Lvl 2/2 Quayle NPC has less spellbook spells than expected
Dharius
Member Posts: 654
This is a very minor observation - most players will never encounter this version of Quayle anyway
Observed: Lvl 2/2 version of Quayle has only two level 1 spells in his spellbook
Expected: Lvl 1 (and above) illusionists should start with at least 3 level 1 spells in their spellbooks (unless for some reason they have been erased)
Observed: Lvl 2/2 version of Quayle has only two level 1 spells in his spellbook
Expected: Lvl 1 (and above) illusionists should start with at least 3 level 1 spells in their spellbooks (unless for some reason they have been erased)
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Comments
I've just checked Quayle.cre, Quayle4.cre and Quayle6.cre, and all three have the correct number of spells memorised for Quayle - 3@1 for Quayle.cre (lvl 2 Illusionist), 3@1 + 2@2 for Quayle4.cre (lvl 3 Illusionist), 5@1 + 3@2 + 2@3 for Quayle6.cre (lvl 5 Illusionist).
However, it's true that there's something odd about Quayle's initial spells. As an Illusionist, he "ought" not to have been able to learn any Necromancy spells, yet his starting selection ignores this restriction - Quayle4 knows Horror, and Quayle6 knows both Horror and Larloch's Minor Drain, which are both Necromancy spells. Even so, I've always assumed that Quayle knowing a couple of Necromancy spells was simply another deliberate "special ability", like his innate Invisibility ability (and the special abilities of various other NPCs), so I don't count it as a bug.
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/543806#Comment_543806
If you create a new protagonist Illusionist, the creation process allows you (quite generously) to pick 3 spells to learn without first having to find or buy the scrolls, but it only allows you to memorise 2 spells - which is the correct number.
The fact that Quayle learnt only two "at creation", while a player-created character can learn three, simply means that the original devs decided not to be so generous with Quayle. Maybe they thought "he's not in Candlekeep, he's not being brought up by Gorion, he's not surrounded by all those books of knowledge, so we'll be less generous about his starting allocation". Or some other reasoning, whatever, I don't suppose we'll ever know exactly how the original devs decided this. But whatever the process, if it was a decision then it's not a bug Why not? He's not allowed to learn any new Necromancy spells as you play (which I agree would be excessive), he just gets the 1 or 2 he starts with. The original devs may well also have had some "special reasoning" about Quayle's backstory to explain how he acquired this "forbidden knowledge" (forbidden for an Illusionist, I mean), and again we'll probably never know exactly how the design decision was taken, but we've no right to assume that it was merely a blunder.
Lots of NPCs have special abilities which aren't "legal" for their race or class. Would you delete Dorn completely from the game (since half-Orcs aren't actually allowed to be Blackguards)? Would you delete Coran's bonus DEX and bonus proficiency because they're also outside the rules (even though, in Coran's case, he's a canonical character from PnP)? Would you delete Quayle's own innate Invisibility spell, because a Cleric/Illusionist doesn't normally get special innates? Would you delete Tiax's innate Summon Ghast spell, because that's notionally "illegal" too? No, surely you wouldn't do any of those things, because certain NPCs (including ones I haven't mentioned) having some "special abilities" is an established part of the game and helps to make the built-in NPCs a little different from player-created characters.
Unless one of the original devs steps forward and testifies about how all this originally happened, then we ought to give the original devs some benefit of the doubt, and assume that they gave Quayle a couple of abnormal spells as a deliberate choice, a special ability rather than a bug.