Hexxat (spoiler)
Hi!
Last time I played BGIIEE from the start (a looong time ago), I picked up Clara in The Copper Cornet and then she turned into Hexxat. But now she is namned Hexxat from the start. Why the change?
/J
Last time I played BGIIEE from the start (a looong time ago), I picked up Clara in The Copper Cornet and then she turned into Hexxat. But now she is namned Hexxat from the start. Why the change?
/J
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Comments
She was always Hexxat... calling her Clara would spoil the 'surprise'. I think your memory is failing you.
- There was no evil thief in SoA. She filled that need.
- There was no female romance option to Anomen. She filled that need.
- She cannot be level-drained; for large swaths of SoA, this is a Big Deal.
- Damn good stats, almost too good
- She provides you with, effectively, a Bag of Holding in Chapter 2.
- If she dies during an adventure, you don’t need to slog all the way back to a temple, just wait a bit.
- Her quest is interesting. I found it challenging, though I’m sure the powergamers didn’t.
- She makes Viconia uncomfortable and somewhat scared, which I like
The problems, I think, are that mods have meant 1 and 2 are not a big deal now. However, many people (possibly most) play unmodded. Also, the whole Clara-suddenly-gone business was a bit of a shock to some. Oh, and the whole Twilight thing has made undead a cliche, and a boring one, but I ignore that. I do think the lesbianism offended a certain type of person; it made them so angry that they threatened to leave Mom’s basement. We’re past that now, though.Again, she’s not the greatest of the joinable NPCs, but she’s effective with a good side quest.
I believe one of the devs mentioned that Hexxat was originally intended to be an Assassin, and her quests oriented around that. The problems, as far as I see it, are:
1: Her quests are linear, simplistic and have zero subtlety. You wander in, murder stuff, wander out. When the Blackguard's quests offer ten times the opportunities for cleverness and stealth than the thief's quests, something has gone wrong. There's barely more than a few locked tombs in her entire questline. And don't get me started on the infinite Exp generator spider generator "puzzle".
2: Mechanically she is a great tank primarily because she glitches out and sits at 1 HP waiting for the script to kick in while she absorbs hundreds of points of damage. - This is not a positive, it's daft.
Her stats are decent, unless it's daytime, or you don't feel like messing around with her cape every five bloody minutes, in which case she's mediocre in everything, and strength is largely irrelevant to a thief since it doesn't multiply on a backstab.
3: Hexxat is a railroading hellbeast. (this is from memory so forgive me if I miss a few)
Anomen, who gives zero craps if you actually side with vampires and is potentially Chaotic Neutral, declares that he will strike you down with his sword if you don't kick her from the group.
Viconia, who is a Drow female, agrees with her about how hard it is to be a woman.
Korgan, well known slayer of the undead (and also immune to pretty much anything whenever it matters), is so scared of her.
Hexxat, who is a single class thief who could be taken out by pretty much any other character in a fight by virtue of them not being single class pure thieves, acts like she is A: super awesome and skilled. B: smarter than the 21 Int, 20 Wis CHARNAME who can only marvel at how special she is and wait for her to explain obvious crap to them or express their surprise at things they already knew, because Hexxat needs to always be right, and always be mysterious (to the point of basically saying nothing of substance at all), and always be special, because Beamdog loves their monstrous diversity hires.
4: Her quests are railroady glitch fests too.
There is a wall of SAD here. You cannot pass!
There is a vampire here eating your party mate. You cannot possibly react to this surprise, let alone in a rational manner.
There is a wall of NECROMANCY here. You cannot pass! Only SPESHUL VAMPIRE LESBIANS can pass.
Cleric/Mage with Negative Plane Protection, Mind Blank, Immunity to Necromancy, Enchantment, and Abjuration? Lolnope.
Remember the names of four people I just had a conversation with? Or my mission briefing from an hour ago? How can even do what be the want to look like? Better find a book or something to carry with me because I certainly don't have a journal or anything.
Golden statue? Silk? Sorry, 0 value can't sell them. Lol.
Sneak past two enemies to bypass them? Nope. Plot locked door.
Of course, if it wasn't for the arbitrary Undead Only barriers, almost every trap, almost every locked door, isn't disarmable and has special unlocking requirements, making Hexxat superfluous in her own quests.
5: Twilight is still a better love story than Hexxat.
6: I'm the only evil thief, I exist solely to supply super evil 1 reputation parties (everyone else can use the vastly superior Jan) with a thief. My questline kills me forever. Lolnothief4u.
Being undead was already a cliché before Twilight, being "black lesbian vampire Carmen Santiago tomb raider with a mysteeeeeerious benefactor who just wants to regain her humanity again" was a trainwreck.
Badly written? At least grammaticaly she is pretty much ok. ;P
But I remember that I was kinda triggered by one particular dialog. It was a heated conversation with Keldorn and in my opinion the writer/s started putting words in Keldorn's mouth, their own words, not Keldorn's words, words/arguments that the "real" Keldorn, if you know what I mean, would never say. It was really awkward warping and twisting Keldorn character for the questionable at least sake of some wannabe "writer" opinions about something/whatever. Dunno if it was incredibly badly written but for sure it was incredibly pretentious.
At best she's an illegal F/T multiclass and gets a 1/day assassinate/GWW combo going against a single target, and she's still losing out to the turnip fetishist on pretty much every conceivable metric, and still have a good chance to lose in a fight to many of the characters on the team.
So yeah, mechanically mediocre. Not mechanically bad, like a pure thief is, not good, like a spellcaster, sort of in the middle, which, in terms of actual NPCs, is actually pretty low on the totem pole, hanging out with people like Valygar and Minsc.
And yes, that's exactly the bad writing I'm referring to. Her own content is so excessively vague and mysterious as to become ultimately shallow and pointless, but that could be dealt with on its own. Actually hijacking other, better, characters, including the player, is right down there with the absolute worst amateur NPC mods available for free.
hehe, Jan is awesome but seriously - Jan "Squishy" Jensen.
Hexxat is almost unkillabe and with particular item upgrade mod installed she can have hardcoded 5 APR raw, without haste/improved haste. Well, lets see: Fulcrum+Belm (with another mod Belm can be upgarded to +4 LOL)+timestop+imp. haste+assassination=8APR all dealing max damge. Mechanically mediocre? Like....holy shit !!! ;DDD
People wanted monk you have Rassad, WM Nerra, evil thief Beamdog make some hybrid Vampire, so its fan service, some people like them some not, for me all ee NPC are level(or more) inferior to vanilla. I like new class but not Dorn, like shaman NPC but this is like 50% finished
So it is not so wierd that Hexxat is written on knee, not human nor vampire with poor story. Clara is more interesing that haxxat for some people and this is really sad.
In terms of APR, yes, Jan can also get up to 9 APR (which is ideal, you want to have a 1 APR gap if you want to also throw out a spell every round at the same time) with Firetooth + Belm with iHaste, no mods necessary. The difference is that he casts the iHaste himself, and he doesn't need it to be once a day with assassination so he can stack up three rounds of timestop backstabs if you really need it. Even the strength difference is largely irrelevant. Since Strength belts set, rather than add, Hexxat's strength bonus simply vanishes once you account for gear.
Overall, the biggest perk Hexxat gets is Dexterity, since it's hard to get a character up to 20 Dex normally, but nothing she can get as either a Fighter or a Thief would put her near being in the top ten NPCs mechanically, even while relying on her "racial" advantages and immortal cloud tanking.