BGII:EE Mod Request
terezero
Member Posts: 9
Hi! I hope this is an okay place for this topic. If not, I apologize in advance.
As the title suggests, I was hoping to make a request from one of the great modders out there. In BGII original, it was possible to make a party where you could keep all romanceable partners with you at all times. In EE, with the new romances, this isn't really feasible. So, I was hoping to ask if it would be possible to mod a game so that you could send away love interests without ending the romance completely.
Thank you for any and all replies!
As the title suggests, I was hoping to make a request from one of the great modders out there. In BGII original, it was possible to make a party where you could keep all romanceable partners with you at all times. In EE, with the new romances, this isn't really feasible. So, I was hoping to ask if it would be possible to mod a game so that you could send away love interests without ending the romance completely.
Thank you for any and all replies!
0
Comments
Wont hurt to give it a whirl.
Gus
Okay, did a quick install and loaded up an old save. It doesn't seem to be stopping romances from ending once they're sent away. I think it was mostly so that you couldn't end it no matter what you said/did. Kind of an RP kill, honestly.
It might not be working simply because it was an old save, though.
In fairness, most of the stock romances are already pretty close to RP kills as it is. The real mod request should be to make them not suck.
As it is, about the only one that isn't a complete fiasco is Jaheira, and that's a close one, not only because it is buggy as ever, but also because it can technically start a few days after she finds her dead husband and realizes she is a widow. The only saving grace with that one is that Jaheira is played as a mature, responsible adult woman who grasps subtlety and self-respect.
Once they are alive, or if they are still alive, you have 3 days to bring them back in the party, else it ends. If you do it before the three days trigger, the romance will never end. This is at least true for Aerie/Anomen, I didn't check for the others, but they seem to have all of the same semantics.
The EE Romances don't have any consequences as long as you pick the right farewell dialogue (For Neera: Hint, don't pick the first one) or they really don't have any consequences (I.E. for Rasaad.) I didn't check Dorn or Hexxat, but I imagine it works the same.
So if there is a character you can safely remove, it's always the EE NPC. But if you are clever about the time variable, you can probably juggle for short-bursts without needing a mod to change BALDUR.BCS, which is what makes all of this happen.
I started playing around a bit with the above, but the time limit involved really makes it hard to drop a party member, then pick up a new one and do quests with them in that small a time frame. For example, dropping Viconia and picking up Valagar, doing his quest, then going back for Vi in 3 days game time was beyond what I could do.
It's called Rjali Romance and is more or less founded on the idea of having a fun harem-type story.
I'll explain it in detail, so you can decide for yourself if it's to your taste.
Once recruited into the "family", most of the NPCs become "parkable", which means they can be asked to go to De'Arnise Keep (you have to have claimed the stronghold, and the mod ensures you're given it regardless of class), where they'll pick out a space for themselves and can be swapped into and out of the party without disrupting the relationship. Rjali herself cannot be parked, and a couple mod NPCs cannot be parked in SoA.
And yeah, mod NPCs are included. Besides adding four other NPCs itself from Planescape Torment (well, kinda. Fall-From-Grace and Annah of Shadows are there, complete with voiceset and sprite. Ravel is polymorphed into a human rather than a hag, and Ravel has a daughter who can also join the party), the mod supports a whole slew of NPC romances including Sirine, Isra, Sheena, Dace, Petsy (who drops her racial requirements with this mod and considers you an honorary short folk if you're not), Fade, Amber, Branwen, Skie, Nalia, Imoen, Tashia, Tyris, Ninde, Yvette, and Saerileth. Yes, that Saerileth, who in this mod apparently gets a message from Tyr that she's cleared to join the harem. Saerileth and Ninde can't be sent to the Keep in SoA, but can in ToB, while Rjali and Yvette cannot ever be left behind. There's also a non-combat Will-of-the-Wisp companion, Fay, who takes the place of a familiar.
Besides the romances of the mod, there's a lot in it. Rjali has a side story where she tries to transform the Keep into an orphanage. There's a sidestory regarding one of Rjali's genie friends, Jini, where the female elemental takes over Grace's Brothel for Slaking Intellectual Lusts (referred to as "the Brothal"), which acts as an epilogue for Planescape: Torment. Meanwhile, Rjali's other genie friend, Horace, acts as Charname's wingman, giving him access to ridiculously overpowered equipment as well as keeping track of the romances, the requirements for the next stage of each, and even the ability to "goose" them, kicking off the next stage of a romance without the usual timer.
Since the mod involves a harem, there's a good deal of sex involved, but the level of detail mostly ranges from implied to censored ("[A Steamy Intelude Ensues]").
My personal opinion:
What's good:
* Rjali's Swashbuckler/Cleric combination makes her a one-stop shop for all the required party roles, allowing you to swap the party around constantly without sacrificing effectiveness. Rjali herself is a pleasant character, managing to be light, caring, and fun, albeit very focused on Charname.
* The Brothal segments do provide an oddly satisfying epilogue to Planescape: Torment, showing a number of characters from that game and how they're faring after it. Grace and Annah are playable and the end result is fantastic, while Ravel and her daughter are pretty generic but effective mages.
* The Parking functionality allows you to build a playable party much larger than the six character limit without feeling like an unrepentant "love 'em and leave 'em" jackass.
* The Jini Romance for BG1/SoD acts as a prequel to this, and considered canon in this mod, so Rjali, Jini, and Fay are active parts of your story from Candlekeep to Bhaal's Throneroom, though Rjali and Jini play passive roles in half the story. It might just be me, but I like my mod NPCs to do this.
* The banter and redesign of the Keep as more of a home and less of an occasional obligation really is nice. It's cool to walk through the place and see your "parked" allies chilling in their own little spaces and catch up with each, to see the orphans (each one a character in their own right), and just generally feel like the Keep is the most important place in the game.
* Most of the OP items Horace can give you (or that Rjali gives out like candy if you install that component) are absurd, but having a bag of holding from the beginning of the game and having access to a sword that makes you untouchable and does ungodly damage is a nice feature for just powering through the particularly tedious parts of the game for the umpteenth time.
* The mod's integration of so many mod NPCs serves as an exceptional showcase for the immense talent the modding community continues to demonstrate. There are a lot of NPCs I wouldn't have taken the time to download without Rjali touching them, such as Petsy and Isra, and a couple (Fade and Sheena) that I'd dismissed long ago as dead projects that have been given new life through this.
* Horace's "goose" feature is really handy if you want to just see as much content as you can in a condensed period of time. A good number of the mod romances are fairly well written, but the timers and at times cryptic requirements for advancement make it very hard to appreciate them.
The bad:
* I'm not crazy about the "harem" bit, myself. I tend to favor runs of a "one-woman-guy" variety and this ain't it. Even the most faithful Charname you can play will have at very least three concurrent romances going, between Rjali, Fay, and Jini. I also don't really enjoy the "collect 'em all" feel the parking component creates. It's an interesting story, but I have to emotionally distance myself from Charname to stomach it. More than usual, I mean. I don't really relate with an omnicidal "hero", either, but that's just D&D.
* The new regions included in the mod are mostly stolen straight from Planescape Torment, and they are not well integrated, creating lines in the background at higher resolutions and not looking so good. Also, do *not* use the alternate rendering feature with EE, as the game will crash every time you enter one of these areas. It took me ages to figure this out so I'm just putting it here and for the record.
* While the mod integrates mod NPCs from a lot of different creators, it doesn't include them. As a result, you will need to track down each of them separately and hope you've got the most recent version of each, which can be tricky. Sheena for instance, has her version 1.7 listed as 7 while the 2.5 one is listed as 2.5. Besides this, you've got all most of the bugs from each mod (Rjali fixes some of them), plus the ones introduced in Rjali, plus the inevitable entropy of using so many mods at once. And since very few mod NPCs have anything resembling a walkthrough, I have absolutely no idea of Tashia giving me the silent treatment is because I haven't found the right trigger for next phase or because a bug corrupted said trigger. And Horace doesn't know everything. It gets frustrating.
* Rjali does have some bugs itself. Mostly, this has surfaced for me when trying to park certain NPCs, namely Nalia, Sirine, and Isra. I manage to approximate the effect with CLUAConsole to replicate some of the commands, but it is kind of an immersion breaker.
* The OP sword can be addictive, especially if you've played the game way too many times already.
The "I'd fix if it were me" bit:
* Redo the parking mechanic so that it isn't limited to NPCs whose romances have reached level 2. The parking mechanic is so wonderfully beautiful that I would really love to put friends in my keep as well as lovers. Even if it's limited to just potential love interests, I'd really rather be able to open my home to them without having to sleep with them first.
* Do something mechanically interesting with Ravel and Kesai-Serris. Although they're part of the story (to some degree), they're just generic human mages with pretty decent (and identical) stats. Do something interesting with them, even if it's just making one of them a sorcerer, multi-class, or kit.
* Don't destroy really nice gear, please. The Robe of Vecna ends up being a prerequisite for a post-Spellhold sidequest for Jini. It's all well and good to make me quest for the macguffin, or to use a generic item for it, but destroying the Robe of Vecna is just mean and tying the quest to Vecna in general is frankly a rather silly stretch to begin with. Talk about taking a joke to seriously... But that's just a minor bit of whining that can easily be undone with a little cheating anyway.
Final Verdict: Despite some bits I don't personally take much pleasure in, the entire package includes some really cool stuff you can't get anywhere else and it's all done with skill and style.
Anyway, I tried to be thorough, here, but it's an interesting mod that should do what you're looking for - and a whole lot more you may or may not appreciate.
I still like the idea of being able to collect your party in the keep, mind, and the inclusion of Annah and Grace into the game is pretty solid, but I really don't like the idea of it being done without the original creator's consent. (I never assumed that was the case with the PST content, that was pure fanfic, but I'd hoped that the other mod creators at least gave an okay.)
Addendum: Mind, I still stand behind what I said for the most part. It did give me a showcase to explore mods I wouldn't have spent an entire run through to experience, a couple of which I genuinely want to use in future runs, and Rjali is a pleasant and useful party member. I'll admit the banter isn't at all a strong point (and with Sirine in particular it's pretty obvious where the content is original or added in), I just really appreciate it when the party has interactions that aren't tied to the main character and that banter really makes makes the illusion. If the Crossmod banter pack wasn't so anemic (each one seems to only talk to two or three others, and not much at that), it'd do the job, but I don't find that it does. At very least, I got to see a number of mods that didn't catch my eye on description alone that I found I really liked. My endorsement of the mod just loses a fair chunk of its luster for the knowledge.
NPCs don't "leave" until they get the chance to speak with you after reforming the party. Because of this, a classic trick that I believe still works is to put the person you want to leave behind in a non-sealed area (that is, a region you can enter and exit without the whole party, like non-significant houses or stores) that you don't have a reason to re-enter. Adventurer's Mart is probably not a good idea, but the Derelict House in the slums is okay once you've taken care of Baron Ployer. Once that NPC is alone in that area, reform the party to not include them. Then go on your merry way to adventure with an open slot in your roster.
If you walk into the area later, they'll walk up to you and ask you really want to kick them out. Simply say no, on second thought you don't want them to leave, and they'll rejoin the party with the relationship intact.
It's a classic because this one was really useful in BG1 with the paired characters. Say you wanted Jaheira, but not Khalid, because a melee fighter who with a negative morale score isn't someone to rely on. Send Khalid into some random house you have no reason to revisit, reform the party to kick Khalid from the group. Since he can't get to you to ask if you mean it, Jaheira won't quit. So you end up with a druid with better equips and no timid tank. Cheating? Kinda. Cheap? Oh, yeah. Still, it gets the job done.
I tested some code just now that changes the three days length to One Month Game Time and packed it into a simple mod. I figure if you are abandoning your NPC longer then that the relationship is probably not going to happen realistically. This mod only works on Anomen/Aerie/Viconia, Jaheira's still breaks instantly as she has no timer like the others. But this should allow you to swap out Anomen/Aerie/Viconia for whoever you need at the time with little concern. Let me know if it works!
@Calemyr
That exploit will only works for Jaheira romance-wise, because hers is triggered by dialogue. None of the others work that way. When you're removed, even if the dialogue doesn't fire, you're no longer in the party, and the timer of three days (Or one month with my mod) will fire.
I don't like harems or any mod like that, so I wouldn't recommend the Rjali Romance. Sure, open relationships exist, but the banters and characterizations of women in the mod are just male fantasy to me. There are ways to write a mature humorous romance and this is definitely how not to do it. And if you're going to use other's NPCs without permission, at least get their features and characterizations right. Sirene doesn't have a tail.
As for the harem bit, I agree that it's not my speed. I've never liked that bit. However, there are no other mods that have tried to do any of the features of the mod that I like: Annah and Grace as playable characters, and the ability for any NPC to be treated as part of the party to any extent when not out of the active 6. If any mod exists that a "parking" mechanic not tied to romantic status, I would snap that up so fast even I wouldn't believe it.
Rjali does do that, to a limited extent that covers the requirements the OP stated and is, to my knowledge, the only one that does it to any extent at all. So I suggested it, complete with as much detail as I could so that they could make the choice.
I had forgotten the old trick of reforming a party member where they couldn't initiate their exit speech! That should give me a good bit of extra leeway! Thanks!
@Skitia: Thank you so much for the mod! I'm installing it now and will do some play-testing. Being able to drop three of the OG romance partners for a some time should allow me to pull in at least a couple of the new characters on semi-permanently.