I was expecting Shakespeare, but great work nevertheless.

I will never be able to look at Mazzy the same way again. And if I look at her your way, she'll probably hit me, so thanks to you, I'll never be able to look at Mazzy again...



I liked the story a lot ? the in-jokes were suitably in ("Manager Bondari, we need to reload a new cannister of O2 into your suit."), the technobabble was suitably... umm... technobabbly ("Two giant cables, (Tapered Mono-molecule diamond fibre) each hundreds of miles long, rotated in Toril orbit, the ends touching down to the edge of the atmosphere once every 4 hours.") and all of the characters were cast in roles that I never would have expected but that still could have been no other way.

I must admit I skipped most of the songs, though...

All in all, I would rate the story four turnips and one bottle of turnip beer (and no, I'm not telling you what the scale is):

:turnip: :turnip: :turnip: :turnip: :drunk:

From what I've heard, the Forgotten Realms had their own cosmology way back before it was a D&D setting. It was bought (or licenced, or leased, or however these things work) by TSR during a phase when their policy was that anything that existed in one of the settings should exist in all of them, and so the FR cosmology was forced into the standard setup with the planes and the Great Ring and everything.

When the FR sourcebooks were being rewritten for 3rd edition D&D, the rules (or the company) were no longer the same, and so the people responsible decided to go for something as close to the original version as possible, which is probably a good thing. It does lead to some problems with compatibility at times, though...

EDIT: Oh, and I belive that the official line is that the planes have always been the way they are now, and that people in the realms have always known it, and if that causes serious continuity problems in your campaigns we're very sorry, but you'll have to live with it. I thought I had a link, but I seem to have lost it.

Unlike the other drow deities, Ghaundaur was never a member of the Seldarine or a mortal drow - he's existed as an amorphous blob since the dawn of time.  Upon arriving in the Abysss, Lolth took his domain, forcing him to retreat to the paraelemental plane of ooze.  She later forced him to help her in her campaign on Faerun.

Here is a short hymn to Ghaundaur that I felt compelled to write after reading this. Because that's the kind of person I am. Imagine it being recited by a priest or cult leader at a secret gathering of the faithful, but not too loudly, because then the Matron Mothers could hear them.

Oh, and you'll also need to imagine that what followers of Ghaundaur really want it to turn into happily bouncing blobs of primordial goo, but really, what other reason could thay have for following a god of slime?

---

O Blob
Who has existed
Since the dawn of time
In eternally amorphous gooeyness

O globule of semi-liquid viscosity
Holy glob of slimy insubstantiality
Grant us the gift of extatic elasticity

There are pros and cons to both systems, but I think I like 2E a bit better for the simplicity of it.  Now some may say that I am obviously smoking something, but let me explain.

In 2nd edition, you did have a lot of numbers you had to figure out, like THACO, AC, all the adjustments and saving throws, but once you did that once, you didn't have to calculate so much on the fly.  You just rolled the dice.  In 3E you have not just regular AC, but Deflection AC, unarmored AC (for certain spells), and all sorts of weird adjustments.  Combat, due to all the feats actually becomes more complex, with more calculation and more modifiers.  And don't get me started on Attacks of Opportunity.  While it makes sense in some cases, the rules don't in others.  A lot of these changes were wrought for realism, but really only added more complexity. 

(I chose to reply to this post because it has the most material to work with. Nothing personal )

Are you sure you are really comparing 2nd edition to 3rd edition here, and not "a game you've played for several years" to "a game where you haven't had time to get used to the quirks yet"? The 3rd edition is by no means perfect, but many of the arguments against it that I've seen against it (and in favour of 2nd edition) come down to familiarity and preference rather than any real difference in quality (they're both good games) or complexity (they can both be insanely complicated if you're not familiar with them).

And then there is the Hit points and Attack Bonuses situation.  You have creatures with 500 hp and a +45 to hit.  That means a player's got to be able to dish out some insane amounts of damage.

And these creatures are rare and should be encountered sparingly and killed even less often. I agree that giving, say, a dragon lots and lots of hit points doesn't automatically make it impressive, and anyone who tries to make an encounter with it exciting and dramatic based only on the numbers would probably fail. But I don't see anything inherently dramatic or exciting about 185 hit points and a THAC0 of -10 either...

And finally, the biggest thing was the discounting of stat points.  No adjustments and a 16 and a 17 are effectively the same thing.  That sucks in my opinion because a 17 is statistically harder to get than a 16 (6+6+5 as opposed to 6+5+5 or 6+6+4) but it doesn't mean anything.  So those stat points you get don't mean much either.

Compared to 2nd edition, where 6 is in some circumstances effectively the same thing as 14 but you have to look at a table in order to remember which numbers apply to which stats

Then there are things I'm ambivalent about, such as having to AIM magical attacks.  And having to use the native combat bonuses of your spellcaster (which suck) to do so, effectively limiting his usefulness to anything other than buffing spells or magic missile until he's high high level.  While it is A LOT more realistic, it add another roll.  And no combat action in my opinion should have more than 2 rolls except in special occaisions.  Which it now can (to hit, saves, and damage)  At least they should have had a spellcaster attack chart, different from the usual one.

I agree about trying to keep down the number of dice rolls, but I don't agree that this made spellcasters useless. I would point out that ranged attack rolls are usually against a lower AC than normal attacks, but this would mean that you were right about 3rd edition being more complex, so;

Look behind you! A three-headed monkey!

Now, there are some things I like, the higher the number the better the AC (but not all the weird situational stacking rules they have now), improving stat numbers over time, a better skill system (but not the skill point distribution or the distribution across classes: like why do priests and mages only get 2 points per level and wh aren't spot and listen, two basic skills if you ask me, not just general??)

I agree about the skill points. When I played, we used to take a more relaxed approach to this and let the characters have the skills that made sense for them, as I'm sure players everywhere do and have done, whatever game or edition they are playing.

As to the flexibility - I don't like the removal of the stat restrictions because it does cheapen the classes some, now anyone can be a pally or a ranger instead of having to roll well enough to be one.  The species restrictions don't bother me as much.  But this flexibility, this ability to choose usually leads in one way.  MASSIVE UBER POWERGAMING.  Which I do in CRPG but I absolutely despise in RPG.  At least in 2E it was damn hard to get away with it.  Now, you can create UU's uber cheese characters and make em legal.  2E you could allow an elven paladin or a gnome mage fighter or a tiefling or anything, but as a DM you could just say no and have the rules back you up.  Now, if someone produces a character that is pure mutated powergamer goodness, if you say no, they can whine and complain about how the rules clearly allow them to do it.  It's the reason I stopped DMing.

I'm sorry to hear that you've had bad experiences with this, and even more that it made you stop playing (I stopped because of lack of time and because we all moved in different directions, which I guess is kind of bad, too).

But I'm afraid I'm going to have to scrutinize you a bit anyway: are these the same people you played 2nd edition games with, and if so, did they really never try to exploit the rules to their advantage in any situation back then? I seriously doubt that the rules as such encourage people to be powergamers (or that other rules would have stopped people who were determined to make overly powerful characters).

The problem I have with the more restrictive rules of 2nd edition is that I feel that they restrict the characters way too much and therefore interfere with my enjoyment of the game. But then again, I haven't played much with those rules... (yes, I'm trying to suggest something here (the smilie is supposed to be looking up at my first paragraph, in case anyone was wondering (and yes, I know double parentheses are bad, so let's make them triple)))

So, some of the cosmetic stuff was pretty dang good.  But the core changes they made in my opinion take away a lot of the difficulty and challenge, that is now replaced with overpowered monsters and the like.  If I ever do play again, it will probably be a mutated form of the two.

Okay.. I've rambled long enough.

You never said what the "difficulty or challenge" of 2nd edition was, so I'll take the liberty of interpreting it in a way that suits my own devious agenda. I hope that's alright with you.

If the changes took away a lot of the difficulty and challenge for the players and replaced this with bigger challenges for the characters, I fail to see how that's a bad thing...

Yeah, I know. That's not what you meant. Let's just have a turnip and be friends, shall we?

:turnip:

or... how 'bout if the PC's male, and he and 'Dalis is romancing Aerie, that after a few cups that 'Dalis suggests that you, he can 'share' the sweet little dove...

or perhaps when drunk enough that Aerie pops up with that suggestion. ^^

(Warning: this post contains shameless self promotion)

The Haer'Dalis romance will contain something similar as one of the possible ways to end the inevitable conflict with Aerie. It won't require anyone being drunk, though, and it will have to be initiated by the player (so people who want to be nice to Aerie probably won't see it).

Oh, and Aerie says no, in case you were wondering...

EDIT: wait a minute, there was a topic, too....

I don't know how many drinking sessions you were planning to have, but a few drunken confessions would probably be nice as a first stage. You know, Korgan confessign that he only wants to be loved, Viconia confessing that she's always wanted to be a ballet dancer, things like that. If you're just going to have one event for each character, though, you might want to go for something more substantial.

Well, her anatomy is a bit... umm... exaggerated, but as far as general appearance goes, half-orcs can be anywhere on the scale between orc and human. Here's a concept sketch by Todd Lockwood, who did a lot of the artwork for 3rd edition D&D, that illustrates the range of possible appearances (in case direct linking to the image isn't allowed, go to www.toddlockwood.com, choose 'conceptual art', go to the fourth gallery and click on the third thumbnail in the second row. Er... let's just hope direct linking works...)

And charisma doesn't necessarily have anything to do with appearance...

It is worth noting that the only indoor bathrooms in all of Amn are apparently in Nalia's keep.

This may explain its importance.

It is also worth noting that one of the toilets in there has a gem in it. I don't normally go rummaging though other people's toilets, but i found it by accident the first time I had Jan in my party...

!

Baldur's Gate 1 Tutu ? A mod that replaces the music score of BG1 with Miles Davis' 1986 album 'Tutu', and causes no end of confusion because it sounds just like another mod...

The Freedom of Speech Mod ? Have you ever been annoyed by the limited number of replies in most dialogues? With this mod, you get all the replies, all the time. That's right, the PC replies for every dialogue in the game will appear in all of the dialogues. Most of them won't work, but at least they'll be there (recommended: a mouse with a really good scroll wheel, or a numerical keyboard that goes to 16,439).

Fun-be-gone ? This mod removes all the parts of the game you like, and only leaves cutscenes you've seen a hundred times before, enormous dungeons with nothing in them and insanely difficult battles that you can't win because of scripting errors. Automatically sets path search nodes to 1.

She was educated in Candlekeep, surrounded by mages and priests, even if she didn't originally take that path. She was always interested in magic

What might be worth considering is not why Imoen suddenly changed, but why she never took up magic in the past. Stories about magic and wizards would spark something, maybe, but is it possible that all she saw of actual practical magic in Candlekeep was dusty tomes and old, stuffy wizards and sages (Gorion, Tethtoril, Obe) and so it never interested her until she saw other wizards at work, in an adventuring context, before her eyes?

Well, I always saw her as quite young at the beginning of BG1, 15 or 16 or so, so she wouldn't necessarily have chosen a career, and she probably wouldn't have had time to become a proper mage even if she had started working on it. Then she's thrown out into real life by accident, and has to do something that's useful then and there and not after a couple of years or at least months when she's had time to finish her studies. But I see I'm just repeating my old post here...

And yes, the official information about her age makes her a bit older, but the "thief by accident" approach still works, I think.

This clashes with her ToB epilogue, of course...

Maybe, but it also better matches her in-game character. She's Neutral Good; she might become a Robin Hood type, stealing from the evil and giving to herself (or the poor), but you can't run a Thieves' Guild that way. There just aren't enough "evil" folks out there to rob, and an Intelligent, Good character is not going to be able to keep lying to herself about how much harm her guild is doing forever.

Well, I suppose that "thieves' guild" could be just as vague a term as "thief" is in the AD&D sense, and then it could be an organization that's fighting evil and trying to ease the suffering of the poor just as easily as a band of robbers and murderers. The only thing needed to qualify it as a thieves' guild would be that the members are thieves...

It was quite the rubbish epilogue. The epilogue is something that will likely change, after all, your interactions with Imoen are more than likely to have an effect on her, depending on what you talk about.

...but I'm all for ditching the old epilogue and writing a new one that actually makes sense, too.

And one humorous note..
?If your story contains a scene with Jan getting amorous with a turnip, make sure your readers know there?ll be some hortosexual situations in your story.? ? and this.. this is just frightening.  I mean.. ye gods.  If certain people ever see this.. who knows what madness would be unleashed!!  For the love of us all, never say such things again!

For your information: I just wrote about two thirds of a story called "Turnip Love", about love, betrayal and steaming hot vegetable lovin', but in one of my occational attacks of sanity, I decided not to finish it and post it.

Another reason might be that after a few months on the road, she realizes that being a thief in the real world is quite different from picking a couple of pockets in Candlekeep, and that it's not really something she wants to spend the rest of her life doing.

I got the feeling that she became a thief because she was already doing a lot of hiding and poking through other people's belongings just for fun, and when she left with the main character, that was something she could keep doing to make herself useful. She probably wouldn't be interested in the more violent aspects of being a thief, like killing people and stealing things that are actually valuable from someone who's innocent, so after becoming reasonably good at finding traps and opening locks, I don't think she would be interested in learning more about the thief's trade. This clashes with her ToB epilogue, of course...

Yes, I have the same feeling about it, especially the monster descriptions. I appreciate that they aren't forcing players to accept any one view of a certain creature as the correct one, but I think that some of them, the powerful ones in particular, are just reduced to different combinations of special abilities ? you just get a bunch of numbers but aren't told what to do with the creatures except fighting them. But I can't say I'm a great fan of the classical D&D monsters at the best of times, so it doesn't really matter that much to me.

Glad that I could be of help.

When I read through the (3rd edition) Player's Handbook for the first time, I was a bit amused by the way the rules made the barbarian class a profession just like all the other classes, so the first character I made under those rules was a guy who came from a good, small town middle-class home and decided to become a barbarian. I even think he went to barbarian school for a while.

I never really played with the character, though ? I ended up DMing all the time, so I gave it to one of my players, and he decided to tone down the background a bit...

Here's the D&D 3.5 entry on Balors, but it doesn't contain any descriptive text. I've got the 3rd edition Monster Manual lying around as well, but it doesn't say anything about numbers (or the Blood War) either. You decide if that means the 2nd edition information still holds true or if it means that these things were scrapped for 3rd edition. Or if it just means that it's in another book...

Khayman's already posted a pretty impressive list of tutorials, but in case you're looking for more, there are some digital colouring tutorials on Elfwood as well.

I'm not completely sure, but I think that the Faction War was introduced in one of the official books, probably just before the Planescape product line got closed down. The planewalker.com people are, as far as I know, just following the official line.

The site itself is "the official fansite", which means that they have permission to do what they're doing and they're probably linked to from WotC's site. I don't think that gives their material the same status as an actual published product, if you care about that kind of thing.

If you're looking for an affordable image editing program, you can't really beat the gimp, which is free. I've been using it ever since my latest PS demo stopped working, and I don't have any complaints at all. The user interface takes some time to get used to, but that's true of Photoshop as well. Apart from that, the only problem is that the name of the program tends to make people think of a certain scene in Pulp Fiction, but I can live with that...

Oh, and I like the pictures. I was sort of hoping that someone would break the pattern of edited versions of the original portraits, so you're right on time, too.

Late last year, even.

And for what it's worth, we can open .rar files just fine, too. The only problem files are self-extracting .exes, and even some of them can be expanded without any problems.

Umm.. not that it matters much...

EDIT: I just noticed that the same can be said of the entire thread, so I probably won't feel bad about it...

The game doesn't follow the official material very closely when it comes to the Cowled wizards either, I believe...

The easiest way to deal with it is probably to treat the BG2 version of the Radiant Heart as a different organization which just happens to have the same name. Any material from the source books can of course be used for inspiration, but I would suggest trying to make that work with the Bio-Radiant Heart rather than the other way around.

I've only been reading bits and pieces of the story so far, but Imoen dying her hair sort of got me thinking. If Imoen's and Viconia's relationship continues, I would like you to keep this picture in mind:



Please?

(picture courtesy of CamDawg )

Probably the best Forgotten Realms site on the 'net.

It doesn't cover other worlds or planes though.

Nightmare, your link does not seem to work...

The link didn't work for me either, but the address did. Try to copy http://www.toril.info/ into the address field.

There are some Planescape books that deal with demons, but I don't have them. Many of the books are availiable as PDFs from Rpgnow.com, but not for free.

And if I'm not mistaken, full stats for monsters (as in strength, dexterity, constitution and so on) was only introduced in 3rd edition, so if you're looking for that kind of information, you're probably out of luck.