A fit of pique

FrdNwsm

Janis, a female Blade and a true neutral Bhaalspawn, has a bit of a temper. At the funeral of Nalia's father, when Isaea Roenall started hassling Nalia and being generally insulting, Janis, being also a feminist, lost it totally. She attacked and killed him. The party then fled the scene to avoid having to kill all the other guests, who were understandably upset and started to draw weapons.

Well, the good ones amongst her questing comrades were distressed (the whole group was now despised), but luckily there was an all night temple in Waukeen's Promenade; the gods were mollified by a significantly generous donation. This was an example of the Golden Rule (he who has the gold, makes the rules) in action. Happy and unified once more, the intrepid group forged on to their next adventure.

OOC question here. Does this count as an incomplete/broken quest? Presumably, with him dead, there will be nobody to have Nalia arrested, which circumvents a whole 3 part side-quest. (Or does she get arrested anyway?) I had a problem in my first BG2 run through, when Neera's quest was not completed properly, but that is a known issue. Has anyone else whacked this obnoxious swine in their own games?

Note: killing him was worth 6,000 experience. Not only was it gratifying to do, we profited from it.

FrdNwsm

Hmm, from the deafening response, apparently no one has whacked this annoying loudmouthed blowhard before. I had better go back and "unkill" him. Be annoying if I couldn't follow Irenicus to Hell because Nalia's quest was considered unfinished. Too bad; clobbering that idiot was SO satisfying.

Cheesebelly

That's too bad, I kinda wished Biff would just replace all his future scenes. But then again, I wouldn't like Biff to be in a prison cell all his life

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FrdNwsm

subtledoctor said:

It might end Nalia's quest, or shunt you into a shorter and different branch of it, but IMHO that's a *good* thing. What would be the point of an RPG if your actions - actions like unjustified murder - didn't have any consequences on the progression of the game?

In any event I hardly think this will have much, if any, effect on the Main Quest. Maybe a different ending narrative for Nalia or something, I guess. If even that.

The problem lies with the way the game handles unfinished/broken quests. The consequences ar not necessarily limited to that one quest. In my berserker run-through, I did two simultaneous runs; one all good party, one evil. Evil party had no problem finishing the game. The good guys got to the final scenario where you are supposed to destroy the pocket plane, and could NOT do it. I couldn't complete the game because I broke Szass Tam during Neera's quest. Even removing her from the party didn't resolve the problem.

I didn't want to reach the end scenario in SoA and be unable to progress to the final Irenicus confrontation because a minor side quest was left unfinished. Mind you, there's a good chance it might have had no effect at all, but I didn't feel like taking the risk.

lunar

I don't think killing the brat will cause game breaking bugs. Neera's in ToB quest may do so because well, it plays with a lot of area-map reachability variables.

By the by, you should have opened up this topic in bg2 forum.

FrdNwsm

Well, Neera's quest is known to cause problems. It's true that the odds are greatly in favor of there being no adverse consequences to killing Isaea. However, I didn't want to take the chance of finding a hitherto unknown quest glitch 4 chapters later. Better safe than sorry; also doing it the approved way gets you more experience, and I've already had the fun of killing him.

Have your cake and eat it too?

We're not talking about in game consequences, but rather program bugs. On the other had, if you misbehave, you take the consequences. The first time I rescued Viconia, I wondered why the party's rep had plummeted to despised. I thought it was probably due to rescuing an unpopular being; it wasn't until later that I realized that we had cast a fireball at one of the fanatics, and killed some bystanders. Ooops. Sorry folks, my bad. OK, I dealt with it; luckily Faerun has the local equivalent of weregild.

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FrdNwsm

Well, I was curious, so I did some experimenting. I went back and picked up an earlier saved game, did an alternate time line where we killed Isaea, and ran the two simultaneously. In the "normal" line, where we let Nalia's quest go to completion, Anomen's quest pops in shortly thereafter. I have done Anomen's quest several times with several different MyChars, and usually we get the message that his sister has been murdered when he is level 9.

In the line where we kill Isaea, Nalia's quest is listed as unfinished; concerning Isaea, it says that "we haven't seen the last of him". Oh yes we have. But her quest is well and truly broken. The rest of the funeral guests are still there, and attack us whenever we go back to check.

Playing this variant, Anomen has gotten to level 11 and his quest still hasn't arisen; he is still obnoxious, has his wisdom stuck at 12 and is trading barbs with Keldorn. Anomen was with us when we whacked Isaea, and I am wondering if that precipitous drop in reputation (down to 4!) also screwed up his quest. (He gets rejected and can't become a knight if the party rep is under 10 at the time of his trial). I paid a bunch of gold to get party rep back up to 11 but it's still not happening. Oh well, maybe killing Isaea saved Anomen's sister's life.

I'm seriously going to avoid going off the standard track with any NPC quest from now on; I'm just that paranoid about it.

scriver

subtledoctor said:

It might end Nalia's quest, or shunt you into a shorter and different branch of it, but IMHO that's a *good* thing. What would be the point of an RPG if your actions - actions like unjustified murder - didn't have any consequences on the progression of the game?

Things like this isn't "a consequence on the progression", though. It's only a consequence (in the context of RPGs, of course) if the game (and thus the writer) acknowledges the event. If they don't, it's just a cut of plotline. The opposite of a consequence. An antiquence. A void in the action-reaction sequence in which the gameplay does not respond to the player.