How important is reputation?
Heindrich
Member, Moderator Posts: 2,959
I know that you get a discount from merchants if you have very high reputation, and penalties if it is very low. But for a good party, is it important to maintain a very high level of reputation?
My party was at rep 18 when my party had a disagreement with a Flaming Fist Mercenary that escalated rather quickly. I thought I was doing the 'good' thing by not handing over the badly wounded Samuel to him, but he attacked and I was forced to kill him, which reduced my reputation by 9(?!).
I have been minimising save-loading in my game, only doing so when something catastrophically bad happens. Also for RP purposes, I don't necessarily want to change my decision with regards to Samuel and the mercenary. So is it ok for me to continue with my huge reputation hit or will it affect my future quests?
My party was at rep 18 when my party had a disagreement with a Flaming Fist Mercenary that escalated rather quickly. I thought I was doing the 'good' thing by not handing over the badly wounded Samuel to him, but he attacked and I was forced to kill him, which reduced my reputation by 9(?!).
I have been minimising save-loading in my game, only doing so when something catastrophically bad happens. Also for RP purposes, I don't necessarily want to change my decision with regards to Samuel and the mercenary. So is it ok for me to continue with my huge reputation hit or will it affect my future quests?
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Comments
I wouldn't say it's very important to keep a high reputation, but there are a few drawbacks to having too low reputation, so I wouldn't make a habit of cutting up members of the Flaming Fist (jerks though they may be). But your current situation is most definitely possible to recover from (it's not even a very big setback; reputation is not that important).
If you think your reputation is too poor, you can go to a temple and throw money at the priest until he/she starts saying nice things about you [1], but (as I am sure you already know) there are also many opportunities to improve your reputation for free (typically by doing nice things in quests).
1. Reputation 7–11 is the comparative sweet spot, where buying reputation is the cheapest, at mere 100 gold per point.
1. Party members might leave if your reputation gets too high or low, good and neutral characters leave at around 2 but evil characters do not like high reputation and will leave at around 19 according to manuals, might not be 100% accurate.
2. Store Prices, high reputation gives a discount at stores while low reputation causes an increase in price.
3. If your reputation goes to 5 or below, there is a chance Flaming Fist Mercenaries that attack will appear when you enter a new area.
I usually always have 1-2 evil char in my team, I usually send Dorn or Viconia or Edwin or Xzar (etc) in a dark corner to kill a poor innocent to keep my reputation at 9-16. ‘’Rumors’’ across the sword coast said that some members of my team are involved in some villainies/suspicious assaults/curious ‘self-defence cases’ and then they tend to not trust charname and pals so easily but.. this is only rumors right? ^^
Depends on the order you explore the map, if you are heading off west with Samuel and haven't spoken to the Flaming Fist yet, he will latch on to you if you enter his field of view. But all is not lost, claim Samuel is a merchant he'll let you go.
Otherwise, best course of action is to exit the area to the north and avoid him entirely.
But you can recover from a nine point loss easily enough. I pretty much always run with a 20 reputation. It's easy to maintain for a good aligned party, even if things do go wrong on occasion. And it's nice for cheap shopping!
Actually I picked up Samuel before I came across the Mercenary. Also, for a long time, I thought the Flaming Fists were antagonists, a kind-of mafia gang of some sort, so I was quite eager to kill him for xp/loot.
Otherwise, best course of action is to exit the area to the north and avoid him entirely.
But you can recover from a nine point loss easily enough. I pretty much always run with a 20 reputation. It's easy to maintain for a good aligned party, even if things do go wrong on occasion. And it's nice for cheap shopping!
Yeah I got my reputation back to 17 now, completing a bunch of side-quests west of Nashkel and Beregost.
lol... I thought it was their interpretation of the law. Like an extremist religious sect, intolerant of other beliefs and peoples, violently imposing their own views on others. Also, there's 'honour' among thieves and bandits, and warrior sects of questionable authority and morality, who may also fight to uphold their conception of 'law'.