Romance pitfalls playing a female character

Xavioria

SO I decided to try to play a female character again after a while of playing a male character (using a portrait that is in my likeness) and was rather enjoying myself until I encountered a few... interesting issues.

I wanted to try a Dorn, Anomen, Hexxat romance triangle, thinking that it must have been the best idea under the sun... until I realized the inherent problems with this approach. You CAN'T have Dorn and Anomen in the same party. Not going to say why due to spoilers, but suffice to say, they cannot. I'm not going to speculate, BUT this feels like a way to avoid writing romance conflicts between the two NPCs, for WHATEVER reason, I know not, but, I was like WHATEVER, I'll try a different triangle.

SO I tried the Haer'Dalis romance (which is a third party mod) to try some type of love triangle.

Much to my chagrin, I should have realized that content between NEW Characters probably hadn't been written yet, so there weren't any conflicts with Haer'Dalis whatsoever. Added to this was Hexxat's NEVER STARTING a romance with my character. This COULD be a bug, OR, possibly my character isn't compatible (CN half elf C/M),

Last but not least was that while the Haer'Dalis romance was a bit... overwritten... I'm not trying to critique anything, and it is QUITE well written, it's just too many choices and too much reading in terms of a romance. I can deal with the occasional anecdote (Jan Jensan coming to mind) but the constant barrage of paragraphs and the endless supply of choices with it made it impossible to enjoy... for ME anyway, that's not to say it isn't good, it is VERY good, I just couldn't deal with it as time wore on.

SOOO the entire reason for this posting was partly to vent and also partly to ask what people's opinions were on the nonexisting Dorn/Anomen conflict and if Hexxat's romance not starting is a bug or not, because I'm actually not sure.

Twani

Hexxat's romance not working is a known bug. One way to deal with it that I know of is to try and dismiss her from your party, then choose the flirtatious dialog. That seems to get it rolling. There is a CLUAConsole command to just start the romance and it will continue from there, but I don't know it at the time. (Sorry!) I'm sure someone will come to this thread soon enough and explain the timer trigger.

I think Anomen and Dorn refusing to be in the same party is alright: Anomen, for all his faults, does try to act like a good individual when he remembers himself, and associating with a blackguard is not a thing a priest of Helm would do (especially since said blackguard has no problem slaughtering priests of Helm). Interestingly, then do have a conflict: if you sleep with Dorn, Anomen does an "EW WTF EW" routine (same as Aerie, Jaheria, Rassad, and Neera- not sure if Hexxet and Viconia get in to it) and breaks up with you. How you would get both Dorn and Anomen in the same party is a bit confusing, though. If you want a triangle, I'm guessing Anomen and Rassaad probably conflict a bit?

I personally liked the Haer'Dalis romance: it's one of my favorites. I do agree that it's a lot of reading, but my personal favorite game is Planescape: Torment, so I like that. I have to say, though, reasons like yours is why with the NPC I'm working on I decided to make his personal talks PID induced. So he can talk forever about his family/his faith/his hometown if you click on him and ask him, but he won't talk for stuff as long during actual love talks. The love talks are fairly simple, and the PID's are long and babbling. I think that creates a good balance, but I'm rambling. Maybe you should post your critique to the HD Romance boards, and see what the creators think? It is true that it's a lot of reading, but I think the lot of reading pays off.

Avenel

Regarding Hexxat and Anomen, they do have a conflict if they are in the same party, and Charname will eventually have to choose between them. My game was bugged too, so I never got any romance dialogue from Hexxat. I had the same problem with Rasaad, so I started his romance by adjusting his global lovetalk timer to 1. For Hexxat, try putting this into CLUA Console: C:SetGlobal("HexxatLovetalksTimer","GLOBAL",1)

My good-aligned PC wasn't going to have a bar of Dorn, so I can't comment on that.

Re the Haer'Dalis mod, I think it is brilliantly written, and it delves very well into his character. He is wordy by nature (he is a bard, after all) and words are his passion. It makes sense, then, that his dialogues are lengthy when they need to be, and full of intrigue. Just my own two cents.

scorpiova

There are many well-written and fun custom npc's out there that have romance for female players; Angelo, Kelsey, Faren, Arath, etc)

I would recommend checking them out if your looking for more variety. Some of them, Kelsey in particular do have conflicts with Anomen. You can even have Ajantis back as a romanceable companion if you want.

Check out the link below for a list of mods that are compatible with BG2EE, they are also very easy to install.

http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/23726/bgii-ee-compatible-mod-list/p1

Fredjo

Haer'Dalis romance being a mod, I don't think Overhaul will ever add anything connected to it.