[Known 10733] Quayle able to cast Horror?
Astafas
Member Posts: 448
Quayle just joined my party, and imagine my surprise when finding the necromantic spell Horror in his spellbook?!
Post edited by elminster on
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Sure, an Illusionist can't normally learn Necromancy spells, but neither can they normally have innate Invisibility (which Quayle also does), and neither can various of the other NPCs have the various "special abilities" which they have. Does anyone actually want to delete every special ability of every character?
(Hey, wow, when Sarevok is reduced to being an ordinary unkitted Fighter, Gorion is probably going to win the ambush outside Candlekeep ... so the game as we know it won't happen at all!)
The original Bioware devs put two Necromancy spells (Larloch's Minor Drain and Horror) in Quayle's files, they didn't get there by magic (ha ha). We should respect their decision to add these spells as "special abilities" for this particular Illusionist, unless there is evidence that this was somehow unintentional.
The three files are Quayle.cre (level 2/2), Quayle4.cre (level 4/3) and Quayle6.cre (level 6/5).
In Quayle.cre, he knows 2 Mage spells at level 1. These are Magic Missile and Spook, not relevant to this issue.
In Quayle4.cre, he knows the same spells as in Quayle.cre, plus he has now learnt 2 Mage spells at level 2. These are Horror (a Necromancy spell) and Mirror Image.
In Quayle6.cre, he knows the same spells as in Quayle4.cre, plus he has now learnt 1 Mage spell at level 1, 1 Mage spell at level 2 and 2 Mage spells at level 3. These are Larloch's Minor Drain (another Necromancy spell), Melf's Acid Arrow, Monster Summoning I and Wraithform.
Since the files are consistent with one another, and since a Necromancy spell has been first added in Quayle4.cre, and then retained and another one added in Quayle6.cre, the internal evidence is that this was a deliberate choice to let Quayle learn some Necromancy in spite of being an Illusionist, not an error.
Mages are not born knowing every Mage spell in the Realms, they learn them gradually as they find (and succeed in scribing) the various spell scrolls, as time passes and levels increase. The lower-level versions of Quayle know only Magic Missile and Spook, but for his highest-level version, Bioware decided that he should by that stage have learnt one more level 1 spell than he knew in his two lower-level versions. The new one they chose to give him was Larloch's Minor Drain.
Other BG1 Mages also learn new level 1 spells (in addition to higher-level spells) as they progress to higher-level .cre files. Take Xan, for example - he doesn't yet know Protection from Evil in Xan.cre and Xan4.cre, but he has learnt it in Xan6.cre. Or Xzar - he doesn't yet know Burning Hands in Xzar.cre or Xzar2.cre, but he has learnt it in Xzar4.cre and Xzar6.cre. Or Edwin - he doesn't yet know Larloch's Minor Drain in Edwin.cre or Edwin2.cre, but he has learnt it in Edwin4.cre and Edwin6.cre. The only original Mage who doesn't learn new level 1 spells in higher-level .cre files is Dynaheir. (Nor does Neera, but she starts with a much longer list of known level 1 spells than any Bioware NPC, even in her lowest-level version, so learning even more for her higher-level versions was probably judged to be too OP.)
Thus Quayle's .cre files are not only consistent with one another, but are also consistent with the normal pattern of development for other Mages.
It's the fact that they chose to grant a new Necromancy spell to Quayle in two separate .cre files, not just in one instance, which tells me that this must have been a deliberate policy choice. It is therefore genuine original content, not some sort of error.
Even those find find this an implausible choice by the original devs ought to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one, and leave it alone that Quayle has the non-standard ability of having somehow been able to learn a couple of Necromancy spells, in spite of being an Illusionist who "normally" couldn't do that.
Xan (level 2 and level 4): Has Charm Person and Color Spray
Xzar (level 2): Has Chill Touch and Larloch's Minor Drain
Xzar (level 4): Has Burning Hands, Chill Touch, and Larloch's Minor Drain
Dynaheir (level 2 and level 4): Has Burning Hands and Magic Missile
Edwin (level 2 and level 4): Has Armor and Color Spray
Edwin (level 4): Has Armor, Color Spray, and Larloch's Minor Drain
Based on how other mages in the game are treated at (approximately) these levels the 2/2 and 4/3 versions of Quayle really should have had Larloch's Minor Drain if it was intended for him to have it (and yes I realize the 4/3 version of Quayle is level 3 as a mage but these are the closest comparisons available). There really isn't any consistency reason why he couldn't have known two mage spells at these levels. Larloch's Minor Drain isn't exactly an overpowered spell, so I just don't see a reason why Bioware wouldn't have added it if it was their intention that Quayle have access to Necromancy spells.
What isn't speculation is that Bioware gave him a Necromancy spell not once but twice - Horror in Quayle4.cre, and then also Larloch's Minor Drain in Quayle6.cre. If it were only once, and/or especially if there were an inconsistency between files (such as knowing Horror in Quayle4.cre but not in Quayle6.cre), then I'd agree that there'd be reason to suppose that it might have been a blunder, but twice and in separate files makes it much more likely that this was a deliberate decision. At the very least, likely enough that the original choice should be given the benefit of the doubt, and therefore left alone.
Obviously it was never the idea that Quayle have general access to Necromancy, since he can't scribe any further Necromancy spells after being recruited, so he's mainly following the Illusionist rule even though he does have a limited exception (a.k.a. "special ability") for these two Necromancy spells.
(I'm working off the original game off GoG.com here, the EE has probably corrected this)
At level 2/2 he is able to cast three level 1 spells. But he only has two memorized.
At level 4/3 he is able to cast three level 1 spells and two level 2 spells. But he only has two level 1 spells and one level 2 spells memorized.
At levels 6/5 he can cast five level 1 spells, three level 2 spells, and two level 3 spells. But he's missing one memorized spell from each level.
Contrast this with Edwin or Xzar (Dynaheir and Xan are imprisoned when you find them so they have no spells memorized) and they have the appropriate number of spells memorized for their levels (Edwin gets +1 because of his amulet).
The most likely explanation for all of this is that whoever programmed Quayle in forgot that he was a specialist mage (forgetting in the process that he couldn't learn minor drain or horror) and instead programmed him in as though he were a normal cleric/mage (which would explain why he is missing a memorized spell at each level). Admittedly, that wouldn't explain why he knows Invisibility as an innate ability (including at levels 2/2 when he couldn't otherwise cast it if it were a spell in his spellbook). But I'd say its also supported by the fact that outside of that innate ability he doesn't know any illusion spells (which is not normal compared to the other mages in the game). Ultimately, someone at bioware forgetting that he was an illusionist (at least when it came to remembering what his restricted spells were and how many spells each day he could memorize) is the most plausible explanation I can think of.
Nevertheless, although it's obviously conceivable that all sorts of things in original content (not just Quayle's spells!) were not actually intentional decisions, respecting the original content ought to mean that Beamdog doesn't change things capriciously whenever there's a speculation that something might have been an error, but instead takes a more minimalist approach of changing only those things which are unequivocally errors.
Beamdog have already fixed Quayle's (arguable) under-scribing (by adding Spook) and his (unimportant) under-memorisation (by filling his spell slots). (And incidentally, although it's not so relevant to the present debate, Beamdog have also given Quayle an extra point of DEX, which makes a significant difference to his physical utility.) That's enough already! It remains perfectly plausible (and likely IMO) that his non-standard knowledge of a couple of Necromancy spells was a deliberate "special ability", so there's inadequate justification for further tinkering. Nor does it need to explain that. That's undoubtedly a deliberate "special ability", like Yeslick's innate Dispel Magic and Tiax's innate Summon Ghast.
Nevertheless, it's far from proof. The fact that they allocated Necromancy spells to Quayle twice, and in two different files in a consistent way, and incidentally kept those allocations in original BG2 as well, all makes it seem to me distinctly unlikely that there'd be such a concatenation of mutually-consistent errors on the same point - random errors by careless coding usually stick out as inconsistencies. Thus Occam's Razor says to me that it was probably a deliberate choice to let Quayle have this exception.
The fact that we can advance contrary opinions on this, for reasons which we can explain to one another at length and in a mutually-intelligible manner, surely demonstrates that there is legitimate room for more than one opinion on this.
And where there's room for differing opinions about whether the original content is genuinely an error or not, I reckon Beamdog's proper reaction is to err on the side of caution and leave it alone.