2 Mod Ideas I am willing to try my hand (TOB Ending + Redemption Like)

Guguma

Hello All,

I have been modding my own games (Original and EE) for quite sometime now, mostly items and spells, and I have a fair amount of coding experience. Now that I have some spare time I always had these 2 mod ideas which I might try my hand. I will briefly explain them here, and I appreciate any feedback. Before I do so however I must say that I am aware that they are moderately ambitious attempts (possibly the TOB Ending one, which will certainly present unforeseen problems, so I would also greatly appreciate plausibility feedback from experienced modders too. Without further ado:

1. TOB Ending

I was never satisfied with the ending of TOB, not with ascension either. I do not see Melissan as a satisfying final encounter, and we already dealt with the five before so I do not see a point in it. Besides getting the right to godhood by an "enough, Melissan loses, CHARNAME wins" interference from Solar does not seem , well, epic enough.

The idea is to modify that last battle only, and it will proceed in this manner:

1. We will have our usual first round with Melissan
2. After we defeat Melissan, our beloved father Bhaal will conjure up. He will certainly mock Melissan for thinking the way she did and punish her approprietly.
3. Then he will turn to his favored child and ask him to deliver his portion of the essence, leaving us with 3 choices.

(Forgive my Dragon Age like response texts, for simplicity)

i. Surrender to Bhaal, be rewarded as his right hand (kind of NEUTRAL ending)
ii. "Never. I will god." And prepare for an epic battle with Bhaal (EVIL ending)
ii "Never. I save." And prepare for an epic battle with Bhaal (GOOD ending)

In theory modding a single encounter seems doable, however I have been warned before that the final encounter/area has some tricks that might not be easy to bypass.

Anyway that is the basic idea.

2. Redemption Like, Jon Irenicus MOD

I played both "The Longer Road", and "Redemption", Redemption gives us too short of an Irenicus time. And I felt Longer Road to be too intrusive, and too goody. So here is the idea.

I could never hate Irenicus a great deal, especially after seeing him speaking of genuinely regretting what he is about to do right before he strips you of your "very divinity", and seeing his desperate attempt to rekindle his love for "Elessime", it seems like the man was never given a second chance. In fact I would love to have an option like this in SOA:

Irenicus: Who...Who dares!?

CHARNAME: *pant* *pant* (Dragging a beat up bhaalspawn right behind him) Ok stop your theatrics and dimension dooring for a second and listen will you?

Irenicus: ???

CHARNAME: Why don't you take this guys' soul, give mine back, do your tree thing while I handle the elves over here?

Irenicus: The catch?

CHARNAME: You will help me take Bhaals place afterwards, we will be God bros!, just like Bhaal, Mask and Bane!

Irenicus: (His beady blue eyes suddenly glare like you have never seen before, and you can swear you saw a smile for a second) Lol never occurred to me, lets do this.

Elessime: Dayum Shame...

Anyway, let me get back to redemption. So CHARNAME will have a monologue with himself in his pocket plane, remember Irenicus, consider that he would make a powerful ally or pity him possibly remembering his regret lines etc. and will decide to pull him out of the Blood War.

I would not want this to be too intrusive, so some Abyss lord or Nine Hells lord might not be happy about his presence in hells and lead CHARNAME with a plan to pull him out. One Area, one Major Quest, a lengthy dialogue with Irenicus and we might pull him out of there. He will be something like an 18th 19th level pure wizard when he joins with maybe one or two special spells (dual chromatic orb with lowered saving throws for coolness maybe, nothing too intrusive)

I did not do any banter modding, I would certainly like to include banters of CHARNAME and Irenicus but I would like to keep them as non intrusive as possible, I do not think I can write with a quality on par with the original writing. Many mods makes themselves pretty obvious through the writing, even the sound acting and writing in the EE additional content just shows itself. I seriously do not mean any offense in the last comment, I just think that the original writing is very very very high quality.

Ok, so here it is, waiting for comments and thanks in advance.

shawne

The Bhaal scenario seems interesting, and rather like what the original team were considering for the endgame... but it does raise the question of why Bhaal would need to ask for his essence back. If this was his plan all along, wouldn't he have prepared for the possibility that the surviving spawn might not want to give up their power?

Guguma

I understand the concerns here, a proper answer to this question would require digging into the "not so clear" part of the d&d lore. As far as I know the original plan was that all of Bhaal's children were to be to be executed by his priests as soon as possible. Bhaal then would be revived again by a ritual performed by the priests. Even the question of "can Bhaal just pop into life" does not have a clear answer, but lets assume that it happens.

Then comes your question. I would assume he might be prepared for that possibility, but there is the other side of the coin as well, "is it really wise to challenge a partially reformed god at his own throne (plane of existence)?" So I would assume his line of thinking would be more like "If my last standing child does not surrender their essence, I will simply crush them."

Btw, you mentioned that this idea was along the lines of what the original team were considering for the endgame, can you point me to any sources/references about this? I had no idea about this, I would be glad to read some info. I recently came across and read "Planescape Torment Vision Statement" it was such an interesting read, if something like this exists for BG, I would love to read it.

Thanks

shawne

Guguma said:

I understand the concerns here, a proper answer to this question would require digging into the "not so clear" part of the d&d lore. As far as I know the original plan was that all of Bhaal's children were to be to be executed by his priests as soon as possible. Bhaal then would be revived again by a ritual performed by the priests. Even the question of "can Bhaal just pop into life" does not have a clear answer, but lets assume that it happens.

Eh, you can handwave it by saying that Amelyssan's death, coupled with the close proximity of the last surviving Bhaalspawn, is enough for Bhaal to coalesce, if not immediately regain his divinity.

Then comes your question. I would assume he might be prepared for that possibility, but there is the other side of the coin as well, "is it really wise to challenge a partially reformed god at his own throne (plane of existence)?" So I would assume his line of thinking would be more like "If my last standing child does not surrender their essence, I will simply crush them."

Bhaal is the God of Murder, though; if he believes killing his last child is as simple as that, why bargain at all? (I'm not saying it's an impossible hurdle to jump, just that you need to take that into consideration if you want the scenario to stay believable in the overall context of the endgame).

Btw, you mentioned that this idea was along the lines of what the original team were considering for the endgame, can you point me to any sources/references about this? I had no idea about this, I would be glad to read some info. I recently came across and read "Planescape Torment Vision Statement" it was such an interesting read, if something like this exists for BG, I would love to read it.

Mostly rumors and discussions rather than a specific design document - it's been said that the dreams in the first game and Bhaal's appearance in SoA were meant to foreshadow a final confrontation at the end of ToB. I've always enjoyed the Amelyssan bait-and-switch, but much like the revelation of the PC's own origins, it's not something that was foregrounded particularly well.

wubble

shawne said:

I've always enjoyed the Amelyssan bait-and-switch, but much like the revelation of the PC's own origins, it's not something that was foregrounded particularly well.

That's because most of the foreshadowing budget was used up hinting at neverwinter nights.

shawne

Another point to consider: would the presence of Sarevok or Imoen affect what Bhaal would say or do in this scenario?

wubble

shawne said:

Another point to consider: would the presence of Sarevok or Imoen affect what Bhaal would say or do in this scenario?

Sarevok has no essence and so Bhaal probably wouldn't be very interested in him,however bhaal would probably be rather confused by imoen's innocence as even good charname and balthazar are affected much more by the taint.