Well, being immortal means that you can't die (unless eaten or disintegrated or something, oh yeah, lunacy too). So even if I wasn't a high enough level to tackle something in the game, it wasn't a problem. I would die and then get back up. Rise From Your Grave. LOL. Then I could go back and fight whatever it was I was fighting. Eventually, cause not everything was immortal (most things weren't), I would kill it. Near to the end of the game this didn't help much, but for the most part, you were high level by then and didn't have to resort to those kind of tricks to keep going.
Another benefit was that your character constantly regenerated. Like a troll, but slower. If you kept putting your character points into dexterity, the regeneration would keep going up as well. I started off with 18 to dex cause I wanted to make a thief character so I put most of my points there. And, as I leveled up, I would add another point. By the time that I got to 16th level as a thief, I had maxxed out the 25 points into dexterity. I could just stand in one spot and watch my hitpoints rise after I was hit. Made combat a lot easier. I could just duck and run til my hitpoints got up where I could fight again. I didn't die near as often then.
The only 2 real drawbacks that I had about the game was that I couldn't become a priest, nor could I find any armor in the game. They had stuff that would help push your armor class down, but no real armor. Also, another reason to have a really high dexterity.
I eventually did switch over to mage though, cause I really wanted to try out the cool spells in the game. My favorite was Abyssal Fury. To see the ground crack open and a demon's hand come up and grab your enemy, then pull him down below the ground was really cool. If he failed his saving throw (I guess anyways), the hand would fling his skeleton out of the pit and then the ground would snap back together. Totally AWESOME. Another cool spell was Meteor Storm Bombardment. I would cast the spell and magic would travel up into the sky and then go into outer space to where there was a meteor storm. The magic would grab some of the meteors and pull them back to the planet. It would bring them raining down upon your foes. Again, truly inspired. I loved the graphics on that one. There are so many other spells to mention, but it was just too COOL.
Whenever I would get to a point that was really hard as a fighter or a mage though, I would talk to Annah, and become a thief again. I could go invisible with my stealth option and backstab the hell out of stuff. Then I could run away (with a dex of 25 this wasn't too hard at all) and then go inviso again and then backstab some more. I went down into the pit under the Lower Ward with just him alone and took it out. I tried with other party members, but they just kept getting killed. Another benefit to this was if I died down there (which rarely happened), I would just get back up again by the entrance. Just too COOL.
I like this game so much that I have shelved BGII for awhile while I replay it. I understand that there are multiple endings to the game. I didn't know that the first time I played it, so I erased everything after I was done. I was kinda disappointed by how it ended when I played it. Anyways, not to belittle BGII or anything, but I just really liked it that I could advance as high as I wanted and that I could tailor my character how I wanted AS I played it. You can put points to your stats whenever you get a level up. By the time I reached 26th level mage (I could cast 9th level spells by then - several of them) I had most of the stats raised up over 18. Except for Charisma, but who cares about Charisma anyways. LOL
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