Question for people who've played through Baldur's Gate II (spoilers)

There's a mod that fixes the endings problem from memory. At least, you get to give Aerie back her wings. And it adds an evil ending when you romance Viconia.

Yeah, that makes sense. Aerie deserves a little divine favoritism after all she's been through. I mean, I haven't even played the game with her in the party yet so I can hear her life story from her lips, but just reading a summary of it I feel terrible for her.

I'd also maybe fix Minsc's head. Because as entertaining as he is, friends don't let friends walk around with untreated brain damage, right?

I can't remember, didn't the game provide some rather lame justification for why Aerie couldn't just get one of the many potent clerics to heal her ( including herself, by late game! )?

I don't think limbs can be regenerated once the wound has healed over naturally.

Except that IIRC, that's never been a listed limit in any version of AD&D I've read.

I wonder if being polymorphed into a regenerating troll would be a way of circumventing that. I found myself healing my character from the brink of death by using the cloak that turned me into a troll quite often.

edited 18th Feb '12 2:31:58 PM by KilgoreTrout

So, do you guys ever use custom voice sets and portraits? For anyone who watches the show Blackadder, I took voice samples from the show and made soundsets for Blackadder, Baldrick and Prince George, so now I can play through the game with those characters. It's quite amusing.

Heh, well, I haven't done anything to the sound files, but I do use custom portraits if only because I don't want my character to look just like one of the NPC party members from either game. Here's where I got the portrait for my evil female bard:

http://portraits.chosenofmystra.net/index2.html

Something that's a bit annoying is that it seems most of the evil decisions result in significantly less XP. So if you want to play an evil character and see the evil ending, it's more difficult.

I could use a little bit of advice re. party makeup again, since I'm planning to play through this game and ToB at least twice more; once to see the evil ending and the Anomen romance (Anomen actually doesn't seem to be too bad, even if he does have moments of douchery), and once more to see what happens when I make an elf named Drizzt and I run into the real Drizzt; I know that Drizzt will be pissed and challenge me, but I want to see exactly what he says and does. ;) I'm also doing it to see another of the romances, in this case Aerie's.

Anyhoo, here's what my evil-oriented party looks like:

-Me (Skald bard)

-Korgan

-Anomen

-Edwin

-Cernd

-Yoshimo, later Imoen

One concern I've got is that I won't have enough frontline fighters, since Anomen's stopped leveling up as a fighter and since I'll have to do without him for the Bodhi boss fight due to him being kidnapped and all.

And here's the party I'm thinking of creating when I make my elf:

-Me (thief/mage named Drizzt)

-Keldorn

-Mazzy

-Valygar

-Aerie

-Nalia

I would have liked to make a thief/cleric so that Aerie wouldn't have to handle all of the healing. I'd rather not have a multiclassed healer, since my favourite healing spell (Mass Cure, which not only heals everybody but doesn't require the healer to actually walk right up to the person she's healing) heals 1d8 + 1/level hit points, which meant in my original party that Jaheira casting it as a level 13 or 14 druid healed significantly less than Viconia casting it as something like a level 27 cleric.

Having two half-clerics would've been as good as having one whole cleric, I assumed, but for some lameass reason the game will not let an elf PC be part cleric. As for why I wanted to multiclass at all instead of going just full cleric...well, it's because on the third time through I figured that I'd have seen enough of Imoen and Yoshimo and I want to give Nalia a try, but Nalia's thief skills are stuck where they are and I would like somebody in the party whose ability to pick locks and disarm traps keeps improving.

(The one interesting thing I found about Aerie is that you can put her priest spells into a sequencer/trigger/etc, so that might help her be a more effective healer than Jaheira was.)

edited 20th Feb '12 4:39:17 PM by KilgoreTrout

Both of those look fine to me. So long as you have someone that's kinda good at thieving, kinda good at healing and kinda good at arcane magic, you should be okay.

Probably one of the few weak points of BG 2 is the lack of many good options for playing evil characters. It's really geared towards good-aligned parties. But I usually play as good characters anyway.

So, about that dragon in Hell...

Playing through the game again as my evil bard, I got back to that point again and experimented with the dialogue to see how to avoid fighting the dragon.

The demon tells you that you need to fight this thing to get the Tear of Bhaal, and if you say in response "Very well, I shall defeat it!" or say "If it guards the Tear of Bhaal, I suppose that I have little choice," then that turns the dragon hostile. If, during my first playthrough, I were to walk up to the dragon and see that it wasn't attacking me, I would've tried conversing before fighting, but the damn thing just tried to eat me from the get-go, which is why I assumed that I was doing the non-evil thing by fighting back.

Here is how you avoid the fight:

PRIDE DEMON: You are a wonder of destruction, Child of Bhaal! Go then, and defeat the creature that lies in the cavern! Crush it beneath your heel and claim another victory!

CHARNAME: [choosing dialogue option 3 out of 3] What manner of creature do you speak of?

PRIDE DEMON: It is a powerful creature, Child of Bhaal. One that only you can destroy! I am confident in your ability to deal death to such a creature as this and take the Tear that is yours!

CHARNAME: It's powerful...but what manner of creature *is* it?

PRIDE DEMON: It is a creature that deserves death, Child of Bhaal. You are such a wondrous fighter, i simply thought that you could defeat it where others failed.

CHARNAME: Why does it deserve death?

PRIDE DEMON: Because...because it exists. It stands in your way.

CHARNAME: Are you saying it will not give me the Tear?

PRIDE DEMON: [Sounding incrediby disappointed] Well...no. It *might* give it to you if you ask it nicely enough, I suppose. I see that despite your great deeds you have no pride in you, Child of Bhaal. So be it. Humility serves well those who wield it well.

If you say all of that, you walk into the cavern, the dragon isn't hostile, and it congratulates you for mastering your Pride. Then it gives you the tear without you even saying a word to it and teleports away.

So basically, the game decides you're evil if you take what the demon says at face value, not because you attacked a dragon without provocation, because it does provoke you. (As opposed to telling you that it really isn't interested in a fight or just standing there waiting for you to swing first.) By the same logic, wouldn't you be evil for killing Ajantis and the other paladins in the Windspear Hills? Because in both cases you were tricked into attacking somebody.

The difference is that you had no way of not beng tricked with the Ajantis fight. Also, they were under the same spell and thought you were demons.

With the Pride Demon, if you're really noble then you'll take a position of non-violence by default, so I don't think it's unreasonable for the game to expect you to ask questions of something that brazenl massages your ego and encourages you to kill before giving evidence of the need.

To answer your question about the Unfinished Business mod in the other thread (so as not to derail it into a general discussion thread when we have this one), it does not increase the difficulty. Versions of the mod exist for both games, and there's some interesting stuff added. Also some powerful items, I believe. I recommend the mods, particularly the bits that involve the character quests in the first game (since they got very little development).