A suicide and a dead cat: question about.

Syntia13

There are two encounters in BG1 which I thought I had all figured out, but now I'm not so sure anymore.
I'm talking about:
1) The potential suicide whom you meet on the starting map.
2) The little girl who asks you to find her cat which fell off a waterfall.

Ad. 1) - I've been once told that you can actually talk the young man into jumping off a cliff; I was curious, so I conducted an experiment... actually, I just quicksaved/loaded a bunch of time to try all of the dialog options. None of them worked - whatever I said, he would go back home, even if I straight up told him to go on and jump. Instead of doing it, he said that me saying that must mean that I knew he'd do the right thing. He thanked me profusely for showing such faith in him, and went home happily. I dismissed the fellow gamer's claim about successful murder by suicide as false/wishful thinking.
However, some of the online walktroughs say that if you urge him to jump, he admits that he 'hasn't the guts to do it'. Not what I experienced at all. Hmm. Could it be that there are more than one NPC reaction to the same PC's dialog option? Are they chosen randomly, or based on PC's reputation, or charisma... or character? That would make a lot of sense, actually - the game could assume that a good PC is just trying reverse psychology, while an evil PC would mean it.
I really would like to know an answer to this, so my question to you all is: did anyone ever managed to talk the jumper into jumping, and if so, what was your character, charisma, and reputation at the time?

Ad. 2) The cat is dead. After you retrieve its body and return it to the girl, there are three ways she can 'thank' you (that I know of).
a - she cheerfully says that the cat has been dead before, but her papa will raise it from the dead, so it's perfectly all right.
b - she cries, hugs the dead cat and goes away to bury it.
c - she accuses you of killing the creature, and runs away to tell on you.
I discovered it during one of those 'dang, I died and had to do everything again and why do I get a different reaction this time?' moments. I reloaded a bunch of times again, this time trying to talk to the girl with different NPCs after picking up the dead cat. I don't remember who exactly was in my party, but it was quite a diverse gang (Jaheira&Khalid + Xzar&Montaron are possible); what I do remember is that I came to a conclusion that the response you get depends on the alignment of the person who speaks to the girl. (Good - response a, neutral - b, evil - c). But recently I came across an opinion that it is based on PC's charisma. That isn't possible, since I got all three with the same PC, but perhaps it's the charisma of the person that speaks to the girl that counts?
So, question - does anyone know for certain which is it - the character or the charisma that determines whether or not the cat will get to enjoy another of its nine lives?

Miloch

1) I don't think he jumps no matter what you say or what your reputation. The BG1 NPC Project mod does give him more content. Offhand, I can't recall if that's a part of it.

2) The reaction is determined by party reputation +/- charisma of speaker. Dudleyville shows the different results:

http://www.forgottenwars.com/bg1/ar5200.htm

Quartz

Ahh, the joys of Charisma + Rep character reaction. Crazy good fun, right? Part of what makes Baldur's Gate 1 so awesome.

BGII only had a very little bit of it. e.g. if your reaction was really low, Lehtinan wouldn't give you permission to go to the back of the Copper Coronet, because you "look like trouble."

BG1 had a ton of it ... greatly effected just about every quest, and a lot of other dialogs.

cyberhawk

I was really impressed when I found out that Melicamp can die during the process of returning to his normal state. Normally Thalantyr will only tell him afterwards how dangerous and daring that act was, but on some occasions the stupid guy simply dies and you have to listen to a little speech from Thalantyr how magic is a daring and potentially lethal thing and how important selfcontrol and safety are while using magic.

This experience really addsto the game and also makes the existence of wild mages more logical.

salieri

There's no way the guy could jump off the clff without it resulting in some kind of totally disappointing animation.

RomulanPaladin

Checked the actual game files. Chase (the cliff jumper) has absolutely NO dialog options other then the normal three, all of which result in him walking away safely.

Permidion_Stark

cyberhawk said:

I was really impressed when I found out that Melicamp can die during the process of returning to his normal state. Normally Thalantyr will only tell him afterwards how dangerous and daring that act was, but on some occasions the stupid guy simply dies and you have to listen to a little speech from Thalantyr how magic is a daring and potentially lethal thing and how important selfcontrol and safety are while using magic.

This experience really addsto the game and also makes the existence of wild mages more logical.

It has always bugged me that you get no experience if Melicamp dies. It's the only point in the game where I cheat and do a quick save before handing the skull to Thalantyr and keep reloading until the 'antichickenator' works successfully.

Miloch

salieri said:

There's no way the guy could jump off the clff without it resulting in some kind of totally disappointing animation.

Challenge accepted! Could be done by playing the "falling down" animation, displacing it by x/y to simulate falling off the cliff and then playing a splash spell effect when he hits the water.

Brude

1) I've only gotten Mr Depressed to talk about his special item once. Not sure what that's based on.

2) This sounds like a straight reaction roll, and if it is then I'm pretty sure it matters who actually talks to her.