Lore justification in Bhaalspawn saga for not allowing Aasimar/Drow charnames

[Trouveur80]

11 minutes ago, DavidW said:

I think I had this as a Dragon Disciple HLA at one point. The biggest problem is technical:the dragon avatar is way too big to fit in most areas. 

Maybe a custom avatar based on the greater wyvern one could do the trick ?

[DavidW]

Plausible but outside the scope of what I'm prepared to do for one HLA!

[RoyalProtector]

2 hours ago, Trouveur80 said:

Maybe a custom avatar based on the greater wyvern one could do the trick ?

Could work, or perhaps the Druid can simply choose which type of shape to morph into (visually), according to the situation (i.e. color-tinted great wyvern or actual dragon shape).

Could be too ugly as a solution, I suppose, and probably inappropriate lorewise.

I am all for making druid shapes stronger (and anything that gets deprecated naturally early in classes and kits in the vanilla game).

[Trouveur80]

30 minutes ago, RoyalProtector said:

Could work, or perhaps the Druid can simply choose which type of shape to morph into (visually), according to the situation (i.e. color-tinted great wyvern or actual dragon shape).

Could be too ugly as a solution, I suppose, and probably inappropriate lorewise.

I am all for making druid shapes stronger (and anything that gets deprecated naturally early in classes and kits in the vanilla game).

I had in mind a dragon disciple HLA.

For druids, ToF already buffs them, particularly Avenger's and Shapeshifter's ones.

Unkitted druid have better elemental forms too.

[MrNatas]

As others have said Abazigal and Draconis are actual dragons, that said if ToF allowed you to play an actual dragon that would be awesome.

That aside, while a full drow I don't think could work for the Bhaalspawn, I think Half-Drow in terms of a subrace could probably be fine. Like the PC would still have to disguise themselves as a full drow due to not looking "drow" enough.

[RoyalProtector]

40 minutes ago, MrNatas said:

I think Half-Drow in terms of a subrace could probably be fine

I am all for this (it would just be a variety of half elf), and generally speaking including races that are present in NWN2 too: Pureblood Yuan-Ti (they were born to pass off as humans anyway, so why not? I'm already thinking of a racial ability to charm serpents and Yuan-Ti), Orcs (probably not that big of a deal, either). (The NPC-only ones in MotB are probably inadequate, like Hagspawn or Half-Celestial for a Bhaalspawn).

A dragonborn race could be nice perhaps, although it would probably add some complications.

But I think David wants to keep to the races present in IWD.

Edited March 3 by RoyalProtector

[jastey]

On 3/2/2024 at 5:12 PM, DavidW said:

The plot of chapter 5 of BG2 revolves around the fact that you are not drow but need to infiltrate their city. Having a drow PC breaks that plot hard. Of course you could change the plot, but that’s way out of scope for ToF.

Funnily enough, I see the smallest problem for a Drow origin of the PC in chapter 5 / Underdark, since there is also the problem of fitting in in Ust Natha with regard to culture / language which I'd assume the PC didn't learn in Candlekeep (and if, not in a way that they'd pass as an Underdark drow from Ched Nassad).

It's everything else in the game where I'd see a problem justifying a drow PC without a heavily rewrite of people's reactions. Discussing with  FF soldier about chasing a drow (Viconia in BG1) or the fanatics of burning her in BGII? Having Emerson opening the Nashkel mines for the PC to explore? Scar asking the PC to infiltrate the Merchant's League? etc. - I don't think so.

Whereas Adalon's disguise would work perfectly with one small line mentioning the missing drow language / culture that would probably get the PC killed shortly after walking into the city, drow appearance or not.

[RoyalProtector]

15 minutes ago, jastey said:

It's everything else in the game where I'd see a problem justifying a drow PC without a heavily rewrite of people's reactions.

True. Some big mod would have to rewrite reactions across all the games. Not to mention other mods that add quests and companions would certainly not be aware of this -- and again, more weirdness could happen.

Although to be fair tieflings are also seen with much more suspicion than the rest of "civilized" races. Not as much as drow, but it is still there.

[DavidW]

I'm reminded that I've meant for ages to post a thread soliciting crowdsourced suggestions for ways NPCs might react to a player's subrace.

[JediMindTrix]

The scope of realistically implementing a Drow subrace with the 'correct' NPC reactions is essentially it's own mod.

[RoyalProtector]

7 hours ago, DavidW said:

I'm reminded that I've meant for ages to post a thread soliciting crowdsourced suggestions for ways NPCs might react to a player's subrace.

Yes, please, go right ahead. I have many thoughts on this.

It's not a priority now of course, but would be nice as an optional component or something like that in the future.

[Morgoth]

On 3/3/2024 at 2:06 PM, DavidW said:

Correct.

I think I had this as a Dragon Disciple HLA at one point. The biggest problem is technical:the dragon avatar is way too big to fit in most areas. 

Wouldn't your dragon be actually littler, considering that you would be a young one?

I wouldn't mind charname being half the size of firkraag/any other dragon, given how young you are.

With that said, I wonder what's the age of Draconis, though... He is as big as the others.

[DavidW]

On 3/3/2024 at 1:34 PM, RoyalProtector said:

But I think David wants to keep to the races present in IWD.

Not necessarily (I don't think genasi are in IWD).

There are two constraints here. On the technical side I'm restricted to the in-game sprites. Half-yuan-ti are okay because they can basically be green-skinned humans. Goblins would be kind of okay because they can be green-skinned halflings, though it's not completely ideal. Dragonborn and other exotica aren't really viable, at least not without compromising my production values.

The other issue is that I don't think an implementation of subraces will really be fully adequate unless it replicates IWD2's recognition of your subrace in dialog. I'm not going to get to that any time soon (after clearing the ToF / SCS bug list I have WoP to pay attention to, and then another project) but it's still an in-principle goal, and of course the more subraces, the harder it gets.

[RoyalProtector]

I understand. For the time being I can shrug off lack of interactivity with the game world as far as your subrace is concerned, i.e. elven subraces are just referred as elves, humans/planetouched/yuanti are treated as humans (though hopefully not by referring to them with the "human" string). As long as there is not too much mind-bending, I'm good, I'll make up my own stories.

Edited March 6 by RoyalProtector

[RoyalProtector]

Aasimar are now available by default in BG/BG2. Good stuff.

Edited March 8 by RoyalProtector