Wild animals no longer turning hostile bug?

Pingwin

Since the last patch, I've noticed that you can now safely walk through groups of bears and they no longer turn hostile. Is this intentional or a bug?

argent77

It depends. Animals won't get hostile if your character is a druid or ranger.

Pingwin

I've got Kivan in my party but everybody can walk right by bears now without them turning hostile.

argent77

From what I can see in the scripts, your party members can all safely pass wild animals as long as a druid or ranger is in their sight.

ThacoBell

Yup, having a druid or ranger in the part prevents animals from turning hostile.

Question2

The funny thing is...you actually want them to to turn hostile for the xp...

Dordledum

Plenty of xp in the game!

Grond0

Question2 said:

The funny thing is...you actually want them to to turn hostile for the xp...

Well if you want to attack them, nothing's stopping you - they'll turn hostile then all right .

Pingwin

I always do my utmost to keep out of the way of the packs of bears. My half-orc fighter cleric may have some dubious moral values and hangs out with murderers and lunatics, but cruelty to animals is still wrong. That bloke in Baldurs Gate who wants his niece's cat to be killed always gets a magic flail in his face.

[Deleted User]

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argent77

Shandyr said:

ThacoBell said:

Yup, having a druid or ranger in the part prevents animals from turning hostile.

Since when? Since last patch? Has this always been the case in the Enhanced Edition? Was this the case in the original, vanilla game?

I feel like I never knew about this...

You wouldn't believe the effort I have always made to go around every bear in great distance because I don't wanna kill them.

It is like this almost forever. I clearly remember the same behavior in original BG2 (maybe added by community fixes though).

Sylvus_Moonbow

Interesting, never knew this. Thanks!

CamDawg

This is bear behavior we've back-ported from BG2, but I think that was done in the original BGEE release--we've not changed bears in 2.5 AFAIK. Original BG bears would attack anyone if they got too close.

argent77 said:

It is like this almost forever. I clearly remember the same behavior in original BG2 (maybe added by community fixes though).

Some of it is from BG2 Fixpack, at least. Some animals (such as deer) were supposed to hang out with the party instead of running away, but had an impossible trigger (druid AND ranger AND elf).

Chronicler

If you google "Social Justice for the Bears Baldur's Gate" there's a hilarious thread on the Steam Forums about it.

CamDawg

Chronicler said:

If you google "Social Justice for the Bears Baldur's Gate" there's a hilarious thread on the Steam Forums about it.

This thread, presumably and yeah, that's... uh... something. It's something, all right.

Monotremata

Ok so the original BG makes sense. But, Ive always played a half-elf Ranger every time. Jahiera was always in my party right behind me in the formation at #3 (Im always in front). I've been attacked by bears in BG:EE what gives?

argent77

Monotremata said:

Ok so the original BG makes sense. But, Ive always played a half-elf Ranger every time. Jahiera was always in my party right behind me in the formation at #3 (Im always in front). I've been attacked by bears in BG:EE what gives?

You may be right. In pure BG:EE (without SoD) this behavior has been added only by patch v2.5.

Chronicler

argent77 said:

Monotremata said:

Ok so the original BG makes sense. But, Ive always played a half-elf Ranger every time. Jahiera was always in my party right behind me in the formation at #3 (Im always in front). I've been attacked by bears in BG:EE what gives?

You may be right. In pure BG:EE (without SoD) this behavior has been added only by patch v2.5.

It was there a couple patches before 2.5 too. Think it's one of those things that gets bugged and then fixed periodically.

ThacoBell

argent77 said:

Monotremata said:

Ok so the original BG makes sense. But, Ive always played a half-elf Ranger every time. Jahiera was always in my party right behind me in the formation at #3 (Im always in front). I've been attacked by bears in BG:EE what gives?

You may be right. In pure BG:EE (without SoD) this behavior has been added only by patch v2.5.

Its been acitve since the initial release of BGEE. I ran rangers and druids all the time back then.

argent77

ThacoBell said:

argent77 said:

Monotremata said:

Ok so the original BG makes sense. But, Ive always played a half-elf Ranger every time. Jahiera was always in my party right behind me in the formation at #3 (Im always in front). I've been attacked by bears in BG:EE what gives?

You may be right. In pure BG:EE (without SoD) this behavior has been added only by patch v2.5.

Its been acitve since the initial release of BGEE. I ran rangers and druids all the time back then.

Strange. It's not working in my older (standalone) BGEE installations.

ThacoBell

argent77 said:

ThacoBell said:

argent77 said:

Monotremata said:

Ok so the original BG makes sense. But, Ive always played a half-elf Ranger every time. Jahiera was always in my party right behind me in the formation at #3 (Im always in front). I've been attacked by bears in BG:EE what gives?

You may be right. In pure BG:EE (without SoD) this behavior has been added only by patch v2.5.

Its been acitve since the initial release of BGEE. I ran rangers and druids all the time back then.

Strange. It's not working in my older (standalone) BGEE installations.

That is strange. Maybe we can chalk it up to IE being fickle.

jastey

Gremlins! (They don't care about rangers nor druids!)

Pingwin

Is it ranger/druid in sight of the animal, or ranger/druid in the party that stops the animals turning hostile? I had a bear try to attack Xzar whilst wandering through the Beregost temple area. I was just passing through and as soon as I'd entered from Beregost I'd clicked on the south side of the map and left everyone to it. Kivan was in the group but I suppose it is plausible that the group had spread out enough that Xzar had walked into a bear that couldn't see Kivan. This was quite recent so whatever patch the PC version was on prior to the 2.5 patch.

Bubb

For anyone who is curious, here's the part of BEAR.BCS that controls whether the bear becomes hostile when a PC gets close to it:

IF
    Range([GOODCUTOFF],7)
    !See([PC.0.0.DRUID])
    !See([PC.0.0.RANGER])
    !See([PC.0.0.FIGHTER_DRUID])
    !See([PC.0.0.CLERIC_RANGER])
    Allegiance(Myself,NEUTRAL)
THEN
    RESPONSE #100
        Enemy()
END

Pingwin

Ok so looking at that script, a bear can still turn hostile if it sees a non ranger/druid character close by but can't see the ranger or druid in the party. So it's still potentially dangerous if you have your party spread out a bit with a pack of bears wandering around nearby.

parrker

> Allegiance(Myself,NEUTRAL)
What is this check for? Alignment of the bear itself?

Bubb

@parrker: Yep. The script is checking that the bear is currently neutral to the party. It's just there to make sure the bear doesn't call Enemy() when it's already hostile.

parrker

Ah, I see. For some reason, I thought this is about alignment. Would be awesome to see some Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil bears roaming the forests of the Sword Coast.

Dordledum

This actually saved me yesterday evening. I had been fighting some tough fights in a row and had 3 characters with current HP scores below 5 and 3 dead companions.

I went from an area where I could not rest safely to Nashkel to rest up and raise the dead ones. Random encounter, I had to defend myself, oh noes! But it was a friendly polar bear.

We waved at him and went off to Nashkel.

jastey

Dordledum said:

Random encounter, I had to defend myself, oh noes! But it was a friendly polar bear.

We waved at him and went off to Nashkel.

lol

Pingwin

I've had that encounter quite often. Always make sure I give him a wide berth and go on my way.