Cost To Increase Reputation At Temples Out Of Control

Winedogger

Has anyone else seen page 17 of the new manual - 'Effects of Reputation and Alignment'? In the original game, increasing your reputation one point by donating at a temple cost between 100-500gp. It now costs up to 5000gp/point. What is going on here?

Schneidend

Typo, maybe?

DeathMachineMiyagi

If that isn't a typo, and the world still acts the same for BG characters who fall below 6 rep or so, an evil playthrough has basically just been made borderline unworkable.

Here's to hoping it IS a typo.

DeathMachineMiyagi

Nah, checking the manual, it isn't THAT bad. You have to donate a ton of money to bump your rep at the high extreme, but the low isn't too harsh.

Really, anyone who wants a 20 rep will get it quickly enough anyway. More than enough chances to raise your rep in BG.

TheCoffeeGod

Unless it's a typo, it looks like this carried over from the BGII engine.
In BGII it's much more expensive to boost Rep through donations.

Kirkor

Well, to be honest, original prices for reputation boost were way too low. I mean, come on: I kill a child and pay 1000g and suddenly from a child murderer I became a hero...

Can you give me link to the manual? I can't find it...

Dee

There is a typo in that table, but it's at the 13-14 mark (It says 200 and 500 when it should be 1200 and 1500).

@Kirkor The manuals should be in the same directory as the preloaded game. You can also download them here: http://www.baldursgate.com/manuals.en.html

The_New_Romance

Kirkor said:

Well, to be honest, original prices for reputation boost were way too low. I mean, come on: I kill a child and pay 1000g and suddenly from a child murderer I became a hero...

Actually, in the Forgotten Realms setting 1000 gp is a lot of money. You just wouldn't know from the Baldur's Gate game itself because it doesn't feature copper and silver coins. If I recall correctly, a farmer or skilled labourer earns about 1 silver coin a day. That means, 1 gp is worth ten days of work, so 1000 gp - especially all at once - would be worth about 3 years of common work. If my memory is still working, that is.

Now, you can't really put a price tag on a human life, but 3 years of work - even at a low to average salary, and not counting weekends, days off and the like - is a lot of money. So, the law might still be after you, and the parents won't forgive you, but giving that much money to a church will most likely make a big part of the parish like you. Of course, it's a discussion about a fantasy world, so you can always argue this way or that way, but it seems at least somewhat internally consistent.

Have a look at this, if you're interested: http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/27041569/Actual_cost_of_items
If you put the average factory worker's yearly income at 50,000 $, that'd make 150,000 $ as a donation to a church in the above example. Quite a sum.

Mechalibur

The_New_Romance said:

Actually, in the Forgotten Realms setting 1000 gp is a lot of money. You just wouldn't know from the Baldur's Gate game itself because it doesn't feature copper and silver coins. If I recall correctly, a farmer or skilled labourer earns about 1 silver coin a day. That means, 1 gp is worth ten days of work, so 1000 gp - especially all at once - would be worth about 3 years of common work. If my memory is still working, that is.

That's *supposed* to be the case, but the economy is actually really messed up in most D&D worlds if you stop to think about it. Especially in BG where the lowest demonination is gold pieces, meaning that something like a single ale costs several days of farmer work.

The_New_Romance

Of course. I tried to articulate that by stating it's (only) a fantasy world. It gets worse as the economy is totally messed up, you're right about that. Still, I think that 1000 gp are a lot of money in-setting, it's only that BG is distorting the value of money. Which is especially nasty considering that the baseline was never all that straight anyway.

TJ_Hooker

The_New_Romance said:

Of course. I tried to articulate that by stating it's (only) a fantasy world. It gets worse as the economy is totally messed up, you're right about that. Still, I think that 1000 gp are a lot of money in-setting, it's only that BG is distorting the value of money. Which is especially nasty considering that the baseline was never all that straight anyway.

The thing it doesn't seem like there's any reliable way to evaluate the value of gold pieces in BG in something like dollars, despite what it might be in actual DnD lore. For instance, there are plenty of lowly enemies that carry 20+ gold on them, such as bandits. By your example of a farmer who earns 1 silver a day, that would be over 200 days of work, or put in terms of dollars, 55% of the $50 000 made in a year by the labourer. So in that case, Joe Blow Bandit is walking around with the gold equivalent of $27 500 in his pocket. It just doesn't make sense.

The_New_Romance

No, it really doesn't. I was just taking exemplary numbers from the thread I linked to at least get a starting point for people regarding this question. The economy is messed up, and BG doesn't have the lesser coins, so yeah - it doesn't work out if you're only considering BG. The Realms themselves, though, seem somewhat consistent (as I said above, emphasis on "somewhat"). We're on the BG forum here, though, so don't take my ramblings too seriously

Kirkor

Mechalibur said:

The_New_Romance said:

Actually, in the Forgotten Realms setting 1000 gp is a lot of money. You just wouldn't know from the Baldur's Gate game itself because it doesn't feature copper and silver coins. If I recall correctly, a farmer or skilled labourer earns about 1 silver coin a day. That means, 1 gp is worth ten days of work, so 1000 gp - especially all at once - would be worth about 3 years of common work. If my memory is still working, that is.

That's *supposed* to be the case, but the economy is actually really messed up in most D&D worlds if you stop to think about it. Especially in BG where the lowest demonination is gold pieces, meaning that something like a single ale costs several days of farmer work.

Change in-game money name from gold to silver, and it would make much more sense.
I guess that there is only one kind of money (gold) to simplify things.

Anyway, back to the topic, I think the new prices are better. You should realy earn your reputation the hard way (just like in RL). In Vanilla BG it was too easy. I could get 16 reputation in Friendly Arms Inn temple at the very beggining without any effort.

Winedogger

While I agree that the original numbers where probably too low, these seem prohibitively high for BG1. In BGII gold is much more plentiful.

ajwz

New numbers are better. You kill a police officer and get let off with a fine, you better believe its gonna be a big one.

GoodSteve

Winedogger said:

While I agree that the original numbers where probably too low, these seem prohibitively high for BG1. In BGII gold is much more plentiful.

I dunno, I usually have more money than I can spend by the end of BG1. I had purchased the Robe of the Good Arch-Magi, Claw of Khazgaroth, Shadow Armor, Crossbow of Speed, more potions and magical arrows than I'd like to count and had roughly 130k gold when I beat Sarevok.

I had more than enough to go from sinner to saint 3 times over.

lindz

I've just experienced this. I'm playing an evil party and already have a very bad reputation. Went to the temple to try to raise it so I can enter Nashkel to find that the reputation gains have gone up 10x what they used to be.

Is an evil party even viable now?

Wanderon

I have always maintained that a true evil party that dropped it's rep to 1 or 2 and left it there would never finish the game - it's probably the ultimate BG1 challenge... ;-)

Assuming core rules or higher!

DeathMachineMiyagi

ajwz said:

New numbers are better. You kill a police officer and get let off with a fine, you better believe its gonna be a big one.

The system is, and always has been, stupid. It would be stupid if the price was 200 gold. It would be stupid if the price was 20,000 gold.

Steeper donation costs won't change the absurdity of making up for the massacre of men, women, children, law enforcement, etc. by throwing some coins in the donation bowl. It just makes working an evil party around the broken system that much more of a pointless pain in a game that already actively punishes an evil charname.

I haven't played an evil party yet, so I have no comment on the viability of such in BG:EE, but if what lindz suggests is true, its something that should be fixed. I'd rather see a complete overhaul of how BG treats reputation and alignment, but in lieu of that, making a reputation bump through donating reasonably priced is an acceptable patch on the problem.

Redrake

It costs 500 gp at the temple of Lathander. I just checked.

mercurymeltdown

It's the same prices as in BG2