Has Neera become immortal?
Permidion_Stark
Member Posts: 4,861
I spent last night soloing with my fighter thief. I was breaking into every house in Beregost and robbing the place blind and pretty soon my inventory was full and I was in need of a gem bag. I went to bump into Neera and then stood aside while the Red Wizard and his thugs dealt with her, planning to take the bag from her corpse when they were done (I don't like to kill her myself - I'm a good guy).
Anyway, this time she wouldn't die. She got whacked by the thugs over and over again and had a load of spells chucked at her by the mage she still stayed alive. In the end I had to kill the wizard and let her join the party just to get the gem bag.
So what gives? Is Neera immortal now?
Anyway, this time she wouldn't die. She got whacked by the thugs over and over again and had a load of spells chucked at her by the mage she still stayed alive. In the end I had to kill the wizard and let her join the party just to get the gem bag.
So what gives? Is Neera immortal now?
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I think at least both should behave the same way right?
With Neera what happens seems to have changed. I used to avoid the encounter at low level because I generally found that Neera would get killed and I would get killed along with her but this time she seemed completely indestructible. I was wondering if something had changed with the 2.5 patch.
Thanks Julius. I guess I was misremembering about Dorn. The time he died must have been before the patch.
I can't say I am a fan of the change. If a character keeps dying in an encounter maybe it's because the encounter has been badly designed. Making the character immortal seems the wrong way to fix the problem.
And now we've got a situation where if I allow Neera to see my character I get dragged into a fight in which I can be killed but she can't. That doesn't make much sense to me.
And if she goes away how do you get the gem bag?
These are additional reasons to make Neera unkillable:
- Neera's HP at the lvl 1 are very low (4)
- Neera's wild surge can kill herself (for example, through a Fireball surge)
- Neera is in Beregost, the town many players reach while still of the 1st level and thus not having enough firepower to kill all the enemies before they hit Neera
Another argument was the following. With a LoB diffuculty available, keeping Neera on LoB alive during the initial encounter was more difficult than all other tasks of the similar level of danger. Neera just melees enemies after casting her spells, thus becoming an aim of the red wizards.
All that against a situation when you want her Gem Bag for the sake of it - as a result of her dying in the encounter. You can just go kill her in the Friendly Arm Inn. Or you can let her join you for 10 seconds, take the gem bag, and dismiss her.
Problem 1. We have created a character who has got low hit-points and who can kill herself by accident.
Problem 2. We have put her in a place where the people who meet her are likely to be too low level to handle the encounter.
Problem 3: The character's script means she melees after casting her spells. But she is hopeless at meleeing and so just gets herself killed.
Solution: We make her immortal.
https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/35411
If she goes away, you don't get the gem bag. If you want the gem bag, either kill her before the encounter starts (the minhp item doesn't get applied until the red wizard encounter starts), or go through the encounter, accept her into the party for ~10 seconds, take the gem bag, and dismiss her.
Or, just install the Add Bags of Holding component from Tweaks Anthology.
If you say you won't help her then the Red Wizards don't show up at all. So Neera tells you she needs saving but because you refuse to help it turns out she doesn't need saving after all. If it was your first playthrough you would have absolutely no idea what was going on.
If you say you will help and then change your mind and tell the Red Wizards to take her they turn hostile but only attack Neera. I've tried it a couple of times and she can't kill them because she hasn't got the spells and is lousy in melee and they can't kill her because she is immortal. The fight ends up as a stalemate and if you want it to end you have to kill the Thayvians, who don't fight back because they now only target Neera.
If you fight by her side you can be killed but she can't.
It's a mess.
I had to reload at least 20 times during my encounter with Dorn near Nashkel because he kept dying under 10 seconds.
He finally made it through after 20+ attempts.
If people want to be certain that Neera and Viconia won't die in their initial encounters then they can always switch to story mode. Otherwise, you take your chances.
I'm not keen on the Neera character (because I don't want a Wild Mage in my party not because of her personality) and I think the encounter has always been problematic, mainly because it can be over-powering for a low level party and before the latest patch there was no way to avoid it. However, if I was playing a good character I would always try to keep her alive. In fact I quite enjoyed the challenge of getting her through the fight unscathed.
But now it feels totally pointless. No matter what level of difficulty I am playing on Neera is playing in story mode. I can't see how this is an improvement and I hope they change it back in the next patch.
I agree it doesn't make much sense for NPCs to be killed before they can join the party so why create that possibility in the first place? If the devs didn't want them to die they shouldn't have sent a bunch of guys to attack them.
In both instances the characters could have been introduced in a different way and the ambushes could have taken place once they were in the party. Then you wouldn't have to do dumb railroad DM stuff like making a character immortal for an encounter.
But it is far worse game design to create that situation and then try to correct it by making her immortal.
The devs made a mistake when they first designed the encounter and now they have compounded their error by making her unkillable.
They didn't correct an error, they double-down on it.
They wanted Neera to be able to join the party so that the players could do her quest but they created an initial encounter where there was a good chance that Neera would die. Instead of recognising that this was a mistake and changing the encounter they said we can solve this problem by making Neera immortal.
It's not a solution, it's just a hand wave that has made things far worse than they were in the first place.
Ideally - a cutscene or event should play out realisticly under the d&d rules - it would also help new players to learn, e.g. seeing how the npc mage lowered the defences first etc. But, like with Neera, the scene is meant more for story than gameplay and the effort to implement everything by the book far outweighs the benefit of keeping the core rules advocates happy. Also, things like this are very easy to mod and make it exactly how you want it
It's a terrible encounter for a terrible NPC in a terrible place to have it.
And the "solution" makes things worse.
Apart from that, yay, everything is hunky dory (heavy sarcasm).
@Permidion_Stark, just attack/kill her from range the moment you see her before she has a chance to speak to you. She will try to run but gets blocked by the Fog of War.
Mind you, better do it fast before they close that loophole.
A more thorough solution to all the problems would have been to place another gem bag for sale at one of the shops as well as the min IHP for players who find the fight too hard but want to recruit her.
But that was too simple......
Viconia works the same way. She asks for help. If you say no, she does an EscapeArea(). The Flaming Fist soldier doesn't appear to kill her in front of you. Viconia just leaves.
Also, the Thayvians attack my CHARNAME when they turn red-circled, even when I say they can have Neera when talking to Ekandor. There's nothing in their scripts that targets Neera only.
Main problem is the encounter is genuinely tricky for a first level party, especially a party of 1st level newbies that may be just the PC and Imoen at this point. The simplest solution is to move the encounter a little deeper into the game, so the PCs are likely a 2nd or 3rd level, and more numerous.
Second solution is to do the "it's a cut-scene" thing completely, rather than invite combat on the party.
Finally, the encounter could be cut back and simplified even further, although that is probably the second- least satisfying option, where last choice is a cheesy cannot-die effect.
Heck, have the assassins use weapons that often do no damage, or penalize their hit rolls, or pretty much anything rather than god-mode cheese. Thinking of the combat-practice encounter in Candlekeep where the PC does not take damage here.
Just add the following action to NETHAY01.DLG, State 0, Response 1:
ActionOverride("NEERA",ApplySpellRES("OHNMODE2",Myself))