Consis

On the other two forums from which I commonly visit, this exact topic has endless replies and debates ranging from government's fault to it being a race-related problem. It seems almost no talk of it here though.

But to be honest, I'm glad because some people are getting angry and that's simply ridiculous. Thus I come here where the focus is of the fictional sort. That's what I've always loved about D&D; it's trusty ability to take your mind off real-world nonsense.

This may be a bit late but I'm definitely staying with you guys. You moved, I received the email, and I'm still mostly observing. I don't post much because I have so much yet to read and learn from such Forgotten Realms masters. That is how I feel about you guys. And I think this is better than any other half-baked wannabe cheap immitation spilling similar information onto the web.

Carry on!

They probably removed the blood war. It was not in any other edition besides AD&D 2E and alot of people didn't like it.

True, as is the popular sentiment of this entire forum and most of the young fans who've since grown into adulthood and lost their chlidhood to workaholic nonimaginative careers. It's utterly depressing.

New fans, new enthusiasm, and better consistency of details are needed. If even the authors aren't loyal to the story then how can we expect anyone else stay interested? This is what I've devoted my life to. I will renew the lost hope when I finish my work. I don't care if it takes the rest of my life to perfect it. People will come back and be happy with Baldur's Gate and the side-shoot "Blood War" random encounters. It may not happen in my lifetime, but that is not for me to decide, so I simply carry on with what I am compelled to do. Anything less would not be me.

As I recall, Baatezu supposedly out number every devil at least a hundred to one. I gathered that devils are more powerful while the fiends have sheer numbers on their side.
(please excuse the following rant)
It may well be that the balor in the BG2 "underdark" was a portal or even buried there via an imprisonment spell. But there is also another consideration; whoever is running the show at Wizards of the Coast headquarters is anything but consistent. We fans are loyal to the parts of story that we first encounter only to see minor details contradicted in consecutive games. The books, games, and role-playing canon often conflict.

I don't really have a problem with this because these are the only people I know of that have ever successfully blended Greek, Celtic, Norse, Oriental, Egytpian, and modern mythology to form this intrensically popular role-playing game we now call AD&D 3rd edition. I tip my hat to them for this accomplishment.

Personally, I've grown so attached to the Baldur's Gate tangent that I refuse to accept anything contradicting it.

I quite agree with Nightmare(as usual). 2nd edition and even today's latest 3rd edition AD&D provides for some exceptionally powerful player characters past lv10. I remember having these same discussions with my old DungeonMasters and we have always come to the conclusion that a lv10-anything is really quite powerful. Of course while we would discuss such things some group fanatacist would immediately jump into our conversation and start spouting arguments like: "Terrask, Great Wyrms, Holy Avenger, etc". But really, a character can defeat such monsters and wield such powerful weapons by lv12 easily as long as the character is working together with other well developed team members. This is why every group I've ever been a part of have always agreed, as a group, to retire their character sometime during their level12 adventuring. The DungeonMaster would usually give the player time to think of a memorable/dramatic exit so that his/her character could retire with plenty of significance for the future storybooks/tales of legend. Then in the next campaign the retired character would live on in song and casual banter.

I can also agree that wizards might sometimes wish to get higher than lv12 because they are aiming for those specific high-level spells such as Delayed-Blast Fireball, Chainlightning, etc. But the instant the player is able to use such powerful magiks is the instant the rest of the group becomes either a crispy charred victim of collateral damage or obselete all together. So as you can see it seems more reasonable for the DungeonMaster to only let the player use the player-preferred high-level spell once and then insist on character retirement.