Algernon's Bug

[chuft]

A friend of mine is playing BG1 and TotSC with no mods or tweaks or anything.

 

He decided to try thieving in the Nashkel Barracks and sent Imoen in there alone.

 

Imoen was wearing Algernon's Cloak and for some reason, he activated the item and clicked on Imoen. It said she was Charmed (she Charmed herself !). He still had control of the character and proceeded to pick and open locks.

 

This activity resulted in more and more guards being summoned to respond to the thieving. However, they did not bother Imoen, apparently because she was Charmed. Instead they just collected around the exit. When she tried to talk to one he just said "Stand away, citizen!" and didn't try to arrest her.

 

When he sent Atjantis into the room from outside, the guards did try to arrest him, so apparently it is something to do with Charms in particular.

 

So if you Charm your own thieves, are they immune to the law? It appears so. A nice prep spell prior to burglarizing a manor house!

[Kulyok]

That's brilliant! Hah! And I could role-play that I charmed "good, honest" Imoen, so she'd do my bidding! Great thinking, thanks for the tip.

[plainab]

well i never heard of this before. but i see how it can happen.

 

the container activates the guards to spawn, because this block returns true

IF
 Opened([ANYONE])
 See([NOTGOOD])
 !StateCheck(LastTrigger,STATE_INVISIBLE)
 !StateCheck(LastTrigger,STATE_IMPROVEDINVISIBILITY)
THEN
 RESPONSE #100
DisplayString(LastTrigger,9896) // 'Someone has noticed you! You hear the guards being summoned!'
Wait(3)
CreateCreature("AMNISE",[-1.-1],0)
CreateCreature("AMNISE2",[-1.-1],0)
CreateCreature("AMNISE2",[-1.-1],0)
END

this returns true because PC (normal EA state of player characters) is lower in value than NOTGOOD. Since Imoen became charmed her EA turned to CHARMED which is still a lower value than NOTGOOD so it to returns true.

However, the guards don't talk to Imoen cause their script block fails

IF
 See([PC])
 NumTimesTalkedTo(0)
THEN
 RESPONSE #100
Dialogue([PC])
END

they don't see Imoen because her EA is set at CHARMED rather than PC. Which explains why Ajantis gets talked to when you brought him inside. The guards finally found a valid creature to talk to.

 

The question is: leave it alone or develop a solution to "fix" this exploit. I kinda prefer leaving it alone and allowing a mod to take this a step further... i.e. additional dialogue if the spell wore off and they were caught etc....

 

and i do like the idea of an evil PC charming a 'good' thief into doing the 'dirty work' for them.

[devSin]

Charm messes up everything. It changes NPCs to EVILCUTOFF or some other junk EA value (I think it permanently sets EA to 200 or similar, instead of 255), which screws any script that uses [ENEMY].

 

In plain BG/TotSC, you can actually break all the trap scripts if you just leave the area while it's still executing the Wait(). It can be tricky to set up (since two characters have to be close enough together to be able to leave at the same time), but you just need somebody by the door, send one character to loot, then select the party and click the entrance (if the characters are close enough together, they'll all leave when the first character reaches the transition point).

 

If you can leave before the guards spawn, the script gets killed, and you just stole with no consequence. With a bit of care, there's almost nothing that can't be freely stolen in BG/TotSC.