Skip to content

Unexpected Reputation Loss - a Warning...

ConfusedWizardConfusedWizard Member Posts: 14
in Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition
Hello,

I played BG2 (SoA and ToB) several times, years before, and have it still installed on my PC. It also runs fine - but BG2 Enhanced runs better. So I am not a newbie to the game.

But yesterday, while playing Chapter 2 in SoA something happened, which was completely new to me. I never saw this in the original game, but I am unsure if this is a 'feature' of the enhanced version or was always so. It also is not a bug, I think:

While playing in the Druids Grove the following happened:
In the save before Druids Grove my party (Protagonist Neutral Good, Jaheira, Jan Jansen, Minsc, Mazzy and Anomen) had a reputation of 16. After winning the Druid fight and handing in the quest in Trademeet I suddenly saw, that the reputation was 9 !!

I could not find out with the quicksaves how this happened. I had to repeat the entire Druid Grove. But I think I know what happened, and where:
There are 2 fights with Shadow Druids before reaching the entrance to the Druid Grove itself, where the third fight happens. I the first fight the Druids fight three Trolls (and lose, if you do not help, because they are incompetent, and have no elemental damage).

In the second fight the party is attacked after a short dialog. Here I think this happened:
One of the Druids says something, then he attacks (red circle). The others are still blue, and change a second or two after this. I did not wait, but hit them all with chaos.

After a while two of them are dead, the other two try to flee ('We did as Faldorn asked'), but this does not work, since one of them is in panic the other is helpless because of Insect Plague by Jaheira. Our party disengages, but this does not help since they receive still damage (Insect Plague). It probably happened here, because the game changed hostile NPCs mid fight to 'neutral', and we could not disengage. (Normally an AoE effect, which does no direct damage - like Chaos for example - does not affect neutral NPCs, AFAIK). I think the problem were NPCs going the neutral mid fight.

This has to be the location where it happened, somehow the silly game counts attacking either seconds before becoming hostile or attacking after changing to neutral as attack on a 'neutral PC', and the reputation is lowered. Especially the second case (changing NPCs from hostile to neutral in mid fight) is a problem, because with a spell still running (Insect Plague, Melfs Acid Arrow, ...) the NPCs is attacked (receives damage) after changing to neutral, and there is nothing one can do. There should be no reputation loss!

This is probably just a problem with the old engine, but it should not happen. Hostile NPCs are very quick on the draw and start casting using unbelievable triggers of series of spells. So I normally are also very quick, or my party is at a disadvantage. To receive a reputation hit after one NPC of an enemy party goes hostile (the others follow very fast) is not correct. Maybe there is a possibility to disable this behavior?

I just write this as a warning, one should check the partys reputation after each fight against humans - I do not very often look at this and I am happy that I saw it quite fast, or I would have to repeat much more. I do not know if the log reports this - probably yes, but there are so many lines, that it is easily overlooked.

Every fight, where one NPC wants to talk first, is a problem, since the NPC with the dialog goes to hostile immediately, but his companions (if there are companions) follow a bit later. So hitting them with an AoE spell is dangerous. I will watch this carefully in the future...

Comments

  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 0
    The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • jasteyjastey Member Posts: 2,671
    @subtledoctor Assuming you read the OP, what do you comment about how to treat the problem with "timered spell is still running and doing damage" and "NPCs did turn neutral in the meantime therefore further damage leads to rep loss"? Sounds like an oversight of the devs to me.

    I just write this as a warning, one should check the partys reputation after each fight against humans
    If this is indeed a "feature" of the EE then it is most unfortunate. While I can identify with "do only attack the NPCs that are already turned red" for the beginning of a fight (assuming turning hostile for all of them happens appropriately fast), loosing rep if the NPC turned neutral while a spell is still doing damage is nothing the group should get rep hits for. Plus, the example in the OP is a fight with shadow druids...
    Without having tested this myself, this sounds like a "nice concept" but "badly implemented" and will hopefully be corrected.
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    It doesn't sound intentional to me. In BG1 2.5 I'm still able to kill hostile characters before they turn red without rep loss. I'll keep an eye out when I reach BG2. Might be awhile though.
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 0
    edited September 2018
    The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • ConfusedWizardConfusedWizard Member Posts: 14
    subtledoctor said:

    Seems to me, a person isn't hostile unless and until they turn red. Unless I misunderstood, the OP fired an AoE attack spell at a group of blue circles, on the assumption that they would turn red. So two ways to look at this:

    True. But I fired a Chaos spell (which does NO damage at all) at the NPC, which had turned red. Since it ia an AoE spell, others were influenced too. I still do not think this was the problem, since similar situations did no harm up to this time.

    The problem must have been, that several of the NPCs tried to 'surrender', i.e. they yelled 'we have done enough..' or such, then turned blue and tried to run away. The Insect Plague did not end, and if one of your characters ever were at the receiving end of this spell, you know that the log reads 'XXX has damaged you' every round, with XXX the enemy caster.

    This situation is not very often, and I think this causes the problem. There is nothing a player can do, not 'RPing' and not in the engine. Except not using the spell. And this IS an oversight, should be easily handled by script to avoid the reputation loss.
  • Grond0Grond0 Member Posts: 7,317
    edited September 2018
    I've often killed those druids after they've turned blue again and tried to run, but I've never lost reputation. I suppose it's possible that something has changed in v2.5 that affects this. However, as you're not sure where you lost the reputation, are you certain you didn't just catch a wandering innocent in a fireball or similar spell?

    Note that killing blue-circled characters does not automatically lead to reputation loss. There are lots of enemies that are treated as hostiles by the game, but don't turn red until they are attacked or a script fires (in the case of those druids the script trigger is going into sight of one of them). Killing them before they turn red-circled won't cause a reputation loss, so it would seem very strange to me if killing them after they turn back blue now does so.
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    @subtledoctor In certain situations, like in the bounty hunter parties, dialogue happens where they say they will kill you, and then they turn red. But they turn red instantly or all at once, its very easy to target someone before the script finishes and they are still blue. In these cases, you don't get a rep hit, because they are already coded as hostile. In one of the examples the op posted above (the druids in the grove that attack you), they have dialogue and then attack. That situation shouldn't cause rep loss.
  • kjeronkjeron Member Posts: 2,367
    Allegiance is not relevant, rep loss only occurs if the target is CLASS:INNOCENT or CLASS:FLAMING_FIST. None of the creatures in Area 1900, its sub-areas, or their scripted spawns qualify. Nor are any of them are scripted to surrender and change their class.
  • argent77argent77 Member Posts: 3,433
    I remember a bug in previous game versions that sometimes happened in multiplayer games. It caused random people to appear on every map you visited, such as beggars or merchants. It could be this happened to you, and you accidentally killed one of them in the battle.
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 0
    The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • UnderstandMouseMagicUnderstandMouseMagic Member Posts: 2,147
    I start killing that group from out of sight with web and cloudkill.

    Sod waiting for them to start moaning at me.
    Never has it caused a rep drop.
    And I'm absolutely sure about that because before now, I've had to deliberately drop rep for my evil NPC before collecting the reward from the mayor.
Sign In or Register to comment.

2024 Overhaul Games, a division of Beamdog. © 2024 Hasbro, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Baldur's Gate, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Forgotten Realms, Baldur's Gate, Wizards of the Coast and their logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries, and are used with permission. Hasbro and its logo are trademarks of Hasbro, Inc. and are used with permission. © 1998 BioWare Corp. All Rights Reserved. BioWare, the BioWare Infinity Engine and the BioWare logo are trademarks of Bioware Corp. Black Isle Studios and the Black Isle Studios logo are trademarks of Interplay Entertainment Corp. Atari and the Atari logo are trademarks owned by Atari Interactive, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.