#7221 [CORE] - Anomen's screwy weapon profs...

[Deleted User]

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Aranthys

That's from Vanilla. Not a bug unfortunately, since he does mention using spears while fighting when he was youger in one of his banters

AcridSyphilis

Anomen did not plan his dual class very well. He's a very poor powergamer.

Messi

Aranthys said:

That's from Vanilla. Not a bug unfortunately, since he does mention using spears while fighting when he was youger in one of his banters

It's not from vanilla. It's from one of the fixpacks. Vanilla Anomen doesn't have proficiency points in spear. The reason they used to give him those prof points was the line you mentioned, which is stupid considering you don't need points in particular weapon to use it...

Edit: Though him using spears doesn't really make much sense either way. I'd personally prefer putting gameplay ahead of random lines of dialogue that make no sense from gameplay, or rule, point of view.

Aranthys

Agreed, then, this is a bug.

His vanilla proficiencies are :

War Hammer +
Mace ++
Sling ++
Sword and shield style +

That component from the fixpack is not a fix, it's a tweak and SHOULDN'T be incorporated in BG2:EE

suddenly_human

Yeah take it out - it's just confusing. I had to use EE Keeper to get rid of it!

[Deleted User]

The "fix" is that Anomen's vanilla proficiencies short him two pips compared to what he should have from his levels. I imagine spear seemed a logical place to allocate those missing proficiencies since he mentions using one before; I suppose you could make the argument that they would be better placed elsewhere.

Illydth

So there's two sides to this argument:

1) He was a fighter, meaning a Spear Proficiency was at one point legal for his character class. He's certainly not the ONLY NPC who's not power maxed with their weapon proficiencies.

2) On the other hand, Putting 2 points into the spear proficiency is TRUELY wasted proficiency points since Anomen can NEVER AGAIN use them. As far as I know of all of the NPC's he's the only NPC to have proficiency in a weapon he cannot and will never be able to use.

While argument 1 has it's merits, I believe there IS a difference between 1 and 2: In the case of "well most of the NPC's have junk proficiencies", the difference is that while a two handed weapon proficiency on a character typically wielding sword and board or two swords is bad, there's nothing that says you can't switch to a 2 handed weapon at some point.

In this case, Anomen is forever locked out of using a spear. We'll bug this as a low priority and see what we get out of it.

Lace

Kaigen said:

The "fix" is that Anomen's vanilla proficiencies short him two pips compared to what he should have from his levels. I imagine spear seemed a logical place to allocate those missing proficiencies since he mentions using one before; I suppose you could make the argument that they would be better placed elsewhere.

I think it was okay to give him pips to make him up to par for his fighter levels. While it sucks that they're in something useless, I can see where that maintains the strength level of the character from the vanilla version. If they gave him those extra pips in mace, for example, that's a power gain for him over the vanilla version, and a deterrent from using him with other weapon types. If they were to assign those 2 extra pips in another weapon he currently doesn't have proficiency for, like staves, well, that would still increase his melee flexibility, making him more powerful than the vanilla version.

I think the people working behind the scenes made the right call, personally.

Avenger_teambg

This was already considered, he got the 2 spear points for story consistency and to maintain original game balance. We hoped this will maximize the number of people content with.
Roleplaying - check
Story - check
Rules- check
Powerplayers - won't use Anomen

hansolo

@Avenger_teambg
Why don't you just leave him as he was originally?
So he loses out on two prof. points, so what? Other NPCs have their inconsistencies as well.
That's what makes them unique.

Btw, you don't have to take proficiency points to be able to use weapons.

Plus, Anomen has a bit of a showy character, so he might mention his spear related story, but wouldn't actually need to be as good in wielding them as he makes it appear.

This way you could leave his prof. points as it was originally and still have:

Roleplaying: check
Story: check
Rules: <- here we have some inconsistency, but so has Minsc and some other NPCs, see comment above
Powerplayers: won't use Anomen [Well, actually he IS pretty powerful, but that's another story ]

CamDawg

Anomen was actually short four pips at all incarnations. From the Fixpack docs:

Anomen - Anomen was shorted four proficiency stars at every level; Fixpack bumps up his sword and shield from one to two stars. Two stars are moved into spears even though Anomen can no longer use them since dualing to cleric (he mentions his prowess with spears in banter). At low levels the last point missing goes to staves; at higher levels where he already has staff proficiency he receives a second star in war hammers.

Aerie, Cernd, Imoen, Jaheira, Keldorn, Mazzy, Nalia and Viconia all had some issue with the correct number of pips as well and were also fixed.