Why I've fallen in love with Neera
Loki330
Member Posts: 15
Well, having grown up playing the Baldur's Gate series, I was all over this; god knows I won't miss all the hoop-jumping to get it working again....
Anyway, when I first learned about the three new NPCs I gave a bit of a non-commital shrug. "Whoopee, so what," I thought to myself. Then I bumped into Neera. Well, I needed a mage until I got The Usual Suspects and Montaron and Xar are amusing but annoying for a good aligned party, so she'd do. Pick up Garrick and that would do me until Nashkel. She ended up staying; Garrick, not so much.
The thing is, after playing with her for a bit, the more I think about it, the more Brilliant I think Neera is. Firstly, a quick history lesson for people who maybe missed this series the first time around for either age or lack of interest.
---------------------------------------------
The Wild Mage kit was a Very Late addition to the Baldur's Gate series. It was added with Throne of Bhaal, the expansion pack to Baldur's Gate II and the final installment of the series, so you couldn't (at the time) even play one in Baldur's Gate, forced to 'only' play one in Baldur's Gate II. Even then the 'quirks' of the class had mostly settled; you still had the odd whoopsie, but they were seldom serious.
If you played one that is.
I had a sorcerer (sorcereress actually) but the mage and wild mage never really interested me beyond a brief foray with a test character, and there was no NPC with the kit unless you did Shadowkeeper on your save, which I couldn't be bothered to do; while I have little qualms about meddling with the inventory or my own character, I've always disliked fiddling with the NPC's for some reason.
So unless you were into mages and willing to restart BGII from scratch, you weren't going to see the kit at all. Considering this was the expansion pack to a small saga that you'd sunk hundreds of hours into a single character: probably not.
------------
Fastforward to BG:EE and you've got Neera, a wild mage. She's a lovely girl for an experienced player because:
-She's a Wild Mage. For the old skools like me, this means that they can finally get to see the kit in action without savegame editing or playing one themselves
-She's in Beregost, so it's almost certainly before you've settled your party roster; that means she's got a good chance of getting in the party, even if it's just for a moment. I'll come back to this point later.
This is where things get Very Clever, intentionally or not.
-She's neutral. That means she'll happily slot in with any party, assuming you're not 'Chaotic Stupid Evil'
-She's a low level wild mage
As my lurking on the forums have seen these past few days, quite a few people are taken aback by just how much her wild surges can shift the flow of a battle. I know I am, I was expecting 1% per spell unless using Nahal's Reckless Dweomer. It seems to be much higher.
I'm going through the game and despite not playing it for a good five years, I'm remembering where X item or Y npc or Z fight is, and to my embarrassment I'm almost always bang on the money with my predictions. The item names and sometimes the items themselves or a few lines of dialogue are different, but it's basically the exact same game. The same tactics against the same foes with the same equipment for the same problems from before.
Which is where Neera comes in; she's a *low level* wild mage: even at level 12 or so at the start of Baldur's Gate II, the Wild Mage was 'relatively' stable, and you had the spell slots for wild surge protection. Neera is a giddy... level one. You get a wild mage at their 'worst'.
So Neera wild surges. A lot.
This is, for the Old Guard amongst us, brilliant. When Neera wild-surges the battles (and even the pre-fight-buffs) suddenly get interesting. The mage has botched their spell; it may not work or may do more damage (so suddenly the fight's pace has increased/decreased.) It may polymorph the target (or an ally) so suddenly things have changed. She may blow herself up and injure (even kill) the back-liners which was the cause of a reload once or twice. However, when you've got the cash for resurrections, it suddenly makes you wonder if you shouldn't just go find a priest for the idiots and get your loot back the hard way, since you know from previous experience you're going to be lugging half the world economy's gold around and sod it, you've got nothing better to spend it on. Neera single-handedly makes combat interesting beyond the usual things you've done so many times you can do them on autopilot.
Increase the difficulty instead? Well, assuming it isn't already high there's really not that much point anyway. Double damage isn't really 'hard' in the 'real' sense. It's an artificial difficulty, akin to the AI controlled enemies in an FPS instantly seeing you and firing with perfect accuracy at you across the map, a tiny pixel in the distance to you. It's harder to move around and fight, sure, but it's a 'boring' difficulty. Neera's wild surging is an unpredictable spanner in the works; sometimes she fumbles and you've effectively done the fight with 5 people. Sometimes she accidentally buffs the enemies or injures herself/others so the fight got made harder. Sometimes she double casts a fireball at +5 caster level and annihilates the group in seconds.
Then there's her class' Signature Ability. Nahal's Reckless Dweomer makes things very interesting for two reasons. Firstly, it means you can have her operate as what is effectively a Sorcerer, an NPC you don't get in Baldur's Gate I or even Baldur's Gate II without modding. So she doesn't really play like a mage on three levels already.
The third is, Nahal's Reckless Dweomer lets you potentially punch above your weight; in my current playthrough she's level 5 and thanks to Nahal's Reckless Dweomer is already flinging level 4 and 5 spells around, even though as a mage she 'shouldn't be able to do this. Again, fights are suddenly interesting, because I can risk trying for a really powerful spell instead of the usual selection.
So suddenly she's making fights interesting again; I genuinely don't know if having her cast a spell is going to work or throw in something I have to work with/around. (I will say at level 5, she seems to be settling down in terms of Really Bad effects, assuming you aren't casting via Nahal's Reckless Dweomer)
Personality wise, she's not especially 'stuck' in one way (as you'd expect from a neutral person perhaps) so she's unlikely to be as divisive as Anomen or Aerie in Baldur's Gate II (both, but especially the former, being two of the better written NPCs I feel; Anomen is a genuinely complex 3-dimensional character, but because of it he got many people's backs up. You either got on with him, or you didn't. Neera in contrast is quite accommodating.
Now remember when I mentioned above I'd be coming back to her popping up in Beregost 'later'? This is Later.
Baldur's Gate II essentially assumed two things about you in Baldur's Gate I
1. You were good, because:
2. Your party was , Imoen, Jaheira, Khalid, Minsc (and Boo!) and finally Dyniear. The latter I honestly got in purely because of Minsc and Boo. Even now I remember not being especially cut up with her death; I *still* don't even know how to spell her name or even care enough to look it up.
Neera pops up in Beregost before Minsc and Boo, and by extension his witch. So the old skool player gets to see the Wild Mage in action, and her personality makes it pretty likely she won't annoy you enough to actively dislike her. I know by the time I hit Nashkel I was getting quite intrigued with her, and to cut this essay short, I've ended up without the Awesome that is Minsc and Boo (and whatshername... I should call her Zoidberg perhaps) and instead I've got Adjantis; because she's a single NPC and some of the NPCs come in pairs, it means she can disrupt people's 'comfort zone' party setups and get them to try something different with the lineup, which in itself changes things before her wild surges start making things, to use a Dwarf Fortress term, Fun.
----------
Of course, how much of this was careful design and how much is me over analysing/Pure Dumb Luck I'm not sure. Either way, I suppose I'm saying in a very roundabout way I rather enjoy Neera and am currently left quite fervently hoping she's in Baldur's Gate II *and* doesn't go the way of some of the Baldur's Gate I npcs; demoted to extra or worse, killed off.
So... yeah. Neera fanboy. Yay me.
Anyway, when I first learned about the three new NPCs I gave a bit of a non-commital shrug. "Whoopee, so what," I thought to myself. Then I bumped into Neera. Well, I needed a mage until I got The Usual Suspects and Montaron and Xar are amusing but annoying for a good aligned party, so she'd do. Pick up Garrick and that would do me until Nashkel. She ended up staying; Garrick, not so much.
The thing is, after playing with her for a bit, the more I think about it, the more Brilliant I think Neera is. Firstly, a quick history lesson for people who maybe missed this series the first time around for either age or lack of interest.
---------------------------------------------
The Wild Mage kit was a Very Late addition to the Baldur's Gate series. It was added with Throne of Bhaal, the expansion pack to Baldur's Gate II and the final installment of the series, so you couldn't (at the time) even play one in Baldur's Gate, forced to 'only' play one in Baldur's Gate II. Even then the 'quirks' of the class had mostly settled; you still had the odd whoopsie, but they were seldom serious.
If you played one that is.
I had a sorcerer (sorcereress actually) but the mage and wild mage never really interested me beyond a brief foray with a test character, and there was no NPC with the kit unless you did Shadowkeeper on your save, which I couldn't be bothered to do; while I have little qualms about meddling with the inventory or my own character, I've always disliked fiddling with the NPC's for some reason.
So unless you were into mages and willing to restart BGII from scratch, you weren't going to see the kit at all. Considering this was the expansion pack to a small saga that you'd sunk hundreds of hours into a single character: probably not.
------------
Fastforward to BG:EE and you've got Neera, a wild mage. She's a lovely girl for an experienced player because:
-She's a Wild Mage. For the old skools like me, this means that they can finally get to see the kit in action without savegame editing or playing one themselves
-She's in Beregost, so it's almost certainly before you've settled your party roster; that means she's got a good chance of getting in the party, even if it's just for a moment. I'll come back to this point later.
This is where things get Very Clever, intentionally or not.
-She's neutral. That means she'll happily slot in with any party, assuming you're not 'Chaotic Stupid Evil'
-She's a low level wild mage
As my lurking on the forums have seen these past few days, quite a few people are taken aback by just how much her wild surges can shift the flow of a battle. I know I am, I was expecting 1% per spell unless using Nahal's Reckless Dweomer. It seems to be much higher.
I'm going through the game and despite not playing it for a good five years, I'm remembering where X item or Y npc or Z fight is, and to my embarrassment I'm almost always bang on the money with my predictions. The item names and sometimes the items themselves or a few lines of dialogue are different, but it's basically the exact same game. The same tactics against the same foes with the same equipment for the same problems from before.
Which is where Neera comes in; she's a *low level* wild mage: even at level 12 or so at the start of Baldur's Gate II, the Wild Mage was 'relatively' stable, and you had the spell slots for wild surge protection. Neera is a giddy... level one. You get a wild mage at their 'worst'.
So Neera wild surges. A lot.
This is, for the Old Guard amongst us, brilliant. When Neera wild-surges the battles (and even the pre-fight-buffs) suddenly get interesting. The mage has botched their spell; it may not work or may do more damage (so suddenly the fight's pace has increased/decreased.) It may polymorph the target (or an ally) so suddenly things have changed. She may blow herself up and injure (even kill) the back-liners which was the cause of a reload once or twice. However, when you've got the cash for resurrections, it suddenly makes you wonder if you shouldn't just go find a priest for the idiots and get your loot back the hard way, since you know from previous experience you're going to be lugging half the world economy's gold around and sod it, you've got nothing better to spend it on. Neera single-handedly makes combat interesting beyond the usual things you've done so many times you can do them on autopilot.
Increase the difficulty instead? Well, assuming it isn't already high there's really not that much point anyway. Double damage isn't really 'hard' in the 'real' sense. It's an artificial difficulty, akin to the AI controlled enemies in an FPS instantly seeing you and firing with perfect accuracy at you across the map, a tiny pixel in the distance to you. It's harder to move around and fight, sure, but it's a 'boring' difficulty. Neera's wild surging is an unpredictable spanner in the works; sometimes she fumbles and you've effectively done the fight with 5 people. Sometimes she accidentally buffs the enemies or injures herself/others so the fight got made harder. Sometimes she double casts a fireball at +5 caster level and annihilates the group in seconds.
Then there's her class' Signature Ability. Nahal's Reckless Dweomer makes things very interesting for two reasons. Firstly, it means you can have her operate as what is effectively a Sorcerer, an NPC you don't get in Baldur's Gate I or even Baldur's Gate II without modding. So she doesn't really play like a mage on three levels already.
The third is, Nahal's Reckless Dweomer lets you potentially punch above your weight; in my current playthrough she's level 5 and thanks to Nahal's Reckless Dweomer is already flinging level 4 and 5 spells around, even though as a mage she 'shouldn't be able to do this. Again, fights are suddenly interesting, because I can risk trying for a really powerful spell instead of the usual selection.
So suddenly she's making fights interesting again; I genuinely don't know if having her cast a spell is going to work or throw in something I have to work with/around. (I will say at level 5, she seems to be settling down in terms of Really Bad effects, assuming you aren't casting via Nahal's Reckless Dweomer)
Personality wise, she's not especially 'stuck' in one way (as you'd expect from a neutral person perhaps) so she's unlikely to be as divisive as Anomen or Aerie in Baldur's Gate II (both, but especially the former, being two of the better written NPCs I feel; Anomen is a genuinely complex 3-dimensional character, but because of it he got many people's backs up. You either got on with him, or you didn't. Neera in contrast is quite accommodating.
Now remember when I mentioned above I'd be coming back to her popping up in Beregost 'later'? This is Later.
Baldur's Gate II essentially assumed two things about you in Baldur's Gate I
1. You were good, because:
2. Your party was , Imoen, Jaheira, Khalid, Minsc (and Boo!) and finally Dyniear. The latter I honestly got in purely because of Minsc and Boo. Even now I remember not being especially cut up with her death; I *still* don't even know how to spell her name or even care enough to look it up.
Neera pops up in Beregost before Minsc and Boo, and by extension his witch. So the old skool player gets to see the Wild Mage in action, and her personality makes it pretty likely she won't annoy you enough to actively dislike her. I know by the time I hit Nashkel I was getting quite intrigued with her, and to cut this essay short, I've ended up without the Awesome that is Minsc and Boo (and whatshername... I should call her Zoidberg perhaps) and instead I've got Adjantis; because she's a single NPC and some of the NPCs come in pairs, it means she can disrupt people's 'comfort zone' party setups and get them to try something different with the lineup, which in itself changes things before her wild surges start making things, to use a Dwarf Fortress term, Fun.
----------
Of course, how much of this was careful design and how much is me over analysing/Pure Dumb Luck I'm not sure. Either way, I suppose I'm saying in a very roundabout way I rather enjoy Neera and am currently left quite fervently hoping she's in Baldur's Gate II *and* doesn't go the way of some of the Baldur's Gate I npcs; demoted to extra or worse, killed off.
So... yeah. Neera fanboy. Yay me.
20
Comments
It's more likely for her to appear in BG2 just because... Woops, Wild Surge. Now where am I? hehehe
Wild Mage reintroduces that feeling. "I'm a powerful but young mage. I'll try my best but sometimes I make mistakes and hurt those I care about." is kind of how I see Neera or a wild mage in general. Finally, a way to include a balance in a character. Too bad other characters don't have the same opportunities.
Thanks in advance!
Also, I was under the impression that Chaotic Neutral people were ones who weren't "right in the head"... Neutral alignment is a thin edge, Lawful Neutral is the unquestioning soldier, True Neutral is for... well... druids who strive for "balance", and Chaotic Neutral is for the unpredictable mental case individual. Her unpredictable magical spells don't count towards her alignment either. Perhaps Chaotic Good would have been a more suitable alignment for her.
Uhh, no. Edwin is a conjurer (specialist mage)
Thank you so much for this not being a creepy thread about your having a Neera shrine, your writing seven thousand word fanfics about her or her being your "waifu".
But yeah, I definitely agree, Neera's fun and interesting, both personality and class. I'm looking forward to the what-I-assume-to-be even more interactive BGII version where she'll definitely be featuring in at least one of my parties.
Chaotic Neutral is a bit of a git to pin down action wise-the original Baldur's Gate I manual even said "the only thing that can be relied upon them is that they cannot be relied upon!" Later versions (hello 3rd edition onwards) make a point of saying that a chaotic neutral character is not as likely to jump off a bridge as cross it. Heh, thanks... I think. She's currently at 'First to call drinking buddy' for me I think. :P
@Kaeloree Oh cool, thanks for doing that, can't wait to give it a try
However, there is a significant subset of players like me, for whom the Holy Grail of playing BG is the perfect, no-reload game. We feel an elated sense of accomplishment upon finishing a no-death run, precisely because that feat is so difficult to do.
Our numbers are many. I, myself, have never accomplished this "Holy Grail" feat, but many, many of my fellows have done it over and over, with every character class imaginable, and then have installed Sword Coast Strategems, and proceded to do it over and over, again, to the point where they still love the game, but are having difficulty not being bored.
For that particular sub-subset of no-reload seekers who have already succeeded to the point of boredom, it makes some sense to me that they might enjoy having new NPC characters who are designed and written as game handicaps, essentially from their very inception.
For humble me, who enjoys total immersion, and who doesn't like to memorize reams of metagame information from both vanilla and SCS, I still enjoy "seeking the Holy Grail" of a perfect no-reload game, as something near unobtainable. To the very, very small sub-sub-subset of players like me, the thought of deliberately taking a suicidal character who is designed from the ground up to get me killed, strikes me as folly. It strikes me as incredibly, unbelievably stupid folly.
I'd say it all falls under the clichees of "it takes all kinds", and "to each his/her own". You see hilarious fun and an adrenaline rush in Neera, and double the fun if both you and her are wild mages. I see suicidal maniacs with a death wish.
And here's a neat essay on chaotic neutral: http://easydamus.com/chaoticneutral.html . There are other fun alignment essays, there, too.
In any case, I agree with the Original Poster 100%!
Right now I'm wondering how her Caster Lvl comes into play. Every time she casts a spell, I get a notice saying her caster lvl went up or down (last time it went up 3 - woo!). Now, I know what that would mean in a tabletop Pathfinder game, but how does this come into play in BGEE? Is it involved in some behind-the-scenes rolls?
Haha and your comments about Dynaheir amused me... I don't care for her either, and I never knew how to spell her name (although I think I got it right this time).
Chromatic Orb can do anything ranging from a tiny amount of extra damage to petrifying or instakilling your enemy, depending on spell level.
Acid Arrow, Flame Arrow, Fireball, Skulltrap, Lightning Bolt, etc. all do d* damage based on caster level.
Dispel Magic and Remove Magic have their chance of success directly dependent on caster level.
Defensive duration based spells have their duration based on caster level. Stoneskin has number of stoneskins based on caster level.
The wild mage's caster level variation affects profoundly the effectiveness of almost any spell she can cast. The potential for augmentation is nice, but the potential for absolute disaster and death boggles my poor, lawful mind.
Is it listed anywhere what her caster level is sitting at currently?
The plus or minus to caster level are all dicerolls on the wild mage table.
http://www.planetbaldursgate.com/bg2/character/classes/tables/wildsurge.shtml
As I said in the original post, your only option (barring npc editing, which I dislike) is to play one yourself, but since Neera's in BG1 you get one, and get one early. For better (and honestly, usually worse) her wild surges make the battles I remember with embarrassing familiarity far more interesting, and being able to try a cheeky fireball/cloud kill/stinking cloud/whatever so it makes what could be in danger of stale fights due to me being a sad pathetic teenager having learnt them off by heart are for me (now a sad pathetic adult) quite interesting, because I know something can go wrong other than the usual 'enemy get good dice rolls while I don't.' thing. Another way of looking at it might be Guildwars 2 gameplay compared to other mmorpg (including guildwars 1) gameplay. It's designed so that things can go badly wrong quickly and easily, but also designed for you to be able to (usually) recover just as quickly. I feel Neera brings that to the table, along with shaking up your party builds, because her wild surges aren't just a boring 'random chance to fail'. She's turned an enemy boss that's been hitting like a truck into a wolf, allowing me to brutally pummel the crap out of them with relatively little fear of reprisals. Other times she's accidentally hasted an enemy, and once she summoned a pit fiend. Mercifully that was on one of the random-encounter-while-travelling maps, so I could simply leg it.
Flogging a skeleton, the point is this sort of thing is something I can't remember or plan for so I'm forced to adapt and think on my feet when she accidentally her. Which I find interesting and fun.
As for Neera as an actual person: I'm not really sure what you mean (and honestly, not very good with feelings or alone explaining them) so I'll just go with: I was playing (as far as you can in the BG series) a cocky 'swashbuckler style' character and they got on really well with her. They got on *very well*, since they fed each other's confidence/egos and teasing
Personally, I like her. Her attitude and the wisecracks make me smile/laugh and she seems (as far as you can with a fairly low resolution paper doll that's used for any elf/half-elf) attractive enough, and her portrait and voice are pleasant too. The 'eager puppy' tone she has in her affirmative lines brings a smile to my face, and neatly slots with the hole 'keeps trying to do things but messing them up accidentally' thing. It also shows she won't let failures get her down too much (or at least, hides it well; half a dozen dialogues isn't much for me to dissect a character)
Regardless, by the time her (own initiated) second dialogue was over I knew I was going to enjoy killing off the inevitable red wizard encounter far more than I should. If she was real (I know she isn't, so don't worry-I'll at least try and avoid embarrassing drooling) I could see her as one of my best friends.
Also note that normal spells actually have a 5% chance of a wild surge. So 1 in 20 spells will cause a wild surge. If you are casting spells with Neera often then you'll notice those wild surges often enough.
Neera certainly has a fun personally and its nice to have a Chaotic Neutral Wild Mage. Certainly makes her a more unique NPC.