[Spoiler] About Jaheira
Masterteo
Member Posts: 111
Just my opinion on her character.
Am i the only one that is disappointed by her lack of morality ?
1- I mean, how could she have romantic feelings for the protagonist. So soon after her husband's death, nonetheless.
And the " dream " in one of her first dialogues, in which she sees him "smiling" to her and charname...as if in approvation of their possible relationship.
Overall this always made me think that for Jaheira love is meaningless and husbands can be changed as easily as a pair of shoes.
2- She likes to criticize Aerie for her lackings, but does she look into herself to see her problems ? Never.
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These are the reasons why i never used her, until now. Out of curiosity i'm using her to see what happens. Obviously she won't be a romance interest for charname.
What is your opinion ? Do you like Jaheira ?
Am i the only one that is disappointed by her lack of morality ?
1- I mean, how could she have romantic feelings for the protagonist. So soon after her husband's death, nonetheless.
And the " dream " in one of her first dialogues, in which she sees him "smiling" to her and charname...as if in approvation of their possible relationship.
Overall this always made me think that for Jaheira love is meaningless and husbands can be changed as easily as a pair of shoes.
2- She likes to criticize Aerie for her lackings, but does she look into herself to see her problems ? Never.
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These are the reasons why i never used her, until now. Out of curiosity i'm using her to see what happens. Obviously she won't be a romance interest for charname.
What is your opinion ? Do you like Jaheira ?
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Comments
You are not the only one who feels this way. In fact, her behaviour has been subject to discussion quite often for a very long time on this forum.
I don't really see a problem with it myself. She lost someone in rather traumatic circumstances, and now she's developing feelings for someone who has been nearly as close throughout those experiences. She does not jump him for reasons of yolo, and she is fairly hesitant to pursue fulfillment of her newly emerging desires. She takes it slow enough to bore the living excrements out of you, actually.
As for that dream, dreams like that are pretty common for people in mourning who find themselves developing feelings for someone other than they mourn over in real life. So that would just be good storytelling and a nice realistic touch to a fantasy world.
The "changed as easily as a pair of shoes" makes no sense to me at all. The man was murdered. And the talks start out more as good friends discussing the loss of a loved one and how to deal with it than anything else.
The way she talks to Arie, well, yes, she does that. I don't really mind, she just dislikes helpless crybabies who keep begging for attention and aim for romantic relations based on pity.
So yeah, I like Jaheira. And I like her romance, too, except for some of the technical details.
Sure, because as i've stated, i've never used her for more than a few hours. And only during my very first gameplay, before i got rid of her.
The fact that i do not like her for the reasons stated in my post does not mean that i can't try her this time, out of curiosity. Just for doing something new in the game.
Oh, and i said also " Obviously she won't be a romance interest for charname. ". So with " using her " is clear that i mean having her as a companion and read her non-romantic dialogues
Don't get me started on what I think of Jaheira.
Seriously, just don't.
And that's just for starters
Everytime she opens her mouth a kitten dies somewhere.
I quite like the Harper quest (killing Harpers what's not to like?) but not half as much as I enjoy dumping her afterwards and watching her sour face screw up with self pity.
"Oh no, I gave up everything for you"
No you didn't, you really didn't. You dragged me on some dangerous quest in the first game without a thought as to whether that was the best thing to do with an orphaned ingenue who was told to look to you for help.
Delusional.
PS, I'm only half joking.
2: Her entire romance is the most strict. Aerie and Viconia can both handle different answers pretty well, while Jaheira expects to get her way pretty much constantly on everything, just as she did from her first husband.
3: Yes, it's super quick. Not even a year goes by before she's trying to get into CHARNAME's pantaloons, more likely a month or two. Even from a human perspective that's pretty damn speedy to get over "losing the love of your life".
4: She straight up betrays you twice. Once by abandoning the party in a dangerous area to go to party with the Harpers, and then again by leading you into a Harper trap. That's a worse track record than any of the Evil NPCs.
5: As with all druids, the woman is flat out insane. Can't use a sword, because it's not bent enough? Okay, fine. This is a wakisashi. No? But it even uses the same proficiency as- fine. How about this bow? No? But you can use a staff? Is it the string? Is string against nature? Ugh. Fine. A mace? No? Because it has metal on the end? Ignoring the fact that you can use SWORDS, you can use a SPEAR, which is a staff that has metal on the end? Oh, speaking of, can you hold these little spears known as "arrows" in your quiv- no? Sigh.
I think it's even quicker, unless you play super-slow. More like few weeks.
And yeah, her romance is pretty yuck, but every vanilla romance is yuck - maybe except Anomen, I never tried that one.
I think it's even quicker, unless you play super-slow. More like few weeks. "
Well, no. As I stated above, most of her timers run on realtime rather than game time. Playing through the game faster will actually screw you over as you won't have played for long enough for them to trigger. Seriously, Jaheira's last romance dialogue triggers after 5 HOURS REAL TIME. I keep her in my party from the get go, and even playing completionist, I have to intentionall wait around for it to trigger before going off to Spellhold.
Generally though, I tend to leave the game running on pause while I work/write/sleep so all the realtime stuff runs through super quick. I wish they'd put it on game time.
So while Jaheira’s romance seems harshly quick to us, it might not in FR, particularly for a druid whose philosophy on life and death is rather different than ours
The details we get about her and Khalid's relationship (especially in SoD) shows their relationship to be a strong one.
@Pantalion That's just for the last romance talk, looking at in game time, it takes about a few months to go through the whole romance. Of which, is not explicitely romantic for 2/3rds of it. The majority of its content could so easily not rely on the romance, being more of two friends coming to terms with the loss of another friend.
@ThacoBell "Not explicitly" romantic and "not romantic at all" are different things. As you see, OP did not plan to romance Jaheira, yet got her intent clearly and was shocked by behavior of that "grieving widow".
As of Aery or Viconia - neither of them had any previous commitment and could jump in Charname's bed the second they met him should they want to. No comparison here.
Oh, and in game elves are not that "philosophical about relationships": Kivan, Irenicus, Elessime and Solaufein would strongly disagree with such statement.
At least thanks to her Khalid got a proper burial, abandoned under multiple tons of rock in a dungeon. His tombstone should have "Just wasn't that into you." carved into it, since I don't remember her getting Khalid anything for their anniversary?
Still, it's not much - from Charname's point of view, in at best 3 months after Khalid's death Jaheira is already in relationship, and she starts expressing romantic interest in weeks after his demise.
As stated before, Jaheira's lovetalks start as friendship talks that show how much she respects you and your achievements. That is already a positive change, since in BG1 she was your guardian and not necessarily more than that. Yeah, it does turn out to be more than friendship, *if you allow it* , not long after losing her husband , but people do cope with loss in different ways.
This might be a bit shocking, but what if Jaheira and Charname's romance is just temporary? In real life we do bond with other people to overcome bad experiences and afterwards we realize it wasn't really what we wanted.
I see you point, though . Jaheira CLAIMS to be strong, independent and to follow her beliefs . In fact she does all that, but you get to find out that she lacks emotional intelligence (something that Khalid had) and now she deserves to be judged by her lack of maturity.
I think that it gives her even more depth. We all have flaws.
I happen to like Jaheira. So much so, that that I always remember to avoid that abandonment scene in Irenicus dungeon and headcanoning Khalid body to be obviously mutilated beyond any resurrection, so asking about it would be an insult. Oh, and I never romance her with my rare male Charname for that very reason - for me the way romance was handled is totally OOC.
1: Extremely insecure - she cannot tolerate dissenting opinion in a romantic partner or the romance ends.
2: Hypocritical - She cannot be removed the party for any reason or the romance ends. Unless she does it.
3: A traitor - Twice.
4: Not that into her former, wussy, husband.
5: A terrible failure as a druid.
6: In dire need of a visit from Chris Hansen. My Elven CHARNAME is only twenty one for Eilistraee's sake! Decompose
(Necromancy)
Sphere: Animal, Plant
Level: 4
Range: 5 yds/level
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 7
Duration: Instantaneous
Area of Effect: 150 Ibs. maximum
Saving Throw: None or Neg.
This spell causes organic material to turn into humus or compost instantly. Up to 150 pounds of material can be affected. Living matter is not affected by this spell, although a corpse (even a fresh one) would be. Undead creatures that have corporeal forms are affected if they fail a saving throw vs. death magic. A magical item composed of organic materials (for example, a wooden spear +I) must make a saving throw vs. disintegration. Nonmagical items of organic composition (doors, rugs, etc.) receive no saving throw. Decomposed creatures can be raised, resurrected, or reincarnated if the dust is carefully collected and preserved.
So... More defiled than "composted into mulch, swept up with a dustpan, and stored in a jar"? Or "actually turned into an undead abomination, then killed again"?
"Past raising" and "Past resurrecting" are very different things, and the lady clearly wasn't in the mood to try very hard.
Sorry, I do not buy it as "I love you so much I will fight for you to the very end". More like "finally, death did us part and let's keep it this way", which is not Jaheira I met in BG1.
> even though raise dead closed lethal wounds and healed mortal damage, missing pieces were not regenerated.
http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Resurrection_(spell)
This spell does all this but potentially might leave her so exhausted she can't cast spells or fight again for a day or two.
There's many cases in all sorts of books and game literature that places limits or prevents reality altering events such as Resurrection/Wish. Also need to remember that the amount of entities capable of throwing around that much power are very low and they are also heavily tied to organizations/areas with opposing powers to keep them in check.
Now it's true Jaheira could have said OK, lets scrape what's left of Khalid off the table, ceiling, walls and floor, chuck it into a backpack and hope to hell she levels up as a druid fast enough to get to Resurrection learnt before the spells limits expire. Then she has to keep the mutilated body of her Husband with her whilst attempting to track down the ultra-powerful foe who did it. Now i dunno, but that seems like it's pretty damn unlikely as a scenario, i'm pretty sure she would have realised he was defiled past the point where Raise Dead would work, which leaves a spell so powerful that traditional game lore usually accepts is reserved for use by a VERY small amount of the most devout Priests.
The fact the game lets you stroll into any temple and get someone resurrected for 1000 gold isn't supported in normal game literature. That does cloud the views regarding her apparent willingness to give up on him, but the alternative is expecting a small group of badly equipped, recently tortured characters to haul around a dead body that has been mutilated, whilst hot on the heels of the super-villain responsible. Just imagine trying to explain that to the Cowlies when they arrest Imoen and Irenicus, lmao.
What, this mutilated corpse Officer? Oh, that's my beloved husband, no, honestly we are the good guys, despite the fact we're emerging from the sewers with a dead body stuffed into a backpack...lol
And ignoring at least one quest which explicitly involves carrying a corpse in your backpack out of a sewer, one assumes parties of adventurers carrying around mutilated corpses out of sewers is pretty much par for the course for any law enforcement officer. How else are they supposed to get their party members raised?
"Hey, uh, I, uh, see you're dragging five half eaten corpses through the city gate there, Mister CHARNAME? One of them's still on fire?"
"Red Dragon."
"Ah, second building on the left. Tell them I sent you for a 5% discount."
Plus as i have said, there are COUNTLESS cases of people dying in the literature, many of them important and wealthy, that do NOT get resurrected. I mean take the Druids, of which Jaheira is obviously a member, the order will only have 1 Arch-Druid per area (14th level +), temples will rarely have high level clerics in attendance and even if they do then it's going to depend on their faith whether or not they will cast a spell that requires bed-rest afterwards and much petitioning of their Deity.
Now if you were to take Khalids body to say the Great Druid, well, not happening since the local one is a Shadow Druid that you have to kill, lol, she's definitely not going to do Jaheira a favour, even if a "normal" neutral druid replaces her, do you think the party could convince them that reversing the natural process of life and death is a valid use of the Druids power?
Now if you find a cleric powerful enough to cast it, they are going to want something more than gold peices and to be honest some random party of no-bodies (from the clerics perspective) wouldn't even get a meeting in all probability.
Her best hope would be tapping the Harpers network for a HUGE personal favour, but we all know how that storyline pans out, also remember at the time you are in a Dungeon trying to escape, no idea where you even are, you have no equipment, no gold and at the time you don't even know why Irenicus even kidnapped you.
Also remember that Skie Silvershield was killed in SoD and wasn't able to be resurrected, she was killed by the same person that killed Khalid. You can dress it up anyway you like, but at the time his death occurs you have no influence, no money, no equipment and no clue where you are, you're chasing a sadistic monster that has the power to permanently kill anyone he wants.
Of course the most compelling argument is that it's written into the game, at some point you need to have negative consequences for plot purposes, if every 2nd cleric out there was curing and resurrecting anyone who got the sniffles then the power and majesty of the magic would be diminished to merely standard behavior.