing which (IIRC) was mentioned somewhere in some version of the documentation, but was never actually implemented. For example, in BG1ee, Quayle has only 10 WIS, yet he never suffers a random failure (although he does fail if he's interrupted by being hit, of course).

You may well be right, as you suggest in the rest of your post, that it was a deliberate decision to omit some of these details from the BG implementation to keep up the speed on old equipment.

 

Well that all sucks because I always tried to get high wisdom for the Paladin I played. Thought those immunities would play in later

 

Nope, in either BG game or IWD1 only clerics and druids benefit from high wisdom except in dialog choices.
On the other hand, your fighter doesn't suffer from using INT or WIS as dump stats, and thieves only suffer marginal impacts. Bards will want 10 WIS for lore and decent INT for spellcasting. Heck, bards want everything as they are jacks of all trades. STR, DEX, and 16 CON (more is wasted) for fighting, CHA for talking, INT & WIS for lore. Bards are the most demanding for stats after the C/F/M multiclass (because bards are VERY similar to a F/M/T multiclass.)

 

Yes, You are so right there! That's why I always went for at least a 100 for a role on my bard