2: Defenders of the mod seem always to claim that 14-15 years is historically accurate, which is just terrible, because this area of the Realms is most strongly linked to Western European medieval culture, where the average age of first marriage was generally in their mid to late twenties, with 95% occurring at the age of 19 or over and the "ideal" age having been considered 18-20+ since the Ancient Greeks. Younger marriages were typically by both genders to obtain or retain property, and even then the actual "marriage" frequently wouldn't occur until later. .
That's wrong. Late middle age in "Western Europe" - usual wedding age for male : twenties Late middle age in "Western Europe" - usual wedding age for female : mid-teens
Yes this was a bit abrupt but I don't want to take part in the mod review itself. Nothing interesting to say about it. Just a comment on a fact (as opposed to opinion) - nothing more.
"Our best data comes from the highest reaches of late medieval English society, the aristocracy, where women first married while young, between thirteen and eighteen, but most scholars agree that marriage patterns among the non elite in late medieval England conformed to the north western European marriage and household system, with both men and women marrying first in their early to mid twenties to partners of a similar age." - Marriage, Sex, and Civic Culture in Late Medieval England, Shannon McSheffrey.
So your statement is partially correct, but only for the aristocracy, where marriage was as much a contract uniting two interested parties as anything else. In the vast majority of the population as a whole both parties were generally in their twenties. Also worth noting that marriages between the aristocracy statistically weren't exactly popping out children at those younger ages either, but waiting until, y'know, one of the people involved was not a child.
If you're interested you can just go and hit wikipedia for a bit. You should find something relevant looking up the Hajnal Line or Medieval Households. There's a wealth of documentation for this fact, since Western Europe was actually more or less the only place that this happened. You can also try Medieval Households by Herlihy.
But yeah, this is getting too far into academics and too far out of me being opinionated about video games, so I'd appreciate if we dropped this here.
Wait, why was the idea of bandaging wounds to "save spell slots" weird when Fade did it but good when Keldorn did it?
I suppose it's all in the presentation.
I'm not sure as to your familiarity with the two here, but one fetishised the act, involved needless stripping so that CHARNAME could ogle the mammary glands of a woman who had just been beaten and was covered in gross pussy bruises, and had her actively refusing healing spells to that end. Keldorn pretty much always has an option to just be like "Nnnnope, not stitching that up, we'll bust out the Cure spells", included a whole lot less {shuddering}, {trembling} and other horrifyingly weird dialogue where it calls attention to the firmness of his pectorals or such as you're stitching gaping wounds, though maybe I just missed it.
Also it's not optional with Fade. You save her, the next time you rest it's mandatory, even after you just dropped a Heal on her.
But yeah, PnP rules for healing involve bonus HP recovery for medically treated injuries. If CHARNAME could actually get their medic on for a few points of fatigue without getting creepy that would be a neat little touch in my mind, and if it just stuck to dialogue and left out the {descriptions} then the wonderful art of implication can occur without having to get into detail.
- Alright, Minsc, show me where it hurts. - Oh gods, are you going to be able to sit down after this? - How did you even get that stuck in there? - Phew! All done with the stitches. Wait, where's Boo?
Regarding Fishing For Trouble, it appears to not be EE compatible and no longer being worked on, is this the case?
Yeah my bad, Fishing for Trouble is not on the compatible mod list. Regarding medieval age of consent I am pretty sure I remember my English teacher telling us that the Catholic Church stipulated that marriage age without parental approval is 14 for boys and 12 for girls after watching Felini's Romeo and Juliet in class. Nowadays its mostly 18-21 as far as I am aware. But this BG isn't historical simulation a 15 year old love interest is definitely icky. In Muslim countries the legal age of consent for girls are predominantly 15 though. Maybe the makers are from a country where that is OK?
Colours of Infinity #2 - Tales of the Deep Gardens
Plot: Get trapped in a bizarre realm, then escape.
Loot: So, so much, and so much of it as intangible as it is interesting, though some of it does come off as imbalanced.
First, and most potentially gamebreaking, is the Colour Links. You pick with zero clue beyond the basic natures of the colours to have one, and only one, cast upon you.
The mod author has expressed a desire for such things to stay secret, so I'll not be saying which is which, but the effects range from a few extra max HP, bonuses to hit and damage, AC, Casting Time, regeneration, a saving throw bonus, +15% MR, elemental damage, and the one I ended up with, which is +1 APR in exchange for a -2 penalty to hit and some other incidentals, all of which are worth doubling your cleric's damage output. It's an outright steal at 16k, doesn't take up a slot, and is too great to pass up on anyone except pure mages. Fortunately you can't gear up an entire party with it, but still a little unbalancing. Still, way more significant for Clerics than anyone else, since they can't grab Belm and it makes them surprisingly solid in a fight,
Red Leather with +2 Strength - It's +1 Leather, so not exactly tank material, but the strength bonus stacks with "set at" effects, so 22-24 strength is actually quite doable with the armour, as is a 25 Strength Charname without Crom Faeyr. Grey Spear - +1.5 APR, +2 Spear. An easy 5 APR for any warrior with the right Colour Link and Spear Specialisation, but only +2, so not usable against everything. +1 Staff of Beserking - 20% to cause berserk on hit with no save is pretty remarkable against mages, not so much against Umber Hulks. Forgotten Helm - Interesting in that it's only for mages, bards and thieves (multiclass Cleric/Mages need not apply), gives +1 THAC0 and +50 Lore, making it another Green Ioun Stone, effectively. Grey Cloak - 10% chance to be immune to Timestop. That's interesting, but a huge gamble since you could have been wearing a 100% immunity to anything the mage might be doing during Timestop instead. Black Robe - +1 Casting Speed, +30 Lore, +1 to all saves. It's almost a more balanced Robe of Vecna. Yellow Mace - +2 Wisdom, +2 Mace, for pure class clerics only. Bird Figurine - 3/day uses of Remove Paralysis. Neat. Golden Flute - As far as I can tell, the bard is Otiluke'd for two minutes, and potentially causes every hostile in the area to go berserk, and... I believe their bardic music works on all party members regardless of range. So basically if you were going to be playing, may as well play inside an Otiluke's Sphere, I guess? Cards that have a 1/day buff of +1/2 APR and +1 THAC0, seems to be for about a turn. A teddyshield usable by anyone that gives +1 unmarked THAC0 to its main hand, protection from evil and remove fear when equipped. And... A Ring - +3 Charisma, Backstab, Poison and Disease Immunity.
There's also spells, most of which are outright inferior to other spells their level but do include an Arcane healing spell. Several are bard only, but sadly non-scribable,
Finally, on completion each member of the party except CHARNAME gets a special colour spray which restores 10 HP to each party member it hits (and turns other NPCs hostile). Meanwhile CHARNAME gets an innate Raise Dead 1/day, both of which I liked without considering too severe.
Enemies: Asides from a few incidentals, there are several puzzle encounters where you need to use non-standard tactics to win, and a level 16 sorcerer with 60% resistance to everything and Gate.
Locks and Traps: Zilch.
Difficulty: There are some challenging encounters, but a full party of level 12+ or so should be able to handle it, if they have enough cash to engage in the content at least.
NB: Because everything in the Deep Gardens is hilariously expensive you'll probably want to bring around 100,000 gp along for the ride if you want to buy a lot of it, since there's no way of getting extra loot while you're in there.
Overall: A-. The areas are well done, the plot is interesting, and it adds a surprising amount of content for only having four new maps to do it in, but it doesn't quite mesh with the rest of the game as well as ISNF does.
@Pantalion you forgot to mention the great soundtrack for the new areas, or the new areas in general. They look so much nicer then new areas from the BG1ee. Both cobbled together creates an perfect atmosphere. Not knowing what color bonus you get makes things a bit more balanced imo, also those items are extremely expensive. When I "arrived" I could only buy 1 thing, dont quite remember what it was. Trying to collect a ton of gold before you get there is actively working against the measures the creator implemented so that you dont shop for all those items.
@Pantalion you forgot to mention the great soundtrack for the new areas, or the new areas in general. They look so much nicer then new areas from the BG1ee. Both cobbled together creates an perfect atmosphere. Not knowing what color bonus you get makes things a bit more balanced imo, also those items are extremely expensive. When I "arrived" I could only buy 1 thing, dont quite remember what it was. Trying to collect a ton of gold before you get there is actively working against the measures the creator implemented so that you dont shop for all those items.
As I said before, I am unable to provide reviews concerning audio content, as I cannot hear such content, but thank you for your feedback regardless. Concerning the rest, I wasn't actually saving up in advance, but I found there to be few measures preventing me from shopping with the ~60k or so I had on hand, and the game cannot be balanced around this predication of ignorance. BG2 includes both a Save/Reload system and a replay system, eventually the player has the tools to accumulate information and make the optimal choice regardless.
Imo being on the compatible mod list is not a requirement for a mod to be reviewed, as the site rules topic say " you'll find an assortment of variously useful (or not useful) areas on this site--places to discuss the game and its predecessor". If a mod is not EE compatible it has to be pointed out, but talking of and reviewing not EE compatible mods is not OT in a "Mod Reviews" topic, as some not EE users are here, read and partecipate to the discussion.
I'm not sure as to your familiarity with the two here, but one fetishised the act, involved needless stripping so that CHARNAME could ogle the mammary glands of a woman who had just been beaten and was covered in gross pussy bruises, and had her actively refusing healing spells to that end. Keldorn pretty much always has an option to just be like "Nnnnope, not stitching that up, we'll bust out the Cure spells", included a whole lot less {shuddering}, {trembling} and other horrifyingly weird dialogue where it calls attention to the firmness of his pectorals or such as you're stitching gaping wounds, though maybe I just missed it.
I dunno, dude. From what I'm seeing here, it wastes little time in getting him shirtless and describing his sweet bod. Or he can literally get a butt injury and oh dear, looks like we'll have to slip those britches off. Maybe one is less overt about it but I think they're both designed to appeal to the same crowd.
Imo being on the compatible mod list is not a requirement for a mod to be reviewed, as the site rules topic say " you'll find an assortment of variously useful (or not useful) areas on this site--places to discuss the game and its predecessor". If a mod is not EE compatible it has to be pointed out, but talking of and reviewing not EE compatible mods is not OT in a "Mod Reviews" topic, as some not EE users are here, read and partecipate to the discussion.
Yeah, that's totally fine, no problem with people reviewing any mods, EE or not, it just won't be done by me, since I won't be hunting down my old CDs any time within the next hundred years to install mods I can't use on my regular game. People are still welcome to review whatever, and when I finish my current runthrough I'll try and collate things into the posts on the front page.
I dunno, dude. From what I'm seeing here, it wastes little time in getting him shirtless and describing his sweet bod. Or he can literally get a butt injury and oh dear, looks like we'll have to slip those britches off. Maybe one is less overt about it but I think they're both designed to appeal to the same crowd.
You're probably right, while I maintain that the Fade mod was waaaaay creepier about the whole thing (at least Keldorn's butt wounds aren't mandatory and he's not super melodramatic about the whole thing), there are some pretty weird things in there. I'm sure it doesn't help that my eyes glaze over when I come to {extensively described actions and appearances by people who can't handle a dialogue only limitation}. And seriously, sticking your finger in the guy's blood and sticking it in your mouth? Bleurgh, skeeved me out to no end. But yeah, I don't have a "Pan's Growing Horror" rating and I don't generally rate any of the PID "Flirt" dialogue as it is, because they're always terrible.
Ah the danger of wikipedia! 1- The Hajnal line pattern itself is not exclusively used for the MiddleAge. When you read "West of this line, the average age of marriage for women was 23 or more,[3] men 26" Check the foot note, that should ring a bell: Family Formation in an Age of Nascent Capitalism...
2- No need to refer to the Aristocracy: - after the fourth council of Lateran (1215) banns were published. With records for all to see. The data for London (at a non explicit date, probably very late) cannot be extrapolated for other areas and other periods. Those records will show you that the vast majority of women were married in their teens in "Western Europe". Admittedly whether this is 18 in north Italia or 22 in London may not make a huge difference for the purpose exposed by the author. Btw the wikipedia links you refered to, acknowledge the fact even though Wikipedia is not what I would call a reference for History.
3- For the same reason (4th council of Lareran), the weddings were not a "private/secular" matter anymore (for common folks). Perhaps you mix several ages.
4- People can guess why women were married so young (able to procreate, financial aspects even for poor people). On the contrary, men had no social and financial reasons to get married earlier. There is one additional parameter shifting the wedding age for men: they reached their majority quite late (25 IIRC) , a paramater much less important for women.
Whether you like or dislike such or such a mod is not my point. It was just to correct a mistake in your assertion but this is perhaps badly perceived.
1: Please respect my request to keep this thread on topic. Further replies will be ignored and, if necessary, reported, particularly since your self-professed "point" explicitly excludes mods from the discussion. You are welcome to continue believing I am incorrect without feeling the need to inform me of this fact, I will not be offended. You are of course welcome to engage in mod reviewing, discussions on reviews posted, or other such thread related activities as you see fit.
2: Note that I have not quoted or used anything from wikipedia, merely given you suggestions for further reading in the topic. If nothing else, I assume there are several additional sources included on the wikipedia pages that you may enjoy reading as a fellow historian beyond the two books I mentioned as sources explicitly in my previous post. You may of course feel free to bring the debate to the people who wrote those sources, or other such books published within the last forty years, but please do not feel the need to do so here.
As for Fade and Keldorn: these reviews are very useful because they have convinced me to avoid both of them!
Once I finish my next (and probably final, unless some other mods come to my attention) "Lava run" I'll probably conclude with a "Pan's pick: Mods that it would actually use". Keldorn might be on there as a non-romance only deal, since the quest is actually pretty decent, but generally all the romances score pretty high on the creepymeter somewhere in there, especially the ones that read as though they were written as someone's spank material.
Yeah my bad, Fishing for Trouble is not on the compatible mod list.
Pantalion is obviously free to review the mods he prefers and that work on the game he has installed. Sorry for the misunderstanding due to not quoting biffyclanger.
Sounds like the end reward from Colors of the Deep Garden is way OP. Some of the rewards are better than Hell Trials which too powerful for SoA. By ToB though it really doesn't matter.
Sounds like the end reward from Colors of the Deep Garden is way OP. Some of the rewards are better than Hell Trials which too powerful for SoA. By ToB though it really doesn't matter.
I don't think it was as well balanced as I Shall Never Forget, but the end reward I didn't feel was too bad. Five people with 1/day AOE heal for 10 HP works out as up to 40 HP per character if you never change your party, and CHARNAME's 1/day Raise Dead, in the grand scheme of things is just slightly more convenient than selling and stealing back your Rod of Resurrection. It's borderline useless to heal in combat in terms of action economy, and out of combat healing is cheap thanks to a ring of regeneration, so generally it's a time saving feature more than anything else.
The colour links, though, are unarguably imbalanced even for ToB. Purifier 30% + Lums 5% + Hell Trials 10% + Gaxx 10% + Amulet 10% + Colour Link 15% + the MR Shield or Flail of Ages 5% + Robe of Vecna 10% + Holy Symbol 5% = 100% MR on a Mage/Thief, and far easier on a Fighter/Thief who can pick up human skin. And 2 THAC0 is absolute peanuts in ToB in exchange for 4.5 APR with the Ravagar which allows for an average of ~0.9 decapitations per round for 23 rounds with iHaste.
If you want to stick to more "reasonable" effects in your game I'd recommend sticking to:
Red, Amber, Blue, Yellow, or Green
One or two of the others are acceptable, but those five are generally the ones least likely to crazy up your game.
Alright, having finally, finally finished the D'Arnisse and Amber romance tracks, which has occupied several dedicated hours of play, I've finished the run, roflstomped Irenicus, and have finished my reviews on Petsy, Amber, Nalia and Keldorn. Since I'm having trouble working around the character limits, I'm open to suggestions on how to handle layouts, but if people are happy with it, I may just start including links in the OP to the appropriate posts.
Regardless, next run is going to be my @LavaDelVortel run, with:
Foundling - A not-quite-mage mage. Skie NPC - Yaaaay. More single class thieves. Yvette Romance - A colourful cleric by all accounts. The White Queen I Shall Never Forget and Tales of the Deep Gardens (Primarily for the extra interactions CoI NPCs are supposed to get, but also because they're good enough to run through again) Eilistraee's Song La'Viconia Tweak - Since Viconia's recommended for Eilistraee's Song content, she may as well give me some variety by being a Cleric/Thief. La'Valygar - A bromance mod with Valygar the katana wielding mute? Neat.
And for the inevitable point where Valygar and Viconia fight to the death, I've picked up Sarah the romancable ranger to replace him.
Fake Import Mod - So I don't have to keeper my new Bhaalspawn. Dungeon B Gone - This gets an automatic A, I don't care about anything else, skipping the tutorial dungeon significantly reduces the number of sanity checks I need to roll.
So Valygar, Foundling, Skie, Yvette and Viconia... I suppose with a gender-bending Elven Mage/Cleric CHARNAME again, because Eilistraee's Song has a unique kit for female Elven clerics and I'm not sure I trust a not-mage-mage to be my party's only Arcane caster.
If anyone has any other suggestions for this run, let me know, it's going to be awhile before I finish switching mods around.
@Pantalion This post of yours contains two closing </div> tags without corresponding opening tags in a row which breaks the whole layout of this page in my browser. Can you fix it?
@Pantalion This post of yours contains two closing </div> tags without corresponding opening tags in a row which breaks the whole layout of this page in my browser. Can you fix it?
Sadly not. I've no idea how the post got broken in the first place, but presumably due to the /div tags I can only edit half the post as it is, and I don't appear to be able to delete it either. If a mod wants to delete it, I've saved the content to repost and hopefully avoid the issue, but otherwise I can only hope it just doesn't reoccur.
Sounds like the end reward from Colors of the Deep Garden is way OP. Some of the rewards are better than Hell Trials which too powerful for SoA. By ToB though it really doesn't matter.
I don't think it was as well balanced as I Shall Never Forget, but the end reward I didn't feel was too bad. Five people with 1/day AOE heal for 10 HP works out as up to 40 HP per character if you never change your party, and CHARNAME's 1/day Raise Dead, in the grand scheme of things is just slightly more convenient than selling and stealing back your Rod of Resurrection. It's borderline useless to heal in combat in terms of action economy, and out of combat healing is cheap thanks to a ring of regeneration, so generally it's a time saving feature more than anything else.
The colour links, though, are unarguably imbalanced even for ToB. Purifier 30% + Lums 5% + Hell Trials 10% + Gaxx 10% + Amulet 10% + Colour Link 15% + the MR Shield or Flail of Ages 5% + Robe of Vecna 10% + Holy Symbol 5% = 100% MR on a Mage/Thief, and far easier on a Fighter/Thief who can pick up human skin. And 2 THAC0 is absolute peanuts in ToB in exchange for 4.5 APR with the Ravagar which allows for an average of ~0.9 decapitations per round for 23 rounds with iHaste.
If you want to stick to more "reasonable" effects in your game I'd recommend sticking to:
Red, Amber, Blue, Yellow, or Green
One or two of the others are acceptable, but those five are generally the ones least likely to crazy up your game.
Ahhh i see I thought the Color Link were the end reward in which case that is even worse lol.
People seem to like calling me out of the blue from time to time :P Anyway, I am not sure if I can recommend you Yvette Romance as there is a moment in game that appear to be problematic. It was fine, then buggy, then fine again, and buggy yet again... I'm not sure if it will fire right and I kinda run out of patience and ideas how to fix it without changing original stuff a bit.
Very little people know about my Yoshimo Romance and I was wondering if you're going to give it a shot.
As for Skie. Note it was my VERY FIRST mod that was written in Polish (my native language) and the mod is rather small and not super good and... I had some doubts about it.
La'Valygar adds just a few talks, it's an extension of his original dialogues. Thought he would be nice to make him a tiny bit less silent.
(hmmm... I'm not sure if E.Song kit for cleric finally worked fine and was it still fine on EE...)
People seem to like calling me out of the blue from time to time :P
Felt it only polite, since I was going to be working through your works en masse.
And yeah, I hit my first bug with Yvette, since she's stubbornly refusing to "not be a painting". I'm assuming the transform variable is set wrong, so I'll have a stab at progressing it when I'm home next. So long as it's something I can work through in Keeper and console commands without too much hair pulling, a few bugs aren't a deal breaker and I'm enjoying the concept so far.
I've eyed the Yoshimo romance but had no room, but if Skie's got as little content as you say, maybe I'll rush her talks and grab the Yoshmeister instead.
"not be a painting"? I mean something different and more serious. The bug in Spellhold when she's supposed to enter a mirror and the stutter starts, even though a script should play. Everything deppends on other mods and "mood your installation will have that day". I actually am quite happy with my Yoshimo Romance, but I know it's not as popular as my other mods.
Well I managed to fix her, and since she instantly booted Viconia from the party I've added the Yoshi romance in for some Kara Turan tragedy. I suppose I can bring Viccy along for some 'Song content another time.
Fake Import Mod - Supposed to add all the tomes, pantaloons and the experience from SoA to Irenicus' dungeon.
Overall: B- - Did what it said on the tin, though by having Imoen give CHARNAME an exp reward, which didn't work entirely smoothly. I'm also pretty sure it's the thing responsible for breaking the starting cutscene, since it stopped it from actually being a cutscene. It also introduced a bug because of that, disabling control on reloading the save and necessitating a restart. And my imported pre-made didn't even get Bhaalspawn powers. Bah.
@Pantalion This post of yours contains two closing </div> tags without corresponding opening tags in a row which breaks the whole layout of this page in my browser. Can you fix it?
Sadly not. I've no idea how the post got broken in the first place, but presumably due to the /div tags I can only edit half the post as it is, and I don't appear to be able to delete it either. If a mod wants to delete it, I've saved the content to repost and hopefully avoid the issue, but otherwise I can only hope it just doesn't reoccur.
I've fixed it for you. The issue was that you had an ending "/spoiler" tag, but no opening "spoiler" tag. I'm not sure if I placed the opening tag in the right spot, so you might want to check the post again, but the thread should display properly now.
Oh, yeah. Sorry about not mentioning it, I have so many stuff written, I'm having some problems remembering details. Sune and Shar are mortal enemies. Yvette and Viconia won't travel together. But if you want to check Viconia, you may want to try ToB for that. There are no real content apart from tweaking her class etc.
if you are playing the White Queen - the mod includes an additional mini-quest if you have Viconia in your party.
BTW, if you romance Yvette then I guess you won't be able to romance Yoshimo as the match is quite opposite. You know I write hetero, bi and gay characters, these particular ones are heterosexual.
There are some talks for my characters as well. Just one between Foundling and Yvette, though. I think Foundling may have one comment if you're romancing Yoshimo.
Comments
Late middle age in "Western Europe" - usual wedding age for male : twenties
Late middle age in "Western Europe" - usual wedding age for female : mid-teens
Just a comment on a fact (as opposed to opinion) - nothing more.
So your statement is partially correct, but only for the aristocracy, where marriage was as much a contract uniting two interested parties as anything else. In the vast majority of the population as a whole both parties were generally in their twenties. Also worth noting that marriages between the aristocracy statistically weren't exactly popping out children at those younger ages either, but waiting until, y'know, one of the people involved was not a child.
If you're interested you can just go and hit wikipedia for a bit. You should find something relevant looking up the Hajnal Line or Medieval Households. There's a wealth of documentation for this fact, since Western Europe was actually more or less the only place that this happened. You can also try Medieval Households by Herlihy.
But yeah, this is getting too far into academics and too far out of me being opinionated about video games, so I'd appreciate if we dropped this here.
I suppose it's all in the presentation.
I'm not sure as to your familiarity with the two here, but one fetishised the act, involved needless stripping so that CHARNAME could ogle the mammary glands of a woman who had just been beaten and was covered in gross pussy bruises, and had her actively refusing healing spells to that end. Keldorn pretty much always has an option to just be like "Nnnnope, not stitching that up, we'll bust out the Cure spells", included a whole lot less {shuddering}, {trembling} and other horrifyingly weird dialogue where it calls attention to the firmness of his pectorals or such as you're stitching gaping wounds, though maybe I just missed it.
Also it's not optional with Fade. You save her, the next time you rest it's mandatory, even after you just dropped a Heal on her.
But yeah, PnP rules for healing involve bonus HP recovery for medically treated injuries. If CHARNAME could actually get their medic on for a few points of fatigue without getting creepy that would be a neat little touch in my mind, and if it just stuck to dialogue and left out the {descriptions} then the wonderful art of implication can occur without having to get into detail.
- Alright, Minsc, show me where it hurts.
- Oh gods, are you going to be able to sit down after this?
- How did you even get that stuck in there?
- Phew! All done with the stitches. Wait, where's Boo?
Regarding Fishing For Trouble, it appears to not be EE compatible and no longer being worked on, is this the case?
Regarding medieval age of consent I am pretty sure I remember my English teacher telling us that the Catholic Church stipulated that marriage age without parental approval is 14 for boys and 12 for girls after watching Felini's Romeo and Juliet in class. Nowadays its mostly 18-21 as far as I am aware. But this BG isn't historical simulation a 15 year old love interest is definitely icky. In Muslim countries the legal age of consent for girls are predominantly 15 though. Maybe the makers are from a country where that is OK?
Loot: So, so much, and so much of it as intangible as it is interesting, though some of it does come off as imbalanced.
First, and most potentially gamebreaking, is the Colour Links. You pick with zero clue beyond the basic natures of the colours to have one, and only one, cast upon you.
The mod author has expressed a desire for such things to stay secret, so I'll not be saying which is which, but the effects range from a few extra max HP, bonuses to hit and damage, AC, Casting Time, regeneration, a saving throw bonus, +15% MR, elemental damage, and the one I ended up with, which is +1 APR in exchange for a -2 penalty to hit and some other incidentals, all of which are worth doubling your cleric's damage output. It's an outright steal at 16k, doesn't take up a slot, and is too great to pass up on anyone except pure mages. Fortunately you can't gear up an entire party with it, but still a little unbalancing. Still, way more significant for Clerics than anyone else, since they can't grab Belm and it makes them surprisingly solid in a fight,
Red Leather with +2 Strength - It's +1 Leather, so not exactly tank material, but the strength bonus stacks with "set at" effects, so 22-24 strength is actually quite doable with the armour, as is a 25 Strength Charname without Crom Faeyr.
Grey Spear - +1.5 APR, +2 Spear. An easy 5 APR for any warrior with the right Colour Link and Spear Specialisation, but only +2, so not usable against everything.
+1 Staff of Beserking - 20% to cause berserk on hit with no save is pretty remarkable against mages, not so much against Umber Hulks.
Forgotten Helm - Interesting in that it's only for mages, bards and thieves (multiclass Cleric/Mages need not apply), gives +1 THAC0 and +50 Lore, making it another Green Ioun Stone, effectively.
Grey Cloak - 10% chance to be immune to Timestop. That's interesting, but a huge gamble since you could have been wearing a 100% immunity to anything the mage might be doing during Timestop instead.
Black Robe - +1 Casting Speed, +30 Lore, +1 to all saves. It's almost a more balanced Robe of Vecna.
Yellow Mace - +2 Wisdom, +2 Mace, for pure class clerics only.
Bird Figurine - 3/day uses of Remove Paralysis. Neat.
Golden Flute - As far as I can tell, the bard is Otiluke'd for two minutes, and potentially causes every hostile in the area to go berserk, and... I believe their bardic music works on all party members regardless of range. So basically if you were going to be playing, may as well play inside an Otiluke's Sphere, I guess?
Cards that have a 1/day buff of +1/2 APR and +1 THAC0, seems to be for about a turn.
A teddyshield usable by anyone that gives +1 unmarked THAC0 to its main hand, protection from evil and remove fear when equipped.
And... A Ring - +3 Charisma, Backstab, Poison and Disease Immunity.
There's also spells, most of which are outright inferior to other spells their level but do include an Arcane healing spell. Several are bard only, but sadly non-scribable,
Finally, on completion each member of the party except CHARNAME gets a special colour spray which restores 10 HP to each party member it hits (and turns other NPCs hostile). Meanwhile CHARNAME gets an innate Raise Dead 1/day, both of which I liked without considering too severe.
Enemies: Asides from a few incidentals, there are several puzzle encounters where you need to use non-standard tactics to win, and a level 16 sorcerer with 60% resistance to everything and Gate.
Locks and Traps: Zilch.
Difficulty: There are some challenging encounters, but a full party of level 12+ or so should be able to handle it, if they have enough cash to engage in the content at least.
NB: Because everything in the Deep Gardens is hilariously expensive you'll probably want to bring around 100,000 gp along for the ride if you want to buy a lot of it, since there's no way of getting extra loot while you're in there.
Overall: A-. The areas are well done, the plot is interesting, and it adds a surprising amount of content for only having four new maps to do it in, but it doesn't quite mesh with the rest of the game as well as ISNF does.
Not knowing what color bonus you get makes things a bit more balanced imo, also those items are extremely expensive. When I "arrived" I could only buy 1 thing, dont quite remember what it was.
Trying to collect a ton of gold before you get there is actively working against the measures the creator implemented so that you dont shop for all those items.
If a mod is not EE compatible it has to be pointed out, but talking of and reviewing not EE compatible mods is not OT in a "Mod Reviews" topic, as some not EE users are here, read and partecipate to the discussion.
Ah the danger of wikipedia!
1- The Hajnal line pattern itself is not exclusively used for the MiddleAge.
When you read "West of this line, the average age of marriage for women was 23 or more,[3] men 26"
Check the foot note, that should ring a bell: Family Formation in an Age of Nascent Capitalism...
2- No need to refer to the Aristocracy: - after the fourth council of Lateran (1215) banns were published. With records for all to see.
The data for London (at a non explicit date, probably very late) cannot be extrapolated for other areas and other periods.
Those records will show you that the vast majority of women were married in their teens in "Western Europe".
Admittedly whether this is 18 in north Italia or 22 in London may not make a huge difference for the purpose exposed by the author.
Btw the wikipedia links you refered to, acknowledge the fact even though Wikipedia is not what I would call a reference for History.
3- For the same reason (4th council of Lareran), the weddings were not a "private/secular" matter anymore (for common folks).
Perhaps you mix several ages.
4- People can guess why women were married so young (able to procreate, financial aspects even for poor people). On the contrary, men
had no social and financial reasons to get married earlier. There is one additional parameter shifting the wedding age for men:
they reached their majority quite late (25 IIRC) , a paramater much less important for women.
Whether you like or dislike such or such a mod is not my point.
It was just to correct a mistake in your assertion but this is perhaps badly perceived.
2: Note that I have not quoted or used anything from wikipedia, merely given you suggestions for further reading in the topic. If nothing else, I assume there are several additional sources included on the wikipedia pages that you may enjoy reading as a fellow historian beyond the two books I mentioned as sources explicitly in my previous post. You may of course feel free to bring the debate to the people who wrote those sources, or other such books published within the last forty years, but please do not feel the need to do so here. Once I finish my next (and probably final, unless some other mods come to my attention) "Lava run" I'll probably conclude with a "Pan's pick: Mods that it would actually use". Keldorn might be on there as a non-romance only deal, since the quest is actually pretty decent, but generally all the romances score pretty high on the creepymeter somewhere in there, especially the ones that read as though they were written as someone's spank material.
Sorry for the misunderstanding due to not quoting biffyclanger.
The colour links, though, are unarguably imbalanced even for ToB. Purifier 30% + Lums 5% + Hell Trials 10% + Gaxx 10% + Amulet 10% + Colour Link 15% + the MR Shield or Flail of Ages 5% + Robe of Vecna 10% + Holy Symbol 5% = 100% MR on a Mage/Thief, and far easier on a Fighter/Thief who can pick up human skin. And 2 THAC0 is absolute peanuts in ToB in exchange for 4.5 APR with the Ravagar which allows for an average of ~0.9 decapitations per round for 23 rounds with iHaste.
If you want to stick to more "reasonable" effects in your game I'd recommend sticking to:
One or two of the others are acceptable, but those five are generally the ones least likely to crazy up your game.
Regardless, next run is going to be my @LavaDelVortel run, with:
Foundling - A not-quite-mage mage.
Skie NPC - Yaaaay. More single class thieves.
Yvette Romance - A colourful cleric by all accounts.
The White Queen
I Shall Never Forget and Tales of the Deep Gardens (Primarily for the extra interactions CoI NPCs are supposed to get, but also because they're good enough to run through again)
Eilistraee's Song
La'Viconia Tweak - Since Viconia's recommended for Eilistraee's Song content, she may as well give me some variety by being a Cleric/Thief.
La'Valygar - A bromance mod with Valygar the katana wielding mute? Neat.
And for the inevitable point where Valygar and Viconia fight to the death, I've picked up Sarah the romancable ranger to replace him.
Fake Import Mod - So I don't have to keeper my new Bhaalspawn.
Dungeon B Gone - This gets an automatic A, I don't care about anything else, skipping the tutorial dungeon significantly reduces the number of sanity checks I need to roll.
So Valygar, Foundling, Skie, Yvette and Viconia... I suppose with a gender-bending Elven Mage/Cleric CHARNAME again, because Eilistraee's Song has a unique kit for female Elven clerics and I'm not sure I trust a not-mage-mage to be my party's only Arcane caster.
If anyone has any other suggestions for this run, let me know, it's going to be awhile before I finish switching mods around.
This post of yours contains two closing </div> tags without corresponding opening tags in a row which breaks the whole layout of this page in my browser. Can you fix it?
Very little people know about my Yoshimo Romance and I was wondering if you're going to give it a shot.
As for Skie. Note it was my VERY FIRST mod that was written in Polish (my native language) and the mod is rather small and not super good and... I had some doubts about it.
La'Valygar adds just a few talks, it's an extension of his original dialogues. Thought he would be nice to make him a tiny bit less silent.
(hmmm... I'm not sure if E.Song kit for cleric finally worked fine and was it still fine on EE...)
And yeah, I hit my first bug with Yvette, since she's stubbornly refusing to "not be a painting". I'm assuming the transform variable is set wrong, so I'll have a stab at progressing it when I'm home next. So long as it's something I can work through in Keeper and console commands without too much hair pulling, a few bugs aren't a deal breaker and I'm enjoying the concept so far.
I've eyed the Yoshimo romance but had no room, but if Skie's got as little content as you say, maybe I'll rush her talks and grab the Yoshmeister instead. Where's the fun in that? Fight! My minions! Justify your existence! While I think it's a good idea for a mod, it wouldn't change much for me in this run, since everyone except Skie is already kitted.
I actually am quite happy with my Yoshimo Romance, but I know it's not as popular as my other mods.
Fake Import Mod - Supposed to add all the tomes, pantaloons and the experience from SoA to Irenicus' dungeon.
Overall: B- - Did what it said on the tin, though by having Imoen give CHARNAME an exp reward, which didn't work entirely smoothly. I'm also pretty sure it's the thing responsible for breaking the starting cutscene, since it stopped it from actually being a cutscene. It also introduced a bug because of that, disabling control on reloading the save and necessitating a restart. And my imported pre-made didn't even get Bhaalspawn powers. Bah.
if you are playing the White Queen - the mod includes an additional mini-quest if you have Viconia in your party.
BTW, if you romance Yvette then I guess you won't be able to romance Yoshimo as the match is quite opposite. You know I write hetero, bi and gay characters, these particular ones are heterosexual.
Oh, one more thing. If you use some NPC mods, this one may interest you:
http://gibberlings3.net/forums/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=704
There are some talks for my characters as well. Just one between Foundling and Yvette, though.
I think Foundling may have one comment if you're romancing Yoshimo.