I guess it becomes a bit more clear now. I just don't understand why the crusade needs to wreck the coast in order to get to avernus.
Maybe this second time I'll get it better.
She kinda ran off half baked, as she seems to do a lot. The Crusade pillages to increase its numbers, and keep its people fed. Considering Hephernaan, its also possible he is responsible for most of the Crusade's evil actions, and keeps such activity hidden from Caelar.
Jon-bon did have the power to enter your dreams in BG2. The first three dream sequences were all about him offering you power, trying to get you prepped for when he kidnapped you at Spellhold. There's actually a PnP spell called Nightmare that allows you to do just that.
I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before, but in SOA, it seems like interpretation only to conclude that the real Irenicus was acting in those first three dreams. I mean, plenty of other characters cameoed and had lines in the BG1 dreams, but that doesn't mean Ulraunt was using Nightmare in Chapter 7. The SOD writers clearly believe the real Irenicus was doing something, but I'm not convinced.
And to return to what I said originally, I don't think you add to the Baldur's Gate saga just by telling us more stuff. Irenicus needed to test Gorion's Ward on the Dragonspear sidequest because he wasn't sure they were powerful enough for his purposes? That's answering a question that never needed asking.
sod throws a huge wrench into the dreams. in 1 and 2 it is clear it is bhaal speaking to you. in sod jon is entering your dreams and the taint itself is also there taking the form of the fuzzy slayer.
you can say that the hoodman in there is bhaal. but he says something along the lines of ' you have gotten stronger i can no longer get inside your head.' meaning jon is getting into the dreams.
I think the hooded man there with, "Get into your head" is just a reference to him blocking out the actual events of Skie's murder from charname. Not that he was previously invading your dreams. Its Bhaal giving charname dreams throughout the saga, not Irenicus, not Imoen, not anyone else.
I was always under the impression that Bhaal was the one who was speaking to CHARNAME, in an effort to claim his/her destiny; and was speaking as Jon Irenicus since Jon represented the single most clear and present threat to the Ward's existence, and to the Dead God's plan for resurrection.
The recurring theme in the pre-Spellhold dreams is seizing power from your divine heritage. That's not really something Bhaal would want; Bhaal just wants the Bhaalspawn to get themselves killed quickly so his top priestess could perform the ritual to resurrect him. Irenicus, though, does want to conjure power in Charname, so he can seize it for himself.
I don't think the game explicitly says who is responsible for the dreams (aside from the one with Ellesime, which assuredly came from Ellesime herself), but the pre-Spellhold dreams featuring Irenicus are very much in line with Irenicus' own goals. The Spellhold dreams, the one in which you fight Bhaal and the one in which the fake Imoen talks to you about using the Slayer form, are more about losing control, which arguably fits a message from Bhaal, but could also just be non-magical dreams about Charname's fears.
@semiticgod Are you sure? The dreams in BG1 push charname to utilize the power he wields, going so far as to mock them when you get the non murder dreams, "You will learn." And these are coming explicitly from Bhaal's essence. The dreams in BG2 follow the same theme and encouragement.
@ThacoBell: I unno. I've skipped the BG1 dream sequences more than 10 times as often as I've read them, and I don't think I've read the evil-aligned ones.
Gavid in ToB does say that he, and presumably other Bhaalspawn, get an urge to kill that's almost impossible to resist. Bhaal might not want his children to become powerful per se, lest some of them attempt to usurp his position, but he would definitely want them to skew extremely violent, since it would get them killed faster. Do the BG1 dreams urge Charname to seize power, or just to get their hands dirty?
I always assumed that Irenicus was the source of the pre-Spellhold BG2 dreams because he was the central figure in the second two, and it really did seem to align with his motives. But it's possible that all of the dreams in the saga (aside from Ellesime's, anyway) came from Bhaal and none came from Irenicus.
I don't suppose the developers ever clarified what caused the dreams?
@semiticgod The BG1 dreams definitley have an air of power in the later ones, like charname riding a ship down a river of blood/conquest. Nothing in the games actually states that Irenicus is interferring in the dreams, just a line or two of him commenting that he doesn't know what you dreamed about. Imoen's appearance in the dreams is explicitly stated to be charname's innocence fighting back against the taint though.
IWD2's Ice Temple has to be the best dungeon design of them all! Hands down! Beamdog really should create a game where you play as a dungeon master. It's main plot could be to create the perfect dungeon for endlessly harassing invading adventurer parties.
I'd easily put my money for such a game on the table.
IWD2's Ice Temple has to be the best dungeon design of them all! Hands down! Beamdog really should create a game where you play as a dungeon master. It's main plot could be to create the perfect dungeon for endlessly harassing invading adventurer parties.
I'd easily put my money for such a game on the table.
IWD2's Ice Temple has to be the best dungeon design of them all! Hands down! Beamdog really should create a game where you play as a dungeon master. It's main plot could be to create the perfect dungeon for endlessly harassing invading adventurer parties.
I'd easily put my money for such a game on the table.
no. it and most of chapter 5 are the worst parts of the game.
Pathfinder:Kingmaker allows you to turn XP sharing on and off at any point.
Now for an Unpopular Opinion: Beamdog should partner with Owlcat (developers behind PF:KM) to make a 5e D&D game!
@bleusteel Well, that's nice. Never played it, though. That setting doesn't really interest me, TBH. Are you sure that's an unpopular opinion, though? I thought a lot of us wanted Beamdog to make D&D content with more recent rules. Maybe not with that specific developer, but hey.
And another thing: I recently finished Shadows of Amn and came close to finishing Throne of Bhaal, both of which I haven't played in many years, and I ended up having three more opinions that I don't believe are widely shared. (The fourth is one I've long held.)
Haer'Dalis and Cernd are upper-tier characters. The former is the only recruitable Bard in the second game, which means that if you don't bring him along, some very powerful bards-only equipment is lost to you unless you bring Jan along and give him Use Any Item (specifically, the instruments - removing stuns and curing confusions is generally difficult to do in this game); Enhanced Bard Song is a very powerful support ability for the simple reason that fear, stun and confusion are the three most annoying status effects in the game and temporarily granting passive immunity to them without casting a spell or drinking an expensive potion is nothing to sneeze at; his stats aren't great, I'll allow, but they can be fixed: just give Haer'Dalis the upgraded Angurvadal and the Girdle of Fortitude - boom, suddenly he has 22 STR, 17 DEX and 18 CON, conferring much more hitting power and an extra 20 hit points, which does wonders for his viability. Cernd, meanwhile, you can give a lesser Girdle of Giant Strength and the Gauntlets of Dexterity for stat correction, still give him AC bracers and that Shield amulet even if not physical armour and in ToB he can get the Big Metal Unit for armor. it's awesome and it takes care of all his AC needs. Plus he can still cast spells and shapeshift. In general I just think the Summon Insects/Insect Plague/Creeping Doom spells are really awesome as friendly-fireproof spells and spellcaster battles improvers especially.
Keldorn isn't all that. I can certainly see why people like him, but I've also seen the downsides. He's not anywhere near as bad as Anomen - although, y'know, who IS? - but I didn't realise how annoying it can be to have someone who interjects so frequently and so black-and-white morally. And people say Saerileth and Chloe interject too much? First chance I got, I replaced him with Sarevok and just used the Thief's Hood to do my True Seeing. Plus the Isra mod means that there's another paladin available to me, one who won't try to kill Viconia or Edwin.
Watcher's Keep sucks. I mean, Throne of Bhaal in general is my least favourite part of the series but there are at least PARTS of the main story I like or think would be great if they were more developed. Meanwhile, as far as I'm concerned, Watcher's Keep is just a massive black hole of negative emotions from which there is no escape. Some parts of it bore me, some parts of it confuse me, and having to go digging through it for one or more components for the best gear in the game ALWAYS pisses me off. Large swathes of it feel like someone just wanted to show off how clever they are, in the same way that the deluge of riddles they asked us in Spellhold's dungeons felt like someone was excessively fond of word games, such as that whole stretch of controlling a "spirit warrior" through an old-fashioned dungeon crawler. The less said about the Deck of Many Things and the guy who used it, the better. Also, it feels like the lion's share of effort and focus went into IT at the expense of the rest of the expansion, which is really, really short when you get right down to it, and the main villains, who are all really flat and 2-dimensional. And one last thing...
Ascension does NOT make the game better. I didn't look at the Five and Amellysan and think, "Y'know, I like these guys, but I'd like 'em even more if they were a complete pain in the ass to fight against." Souped-up boss fights fail to distract from the fact that they have half a decent backstory and most of a decent motivation between them. (Yaga-Shura and Balthazar, respectively.)
well the harder fights are optional. well besides the final fight. i wish there was a version of Ascension that was just the story stuff and not the harder battles.
ascension in general is really starting to show it's age. and mostly everything from it can be found in other mods: the bhall spawn powers are in ub, seravok has his mods, alot of imoen's stuff is in her romance mod.
the only thing ascension exclusive is the chaos sword thing.
i'm curious if you can install the epilogues included with ascension with out actually installing the main ascension.
well the harder fights are optional. well besides the final fight. i wish there was a version of Ascension that was just the story stuff and not the harder battles.
ascension in general is really starting to show it's age. and mostly everything from it can be found in other mods: the bhall spawn powers are in ub, seravok has his mods, alot of imoen's stuff is in her romance mod.
the only thing ascension exclusive is the chaos sword thing.
i'm curious if you can install the epilogues included with ascension with out actually installing the main ascension.
now i have been being mean to the tob related mods lately. but this one is an actual complaint not just me getting annoyed at bugs or pacing. the way the characters are in turnabout are written are so out of character imo. dyna being the most blatant one.
now this is in comparison to how she is written in bg1npc and sod.
Here's the ultimate unpopular opinion:
I no longer have much interest in replaying (for the umpteenth time) any of the IE EEs. If I'm going to replay an IE-style game, I'd much rather replay PoE1, PoE2 or Pf:Km (while looking forward to Realms Beyond and Black Geyser).
This is especially true given that of the old D&D cRPGs, my most favored games are NwN2 and IwD2, which unfortunately are precisely the ones that don't have an EE.
seems i found out why i have issues with the turnabout mod. while bg1npc project was being made prior to it. it did not officially come out until after. this may explain the wonky characterization that bothers me about turnabout
really if you want my opinion the only tob exclusive mods worth using are ascension and reunion.
I don't know if this counts as an unpopular opinion but here goes:
With the exception of Rasaad and Hexatt who have really interesting stories on paper that don't come out as well, I think all of the Beamdog NPCs are on par with the Bioware NPCs maybe even better in some cases.
Dorn, Neera and Baeloth are among my favorite NPCs ever right up there with Minsc, Edwin and Anomen (yes I said it, Anomen is a good NPC)
I like wild mage better than a regular mage, not because they are broken but because they are believable to me. Magic doesn't need to science that always works, especially when you're a novice at what you're doing, even more so when you're a novice with no one more experience actually teaching or training you. But you are walking around the world learning spells and casting them without not much problem.
Comments
Maybe this second time I'll get it better.
well thats more due to calar not being in full control of what her men are doing.
Can you do a pic of Yoshimo dancing on the head of a pin? I picture that in my head every time I hear him say it...
I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before, but in SOA, it seems like interpretation only to conclude that the real Irenicus was acting in those first three dreams. I mean, plenty of other characters cameoed and had lines in the BG1 dreams, but that doesn't mean Ulraunt was using Nightmare in Chapter 7. The SOD writers clearly believe the real Irenicus was doing something, but I'm not convinced.
And to return to what I said originally, I don't think you add to the Baldur's Gate saga just by telling us more stuff. Irenicus needed to test Gorion's Ward on the Dragonspear sidequest because he wasn't sure they were powerful enough for his purposes? That's answering a question that never needed asking.
you can say that the hoodman in there is bhaal. but he says something along the lines of ' you have gotten stronger i can no longer get inside your head.' meaning jon is getting into the dreams.
I don't think the game explicitly says who is responsible for the dreams (aside from the one with Ellesime, which assuredly came from Ellesime herself), but the pre-Spellhold dreams featuring Irenicus are very much in line with Irenicus' own goals. The Spellhold dreams, the one in which you fight Bhaal and the one in which the fake Imoen talks to you about using the Slayer form, are more about losing control, which arguably fits a message from Bhaal, but could also just be non-magical dreams about Charname's fears.
Gavid in ToB does say that he, and presumably other Bhaalspawn, get an urge to kill that's almost impossible to resist. Bhaal might not want his children to become powerful per se, lest some of them attempt to usurp his position, but he would definitely want them to skew extremely violent, since it would get them killed faster. Do the BG1 dreams urge Charname to seize power, or just to get their hands dirty?
I always assumed that Irenicus was the source of the pre-Spellhold BG2 dreams because he was the central figure in the second two, and it really did seem to align with his motives. But it's possible that all of the dreams in the saga (aside from Ellesime's, anyway) came from Bhaal and none came from Irenicus.
I don't suppose the developers ever clarified what caused the dreams?
That's actually a good point I hadn't thought of before. The power of imagination..Good point.
I still think the BG2 ones are good, but they lack a bit of that variety as well.
I'd easily put my money for such a game on the table.
It is called Neverwinter Nights.
no. it and most of chapter 5 are the worst parts of the game.
@bleusteel Well, that's nice. Never played it, though. That setting doesn't really interest me, TBH. Are you sure that's an unpopular opinion, though? I thought a lot of us wanted Beamdog to make D&D content with more recent rules. Maybe not with that specific developer, but hey.
And another thing: I recently finished Shadows of Amn and came close to finishing Throne of Bhaal, both of which I haven't played in many years, and I ended up having three more opinions that I don't believe are widely shared. (The fourth is one I've long held.)
ascension in general is really starting to show it's age. and mostly everything from it can be found in other mods: the bhall spawn powers are in ub, seravok has his mods, alot of imoen's stuff is in her romance mod.
the only thing ascension exclusive is the chaos sword thing.
i'm curious if you can install the epilogues included with ascension with out actually installing the main ascension.
You can!
now this is in comparison to how she is written in bg1npc and sod.
I no longer have much interest in replaying (for the umpteenth time) any of the IE EEs. If I'm going to replay an IE-style game, I'd much rather replay PoE1, PoE2 or Pf:Km (while looking forward to Realms Beyond and Black Geyser).
This is especially true given that of the old D&D cRPGs, my most favored games are NwN2 and IwD2, which unfortunately are precisely the ones that don't have an EE.
really if you want my opinion the only tob exclusive mods worth using are ascension and reunion.
With the exception of Rasaad and Hexatt who have really interesting stories on paper that don't come out as well, I think all of the Beamdog NPCs are on par with the Bioware NPCs maybe even better in some cases.
Dorn, Neera and Baeloth are among my favorite NPCs ever right up there with Minsc, Edwin and Anomen (yes I said it, Anomen is a good NPC)