So, one of my many projects right now is the first Eschalon game on Steam. It's a reasonably solid stripped-down Baldur's Gate-type, with a one-man party fighting goblins, thugs, lizards, slimes and (I'd assume) other critters. As well as me butchering a helpful townsperson because he had an adverse reaction to me looting his house.

The game's difficulty seems to lie in the percentages, both in battles and in picking locks. Even now, at L5 with a character that, aside from one bad pre-game choice (using 3 points to get a proficiency with shields even though they're essentially worthless because you need that hand free for a torch in dungeons, at least if you're melee-based) has been at least kind of intelligently built, fighting the tougher foes like thugs and goblins is sort of luck-based as they have a better hit % than I do.

Yesterday, I finally broke down and truly accepted save-scumming as a way to circumvent this problem. Saving before choosing to fight anything remotely challenging and before attempting to pick any lock. And, man, I completed a couple side-quests, beat down enough thugs to gain access to a couple skill books and gave myself a bit of hope I might actually get through the game at some point in the future.

But there's this nagging voice telling me that I'm basically setting on a path to beat this game the cheapest way possible by essentially taking no chances and exploiting its "save at any time" mechanics to the max. The majority of me responds that doing things this way is a lot better than simply getting pissed because gaining a level and putting my points into dexterity and stuff to improve my attack accuracy only raised my hit % on thugs from 35% to 39% and eventually abandoning it roughly 5% of the way into things.

So, when it comes to games you can save scum, whether it be RPGs like this, Baldur's Gate, Dragon Age Origins, Elder Scrolls, etc. or shooters like Doom, is there a limit to what you consider to be fair play or does "by any means necessary" enter your vocabulary at times?