Can't kill Marl without rep loss anymore!

Awong124

I couldn't find it in the Fixed Forum Compiled Lists, so maybe it's a "bug" that was "fixed". In BGEE I can't calm Marl down then kill him without suffering a reputation loss anymore! Damn, I loved talking him down then backstab his bullying ass after.

Xiviriel

You deserve to be pegged a villain....

Sulla

Strange... I killed him this time and don't remember a reputation loss, although I did knock him out with my fists first, hoping that would resolve it. When he was still hostile I used my sword.

Awong124

Nope, I tried knocking him unconscious first, but still got a rep loss. At least the rest of the people in the inn don't turn hostile.

elminster

Win for evil characters

It is the same with joia in one of the buildings outside the friendly arm, who you get 900 xp for killing but only 650 xp if you do her quest (being evil I did both). Both now cause reputation losses whereas before they did not.

Ohh and the rest of the people in the inn did not turn hostile if you killed Marl in the original game either.

Awong124

I didn't know about killing Joie. I'll have to do that during my evil playthrough.

I know the people at the inn didn't turn hostile in the original game either, but since they made it so that you lose rep for killing Marl I half expected that they would make them turn hostile as well.

Humanoid_Taifun

Civilians don't turn hostile anymore. That was deemed stupid.

ChrisYui

Humanoid_Taifun said:

Civilians don't turn hostile anymore. That was deemed stupid.

So glad about that change. My issue now is that the price you have to pay to temples ( to keep my reputation above 5 so guards don't auto-attack me ) is scaled to the BG2 prices. Needless to say I can't donate 600g every time I need a point of reputation at the beginning of the game.

Jorath

What is the appeal of playing an evil party? I never tried it in the 13 years I have been playing the game, and was wondering if you get a diffrent ending.

elminster

Awong124 said:

I didn't know about killing Joie. I'll have to do that during my evil playthrough.

I know the people at the inn didn't turn hostile in the original game either, but since they made it so that you lose rep for killing Marl I half expected that they would make them turn hostile as well.

Killing joia can be tricky for a low level party since after her quest she only has to walk out her door for you to lose out on the experience. I recommend the use of the command spell to guarantee success

The_New_Romance

Jorath said:

What is the appeal of playing an evil party? I never tried it in the 13 years I have been playing the game, and was wondering if you get a diffrent ending.

No. You just get to be evil, get different Bhaalspawn abilities and get some of the arguably best NPCs in the game. Granted, you can take them in a good party as well, but it's more complicated.

PawnSlayer

I noticed Joaia today. Even though I always play good, I used to kill her instead of/after doing the quest due to the better reward and no consequences. Interestingly you also prove her a liar when she says she has nothing with which to pay you; that 100 gold is handy first thing in the game!

Quartz

They fixed that exploit, yes. I remember seeing it discussed on here, and they confirmed it fixed.

Silverstar

Is there a good reason to kill Marl though? You get almost a K xp for talking him down and I can't imagine he's worth a whole lot of xp since he's level 1 or 2 or something?

The_New_Romance said:

get different Bhaalspawn abilities

Isn't that based on alignment? Always thought it was. Remember getting some of the "evil" abilities on neutral characters randomly; could be changed by saving/loading before sleep for a retry so to speak.

Humanoid_Taifun

In BG2 it's based on alignment. In BG1, it's based on reputation.

Silverstar

Thanks for clearing that up Guess the reason I've gotten my abilities the way I have then have usually had to do with the starter alignment and not deviating from that much before the dreams.

PawnSlayer

650 XP for killing Marl; not bad early on (which is when you're likely to do it, assuming you're like me and visit Feldeposts's early)

ZanathKariashi

Except now Thanlantyr takes exception if you kill his flesh golems, even out of sight, where as in the original he didn't care.

And seriously...who wrote that Micheal Bayish level of crap of an Ambush fight after the prelude...all flash and explosions and no substance at all. Completely over looking the fact Big G almost outright KILLS Big Angry before going down in a blood soaked heroic sacrifice, in the original. (this does of course require someone to take the time to add up just how much damage Gorion dealt the Angriness during the fight see)

PawnSlayer

It's almost exactly the same as the previous fight (there wasn't a disintegration in the original though), so what's the big deal? I saw it several times in the original that the fight went on for a while without a winner so Gorion just randomly died eventually. That seemed far less plausible than this, especially as Gorion would be expected to know a whole load of explosive spells.

DeathMachineMiyagi

ZanathKariashi said:

And seriously...who wrote that Micheal Bayish level of crap of an Ambush fight after the prelude...all flash and explosions and no substance at all. Completely over looking the fact Big G almost outright KILLS Big Angry before going down in a blood soaked heroic sacrifice, in the original. (this does of course require someone to take the time to add up just how much damage Gorion dealt the Angriness during the fight see)

Yeah, Gorion was so close to victory when he (having cast his entire store of...magic missiles?) pulled out that dagger and started attacking the enormous armored figure with a sword bigger than his entire body.

You people who are complaining about the change to the Gorion-Sarevok battle are completely nuts.

ZanathKariashi

Except that his tactical sense went out the window...what was the first thing he did when he spotted the cleric in the original? Take them OUT with extreme prejudice!? In this one...don't even acknowledge their presence at all so they can dispel the only thing keeping me safe from that walk death machine.

The standing around missing could've been fixed by simply tightening up timing involved in the script a bit more.

And the conversation later isn't going to have the same feel.. (Rather then saying Gorion begged for his life like a little girl before the end just because he's a huge dick, he did it as a "take that old man who almost killed me, I'm gonna ruin your memory with your ward since the whole try to revive you so I can kill you again for revenge didn't work out so well (damn resurrection rules).")


Fun little fact...in the very first release, before any patches, Gorion COULD VERY VERY rarely, deal enough damage to kill the Armored Figure during the prelude, which locked up the game. They buffed his HP beyond the final battle hp count and removed 1 casting of MM to prevent it happen since there were no immortal flags back then). Though at the end he deals enough damage that literally 1 more MM or flame arrow, would've done the job, so in that respect...5 dagger swipes..well less since he still had 2 ticks of acid arrow to soak up, was how close Gorion, on AVERAGE, came to winning (the variance comes both from the damage rolls involved as well as it requires him to kill both ogres in 1 shot each which happen better then half the time).

I always viewed the pre-nerf nigh magic immune final as him learning from his mistakes about underestimating what a single mage could do to him giving proper motivation and lack of regard for their own life.


And into the fact, in the new version, the cleric only casts 1 spell..so she's got a full supply and Gorion barely scratches big Angry...and you character had just barely cleared the edge of the screen, why pray tell did he not just run you down like that mook in the opening?

In the original, you could at least infer that he's been blasted to near death and his cleric was out of commission so a pursuit would be unwise...what's the reason in the new one?

Thats why I say it's all flash and no substance...while it required some fridge logic, the original had the seeds to figuring things out for yourself if you looked, but this new one is just theatrics, with no real justifications.

SharGuidesMyHand

PawnSlayer said:

It's almost exactly the same as the previous fight (there wasn't a disintegration in the original though), so what's the big deal? I saw it several times in the original that the fight went on for a while without a winner so Gorion just randomly died eventually. That seemed far less plausible than this, especially as Gorion would be expected to know a whole load of explosive spells.

I liked in the original how Gorion took out all of Sarevok's goons (which made Gorion look very powerful), but then Sarevok walked through everything he hit him with and killed him - which, in turn, made Sarevok look even more powerful. In the new video, Gorion basically gets double teamed, which gives Sarevok less of an opportunity to showcase his individual power.

Aside from that, other parts of the original fight looked silly or buggy. Tamoko just completely disappears after hitting your char with a single flame arrow, and as you pointed out, Gorion is scripted to just randomly die after a pre-set amount of time, regardless of what is actually happening on screen.

Personally, I think I like the BG EasyTutu fight version the best, which shows Gorion knocking out Tamoko with a sleep cloud, thereby explaining Tamoko's lack of involvement in the remainder of the fight.

ZanathKariashi

He's always knocks her out, but in the first game, the screen is so small, she's out of line of sight, you can see him cast the spell at her off screen though.

SharGuidesMyHand

Isn't Marl the guy who attacks you in that bar in Beregost?

Why would you take a rep hit from that?

ZanathKariashi

You only take a rep hit if you calm him down first or attack him first, if you say the wrong thing and he attacks you, there is no rep hit.

elminster

ZanathKariashi said:

Except that his tactical sense went out the window...what was the first thing he did when he spotted the cleric in the original? Take them OUT with extreme prejudice!? In this one...don't even acknowledge their presence at all so they can dispel the only thing keeping me safe from that walk death machine.

The standing around missing could've been fixed by simply tightening up timing involved in the script a bit more.

And the conversation later isn't going to have the same feel.. (Rather then saying Gorion begged for his life like a little girl before the end just because he's a huge dick, he did it as a "take that old man who almost killed me, I'm gonna ruin your memory with your ward since the whole try to revive you so I can kill you again for revenge didn't work out so well (damn resurrection rules).")


Fun little fact...in the very first release, before any patches, Gorion COULD VERY VERY rarely, deal enough damage to kill the Armored Figure during the prelude, which locked up the game. They buffed his HP beyond the final battle hp count and removed 1 casting of MM to prevent it happen since there were no immortal flags back then). Though at the end he deals enough damage that literally 1 more MM or flame arrow, would've done the job, so in that respect...5 dagger swipes..well less since he still had 2 ticks of acid arrow to soak up, was how close Gorion, on AVERAGE, came to winning (the variance comes both from the damage rolls involved as well as it requires him to kill both ogres in 1 shot each which happen better then half the time).

I always viewed the pre-nerf nigh magic immune final as him learning from his mistakes about underestimating what a single mage could do to him giving proper motivation and lack of regard for their own life.

Not that this had anything to do with this thread, but in the original Baldur's Gate Gorion kills the ogre to the most right of the screen first, then he basically disables Tamoka and kills the second ogre one after another, then he goes for Sarevok. However, there were less people involved in the fight in the original Baldur's Gate (only 4). In BGEE he has to deal with 6 people/humanoids, which changes his tactics (there are two additional archers in the fight, one of which hits your character). That said the weird flame strike thing he does on himself, which I'm not entirely sure what it actually was, seemed kind of silly.

ZanathKariashi

And I'd like to add, he wiped the bottom ogre and the two archers with a fireball, instead of just the bottom ogre with a lightning bolt like in the original...the actual fight was basically unchanged (aside that he used some weird disintegrate (couldn't be the actual spell as Gorion is only lvl 9, and 6th level spells aren't available till 12, on the other hand I always assumed the IA from the first game was from a gift from the resident author avatar Mary Sue, so a disintegrating...something wouldn't be right out I suppose) spell instead of a MM on the top ogre except he had a lot of useless defensive spells, no improved Aclarity, and didn't KO the cleric this time, which is what rendered said defensive spells useless in the first place. Which ultimately lead to to not even dent Angriness...unless you consider ONLY 1 acid arrow life threatening to someone of that level.

I don't even really mind the flashy stuff...

but instead of having Tamoko dispel everything away, just remove the images (the SS and PfMW will give all the time needed for the rest), have Gorion take her out as before, then lay into Angriness with what spells he has left, as Angry hacks through the defenses, and right as Gorion's last spell goes off, Angry deathbringers him, and walks slowly a few steps towards the cleric before the chapter 1 thing pops up.

That keeps the flashy stuff, and still leaves open the potential inferences of the old, while diminishing neither Gorion nor Angriness.