I've been a massive fan of Baldur's Gate ever since I saw the first screenshots back in 96 when almost nobody else knew about the project. It's a game series that has always been in my top 5 of all time and for 99% of it, I love it to death. However, there has always been one niggling thing that has bothered me about the series, something that flies in the face of the P&P game it was derived from.

What I'm talking about is actually two related problems. The first issue I have is the way the game almost requires save scumming/reloading to defeat many encounters. It completely goes against how pen and paper games work. In tabletop D&D, when things go wrong in battle it means that you deal with it, you move on and adapt. No decent DM I've ever known lets you simply roll again or pretend things didn't actually happen they way they did. Even if a DM wants to fix things, he does it with sleight-of-hand or provides other "avenues" to make things good over time. But a blatant "Do-Over"? No, that doesn't really exist in classical Role-playing games. Not that I'm saying this isn't a problem in nearly all video game RPGs, but one that stands out like a sore thumb in a game trying so hard to mimic the table-top game it was based upon.

Not only that, but many of the battles, especially with high level mages in BG2, practically require you to do test runs to let the mage empty his spell book so you can find out what he's got. Only after determining his power can you "do it for real" and actually beat him. Even if you're not intentionally trying to cheese encounters, many areas in the game are near-unbeatable without doing this.

Spellhold is a good example, especially if you're a new player and didn't know what was coming. If you simply let party members die with no reloading, you're going to have almost an impossible time actually getting out. This means you really have to start the entire game over if you hope to finish the game. So A, either you have played the series so many times that you know exactly how tough each encounter is and how to prepare for it to win the first time, or B, you are a new player and decide to grind for levels before each quest just to be "safe". The bottom line is that you're bound to get a meta-game experience that deeply hurts the immersion of the game.

I personally hate this aspect of the BG series. I would much rather just let the chips lie where they fell. If I lose half my party in the Underdark with no money to rez them before taking on the Balor, so be it. I should be able to deal with it somehow. I shouldn't be required to save scum each and every battle to get through the game successfully. To me, that's a slap in the face to P&P RPGs. A highly experienced player, who knows the game inside and out may not have this problem, but then you're simply meta-gaming by having prior knowledge of what to expect anyway.

My personal solution to this problem is to let the chips fall where they will and go on, even at great difficulty. Is it hard? Of course. At times it is REALLY hard. You can't tell me that losing half you party to a band of wandering skeleton warriors right before fighting the Shade Lord at Umar Hills doesn't make you want to hit the load button. It takes an incredible amount of self-control to decide to you're going to trudge back to town to rez your party. Sometimes you don't even have enough money to do so and it may require another 2 hours of cash gathering just to be able to bring back your healer or someone else important so you can finish the original quest you started.

But is it impossible? No it's certainly not, I know there are people out there with the kind of patience required to play this way (for the most part at least). Check out this guy's let's play of BG1 to see someone essentially playing without scumming and without grinding. I admire this guy a lot for his way of playing these games, but even he sometimes had to cheese a few fights just to have a prayer of winning later on in the series.

But this brings me to my second problem. Let's say I want to avoid save/reload scumming by simply letting things happen, why then must my main character's death force a game over? And before I hear, "well he's essential to the plot and must live for the game to work", let me just say that this is not necessarily true even now. I can export my main character and import him into another game as a secondary character already in multi-player. So mechanically, even now, the game supports the idea that you can swap out main characters. But on the flip-side of the argument, I think the game is somewhat broken already because of this. How does it make sense that the main character essentially never dies through the entire Baldur's Gate saga when everyone else in his party does at some point or another? That just seems horribly unrealistic to me. If I were Imoen after about 200 hours in I'd start to question why is it that this guy is so darn lucky all the time?

So what I would like to see is a mod that, rather than giving you a game over when CHARNAME dies, nothing happens, the game continues on with the main hero dead like anyone else. Would the story or plot become bugged and or broken after that? I don't know, but I honestly don't care as long as I'm presented with the opportunity to continue onward. I could resurrect my character later. I know this is possible in the Infinity Engine as this is how it works in Icewind Dale and some people have actually produced this by accident in their own BG game. There must be a flag somewhere in the code that starts the game over sequence that can simply be turned off when the main character dies. I'd love to know how to do that or where to look.

Anyway, I think I've made my point. The first problem is annoying but not impossible to get around if you're willing to be frustrated a lot. I don't think that's really fixable - I have a strong hunch the game itself was designed around the idea that you're supposed to cheese encounters quite a bit. Even though it sort of flies in the face of the entire purpose for resurrections. To fix that would mean you would have to throw the baby out with the bathwater and redesign the whole game to work more dynamic. The second problem is unavoidable unless a mod was written to override the game over screen - which I would love to get my hands on.

I've personally never worried about this...To me the Baldur's Gate and IWD games are computer games which are only based on the ruleset (and a simplified one at that) of AD&D, and I find it pointless to compare them to tabletop roleplaying, they work in an entirely different manner. If I feel like going back to town to resurrect everyone would be too much of a hassle and I don't have the time/patience to do it, I simply just reload. And even though I like the Infinity Engine games a lot, due to the nature of saving throws, hit rolls etc., I have to admit that the outcome of certain situations can depend on luck as well, not to mention that sometimes I can accidentally make a wrong click with a mouse, hit a certain key which can mess up a whole battle for me. A typical example for that is when one of my clerics/wizards is casting a spell that would be essential for me to win a battle, and I accidentally order the unit to move away, and thus interrupting the spellcasting. I usually still try to solve situations like this on the spot without reloading, but there are times when I just don't care, and simply hit the 'load' button. Long story short: I like immersion and challenge, but there is a certain limit over which it's really not worth it for me to stress myself over a computer game.

You may be interested in this mod, assuming you're using BGT or Tutu. I'd imagine you might find a similar option for vanilla BG1 if you google it. It doesn't quite accomplish the letting the main character die aspect (it returns the character at 1hp if you win the battle after he 'dies'), but you could easily just not heal him or use him until you visit a temple, then remove the cost of 'res'ing him with Shadowkeeper.

^^ This. This is the problem that the OP has, not the two irrelevant (to these games) points he/she made.

You know it's funny you say that because I have heard people say, going all the way back to 1998, that BG is one of the best computer games at simulating the table-top experience ever made. And to a large extent it does pull this off pretty darn well. In many, many ways, especially if I'm playing with a friend, feel like I'm playing a P&P game, minus the DM.

So I don't really think my point is irrelevant (the word Hickory used) since the original goal of the game was to pull off a P&P-like experience in a computer game as best as they could. It's just, in this regard, they failed pretty miserably. I'd wager that's exactly the sentiment of most people who play Baldur's Gate because it really makes all those resurrection temples pointless doesn't it? I feel like there's a disconnect - on the one hand they seem to really want you to let the chips fall where they may, evidenced by all the temples. But on the execution side, they seem to be telling us to save/reload every 5 seconds, screw their temples. Thanks, I will definitely try this. It sounds very close to what I want. By the looks of it, it's still being actively supported as well.

It's true, but it has never annoyed me more than other games (like saving in Half Life just before a gunfight and playing it all over again until I "win" with full health and least ammo wasted).
Anyways, when a character dies (and is not blown to pieces and I can resurrect him/her), I use to quicksave, so either I replay a lot or carry him/her to a temple.

The irrelevance is you trying to compare the two as one and the same, and lambasting the shortcomings of Baldur's Gate -- a computer game -- compared to a real table-top experience. They didn't fail at all. You, on the other hand, are failing to see them as completely different entities and experiences.

To be honest I never was into tabletop roleplaying to begin with; I remember playing a few times with friends when I was a teenager, but I could never really get into it for some reason, so the fact that BG "does not live up to" the PnP experience doesn't bother me. Still, based on those few sessions that I've taken part in, I believe I can say that to me there is a huge difference between playing a computer game and tabletop rping: The latter allows for much more freedom, since it is played by real people and can be adjusted in any way the players or the DM want it to, and is essentially a social activity. The former is a computer game for single player experience, and comes with all the limitations associated with this medium and the technical limitations of the era the game was developed in. I don't know about the opinions of others, but to me the two have always been entirely different experiences and sources of entertainment. You might as well compare reading a book on your own to having a tabletop rpg session with friends, which, again, would be pointless in my opinion.

Yes, the resurrection temples are there in the game, and every player is free to use them any time they wish to. Sometimes I do too. And sometimes I don't. I certainly won't lose any sleep over the fact that there are times when I resort to hitting the 'load game' buttong instead of walking through x number of screens to resurrect all the dead party members. Sometimes it can be immersive and sometimes it's simply a chore.

It does mimic D&D pretty well. What people tend to maybe forget is that old school D&D is incredibly lethal. Fighting monsters was not always a good option, if you could sneak in and loot the treasure (since you got more XP from the loot in any event), and a player would likely have a few henchmen to act as spare bodies or cannon fodder.

In computer games, the fights tend to be unavoidable, so we die a lot. I prefer games that are more "roguelike" where you live with the consequences, but for something like Baldurs Gate, I dont feel too bad save scumming. It's just the limits of the computer RPG genre.

I honestly have come to the conclusion that the designers of Baldur's Gate wanted players to accept and live with the consequences of their actions rather than abusing the save/reload buttons. I used to not think this way, I used to feel okay getting every fight to go perfect. My thoughts would go something like, "Dang I lost Minsc, let me try again....darn I didn't want to use that potion of giant strength, let me try again...etc", and soon my game seemed to be so twinked-out that I was never using potions (because, hey, I might just need those someday) and every fight was a perfect victory.

That's when I started to realize that this simply *cannot* be the the way the programmers wanted me to play. I mean, it's really no different than cheating with the CLUA Console or using other hacks to beef the party. If the outcome is the same (my party eats every opponent for breakfast), in the end there is no real distinction.

I think, really, there can be a certain level of joy out of admitting that you lost a battle and need to go back to town and/or find some other avenue to gain XP and loot. After watching the let's play series by mynameisnotlilly I finally saw how this could work and the light turned on for me. All these years I felt like I'd been playing it wrong.

Another RPG did this as well: TES 3 Morrowind. In that game, if you wanted, you could easily break the game by simply twinking out your character by using the right spells and items in just the right way. But I think if you do that, you're doing it wrong. In that game the developers basically said, "here's a huge sandbox world for you to make your role-playing playground, have fun.". A true role-player keeps things in context, if he's playing a fighter he avoids looting everything in sight because he wants to put restrictions upon himself. A thief runs from a fight, even if he may be strong enough to win - because, well, that's what thieves do. The point is that in Morrowind you made the game what you wanted it to be by playing a role.

The same idea I think applies to Baldur's Gate. Play a role. And when things go wrong, let things play out. Maybe you've used your last potion, or maybe your party lost its fighter, hell, maybe your party has had its fighter chunked and is permanently gone. Maybe permanently losing a character tells a far more interesting and compelling story than simply hitting the reload button each time. For me, my games have become far more rich and compelling because I've tried to let fate run its course. Is it painful at times? Yes, but often the most difficult experiences impact us the deepest.

How do you go about forgetting everything you already know about enemy tactics strengths & weaknesses, or even where they are & when they'll attack?

Regarding the player character death meaning 'game over', it's probably something to do with the Bhaalspawn thing...

A lot of games can benefit from being played that way. Original XCOM/UFO, I always play "iron man" style. Makes the tension go through the roof :)

I've heard that explanation before, but I think it's a cop-out. If that were the case, why not a game over screen when Imoen dies. Isn't she Bhaalspawn too?

Because the game's story revolves around your character, not Imoen.