Dorn shouldn’t be able to become Fallen

Ryshard

Hi,

So I’ve just come back to an old BG2 EE game and noticed that Dorn has become fallen. It’s really annoying me that this can happen to a Blackguard that’s supposed to be evil. Is this a bug?

Pantalion

Ryshard said:

Hi,

So I’ve just come back to an old BG2 EE game and noticed that Dorn has become fallen. It’s really annoying me that this can happen to a Blackguard that’s supposed to be evil. Is this a bug?

Did you have him, perchance, betray the demon that might be grant him his blackguard powers?

Ryshard

That does sound like something I would do. Haven’t played in about a year.

I’ll be gutted if that’s true. Seems like he’s now just a crappy warrior with nothing to add to the party.

ThacoBell

Ryshard said:

That does sound like something I would do. Haven’t played in about a year.

I’ll be gutted if that’s true. Seems like he’s now just a crappy warrior with nothing to add to the party.

Eh, still has great stats and saving throws. He may not be overpowered anymore, but is still very serviceable.

Khyron

Never found him to be OP to begin with.. actually rather weak due to his annoyingly low Con.

I would take Kagain with the dex gloves any day of the week.. or Korgan in bg2.. or brother dearest in ToB

Sure he can hit hard.. but Kagain with GM in axes is just as good, if not better. Same goes for Korgan, and there's so many STR items in bg2, i can't even use them all in a full party.


Ehh.. Dorn the Blackguard is a novelty really. Once you get tired of his voice acting and silly questline, his time is up :P

Ryshard

Ye he’s good but not as good as a fighter. Using Korgan at the moment with the epic hammer and he runs rings around Dorn. Think I’ll swap Dorn out for Sarevok once I get into ToB. The sword he seems to have got from becoming fallen is great but I still prefer that Silver Sword and the 25% instant kill rate.

ThacoBell

Paladins are not meant to fill the same role as fighters. They are support tanks. Dorn has great saving throws thanks to his Paladin kit, and the blackguard special abilities are pretty potent debuffers. His low con should be an issue if you use him as a second line fighter, which is where he shines.

Ryshard

Aye but now that he’s fallen he has no Paladin abilities, he’s just a sword swinger.

ThacoBell

I was replying to Khyron above.

As for the thread title. I think Blackguards SHOULD be able to fall through regular gameplay. For high reputation (16+)

Ryshard

Ye I would definitely agree with that.

Khyron

The reputation system is the one thing that really seems broken imo..

If a paladin gets framed, and thus his reputation goes really horribad.. he's still LG, and his god would likely know the truth and thus he'd keep his powers.

Just as an evil blackguard -could- do "good deeds" and become extremely popular.. it could all be the means to an end. Gain the adoration and trust of the people.. get voted in as mayor/head of state, seize power by changing the law to suit your evil ways..

If i were evil.. it'd probably benefit me that everyone else thought otherwise.

Since the games -did- incorporate the possibility of falling in some classes, they should have done so in a more sensible way.. like the hell trials. Evil is evil.. not "unpopular is evil"... or "Popular is good"

... anyway.. suppose i'm quite off topic now.

DJKajuru

Khyron said:

The reputation system is the one thing that really seems broken imo..

If a paladin gets framed, and thus his reputation goes really horribad.. he's still LG, and his god would likely know the truth and thus he'd keep his powers.

Just as an evil blackguard -could- do "good deeds" and become extremely popular.. it could all be the means to an end. Gain the adoration and trust of the people.. get voted in as mayor/head of state, seize power by changing the law to suit your evil ways..

If i were evil.. it'd probably benefit me that everyone else thought otherwise.

Since the games -did- incorporate the possibility of falling in some classes, they should have done so in a more sensible way.. like the hell trials. Evil is evil.. not "unpopular is evil"... or "Popular is good"

... anyway.. suppose i'm quite off topic now.

From an RP point of view I believe that blackguards are supposed to gain respect through fear, not glory. I mean, I would expect a neutral evil thief or fighter to be popular, but it seems quite unanimous that BGs aren't the average evil joe, they're truly twisted beings. Blackguard is not a profession like soldier or scout, but a standard for opressive power and intimidation.

Khyron

I do not disagree.. and i guess a BG, as was the object examplified this time, is not the ideal example for my rant.

Yeees.. there are some classes/kits that are inherently evil, beyond the shadow of a doubt.
Like a Cav is good and a BG is eeevuhl.. but that doesn't really change the fact that in the case of BG, your reputation is what governs wether you fall or not.. it's a bit weird tbh.

imo NWN handled it much, much better.. when you had a Law/Chaos Good/Evil "meter" of sorts, where your alignment could be pulled out of skew by your choices of morality and ethics.. where as infinity engine bases it on wether or not people like you.

I shall donate 10000gp worth of holy artifacts to the church.. Lo and behold, I am not evil anymore.. nevermind those 7 dead nuns over there, nobody will miss them... wat?

Ryshard

I like how other games since have handled it, whereas everyone starts neutral and alignment/reputation are one the same and entirely governed by what you do throughout the game, not a choice at the beginning. The BG system is of course old but reputation and alignment are confusing and seem to contradict each other. Games I’m thinking of are KOTOR, Fallout New Vegas and even Fable.

Blackguards and Paladins could simply lose their powers if they didn’t maintain good/evil reputation as their powers are divine and a gift from their god.

tbone1

Ryshard said:

I like how other games since have handled it, whereas everyone starts neutral and alignment/reputation are one the same and entirely governed by what you do throughout the game, not a choice at the beginning. The BG system is of course old but reputation and alignment are confusing and seem to contradict each other. Games I’m thinking of are KOTOR, Fallout New Vegas and even Fable.

True, but sometimes you have to do something in the first place to do it right in the second. At least BG made the attempt to do something.

Borek

tbone1 said:

Ryshard said:

I like how other games since have handled it, whereas everyone starts neutral and alignment/reputation are one the same and entirely governed by what you do throughout the game, not a choice at the beginning. The BG system is of course old but reputation and alignment are confusing and seem to contradict each other. Games I’m thinking of are KOTOR, Fallout New Vegas and even Fable.

True, but sometimes you have to do something in the first place to do it right in the second. At least BG made the attempt to do something.

They were also tied by the 2nd edition rules and obviously D&D was designed for pen and paper, so things where players would rely on a DM tend to be problematic when translated into a computer format.

Necromanx2

Keep in mind that BGEE exemplifies how reputation does not correspond to alignment. After all, Sarevok is CE through and through, yet the population saw his reputation as 20 as they wanted him as Grand Duke (he provided iron in a shortage and wanted to defend against the evil of Amn). Would be nice if reputation was disconnected from alignment.

MakeAthkatlaGrtAgain

Necromanx2 said:

Keep in mind that BGEE exemplifies how reputation does not correspond to alignment. After all, Sarevok is CE through and through, yet the population saw his reputation as 20 as they wanted him as Grand Duke (he provided iron in a shortage and wanted to defend against the evil of Amn). Would be nice if reputation was disconnected from alignment.

And yet party members will permanently leave you based only on reputation depending on their alignment. On one game a long time ago, I simply edited their alignments not to leave.

Khyron

And as such, the lesson learned here.. is that Sarevok keeps cheating.

Arunsun

And the ways to gain/lose reputation is not that great either.
I mean, you can litterally kill a hundred people, loot their house, sell their belongings and give a slight part of that to a temple (even that of Talos, I believe) and you get back to a decent reputation.
And if you kill a person with no one able to see it or trace it back to you anyhow, still at once the entire realms are aware that the party of charname killed an innocent.
One could technically make a new alignment system with everyone starting neutral and gaining/losing Good/Lawful points through dialogue options etc... but that would mean reworking pretty much every dialog in the game. Maybe not that worth it for such an anecdoctic (yet pleasant, of course, roleplay-wise) feature.

However falling with Dorn has nothing to do with reputation, or shouldn't. The one situation that scripts Dorn's fall is if you betray both Ur-Gothoz and Azothet during his questline.

MakeAthkatlaGrtAgain

@Arunsun

The dialog system for alignment was how Planescape Torment did it. Though that game also sometimes if you defended yourself against thugs (such as the people in the city under sigil that locked the gate and you picked it), each one you kill in self defense, it shifts your alignment one point to chaotic and one point to evil. There's some mod that shows a number value of it so you can see. I haven't played the Enhanced Edition but hopefully it kept that in there.

BG2 does has this alignment shift at the end with the tests in the bhaal realm. However you if you do all good except one you get "evil" when it should be neutral. So it's broken -- and since the original game.


Reputation isn't alignment though. To this day there's wealthy people who are despised but then they donate a ton to charity and it shifts their reputation up as people see they're doing some charity work -- certain people in tech companies do this, such as one person who did all these vaccinations in Africa. And for donating to Talos, well it's not you donating in secret or something. You donate and the temple then tells people you're this big donor and to like you. This is how it works in this world today too. Some wealthy person donates to media outlets and then the media outlets put out good public relations on them. And there's one guy in Hungary (I'm not naming people but you can guess who) and some people describe him as a supervillain but he donates tons and so the mainstream media and the big tech companies describe him as as "philanthropist" and he's praised. But that's basically how it is -- you're bribing people to boost your reputation, you're not actually doing good deeds.

So you donate to Talos and Talos hangs up a sign of their donors and people see.

Though the priests, even Talos, provide healthcare to people. In the game, there's no doctors. Priests basically are the healthcare providers for everyone. There's occasional mages with healing positions and druids/shamans, but mainly it's priests. There was some story I remember about a city of mages who refused priests, relied on potions, and one died because he was too proud to be helped by priests.

ThacoBell

@MakeAthkatlaGrtAgain Its not broken, its working as intended. Its not just the standard "Oh I did one bad thing, good thing I'm so good that it doesn't change my alignment". You're in Bhaal's realm, and its entire purpose is to tempt you. On this plane, giving in even once, it grabs ahold of you and alters your very being.