Review: Back to Brynnlaw

Darkcloud

In this mod you are approached by a wizard that your help is required in Brynnlaw and that they might get your Soul back in the process. You then return to Brynnlawn by ship and have to fight through the Cowled Wizards which overtook the island. The writing in the Mod is pretty good. The only problem is that you will meet quite some people that you most likely killed before and they all use some line similar to Edwins "Death is just a minor inconvenience to me" line. While this fits quite nice in the AD&D interpretation of Baldur's Gate it does not so much to actual PnP rules. So purists might not like that, especially with Lady Galvana which didn't seem to be all that powerful. Imoen also has some nice exclusive banter in the Mod and apparently Xan from the Xan mod does too but I did not test that.

Other than that the difficulty is not that high, you have to fight a lot of mid to high mid level Mages. So with the smarter mages component from SCS the mod might turn out quite brutal ( I removed the component after a few to many frustrating encounters short after leaving the underdark). For my liking the mod might have needed a few of more of the high level enforcers and the leader of the mages should have been at a power level above them. He actually seems weaker than them.

On the reward side you get quite a nice amount of gold and a reasonable amount of XP for the quest. For the unique rewards there are some items that are quite nice for the utility slots. None of them are really overpowered but they give mages nice defense and spell slot boosts. There is also a neat one for dual wielders and you get some neat high level scrolls.

The rewards are the Following: Gloves of the Old Master, Damage +2 +2 off hand THAC0. Allowing flawless Dual Wield. The damage does not show up in the profile so I'm not sure if its an error in the display or if it doesn't work.

Boots of Good Defense: +2 Bonus to AC, +10 to maximum HP. The AC stacks with other boosts so its quite a good boost, especially for mages.

Wind (Ion Stone): Boots of Speed movement rate bonus and an additional 8th level spell slot.

Melf's Bracerrs of Defense: Armor Class 3, +10 max HP and 3 additional level 3 spells. Only usable by single class Mages and uh Barbarians (an oversight maybe?).

Then there is the final Reward: you get a piece of your soul back. This means, that you get the stat point back that you lost when entering The building in the Candle Keep dream. I actually had the choice between int wis and char so I don't exactly know how it determinates what you can raise again.

Overall a pretty enjoyable mod where only the defensive items you get might be a bit too strong because they also add 10hp.

Rooksx

Picking this up from the Sellswords thread - I somewhat disagree that the XP rewards in this mod are reasonable. You constantly get at least 20,000 XP for doing just about anything, even for a couple of quests that involve little more than talking to people. Completing the mod gives the party 300,000 XP, which is 50,000 XP each for a 6 person party. That's more than you get for completing chapter 2.

I played with SCS Smarter Mages with option 1 pre-casting. A couple of fights caused an NPC death due to an enemy's chain contingency Horrid Wilting hitting my party. But most of the mages weren't doing that and the bulk of their protections were stripped with a single Remove Magic, which suggests that their levels were a bit low. Most of the fights were pretty easy relative to the likely power of a Chapter 6 party.

Darkcloud

Well yeah there are some points like that but the main game has them too. The thing is that this mod is a bit more dialogue oriented and everything is so condensed.

I think it would be overall fine if it was a bit harder.

Rooksx

Agree. it's certainly not as bad as Sellswords in that respect. Each of my party members got over 400k XP by the end of that adventure, despite an almost total lack of challenge.

There's good writing in both mods but the gameplay needs to be reworked.

Darkcloud

Yes I agree on the gameplay but I can somewhat see why you would make your mod to easy. A mod that is to easy still can stay enjoyable. A mod that is to hard, especially if it ends up for the wrong reasons is just plain frustrating.

Tulgas

Worth installing and trying, indeed this game area was well drawn but not used much from content point of view. As for the rewards, seems too good rewards is problem of basically any mod.

Caedwyr

@Tulgas I looked through the .tra files and saw a bunch of items that gave casters high level spell slots. Were those the ones you found most objectionable, or was there something else that stood out to you as unbalanced?

Tulgas

@Caedwyr mainly, it's too big exp rewards for too easy/short quests. Items from this mod were not extremely unbalanced, but as far as I remember, cutting them in half felt just right adjustment. (Played as mage and seems actively used a pair of items from this mod)
Or may be instead of cutting items it's better to hide them under some nontrivial quest solutions or easter eggs.

shevy123456

There is an indirect mod-conflict (at the least in March 2024,
with the then latest releases) between Back to Brynnlaw mod and
the Tactics remix mod, in that Tactis remix as well as Back to
Brynnlaw, both occupy the house in the docks district close to
the thieves guildhall. So the Tactics remix mod will have that
vampire lich there; I test-triggered that when my party was too
weak to win the fight.

Lateron I started the brynnlaw mod, and when I went back to the
house, the vampire lich was gone. So it seems as if the brynnlaw
mod overwrites the scene there. I just finished the brynnlaw mod,
which worked fine in and by itself, but the vampire lich was still gone
afterwards. So, it appears to be that you may first have to kill the vampire
lich IF you installed the tactics mod and want to finish that fight,
as the brynnlaw mod will cancel it. (The Dusk NPC mod solved
this issue elegantly by providing a dedicated new hideout spot,
which is a nice solution to the problem and works very well.)

Note that in the past, with other installations, I also had
that NPC from the brynnlaw mod appear in the house while the
vampire lich was there, and if I recall correctly he died to
area spells by the vampire lich (the horrible writhing spell,
I think). This time I did not have that, not sure why. Either
way I'd recommend to finish that fight first, before going to
Brynnlaw. Evidently this only is a small issue when both mods
are installed.

In regards to the XP reward: I also agree with the second
comment that the XP rewards are a bit too high, IMO. I can't
say by how much but just to throw a random number, I'd think
-15% or -20% of the XP rewards given, may be a prudent change,
if anyone ever wants to re-pick up the Back to Brynnlaw mod.

(Last release was in 2021 so I think it is currently not
actively maintained anymore? https://github.com/Pocket-Plane-Group/Back_to_Brynnlaw)