Edwin and Dynaheir

[WizWom]

Am I the only one who find Edwin especially annoying?

 

You never find out WHY he wanted to kill Dynaheir; the nearest we get is him chasing her just for being a Rashemani Wytch. So, he has the highest NPC intelligence in the game, and the lowest scripted intelligence.

 

While I appreciate that having perhaps a couple 5th level wizards at that point in the game as joinable NPCs might have been troublesome, perhaps the solution was to move them into chapter 4 (where Coran, Eldoth, Faldorn and Yeslick are) instead of chapter 1. In fact, swapping the Edwin/Dynaheir relationship could be done merely by moving Edwin to where Eldoth is, and Eldoth can be easily put in where Edwin was. Then scripting the entrances to the Gnoll stronghold so that you can't get there until Chapter 4... yes, that would be good. Minsc where Coran was, too.

In addition, you find Eldoth, a Bard, in the middle of a forest, for no clear reason. And he's trying out a scheme which you can't do until Chapter 5 anyway. So, let's put him up in Chapter 5, where Quayle (who starts with no intereaction anyway) sits.

 

So, you trade the Dynaheir&Minsc/Edwin 1st levels for Quayle and Coran there, and Dynaheir and Edwin are then formidable enough to have travelled so far.

 

Changes proposed:

A) Put Minsc in FW2200, on the bridge where Coran is now

B) Put Coran in FW4800, in front of the barracks, where Minsc is now

C) Put Edwin in FW1600, where Eldoth is now

D) Put Quayle in FW4800, on the bridge, where Edwin is now

E) Put Eldoth in FW0900, where Quayle is now

E) Create Lower Level Coran

F) Create Lower Level Quayle

 

So, then, the following issues need to be addressed:

1) Coran needs to get his quest during gameplay, for the Wyvern. Perhaps after you kill Belisarius.

2) The distance from Cloakwood to the Gnoll stronghold needs to be addressed - perhaps moving it to up the river from the bandit camp

3) Gnoll stronghold is quite weak; should reasonably be more difficult for a party of 5th level characters

[Domi]

First of all, BG1NPC's priority was always not interfering with BioWARE design. BioWARE has a number of NPCs that have levels not corresponding to their story, most notably Khalid and Jaheira.

 

Next version has a component that moves Tiax, Quayle, Eldoth and Alora to the locations accessible in Chapter 2. They will be on the levels that BioWARE would spawn them if PC is LVL 1 or 2 (see Dudleyville). We cannot do anything lower level because we cannot guess which kit the player selected for say Alora or Eldoth at installation of TUTU/fix. Extra levels make Tiax and Quyale more feasible NPCs. Hence, it stays that way.

 

Minsc - Dynaheir - Edwin are staple NPCs for people to have early on, not to mention the efforts that went into Dynaheir's romance. In addition, Minsc and Dynaheir are on their Dajemma - a trip that very young nobles among Rashemi undertake when they are barely mature in order to collect information for Rashemen and as a coming of age journey. Minsc and Dynaheir are on the appropriate level to do this.

 

BG1NPC adds an expanded encounter with Edwin's superiors that explains a lot about Edwin's chasing Dynaheir. The encounter happens in area http://www.dudleyville.com/bg1/ar3000.htm and is about adding extra political and conversational content to the existing BioWARE's encounter. It is beneficial to have all three NPCs in the party to have the full story.

 

Edwin's intelligence development correspond to his more developped persona in BG2. Unfortunately, Merja never had time to write an involved political quest that she planned for Edwin, which could have been a great addition.

 

Hence, BG1NPC deals with the issue in a less intrusive and, I hope, fun way.

 

If you disagree with our solution, you have plenty of ideas to create your own mod with a number of quests and dealing with the Rashemi-Thayan politics, Coran's questing, etc. BG1NPC is at the moment in the final polishing state and tra'fying state. In fact we have dropped good 5 written quests because we have no manpower to work on them. So, unfortunately, even if your idea was in BG1NPC spirit, we could not have commited to develop anything like that. Thank you for your understanding.

[cmorgan]

Additional points to consider when building such a mod. Not criticisms with the ideas, which make sense and would provide a new gameplay experience (perhaps even a more logical one )

• Domi alluded to this -- Edwin's intelligence may be 18, but his wisdom is 9. I assume at 12 or so, he wouldn't mutter under his breath within earshot of an entire party of folks armed to the teeth and lacking his... forbearance in human relations He might even question the wisdom of constantly trying to get someone else to clobber Dynaheir, when 60 gp to Montaron and she would be sleeping permanently...
  
• BG1NPC phase3 would be incompatable with any mod that significantly changes starting points (even itself -- dorotea, Andyr, Domi, Jastey, Kulyok, et. al. had huge long behind-the scenes discussions on where the least lot-damaging and code-rewriting positions would be). SwordCoastStratagems sucessfully and independently came up with similar (to our) new starting locations for most NPCs, and we are still checking to make sure that the romances actually work from new starting points DavidW introduced (a good thing, and well worth the effort). Both mods (and EasyTutu) share a common development goal Domi stated -- Enhance Bioware, not Rewrite Bioware.
  This would mean that you would need to add code to your mod to disallow installation of most of Phase3 of BG1NPC. Easily doable, and I can provide the flagged components filenames when you are at that stage of building.
  

In short, cool and logical ideas, but not ones we could work into BG1NPC in a way that matches our philosophy.