It is completely irrational to say one is so experienced and capable virtually NO amount of low level opponents presents a challenge. If Richard the Lionheart or Napoleon went out to fight ten peasants conscripted last week, what do you think would happen? In AD&D the famous generals would slaughter their ten opponents in short order, then be mad because they got practically no loot or experience. In the real world two regional powers would need new heads of state.

We can talk about rebalancing the encounter to make it challenging, but that misses the point that no combat against vastly superior numbers should be rendered trivial by one participants vastly greater experience. Stick a sword through someones heart and they are DEAD; just because it is your first sword fight and their thousandth does not change that. Even AD&Ds coup de grace rule acknowledges that; too bad no others do.

A good example is your frustration at lacking magical weapons during the first Athkatla vampire fight and not wanting summon Cowled Wizards by using magic. After min/maxing another party through TotSC last year then revisiting SoA, my first thought when reading that was "just kill them, too." Irenicus did, and after replicating all the tomes and loading up with all the best gear, even half a party at 10th level was sufficient for me to do the same when I decided to see if I could—I did not even need a spellcaster. The only reason NOT to was that I did not want my Reputation trashed the next time I went to a shop. In terms of challenge... there ARE no combat challenges for that party, probably why I never bothered to finish the game again. It is not like push button dialogue allows much roleplaying.

I will admit in passing that I DO take a perverse pleasure in deliberately breaking min/max hack 'n slash games. ' />


My obvious solution to that problem is that GURPS does the former as well as the latter; the trick there is, once again, that it requires GMs have a rather encylopedic knowledge of the system (as well as a thorough one, but that is true of virtually all systems; no one enjoys watching the GM spend most of the night digging through his library for various rules he KNOWS are there SOMEWHERE.)


I have no experience with AD&D 1st ed. but found 2nd ed. good for those who enjoy that style (plus, like many people, it was my first introduction to RPGs, so it has nostalgia value.) Proficiencies offer just enough of a skill system that I am not completely frustrated by either character limitations or one-size-fits-all stats.

Honestly, from your description, I think you should give GURPS a shot, though I suggest playing rather than running it for a while if possible, because it takes some time and experience to digest all the combinations of rules. However, it has a darned good and fairly simple core, and mostly eliminates the need to fiat most fluff (the simple core makes it fairly easy to improvise with the few exceptions.) Ultimately it comes down to where you want to invest the work, either in learning a complex systems rules for multitudinous contingencies, or devising your own as needed.

The biggest appeal of GURPS for me, apart from realism, is the freedom to use any gameworld without needing a new set of rules. Obviously some stuff is world specific (e.g. channeling in TWoT,) but there are worldbooks for that, which mostly consist of "use this rule to cover this, optionally modified with this tweak to better replicate the specific world." Just googling around for this discussion turned up GURPS versions of:

A Greyhawk campaign, complete with demi-human races,
Generic versions of Frealms demi-humans and
MERP/ICE races for use in a TLotR campaign.

The one I would most like to try is a Prisoner campaign, but I do not know anyone here who uses GURPS, and my Prisoner worldbook is on the wrong side of the ocean. I always enjoyed the series though, and the prospect of a campaign where combat is rare, and invariably supplemental to the in depth mental conflicts and challenges, is very appealing


Like I say, the freedom to say, "rocks fall..." alters the paradigm a bit, but hopefully it seldom comes to that in your campaigns. Beyond a certain point though... once THAC0 reaches 0 and the fighters are pulling 3/1, what do you do to keep it challenging? Throw in spells without saves, off the scale AC/THAC0, level drains behind every corner? Theoretically you can keep it challenging as long as you keep increasing the difficulty, sure, but if the characters keep getting more powerful after a while they are fighting nothing but gods and tarrasques. The core problem, the one that wrecks verisimilitude (and thus fun,) is that they can and will go cuisinart on anything less, and that never goes away, only gets worse.


Yup, ranged weapons are brutal in BG (as, IMHO, they should be.) I cannot stand Jahiera though, so usually do not have access to Entangling Roots then, and consequently end up trying to rotate Minsc and the protagonist as meat shields while the rest of the party uses ranged weapons. That gets tricky, too, because Imoen is awful with a bow (despite her Dex bonus,) and my protagonist is usually the best, and he cannot melee and shoot arrows simultaneously. Kivan is a godsend there.


*nods* That is much of the boon and bane of BG for AD&D 2nd ed. vets: You already know many of the tricks the game relies on ignorance of to provide challenges. I am not really sure why the fight on the way into the Cloakwood mines gave me trouble, because it should not REQUIRE poison arrows for the mages (though they do make it far easier.) Maybe I was just not high enough yet to hit the mages regularly, because on my first run I was focused on finishing the game ASAP rather than exploring every nook and cranny (which tends to boost XP.) Those explosive arrows though... I have been known to have the whole party fire them at things that REALLY made me mad.