I haven't played either (because the descriptions made me go eh?) but I've played Kelsey and Soloufein and while the former is quite good and low-key (most mods are about super badasses, Kelsey makes it a point that he's hardly special), Soloufein was...very dissappointing.
Maybe my expectations were too high. Maybe it's because I'm not a poetry kinda guy. Maybe it's because I'm not much into elves (on that note, I will donate the fuck out of any Dwarf NPC Romance made). But I had him in my party for ten minutes before he started waxing on moons and stars, pain and loss and how much he was wronged. And he didn't stop, he got worse, lamenting all the way through chapter six, Imoen got all flustered by it. I expected a badass, bitter, angry, xenophobic Drow warrior who was used to being surrounded by enemies at all times and constantly had his guard up, completely unfamiliar with the outside world. Instead, I got a whinier Haer'dalis.
Addition: Also had Xan and Kivan in BG2, both were ok. Xan has a LOT of interjections and while the makers clearly tried to develop him beyond his "We're all doomed" persona, they held back, causing many promising moments which end up dissappointing. He gets a lot of background information though, and history, which is very appreciated and appropriate. Kivan was also pretty good, though it suffered from a lot of elf-ness (to be expected really) where you can walk though the moonlight and falling leaves with your soulmate (no, this isn't romance content) if you talk to him in a friendly way enough. I tried to romance him, but for some reason, despite being a jackass to him, Anomen snagged me first. I only found out when he suddenly called me "My love" in ToB, I was quite upset. It was a pretty good mod, and I liked that he reacted properly to Tazok in the Windspear Hills.
Addition: Also had Xan and Kivan in BG2, *snip* Kivan was also pretty good, though it suffered from a lot of elf-ness (to be expected really) where you can walk though the moonlight and falling leaves with your soulmate (no, this isn't romance content) if you talk to him in a friendly way enough. I tried to romance him, but for some reason, despite being a jackass to him, Anomen snagged me first. I only found out when he suddenly called me "My love" in ToB, I was quite upset. It was a pretty good mod, and I liked that he reacted properly to Tazok in the Windspear Hills.
That's good to hear, I currently gather ideas/NPC mods for my next run and have focussed on either Kivan or one of the 2 Tiefling Rogues - or both, depends on what class I'll finally play. Only read the description/board/Faq 2 days ago and he does sound pretty appealing to me. Though I wonder if it's worth to get the hidden NPC (you can resurrect the wife?).
I let her be dead because I wanted him all for myself, me, ME!
But yes, she's an elven Diviner. No idea what she's like or if they get all sappy together. If the writing of the mod without her is any indication; yes, yes they will.
ieks :P no more sappiness! I think I read in the faq you can even determine her class...but at this stage I'd usually never change my permanent party. And it'd be bad for my own reputation; am not that evil to resurrect some fancy maiden. I currently play with 'beyond the law' & Tyris Flare = more than enough sappy shit!
edit: BTL is really awesome, romance between NPCs = nice! Banters and sequences are also very good. Tyris only wanna do it like rabbits once in a while after getting her to stage 2..so that's okay with me :P
For the bad: * The writing is terrible. * The character is a true Purity Sue through and through - dominating the story, choices, and having the lack of depth of character. * The 15 year old/instant love aspect is both creepy and poorly written.
For the good: * I thought the character was just fine from a gaming perspective. A Cavalier with decent but not overpowered stats fits in just fine with a lot of the game's default NPCs. I liked the portrait. * I loved having an appearance in Sigil. That was a well-done recreation of the PS:T environment, minus a few of the bonus magic items available there and the OP demon at the end. * The "good" path made available was a nice optional content addition. * The authors supported this mod all the way through TOB. To many mods end at SOA. * The content added for Watcher's Keep would have been fine had she not railroaded so much of the rest of the game.
So I think there were some nice things done with this but when the writing and character fail pretty spectacularly it is tough to get beyond that -- kind of like an epic sci-fi pick with really, really terrible plot and character development. No matter how nice the special effects or interesting the premise, a movie or mod like that is just doomed to flaming failure.
The "good" path made available was NOT optional at all. I'm not sure I remember, but if you DON'T go with the paladins, Saeri will either leave or literally DIE of a broken heart... she does that a lot.
While I agree she is a Mary Sue as far as character goes, the writing itself is vastly superior to that of many "adequate" mods. I fail utterly to understand why people tend to enjoy badly written mods, that feature references to other RL media, or discuss how much this or that in-game item costs, or play out the use of some spells in dialogues, over a mod that happens to be Sue yet was made by a professional writer. The above-mentioned bad examples of writing make me cringe far more.
The "good" path made available was NOT optional at all. I'm not sure I remember, but if you DON'T go with the paladins, Saeri will either leave or literally DIE of a broken heart... she does that a lot.
It's entirely optional and has no consequences whatsoever. Same as most of other choices, where Saeri objects against something.
There's such a thing as TOO MUCH writing. That's what both of these mods do. It becomes Saerileth's/Chloe's/Tsujatha's Gate! It's not an injoke, it's a sad truth.
While I agree she is a Mary Sue as far as character goes, the writing itself is vastly superior to that of many "adequate" mods. I fail utterly to understand why people tend to enjoy badly written mods, that feature references to other RL media, or discuss how much this or that in-game item costs, or play out the use of some spells in dialogues, over a mod that happens to be Sue yet was made by a professional writer. The above-mentioned bad examples of writing make me cringe far more.
Which mods are those? The only mod I know of that break the 4th wall entirely are joke mods like Banana mod and I can forgive it because it's trying to be comedic and a parody.
None of the character mods I've played ever really reference real world social commentary or whatever.
I also wouldn't call this professional writing. A romance with no buildup... yes, I can say it... TWILIGHT is a better love story. For what that story's worth at least it doesn't plop the romance right in your face and Bella never even NEARLY dies from broken heart... and that's still abominable writing. I just defended Twilight... WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!
As for the "a lot of writing"... that wouldn't make it GOOD persay. If the BG novels were longer than the whole Les Miserable book series, they would just be a larger pile of dog turds! That holds true here too.
As for consequences, it will make her leave your party.
I also wouldn't call this professional writing. A romance with no buildup... yes, I can say it... TWILIGHT is a better love story. For what that story's worth at least it doesn't plop the romance right in your face and Bella never even NEARLY dies from broken heart... and that's still abominable writing. I just defended Twilight... WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!
The "good" path made available was NOT optional at all.
My recollection is that you could still go with the thieves and she was just fine. I don't think I played with her enough to test what going with the vampires would do but I would guess she would leave the group (and not die).
While I agree she is a Mary Sue as far as character goes, the writing itself is vastly superior to that of many "adequate" mods.
Here are my main problems with the writing:
* She instantly falls entirely in love with your character on first meeting. Instant attraction? Sure. Instant desire to start a relationship? Sure. Instant 'love and devotion of the highest order that you proclaim to the other person'? No. Anyone over the age of 13 would have to simply ignore this aspect of the mod to buy into the relationship. * She has no depth of character as she has no real flaws, doubt, selfishness or darkness in her (just as the most evil people with functioning mental faculties have some kindness and goodness in them, any realistic portrayal of a person has some of these 'negative' elements in their personality -- even superman). Elements of this would be OK but it permeates all the writing (a few examples below). * The 'died of a broken heart' thing is just ridiculous from several angles: it is an incredibly unrealistic response, it is inconsistent with her religious views which are supposedly so essential to her character, and it is a ridiculous extension of the Mary Sue trope (she is just too good for this world after whatever sinful thing you did that broke her heart...) * The age aspect is tough for me to swallow. Others may have different views but I would include this in the writing angle. When I did the mod, I actually went in and adjusted the dialog file to change her to legal age. * The rival lover part is not particularly well done. He comes off like a creepy stalker instead of a heartbroken but virtuous paladin. For there to be some tension along the lines of 'will she or won't she', this character would have to be seriously realigned. * Beyond the romance angle, she dominates a lot of narrative - either making choices for you or breaking the game when a choice is made that she doesn't like - and dominates much of the dialogue. This is a black hole Mary Sue.
Not all the dialogue or character development is beyond horrible but so many of the most important aspects of her character stomps on this line that I can't help but condemn the writing.
A lighter touch and a less Mary Sue character (cut down the dialogue, eliminate suicide, cut down the leave the party moments, introduce some humanity, make her a bit less 'special', etc.) would go a long, long way to making this a much improved mod.
Then you can hit some of the issues like the near indestructable demon at the end of the Sigil bit, etc.
And the near indestructable demon can be defeated by placing the indestructable Sir Edorem as a shield in between you and the demon
- another thing that's bad about the mod: an encounter that can only be solved by knowing how to apply cheese.
That one doesn't require advanced knowledge of cheese. It is the most natural way for anyone to solve that encounter. Which goes to a terrible execution decision dragging down an otherwise very well done reconstruction of a portion of PS:T...and yet another decision in the mod that minimizes the importance of Charname in favor of the mod NPCs.
Many NPC mods suffer from this problem of taking away your decisions. I remember when I played with Kelsey I got more and more irritated as he started to answer questions directed at me. I'm all right with NPCs expressing their opinions about what's going on in the game, but not deciding the actions of the group.
A well done example of this is the core BG2 NPCs reaction when Bodhi offers to help you. They express concern, they complain you're even considering it, but they don't decide for you.
I would have to play it once more to say exactly where it happens, but I remember kicking him out of my party after he made a decision instead of allowing me to do it..
I don't either. I also thought his TOB content was pretty good as well. I don't always find his personality a good mesh for my parties, though.
The one mod where the NPC takes away a decision where I really liked it is the Valen mod. I don't play evil well and she has several moments where she lashes out and makes an evil decision for you but she has less overall dialogue than a normal NPC and is definitely not the focus of things so it is very different from the "all about me" NPCs. The Valen mod remains perhaps my favorite NPC mod. (The only negative to the mod is the eventually overpowered claws, a flaw which can be remedied by having her wield daggers or other regular weapons or not upgrade the claws).
My big problem with Weimer's mods is that they're very powergamey. I mean, have you SEEN the Sword Sola can win from a battle winnable only by tactical super CHEEZE? It's... well let's just say if you can still see his icon despite all the buffs it gives him, you've better eyes than I.
I can't hate Weimer though. He gave us modern modding after all.
I actually don't hate ay actual modders... EXCEPT the makers of Saerileth. I cannot stress this enough, the makers are like a teenage Mary Sue writer where anyone who doesn't like their work is FLAMING and talk of age is a permaban on their forums.
Seriously, if they had the maturity to see the flaws, I'd have no qualms with the makers, but that is... unbecoming and unsettling.
I actually feel like that about most of the so called "TACTICAL" mods. They just use a lot of cheese to make battles difficult. The notable exceptions are BP and SCS. Even then I won't install the tactical subcomponents. Casters prebuffing before battle and knowing how to counter your attacks and defenses I can accept and see as an welcome change. Blantantly breaking the rules to make a battle "TACTICAL" I just can't stand.
I actually feellike that about most of the so called "TACTICAL" mods. They just use a lot of cheese to make battles difficult. The notable exceptions are BP and SCS. Even then I won't install the tactical subcomponents. Casters prebuffing before battle and knowing how to counter your attacks and defenses I can accept and see as an welcome change. Blantantly breaking the rules to make a battle "TACTICAL" I just can't stand.
SCS pre-buffing is kinda fair, depends on your decision if you give clerics the same advantage. You do run fully buffed with your party into battle as well - so why don't can the AI as well :P The cleric-component is a bit hmmmmmmmmmmm, but I guess without it, they would be the same victims as in vanilla. (and actually clerics are giving me a damn hard time in SCSII) For mages it's only natural to have some protections up and running, so I don't despite the pre-combat trigger. Even if they usually have spell-reflection+abjuration-immunity ^^ *d00h*
For the tactics-mod I can name one specific encounter, which I do HATE: "Kuroisan", the Acid Kensai!
But that's the cheese-cheat-mod from weimar..honestly he (she? voice sample doesn't fit) is beyond OPness and after I read several boards it seems common to cheat to beat that encounter. Checked in Near infinity and didn't know if I should be laughing or whining. That thing has more immunities, +buffs (hardcoded, so they can't be stripped), and other odd/weird things that it is not even remotely funny and made him harder than anything in SoA/ToB. Seriously a Kensai with 32~ dex/ ~-16 AC/ +16-18 damage/ 130 (?) magic resistance / -16~ saving throws +++ several immunities to nearly everything else is less than fun. He hits you for something like 40-48 damage, so I think there is even more to it... Shredded off some immunities in NI, put the katana in storage and will not use it. Makes even Iron GOlems and similar easily detachable thanks to the very OP-procc.
That encounter or the sword does not have anything to do with tactics..it's a pure cheat.
I have to agree with you. SCS is not entirely without cheese as well. But at least it's mostly acceptale cheese, not the "WTF was the modder thinking when he wrote this?" kind of cheese we see in the acid kensai
It'd be impossible for any AI mod to not be a cheat. Tried both variants of e.g. with/without mage's pre-buffing and that alone makes a huge difference. Mages(without) still can rely and will do so on their conti/trigger/whatsoever stuff and that is only fair. Only clerics start to cast off their stuff regularly and are a common interruption target. (without the pre-buff)
While I think of it, was anything even hard in vanilla SoA/ToB? I don't think so...you could: - feeblemind dragons (LOL..an ancient being..nuff said) - hammer on liches while protected by some lol-scroll - for everything else, have at least your trusty old sword erm fully loaded cloudkill-wand at hand :>
Cloudkill still can be abused to a certain factor, but only in minor encounters you'd usually roll over anyway.
I currently have a much more annoying problem at all, thanks to 'Beyond the Law' you usually get some (or 3) lvl18 mages popping up while traveling in town. They WERE already hard powered up by SCSII and you were usually low-level. Now they switched to lvl 20 and are 4 in their number...and stupid programmer made them by +4 hitpoints immune to death spell I think they are harder to fight against than some dragon/lich/etc....4 SCSII buffed lvl 20 mages are no fun! [my current party is ~14-15 thanks to the XP they give and I wasn't even in spellhold] Thanks to Keldorn (and ONLY THANKS TO HIM) it is doable..but once they start gating in the modded fiends...*duck & cover* or reload :>
There's such a thing as TOO MUCH writing. That's what both of these mods do. It becomes Saerileth's/Chloe's/Tsujatha's Gate! It's not an injoke, it's a sad truth.
Which mods are those? The only mod I know of that break the 4th wall entirely are joke mods like Banana mod and I can forgive it because it's trying to be comedic and a parody.
None of the character mods I've played ever really reference real world social commentary or whatever.
I also wouldn't call this professional writing. A romance with no buildup... yes, I can say it... TWILIGHT is a better love story. For what that story's worth at least it doesn't plop the romance right in your face and Bella never even NEARLY dies from broken heart... and that's still abominable writing. I just defended Twilight... WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!
As for the "a lot of writing"... that wouldn't make it GOOD persay. If the BG novels were longer than the whole Les Miserable book series, they would just be a larger pile of dog turds! That holds true here too.
As for consequences, it will make her leave your party.
You judge the design of the house, while I talk about the quality of concrete being used.
I don't really care about the missing build-up or other weird details such as age - as long as I can't sense the author's thoughts when they were writing this or that sentence. Other NPC-related mods that I've played are Tashia, Tortured Souls, BG1NPC Project, Tyris Flare, Ninde, Never Ending Journey, Xulaye. With every one of them, save for the last, I would sometimes run across a line that would show crystal clear what's been on the writer's mind. That didn't happen with Saerileth.
I don't really care about the missing build-up or other weird details such as age - as long as I can't sense the author's thoughts when they were writing this or that sentence. Other NPC-related mods that I've played are Tashia, Tortured Souls, BG1NPC Project, Tyris Flare, Ninde, Never Ending Journey, Xulaye. With every one of them, save for the last, I would sometimes run across a line that would show crystal clear what's been on the writer's mind. That didn't happen with Saerileth.
Can you elaborate? I don't think I understand what you mean by sensing the writer's thoughts. A few examples might help illustrate this.
OH I remember Saerilith... IF you play a good party who always adheres to the rules and help the needy, then you'll be just fine. If you decide even once that you want to be selfish, you get sincerely punished by it, and that is why I started disliking her. Chloe was ridiculous with stats and tried to steal my thunder by being a half goddess herself, so I was like F*** that!
I think the best NPC mods I've ever used were Kelsey, and Amber! I always had Amber in the party because she was a different kind of NPC, a tiefling (like Haer'Dalis) and not implimented in such a silly or crappy way.
AND btw... the other "option" to go to spellhold through the paladins with Saerilith had to be one of the greatest ideas gone wrong. There were no options, no reasons for the paladins to want to go there in the first place, YET here they were, trying to help YOU get there because they just randomly thought it was a good idea!
Very well, the concrete, or the 'constructed idea' of the mod is that a Purity Sue REALLY wants to join your party. She's such an innocent and goodly girl, but you'd better look sexier than Neil Patrick Harris (who totally has a charisma of at least 16) or she'll leave you when your sexification ring is stripped off by her stalker wannabe boyfriend.
The concrete, or, I assume, the premise.
Though you bring up a good point: an author SHOULD have bits of themselves or their beliefs in their stories, otherwise they're writing blindly: THAT is how they connect with and can really show synergy with their work. If they have no connection or relation in their own material, why should I connect or relate to it?
Every author, even TOLKIEN put his thoughts and 'mind' into his work. Tolkien loved ancient mythology and it's everywhere in his work. Should we hate Tolkien too?
Very well, the concrete, or the 'constructed idea' of the mod is that a Purity Sue REALLY wants to join your party. She's such an innocent and goodly girl, but you'd better look sexier than Neil Patrick Harris (who totally has a charisma of at least 16) or she'll leave you when your sexification ring is stripped off by her stalker wannabe boyfriend.
The concrete, or, I assume, the premise.
Though you bring up a good point: an author SHOULD have bits of themselves or their beliefs in their stories, otherwise they're writing blindly: THAT is how they connect with and can really show synergy with their work. If they have no connection or relation in their own material, why should I connect or relate to it?
Every author, even TOLKIEN put his thoughts and 'mind' into his work. Tolkien loved ancient mythology and it's everywhere in his work. Should we hate Tolkien too?
Tolkien was a good writer. No reason to hate. There are a lot of ways up the mountain for writing something with value but regardless of the method or approach of the author, good writing offers something to the reader and bad writing destroys just about any story, play, game, movie, or other content that relies on it.
I didn't say we should nor would I ever dream of it, I'm just saying, just like how according to ArdanisL: Tashia, Tortured Souls, BG1NPC Project, Tyris Flare, Ninde, Never Ending Journey, & Xulaye apparently draw from the author's real life experiences and knowledge, so too does Tolkien, and the Bronte Sisters, and CS Lewis and Victor Hugo and everyone who's ever written anything.
Speaking as an actual writer, you can also do research to give you knowledge you don't have about subjects. topics and mindsets, and you can ask friends who may have experience in those areas. You don't have to do or experience something yourself to write something well. You just have to do the research.
Speaking as an actual writer, you can also do research to give you knowledge you don't have about subjects. topics and mindsets, and you can ask friends who may have experience in those areas. You don't have to do or experience something yourself to write something well. You just have to do the research.
One can't use THAT in favor of Saerileth either. Had they done research, then Saerileth's words AND voice could have sounded correctly Shakespearean instead of like some pretentious knockoff, that's probably a stretch though.
Comments
Maybe my expectations were too high. Maybe it's because I'm not a poetry kinda guy. Maybe it's because I'm not much into elves (on that note, I will donate the fuck out of any Dwarf NPC Romance made).
But I had him in my party for ten minutes before he started waxing on moons and stars, pain and loss and how much he was wronged. And he didn't stop, he got worse, lamenting all the way through chapter six, Imoen got all flustered by it.
I expected a badass, bitter, angry, xenophobic Drow warrior who was used to being surrounded by enemies at all times and constantly had his guard up, completely unfamiliar with the outside world.
Instead, I got a whinier Haer'dalis.
Addition:
Also had Xan and Kivan in BG2, both were ok. Xan has a LOT of interjections and while the makers clearly tried to develop him beyond his "We're all doomed" persona, they held back, causing many promising moments which end up dissappointing. He gets a lot of background information though, and history, which is very appreciated and appropriate.
Kivan was also pretty good, though it suffered from a lot of elf-ness (to be expected really) where you can walk though the moonlight and falling leaves with your soulmate (no, this isn't romance content) if you talk to him in a friendly way enough. I tried to romance him, but for some reason, despite being a jackass to him, Anomen snagged me first. I only found out when he suddenly called me "My love" in ToB, I was quite upset. It was a pretty good mod, and I liked that he reacted properly to Tazok in the Windspear Hills.
Only read the description/board/Faq 2 days ago and he does sound pretty appealing to me. Though I wonder if it's worth to get the hidden NPC (you can resurrect the wife?).
But yes, she's an elven Diviner. No idea what she's like or if they get all sappy together. If the writing of the mod without her is any indication; yes, yes they will.
I currently play with 'beyond the law' & Tyris Flare = more than enough sappy shit!
edit: BTL is really awesome, romance between NPCs = nice! Banters and sequences are also very good. Tyris only wanna do it like rabbits once in a while after getting her to stage 2..so that's okay with me :P
For the bad:
* The writing is terrible.
* The character is a true Purity Sue through and through - dominating the story, choices, and having the lack of depth of character.
* The 15 year old/instant love aspect is both creepy and poorly written.
For the good:
* I thought the character was just fine from a gaming perspective. A Cavalier with decent but not overpowered stats fits in just fine with a lot of the game's default NPCs. I liked the portrait.
* I loved having an appearance in Sigil. That was a well-done recreation of the PS:T environment, minus a few of the bonus magic items available there and the OP demon at the end.
* The "good" path made available was a nice optional content addition.
* The authors supported this mod all the way through TOB. To many mods end at SOA.
* The content added for Watcher's Keep would have been fine had she not railroaded so much of the rest of the game.
So I think there were some nice things done with this but when the writing and character fail pretty spectacularly it is tough to get beyond that -- kind of like an epic sci-fi pick with really, really terrible plot and character development. No matter how nice the special effects or interesting the premise, a movie or mod like that is just doomed to flaming failure.
While I agree she is a Mary Sue as far as character goes, the writing itself is vastly superior to that of many "adequate" mods.
I fail utterly to understand why people tend to enjoy badly written mods, that feature references to other RL media, or discuss how much this or that in-game item costs, or play out the use of some spells in dialogues, over a mod that happens to be Sue yet was made by a professional writer. The above-mentioned bad examples of writing make me cringe far more. It's entirely optional and has no consequences whatsoever. Same as most of other choices, where Saeri objects against something.
Which mods are those? The only mod I know of that break the 4th wall entirely are joke mods like Banana mod and I can forgive it because it's trying to be comedic and a parody.
None of the character mods I've played ever really reference real world social commentary or whatever.
I also wouldn't call this professional writing. A romance with no buildup... yes, I can say it... TWILIGHT is a better love story. For what that story's worth at least it doesn't plop the romance right in your face and Bella never even NEARLY dies from broken heart... and that's still abominable writing. I just defended Twilight... WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!
As for the "a lot of writing"... that wouldn't make it GOOD persay. If the BG novels were longer than the whole Les Miserable book series, they would just be a larger pile of dog turds! That holds true here too.
As for consequences, it will make her leave your party.
Burn that mod in a car fire.
Here are my main problems with the writing:
* She instantly falls entirely in love with your character on first meeting. Instant attraction? Sure. Instant desire to start a relationship? Sure. Instant 'love and devotion of the highest order that you proclaim to the other person'? No. Anyone over the age of 13 would have to simply ignore this aspect of the mod to buy into the relationship.
* She has no depth of character as she has no real flaws, doubt, selfishness or darkness in her (just as the most evil people with functioning mental faculties have some kindness and goodness in them, any realistic portrayal of a person has some of these 'negative' elements in their personality -- even superman). Elements of this would be OK but it permeates all the writing (a few examples below).
* The 'died of a broken heart' thing is just ridiculous from several angles: it is an incredibly unrealistic response, it is inconsistent with her religious views which are supposedly so essential to her character, and it is a ridiculous extension of the Mary Sue trope (she is just too good for this world after whatever sinful thing you did that broke her heart...)
* The age aspect is tough for me to swallow. Others may have different views but I would include this in the writing angle. When I did the mod, I actually went in and adjusted the dialog file to change her to legal age.
* The rival lover part is not particularly well done. He comes off like a creepy stalker instead of a heartbroken but virtuous paladin. For there to be some tension along the lines of 'will she or won't she', this character would have to be seriously realigned.
* Beyond the romance angle, she dominates a lot of narrative - either making choices for you or breaking the game when a choice is made that she doesn't like - and dominates much of the dialogue. This is a black hole Mary Sue.
Not all the dialogue or character development is beyond horrible but so many of the most important aspects of her character stomps on this line that I can't help but condemn the writing.
A lighter touch and a less Mary Sue character (cut down the dialogue, eliminate suicide, cut down the leave the party moments, introduce some humanity, make her a bit less 'special', etc.) would go a long, long way to making this a much improved mod.
Then you can hit some of the issues like the near indestructable demon at the end of the Sigil bit, etc.
A well done example of this is the core BG2 NPCs reaction when Bodhi offers to help you. They express concern, they complain you're even considering it, but they don't decide for you.
The one mod where the NPC takes away a decision where I really liked it is the Valen mod. I don't play evil well and she has several moments where she lashes out and makes an evil decision for you but she has less overall dialogue than a normal NPC and is definitely not the focus of things so it is very different from the "all about me" NPCs. The Valen mod remains perhaps my favorite NPC mod. (The only negative to the mod is the eventually overpowered claws, a flaw which can be remedied by having her wield daggers or other regular weapons or not upgrade the claws).
I can't hate Weimer though. He gave us modern modding after all.
I actually don't hate ay actual modders... EXCEPT the makers of Saerileth. I cannot stress this enough, the makers are like a teenage Mary Sue writer where anyone who doesn't like their work is FLAMING and talk of age is a permaban on their forums.
Seriously, if they had the maturity to see the flaws, I'd have no qualms with the makers, but that is... unbecoming and unsettling.
The cleric-component is a bit hmmmmmmmmmmm, but I guess without it, they would be the same victims as in vanilla. (and actually clerics are giving me a damn hard time in SCSII)
For mages it's only natural to have some protections up and running, so I don't despite the pre-combat trigger. Even if they usually have spell-reflection+abjuration-immunity ^^ *d00h*
For the tactics-mod I can name one specific encounter, which I do HATE: "Kuroisan", the Acid Kensai!
But that's the cheese-cheat-mod from weimar..honestly he (she? voice sample doesn't fit) is beyond OPness and after I read several boards it seems common to cheat to beat that encounter. Checked in Near infinity and didn't know if I should be laughing or whining. That thing has more immunities, +buffs (hardcoded, so they can't be stripped), and other odd/weird things that it is not even remotely funny and made him harder than anything in SoA/ToB.
Seriously a Kensai with 32~ dex/ ~-16 AC/ +16-18 damage/ 130 (?) magic resistance / -16~ saving throws +++ several immunities to nearly everything else is less than fun. He hits you for something like 40-48 damage, so I think there is even more to it...
Shredded off some immunities in NI, put the katana in storage and will not use it. Makes even Iron GOlems and similar easily detachable thanks to the very OP-procc.
That encounter or the sword does not have anything to do with tactics..it's a pure cheat.
While I think of it, was anything even hard in vanilla SoA/ToB? I don't think so...you could:
- feeblemind dragons (LOL..an ancient being..nuff said)
- hammer on liches while protected by some lol-scroll
- for everything else, have at least your trusty old sword erm fully loaded cloudkill-wand at hand :>
Cloudkill still can be abused to a certain factor, but only in minor encounters you'd usually roll over anyway.
I currently have a much more annoying problem at all, thanks to 'Beyond the Law' you usually get some (or 3) lvl18 mages popping up while traveling in town. They WERE already hard powered up by SCSII and you were usually low-level. Now they switched to lvl 20 and are 4 in their number...and stupid programmer made them by +4 hitpoints immune to death spell
I think they are harder to fight against than some dragon/lich/etc....4 SCSII buffed lvl 20 mages are no fun! [my current party is ~14-15 thanks to the XP they give and I wasn't even in spellhold]
Thanks to Keldorn (and ONLY THANKS TO HIM) it is doable..but once they start gating in the modded fiends...*duck & cover* or reload :>
I don't really care about the missing build-up or other weird details such as age - as long as I can't sense the author's thoughts when they were writing this or that sentence. Other NPC-related mods that I've played are Tashia, Tortured Souls, BG1NPC Project, Tyris Flare, Ninde, Never Ending Journey, Xulaye. With every one of them, save for the last, I would sometimes run across a line that would show crystal clear what's been on the writer's mind. That didn't happen with Saerileth.
I think the best NPC mods I've ever used were Kelsey, and Amber! I always had Amber in the party because she was a different kind of NPC, a tiefling (like Haer'Dalis) and not implimented in such a silly or crappy way.
AND btw... the other "option" to go to spellhold through the paladins with Saerilith had to be one of the greatest ideas gone wrong. There were no options, no reasons for the paladins to want to go there in the first place, YET here they were, trying to help YOU get there because they just randomly thought it was a good idea!
The concrete, or, I assume, the premise.
Though you bring up a good point: an author SHOULD have bits of themselves or their beliefs in their stories, otherwise they're writing blindly: THAT is how they connect with and can really show synergy with their work. If they have no connection or relation in their own material, why should I connect or relate to it?
Every author, even TOLKIEN put his thoughts and 'mind' into his work. Tolkien loved ancient mythology and it's everywhere in his work. Should we hate Tolkien too?