Posted October 02, 2018
I just realized the following (note that I haven't actually tested this, as I have no desire to install either game at the moment):
If one of your party members is equipped with a cursed item, and you don't have the Remove Curse spell handy, there is an alternative:
Kill the character. Doing so will cause the character to drop all of their equipment (a mechanic I dislike for unrelated reasons, but it happens to work in our favor here.) In particular, this means the character will no longer have the cursed item equipped.
Then, revive the character. Fortunately, unlike some other games, in the Baldur's Gate series, there is no permanent side effect of allowing a character to die and then reviving them.
Now, there are a few limitations to this trick:
* It won't work for the main character; if you try, the game will notice that the main character is dead and immediately take you to the game over screen.
* It won't work for items that won't drop on death. For example, it won't work for weapons created by spells (except one particular spell in BG2, but those weapons can be easily traded anyway and don't stick), and it won't work for Imoen's Belt (assuming you manage to actually kill her, which is not as easy as it sounds).
* Unfortunately, the games (particularly BG2) have a lack of cursed items that are actually worth equipping. (If only the game had items like Wizardry 8's Staff of Doom, which is cursed with negative health regen but is a powerful weapon...) As a result, this trick is probably not often useful, and not worth the effort of re-organizing the character's inventory. In BG1, where it looks like there might be *some* use for cursed items (I read about a use for the Vampiric Blade; use its reverse drain effect to heal the rest of the party), you are more likely to have access to Remove Curse than to a revival effect.
If one of your party members is equipped with a cursed item, and you don't have the Remove Curse spell handy, there is an alternative:
Kill the character. Doing so will cause the character to drop all of their equipment (a mechanic I dislike for unrelated reasons, but it happens to work in our favor here.) In particular, this means the character will no longer have the cursed item equipped.
Then, revive the character. Fortunately, unlike some other games, in the Baldur's Gate series, there is no permanent side effect of allowing a character to die and then reviving them.
Now, there are a few limitations to this trick:
* It won't work for the main character; if you try, the game will notice that the main character is dead and immediately take you to the game over screen.
* It won't work for items that won't drop on death. For example, it won't work for weapons created by spells (except one particular spell in BG2, but those weapons can be easily traded anyway and don't stick), and it won't work for Imoen's Belt (assuming you manage to actually kill her, which is not as easy as it sounds).
* Unfortunately, the games (particularly BG2) have a lack of cursed items that are actually worth equipping. (If only the game had items like Wizardry 8's Staff of Doom, which is cursed with negative health regen but is a powerful weapon...) As a result, this trick is probably not often useful, and not worth the effort of re-organizing the character's inventory. In BG1, where it looks like there might be *some* use for cursed items (I read about a use for the Vampiric Blade; use its reverse drain effect to heal the rest of the party), you are more likely to have access to Remove Curse than to a revival effect.
