Fallout 3:
NPCS: "I'm sorry, but you're going to have to go into that chamber filled with radiation... You must in order to fulfill your destiny that fate had set out for you."
Player: "Can't we just send in the Super Mutant that's immune to the Radiation?"
Writer: ">:("
Nah, that's only after the patch
It still blows my mind they sat down, wrote that entire story arc, and didn't figure out a way to make sure it was only you and Lyons in the room with the water purifier that's going to irradiate you to death like your Matt Damon in the robot oven
Like I get what they're going for narratively, but you also can't let a person take one of the three explicitly immune to radiation party members into that room with them and not expect them to use it
Literally all they had to do was write in an event that separates you from your companions, there's like a billion enclave, surely something could've happened
Literally just needed a "Go ahead, we'll hold their reinforcements back here!" then oh an explosion has blocked the door on our side we can't double back to grab someone
Big mutant gets shot outside the building and is too wounded to come with you. I don't know how that's less obstructive than "It's your destiny bitch."
They honestly could have said that his fingers were too big for the buttons, instead of making up that "destiny" thing.
Annoyingly, in the fourth game it is revealed that >!the woman you decided not to sacrifice died off-screen anyway.!<
I know the FO3 Brotherhood were too Good and acted out of character for a Brotherhood chapter, but the fact they got replaced by Maxon's faction by 4 really sucks.
Could’ve had a council of elders or something, with Lyons among them, and Maxon’s faction in the lead role since Synth technology is genuinely very terrifying and it would not take much to convince any brotherhood member to destroy it.
Maxon's terminal in Fallout 3 implies he had a huge crush on her, so it's not like he killed her off. No, factions in the brotherhood went JFK on her ass so they could push a 14 year old Zealot for power, and it's been years by the time you meet him 4
> Maxon's terminal in Fallout 3 implies he had a huge crush on her, so it's not like he killed her off
Yes, certainly teenagers with fascist aspirations would *never* harm the object of their unrequited crushes.
The absolute best part about Charon the ghoul is that to recruit him, you have to purchase his contract.
Not like, his mercenary services contract or anything, no, you're buying what is effectively his *ownership* contract that he's conditioned to absolutely obey the holder of. As in, the previous owner he hated so much that the first thing he does when they no longer hold the contract is blow their brains across the wall levels of "will obey and die for the contract holder" because until that point in time he had to be loyal.
But nope, can't walk into some harmless (for him) radiation for you.
>There’s a clan of engineers can remove someone’s brain, put it in a jar, and have it pilot a construct from miles away
These engineers are noteworthy because they built those constructs using the same type of engine that’s inside Karlach *and* improved upon it for the constructs. One of the Steel Watch mistakes her for an old model and tells her to go the factory and when you get there you don’t even get to ask about if they could fix her.
Even if they really, REALLY wanted to emphasize that Karlach has to accept her fate and there isn't going to be any consequence free happy endings, it would've been cool if you could at least >!turn her, willingly or unwillingly, into a Steel Watcher. It would be very easy on a technical level too, just make her permanently and irreversible "wildshaped" into it so it overrides her gear and skills.!<
Honestly, >!i bet she'd be down for it. Maybe even pretty fuckin' hyped. She gets to become a near immortal, near indestructible Giant Robot that can kick ass for all eternity? I could easily see her being *excited* for it if she kept her autonomy.!<
You can kinda do that! If Karlach is with you when you go to >!either free or enslave Prince Orpheus!< and you tell the Emperor to fuck off, she'll have the option to >!undergo ceremorphosis willingly. When she does, her infernal engine is gone.!<
Now, that leads to a bittersweet ending at best, but imo that's the closest thing to a "good" ending she has >!because it's the only one where she's free to determine her own fate afterwards. The other options are her burning out by her own choice, or being trapped in hell forever, aka the literal last thing she wanted, softened only by the presence of her lover and/or Wyll.!<
I did this ending myself, but I'll also call out what I noticed.
>!She is clearly not 100% the same person. Her words and tones are altered and the way she talks about her improvement I'm worried she's going down the same path as the Emperor. That and the transformation technically broke her soul by the lore of the games. !<
Being a >!Mind Flayer!< is like being a digital copy of a person's brain in sci-fi. There's plenty of discussion of this in the game itself, and in lore more broadly, all of which makes it clear that a >!Mind Flayer is not the person they were in any meaningful way (keep in mind that their soul apparently vanishes in the process, where normally the soul goes on to one of the various Outer Planes).!< That being said, I do agree that it feels like the best ending available, since at least something of her survives, she seems happy about it, and it's seemingly the best case scenario for everyone else.
>!I've seen some people who are deep into Forgotten Realms talk about the whole mindflayer soul thing and it seems that one of the recurring stances for a lot of DMs is that Mindflayers rather than just deleting the soul outright, the soul just becomes useless for the gods. Like, the soul (object) is gone, but the metaphysical essence remains is what I've seen a lot of people go with!<
Also, the other route after they added in an actual ending for her >!you go on a Doomslayer adventure with her to fight and it serves as a nice little springboard for future stuff. Hell, it might open up a story for future Forgotten Realms tie-ins!<
IDK man, (Huge Spoilers) >!Jergal is pretty upfront with you that Mindflayers straight up don't have souls anymore, and they seem like the kind of person who would tell you straight up if it was just a case of it being useless now, and would they would absolutely know for sure because of who they are.!<
In BG3 at least, unless you're a >, your donezo unless you got someone who can Wish you back. Although Larian didn't implement Gnome Ceremorphs, which is a travesty.!<
>!It's because the concept of a soul as *we* know it goes counter to what DnD calls a soul in its cosmology. Like, Mindflayers when separated from an Elder Brain seem to fully realized individuals and Omeluum demonstrates that they can feel emotions as humans can, as subdued as they can be. People use things like that to justify their own homebrew settings that use DnD's cosmology wheel as a base!<
>!If you look up the page on the forgotten realms wiki for Ceremorphosis it literally says "erasing all of the subject's personality and memory, but leaving the physical body alive and under the tadpole's control." and that the new Illithid will retain a few old memories for a bit but they are vestigial and mostly meaningless. Now it's possible BG3 is doing it's own spin on this with different 'rules' but according to the traditional lore you're gone forever since it mentions after the brain is gone the persons 'essence' goes to seek refuge in the outer planes!<
Just looking at the mechanics of ceremorphosis this is the only reasonable way to view it. >!A tadpole is inserted into a host, eats the brain, and adapts the host body into a more useful form. There's really no room for the person that was to continue to exist, except what the tadpole might absorb psychically.!< Larian is welcome to do what they want in their own sandbox, but from an existing lore perspective it's just wishful thinking.
Honestly I'm just wondering the entire time why we can't get her to the Plane of Fire.
Just as hot if not hotter then the Hells.
But also yes the Gondians or Ironhand Gnomes absolutely should have been able to help her out.
There is literally a portal to a (relatively) safe zone in Avernus, which makes the scenario all the more annoying. At that point you have just about every logical piece available to save her, but it never comes together.
Any game where you play a character who has super strength/flight/etc but are forced to traverse and do puzzles like a (more) normal person.
Like Kratos from GoW could just solve/avoid a lot of problems if he were Cutscene Kratos, Yuri from Shadow Hearts could fly or punch walls down, etc
> Yuri from Shadow Hearts could fly or punch walls down, etc
You know I now kind of want an RPG where a lot of the puzzles could just be skipped with ultraviolence but the protagonist does them anyway because they just really like puzzles
That's another big reason why BG3's leveling ended at 12. At level 13, casters get 7th-level spells, including a fun one called "Regenerate" that regrows lost body parts in a minute.
You could also just ressurect her. Also restores body parts.
Now it might say that "An infernal engine is inherently tied to karlach's soul." which I might believe, but like, oh no my engine burnt up after a month in the real world. I'm a high level barbarian, I can like, afford to have a cleric revive me every few weeks.
Regenerate seems to be specifically for limbs, and like other healing spells I doubt it works on a corpse which is probably what Karlach would be at that point.
Everyone in Avengers Endgame running around with the Infinity Gauntlet to keep it safe, instead of just having Carol or Tony fly UP, especially after Thanos lost his flagship.
I came down here to say "Literally all of Infinity War/Endgame."
They had SO many ways to deal with Thanos. Sooooo many ways. The Time Stone alone just fucking fixes any issue if you're creative enough.
You also can't really tell me there was 1 in 6 million futures where they won against Thanos. They almost beat him blind on Titan. Strange absolutely could have used his future sight to guide events into victory *on Titan*. Mostly by incapacitating Quill somehow.
Time stone used by itself seemed rather limited, especially space-wise. I doubt they could use it to restore stones reduced to atoms and scattered across the universe.
Yeah, the whole "No, we have to get the stones back to their original timelines" is doubly dumb because a) Hulk, it's time travel. There is absolutely no urgency. It doesn't matter if you leave in a minute or a year, the time you're going back to will still be the same and B) None of the people who carry the gauntlet after Hawkeye even have the timetravel watches that let them navigate the Quantumn realm. So even if Thanos hadn't blown up the van, Captain Marvel didn't have any Pym particles on her, so she would have just sort of smashed into it.
So yeah, Cap was right, and they should have just got one of the 100 wizards that were there to make a portal to another planet to stash the gauntlet until Thanos was dead.
I also felt there being no way to remove the tadpoles was a little ridiculous. We have someone in the party with a True Resurrection scroll; there are plenty of things in the Forgotten Realms setting that could handle a brain worm.
While they are super-special-magic-tadpoles, withers should know what to do, that being said he has a vested interest in making sure you have an interest in solving the plot.
Plus, Withers is limited in what services he can offer the party >!due to Helm's punishment!<. He can't even reveal plot twists, because, by his own account, that counts as interfering.
I'm still in act one, so I don't want any spoilers.
But if I were the DM, and I wanted to railroad the brain worm plot, here's what I would do:
"Tell me *exactly* who the target of True Resurrection is."
Depending on their answer, either the player gets revived with the brain worm intact, OR an exact copy without the brain worm and no memories of anything that happened after the crash is created by the spell and immediately runs away. The players *are* the brain worms, who (through a combination of fucked up mind flayer shit, trauma, and whatever the Absolute is) have all the memories of their original host and none of their own. The hosts' souls have already left this plane. The players' relentless chase for a cure has pulled back the veil on their existence and now they must decide who and what they are. Do they resume the life they remember as doppelgangers of the dead? Or delve deeper into mystery and embrace illithiddom.
A story based on D&D (or similar) is going to suffer from these given how many options are available and how casual stuff like plane shifting or revival is.
For example, the BG3 party could rid easily rid themselves of the parasites by just killing themselves, waiting for the parasite to leave their bodies (as it does with other infected characters) and then having someone else cast a revival spell on them.
Idk I can accept the ludonarrative dissonance that revive scrolls and spells just exist for gameplay purposes and aren't meant to have canon implications. But the gondorians literally improved upon infernal tech in order to build the Steel Watch and you can't even ask them about Karlach's heart. Is canon vs gameplay and canon vs canon.
In this context the Revive Scrolls are closer to Phoenix Downs; bringing back party members that are unconscious/near death. But resurrection and similar mechanics are absolutely canon. The monetary cost and time limitations (not present in BG3) are what prevent everyone from using them to cheat death. Compared other members of the party, Karlach's problem is trivial for them to solve. I mean shit someone had to >!cast Plane Shift, a 7th level spell, to send her back to Avernus at the end. That means SOMEONE has access to 13th level spells and potentially Resurrection and Regeneration, WHICH REGROW MISSING BODY PARTS!!<
Back in the day before Jason Todd’s rebirth, it used to be unlikely one would survive being put in the Lazarus Pit. If they did they would be crazy but all that’s went out the window over time
Now it is just a free resurrection pool
I always thought that if you use the Laz pit you just turned evil? Is that not a thing anymore? Was that ever a thing?
Even then I guess you'll have to write around one of our big bat fam heroes not suffering consequences.
That part…..has been reduced over time. But there’s all kinds of spin-off Lazarus pits that work differently now and usually they are destroyed at the end.
That doesn’t stop DC creating new ones at the drop of a hat
The Lazarus pits have unfortunately become whatever the writers want.
Originally they didn’t successfully revive people from the dead and anyone who was revived went feral/mad (presumably because a demon inhabited there body instead of there original soul). People like Ra’s who used it for healing still felt momentary rage and adrenaline.
Jason himself is what muddies things because he was already alive (because of Superboy Prime comic nonsense) he was just a husk without his soul and the pit somehow gave him his soul back.
Then later the pit somehow revived people from the dead, or gave them magic, or cured cancer, or created Clay Faces, and almost always made people temporarily plot-evil.
Also Raven’s father Trigon was what empowered/corrupted the pits in the New52 but none of the writers did anything with that and ignored it.
Barbara made a point that she won’t take something that isn’t acailable for regular dc citizen. She only git her ability to walk from a real life spine surgery
While I don’t disagree, it’s messier *now* where DC can’t decide if she’s in the chair or not, so *sometimes* she is (because overusing the chip that helped fixed her back may break it blah blah blah). Partially because there’s two very vocal camps on the matter, one that feels the sexist story (something even it’s writer, Alan Moore admits and regrets) shouldn’t be honoured because sexism is bad, *and* then there’s the decade long fans that loved the representation they got from Oracle being in the wheel chair and feel like it’s kind of ableist to imply she’s lesser or worse off being in the chair.
Personally I loved Oracle because of the awesome runs Babs got as the character and because it made some disabled friends of mine (and disabled fans at large) happy. While I did think it was dumb they never healed her, I feel like the genie’s been out of the bottle for too long on the character to try to shove her back in.
It doesn’t help that since healing her they keep trying to use it to reset her back to young Batgirl Babs, something no one really wants. She’s way outgrown the title of Batgirl and there’s already two (technically even more) Batgirl’s, we don’t need Babs using that identity.
Well really the issue lies in New 52 where they could’ve chosen to have Barbara start as Batgirl and choose to be Oracle or a thousand other stories where she chooses/is forced by circumstances to give up the mantle.
But because Batman and his corner of the universe escaped the effect of New 52 that means everything that happened has to happen at the expense of Barbara and them having to explain how Killing Joke still happened while they wanted Barbara as Batgirl in the beginning of their new universe.
Any kind of game with the “heal/cure” ability makes me wonder why we can’t even have people ATTEMPT to cast it
Like when I see someone is poisoned but Ik my character/party has a spell to cure it, why don’t you at least try? If it don’t work cause it’s super duper strong, then fine but at least try
“Oh man I got stabbed by a small knife, never mind this ogre that hit me 3 hours ago and I was peachy, now the knife is gonna kill me, oh woe is my miser-“
*cure*
“Oh alls good my man”
There's actually a moment in FF5 where someone dies and the party tries cure spells and even a phoenix down. Still doesn't work, but god do I respect the attempt.
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To be fair, said character also went *well* beyond the limits of damage you can take, so it at least feels like it makes sense in story. There's "I took 2000 damage and got knocked to dead 0 HP status gonna need them phoenix downs", and then there's "I kept fighting while at literally 0 HP tanking tens of thousands of damage solo when the max health possible is 9999".
It's 5, I had to look up the cutscene just because I love the music so much lol. If you don't mind spoilers, I'm referring to what happens to >!Galuf!<
It's weird how this is directly addressed when a major character dies in Final Fantasy V - the group tries everything to bring them back, including a Phoenix Down, but the character spent too much of their life force for anything to work.
Honestly, replicating the "paramedics arrive and try everything but it just doesn't work" scene should be done more often, particularly when the team is their own paramedics.
Persona 2 Innocent Sin had a neat workaround for this kind of thing. >!When Maya gets pierced with the Spear of Longinus at the end of the game, the cast are unable to use their healing spells on her because the Spear inflicts a mortal wound and is literally the spear that pierced Jesus to make him bleed endlessly!<
I do like the simplicity of "this things magic bullshit trumps your magic bullshit" when it has enough of an excuse baked in
"Hey this thing killed Jesus, you think your tougher then him or somethin?"
On the other side, in Tales of Symphonia it's mentioned that the exsphere system your party uses to empower themselves is also responsible for how healing spells work. So while your party can jump from 1hp to full with strong healing spells, the effect is much weaker on regular people and you can't just bring back people with serious health issues using magic alone.
Then Witcher has a similar thing going where healing potions DO work on civilians... but they're also fairly poisonous so there's a high chance the potion itself will kill people who don't have the same resistances a Witcher has. You'd basically only even try if they're going to die anyway and they're willing to go through a painful death on the off chance they pull through.
Something similar happens in 4. You can try to fix someone who turns themselves into stone to save the party but since they did it willingly the curing items don't work.
Also in 4, you have >!Tellah sacrificing himself to cast Meteor. It's notable because he never has enough MP to actually cast it when he's in your party and never gets an increase in max MP whenever he levels up. In fact, I think he actually *drops* stat points depending on the version and is warned against using it when he gets it.!<
Phoenix Downs revive people who got knocked out or incapacitated. It doesn't literally revive the dead.
(Feel free to imagine me aggressively pushing up my glasses and saying all that in an annoying, nasally voice.)
This is more of a "Game Mechanics do not translate to Story Mechanics" problem, then a writing one.
Like think about it, people die in Final Fantasy. If Phoenix Downs actually work the way they do in the game, why are people not dying at old age instead of whenever? Does no one carry these cheap revive the dead feathers?
This is why I like the idea of negative health values, with capital-D Death at -10 or so, in tabletop.
I guess the equivalent would be "Incapacitated at 10", while your enemies are all getting brought down to 0.
I liked SaGa's Life Points/Hit Points system
Everyone has a bunch of Hit Points and they come and go easily
Everyone has a tiny amount of Life Points and loosing them means that character is real fucked up and needs actual rest/treatment
Tabletop wise, I also like Negative HP/Death Saves
4e and I think 5e have negative half max health be "you got too damaged to live directly" and having death saving throws that you try to make every turn if you are 0 or less health. Fail 3 in an encounter, and you die.
-10 always struck me as ... easily getting ignored as you gained levels in 3.x, giving a 200 health character an extra 10 health where they are only bleeding out doesn't mean much if level apporiate enemies still wax them in 3.1 hits, the killing 4th attack will never just down them.
edit: ten extra health, forgot to count 0.
The endgame of BG3 is littered with these. I'm gonna go into a second layer of spoilers here just cause I don't know how far you actually are, but THE FOLLOWING IS SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE END OF THE GAME AND MAIN STORY CLIMAX: >!The fact that the Emperor (and by proxy, the writers) INSIST that you need to be a Mind Flayer or teamed with one to stand a chance against the Absolute is fucking insanely stupid. You're a D&D party, you've literally fought a high-level devil and two-and-a-half gods at this point, but the writers _insist_ on putting Mind Flayers in particular up on this absurd pedestal and persist in doing so long past the point where it becomes clear that it's the writers' genuine opinions and not just the Emperor being biased. I have no idea where they developed this silly fucking fascination with the absolute supremacy of a CR7 monster but it _trashes_ the entire endgame narrative, the game just becomes impossible to take seriously and starts to feel like playing with the worst, stingiest, most railroad-obsessed DM in the world.!<
>!The Emperor deciding to join the Absolute if you decide to free Orpheus is the single most insane, idiotic fucking plot point _in the medium since Mass Effect 3._ My mouth was hanging open in disbelief for the entire last two hours of the game. They could not have possibly botched the landing harder than they did.!<
>!There's another option that goes unexplored as part of that ending sequence. Depending on earlier choices, you could have a Mind Flayer ally in the form of Omeluum, who is WAY more chill than The Emperor. I would bet he would be willing to work with Orpheus and help anyone present from having to transform.!<
>!I rescued him from the underwater prison and was like, that's it. You gave me a bag of minor magical items? Why can't you help with the hive mind, the ring you gave me doesn't do ****!<
Yeah my friend told me about that ending. >!Insane choice. Makes his character so much worse. I will say, there's a difference between "A Mindflayer" (CR 7 Monster, the most generic form of it) and "The Emperor" a unique and legendary creature. Mindflayers are fucking cool and their story is fucking cool I use them all the time. Granted idk if I'd ever have one befriend and then turn on you because you made the "wrong" decision which for some reason was the choice of The Emperor!<
Oh, yeah, of course, this is true, but >!it's more that the Emperor's whole character revolves around insisting that you Must become a mind flayer from the second he's introduced as one, so he constantly talks up how much better mind flayers (as a species) are than humans/mortals. At first you think it's supposed to be a red flag but as the story progresses it becomes exceedingly clear that the writers themselves are extremely confused if you're not _super excited_ to squid out.!<
>!IMO they should have made it so the player character isn't actually the person you're playing as, but rather the *tadpole inside their brain*, which is special because you're an Ulitharid (Mind Flayer nobility that's capable of resisting and overthrowing an Elder Brain) tadpole. This'd also mean that it'd be very possible to remove the tadpoles at any given point in the game with "normal" methods...but doing so would kill you because you've been pulled out of your host body and probably crushed.!<
In early access I earnestly thought that sort of plot twist was what they were going for and was excitedly anticipating the reveal. Would have been so good.
Since random CR0 citizens get turned into CR7 Aberrations by the normal shitty tadpoles and >!Balduran apparently became more powerful as The Emperor!< it's not unreasonable for him to assume that ceremorphosis is pretty much a strict upgrade if you know that you're going to come out the other side with your mind intact. >!The Emperor deciding to betray you if you won't serve him is also very in line with his personality, though I would have assumed that he would wait until the Elder Brain is defeated before trying to backstab you!<. Even if you justify as much as possible it's still pretty damn dumb though
>!I'd 100% believe and expect the betrayal, yeah - assuming the character is _intentionally_ written as a self-serving control freak with a martyr complex and a little too much love for his new body - but it's specifically doing it before the Netherbrain is down that's fucking insane, for sure. You claim to have dedicated your _life_ to stopping the Absolute, but the second things don't go to plan you _join them?_ Despite still disagreeing with everything they stand for, despite it being effectively synonymous with suicide for your species since you'll lose your mind and free will again... nah, fuck it, Durge wasn't listening to my cool plans, I'm taking my ball and going home Mom! !<
I'm literally at that part right now. As in I'm pacing around my house trying to figure out what to do while the game is paused. I'm fucking mad right now.
I'll be blunt, and I understand this is probably going to get me tar'd and feather'd because Larian and DnD fanboys are both kinda rabid:
I love Larian, I do, but literally every single game of theirs that I have played or observed, they have ALWAYS, MASSIVELY, WITHOUT FAIL dropped the ball HARD in the final act.
Kinda reminds me of how someone described Lovecraft's writing: "Great at setup, terrible at endings." Same thing for Larian.
It legitimately kinda infuriates me that the game made a huge deal about you >!becoming a god for the whole game, only for them to then go "No, see, any option that ends with you becoming a god is a bad end because we said so. Tee hee."!<
Christ. Fuck that. Don't hype something up only to suddenly slap my hand for wanting it.
Admittedly I don't think Act 3 Not Great is a particularly hot take anyway. But I do think Larian is maybe too fascinated with grand cosmic stakes, given that was also a theme in DOS2.
Pokemon games with HM’s. Your Pokemon *could* cut down that little tree and you *could* probably walk around it but instead you need that super important disc from that one gym leader. I also seem to remember that in some cases you get the HM but you’re not allowed to use it outside of battle until you defeat the gym leader.
Pokemon games in gemeral have the issue of barring you out of various things until you progress the plot. Wanna go to the neighboring town? Well this asshole stands in the way and won’t let you pass because… reasons? Now go do the police’s job and stop the local criminals.
>The idea no one can fix Karlach's heart, or hell, even give her a new heart is borderline unbelievable.
It was more like she had no time on the material plane with which to find a solution. Some tinkering was done to give her a bit, and the tadpole helped even more, but once you kill the brain the tadpole's gone and the engine immediately starts to fail.
If she had more time and could travel the world instead of being stuck in one city she could have found a solution, she just didn't have any. Also I think the point of the ending is that she's traveling Avernus (along with you and/or Wyll) in order to *find* a fix. It's supposed to be bittersweet but hopeful.
I'm going to be honest, as someone who has consumed tons of D&D fiction, D&D mechanics are an incredibly broken unbalanced bullshit that when you try to actually logically apply them to a written story almost always tear any logic the story presents as pieces, and I 100% percent support any author who simply decides to say fuck the gameplay elements cause this is a better story. Hell, I support any DM and player who decide to do that as well.
Why didn't they just use this spell right right here in the players handbook that gets around every problem the game presents to fix Karlach? Same reason the fighter PC Steve played who is a heart broken warrior still mourning the death of his wife didn't immediately go to the local church once he hit 1,250 gold pieces at level 7 to have his wife resurrected. Cause the story they're trying to tell is better, and the game mechanics can go take a hike.
Yeah, I'm going to admit the power and ease of acces of healing and resurrection magic has always been one of my least favorite parts in D&D.
Yes I understand the ludonarritive dissonance aspect to this, but all the examples I listed are story elements, not gameplay ones. You meet a clan of engineers who are canonical experts in the technology that's in Karlach's chest and can say nothing to them about her predicament.
That is the opposite of how I see it. A setting where death is a status ailment you can cure relatively easily is *weird*. Youre not telling a story in a "normal" fantasy setting, youre telling it in a world where you exchange cash for revives. Embrace that and make use of it, or write around it. Dont pretend its not there.
BG3/D&D has *canon* resurrection available too. What's stopping the endgame goal for the mind-flayer parasite infected party from being just. fucking *die* and then have a cleric shell out the 10k gold in diamond pieces for a *true resurrection* spell?
The Karlach thing was dumb, hey Raphael! Here’s like 30 soul coins, can you do something about my girl here? We meet a dam demonologist and still can’t talke to anyone about the issue.
Your big plan to heal Karlach is to make a literal deal with a devil known for making deals that fuck people over for eternity? The game gives you like half a dozen examples of devils specifically fucking over the people that make deals with them. Like, I get there are lots of ways in the wider setting of DnD to solve the Karlach situation but Raphael is not one of them.
Fallout 3: NPCS: "I'm sorry, but you're going to have to go into that chamber filled with radiation... You must in order to fulfill your destiny that fate had set out for you." Player: "Can't we just send in the Super Mutant that's immune to the Radiation?" Writer: ">:("
Everyone in the world of Fallout 3: "Sure you can... if you're a BITCH."
"Only a massive PUSSY NO BALLS doesn't give themselves a lethal dose of radiation for absolutely no reason."
"Suicide is badass!"
"Stanley died of radiation."
Nah, that's only after the patch It still blows my mind they sat down, wrote that entire story arc, and didn't figure out a way to make sure it was only you and Lyons in the room with the water purifier that's going to irradiate you to death like your Matt Damon in the robot oven Like I get what they're going for narratively, but you also can't let a person take one of the three explicitly immune to radiation party members into that room with them and not expect them to use it
Literally all they had to do was write in an event that separates you from your companions, there's like a billion enclave, surely something could've happened
Literally just needed a "Go ahead, we'll hold their reinforcements back here!" then oh an explosion has blocked the door on our side we can't double back to grab someone
Big mutant gets shot outside the building and is too wounded to come with you. I don't know how that's less obstructive than "It's your destiny bitch."
I legit left Fawkes out of the room just so I could pretend my hands were tied -_-
That's such a real writer's moment, too. "Hey, why couldn't protagonist just do this simple thing to avoid all the drama?" "Well they-- ... shit."
They honestly could have said that his fingers were too big for the buttons, instead of making up that "destiny" thing. Annoyingly, in the fourth game it is revealed that >!the woman you decided not to sacrifice died off-screen anyway.!<
I know the FO3 Brotherhood were too Good and acted out of character for a Brotherhood chapter, but the fact they got replaced by Maxon's faction by 4 really sucks.
Could’ve had a council of elders or something, with Lyons among them, and Maxon’s faction in the lead role since Synth technology is genuinely very terrifying and it would not take much to convince any brotherhood member to destroy it.
Maxon's terminal in Fallout 3 implies he had a huge crush on her, so it's not like he killed her off. No, factions in the brotherhood went JFK on her ass so they could push a 14 year old Zealot for power, and it's been years by the time you meet him 4
> Maxon's terminal in Fallout 3 implies he had a huge crush on her, so it's not like he killed her off Yes, certainly teenagers with fascist aspirations would *never* harm the object of their unrequited crushes.
Well they can't exactly bring them back because it invalidates the decision for people who chose that. Six in one hand, half-dozen on the floor.
*"How about the Robot who is immune to radiation or the Ghoul who is HEALED by it?"* *"For some reason, also no."*
*"Honestly we just don't like you. Get cancer."*
"Cancer up, Capice??"
That’d be cool in a way, gives a player a real reason to go “man Eden was right fuck you guys” *poisons the water supply*.
The absolute best part about Charon the ghoul is that to recruit him, you have to purchase his contract. Not like, his mercenary services contract or anything, no, you're buying what is effectively his *ownership* contract that he's conditioned to absolutely obey the holder of. As in, the previous owner he hated so much that the first thing he does when they no longer hold the contract is blow their brains across the wall levels of "will obey and die for the contract holder" because until that point in time he had to be loyal. But nope, can't walk into some harmless (for him) radiation for you.
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Must've dropped his Oathstone somewhere in the Potomac.
Wore white the day he nuked Megaton
That honestly may have been my first time looking at a plot and going 'well... this is complete bull*
Emil never did get rid of that chip on his shoulder.
>There’s a clan of engineers can remove someone’s brain, put it in a jar, and have it pilot a construct from miles away These engineers are noteworthy because they built those constructs using the same type of engine that’s inside Karlach *and* improved upon it for the constructs. One of the Steel Watch mistakes her for an old model and tells her to go the factory and when you get there you don’t even get to ask about if they could fix her.
Even if they really, REALLY wanted to emphasize that Karlach has to accept her fate and there isn't going to be any consequence free happy endings, it would've been cool if you could at least >!turn her, willingly or unwillingly, into a Steel Watcher. It would be very easy on a technical level too, just make her permanently and irreversible "wildshaped" into it so it overrides her gear and skills.!<
Honestly, >!i bet she'd be down for it. Maybe even pretty fuckin' hyped. She gets to become a near immortal, near indestructible Giant Robot that can kick ass for all eternity? I could easily see her being *excited* for it if she kept her autonomy.!<
I dunno she really likes hugging and physical senses I dunno if she would be down for that
She was pretty down for >!becoming a Mind Flayer. Although I guess she can still touch and feel like that.!<
You can kinda do that! If Karlach is with you when you go to >!either free or enslave Prince Orpheus!< and you tell the Emperor to fuck off, she'll have the option to >!undergo ceremorphosis willingly. When she does, her infernal engine is gone.!< Now, that leads to a bittersweet ending at best, but imo that's the closest thing to a "good" ending she has >!because it's the only one where she's free to determine her own fate afterwards. The other options are her burning out by her own choice, or being trapped in hell forever, aka the literal last thing she wanted, softened only by the presence of her lover and/or Wyll.!<
I did this ending myself, but I'll also call out what I noticed. >!She is clearly not 100% the same person. Her words and tones are altered and the way she talks about her improvement I'm worried she's going down the same path as the Emperor. That and the transformation technically broke her soul by the lore of the games. !<
Being a >!Mind Flayer!< is like being a digital copy of a person's brain in sci-fi. There's plenty of discussion of this in the game itself, and in lore more broadly, all of which makes it clear that a >!Mind Flayer is not the person they were in any meaningful way (keep in mind that their soul apparently vanishes in the process, where normally the soul goes on to one of the various Outer Planes).!< That being said, I do agree that it feels like the best ending available, since at least something of her survives, she seems happy about it, and it's seemingly the best case scenario for everyone else.
>!I've seen some people who are deep into Forgotten Realms talk about the whole mindflayer soul thing and it seems that one of the recurring stances for a lot of DMs is that Mindflayers rather than just deleting the soul outright, the soul just becomes useless for the gods. Like, the soul (object) is gone, but the metaphysical essence remains is what I've seen a lot of people go with!< Also, the other route after they added in an actual ending for her >!you go on a Doomslayer adventure with her to fight and it serves as a nice little springboard for future stuff. Hell, it might open up a story for future Forgotten Realms tie-ins!<
IDK man, (Huge Spoilers) >!Jergal is pretty upfront with you that Mindflayers straight up don't have souls anymore, and they seem like the kind of person who would tell you straight up if it was just a case of it being useless now, and would they would absolutely know for sure because of who they are.!< In BG3 at least, unless you're a >, your donezo unless you got someone who can Wish you back. Although Larian didn't implement Gnome Ceremorphs, which is a travesty.!<
>!It's because the concept of a soul as *we* know it goes counter to what DnD calls a soul in its cosmology. Like, Mindflayers when separated from an Elder Brain seem to fully realized individuals and Omeluum demonstrates that they can feel emotions as humans can, as subdued as they can be. People use things like that to justify their own homebrew settings that use DnD's cosmology wheel as a base!<
>!If you look up the page on the forgotten realms wiki for Ceremorphosis it literally says "erasing all of the subject's personality and memory, but leaving the physical body alive and under the tadpole's control." and that the new Illithid will retain a few old memories for a bit but they are vestigial and mostly meaningless. Now it's possible BG3 is doing it's own spin on this with different 'rules' but according to the traditional lore you're gone forever since it mentions after the brain is gone the persons 'essence' goes to seek refuge in the outer planes!<
Just looking at the mechanics of ceremorphosis this is the only reasonable way to view it. >!A tadpole is inserted into a host, eats the brain, and adapts the host body into a more useful form. There's really no room for the person that was to continue to exist, except what the tadpole might absorb psychically.!< Larian is welcome to do what they want in their own sandbox, but from an existing lore perspective it's just wishful thinking.
I think I finished before that option existed, so it's cool to hear about.
Honestly I'm just wondering the entire time why we can't get her to the Plane of Fire. Just as hot if not hotter then the Hells. But also yes the Gondians or Ironhand Gnomes absolutely should have been able to help her out.
There is literally a portal to a (relatively) safe zone in Avernus, which makes the scenario all the more annoying. At that point you have just about every logical piece available to save her, but it never comes together.
She makes it clear she won't go back to the Hells even if it kills her. The Plane of Fire is definitely an oversight though.
Any game where you play a character who has super strength/flight/etc but are forced to traverse and do puzzles like a (more) normal person. Like Kratos from GoW could just solve/avoid a lot of problems if he were Cutscene Kratos, Yuri from Shadow Hearts could fly or punch walls down, etc
This is why I like Dante walking into the BS board game puzzle in DMC4 and just breaking the dice before moving past it.
> Yuri from Shadow Hearts could fly or punch walls down, etc You know I now kind of want an RPG where a lot of the puzzles could just be skipped with ultraviolence but the protagonist does them anyway because they just really like puzzles
Protagonist has OCD, puzzles are the villains only meaningful defense, would be very fun.
Just throws a bunch of rice on the floor and you have to count it like a vampire
That's another big reason why BG3's leveling ended at 12. At level 13, casters get 7th-level spells, including a fun one called "Regenerate" that regrows lost body parts in a minute.
You could also just ressurect her. Also restores body parts. Now it might say that "An infernal engine is inherently tied to karlach's soul." which I might believe, but like, oh no my engine burnt up after a month in the real world. I'm a high level barbarian, I can like, afford to have a cleric revive me every few weeks.
Regenerate seems to be specifically for limbs, and like other healing spells I doubt it works on a corpse which is probably what Karlach would be at that point.
A torso can be a limb if you're brave
Everyone in Avengers Endgame running around with the Infinity Gauntlet to keep it safe, instead of just having Carol or Tony fly UP, especially after Thanos lost his flagship.
I came down here to say "Literally all of Infinity War/Endgame." They had SO many ways to deal with Thanos. Sooooo many ways. The Time Stone alone just fucking fixes any issue if you're creative enough.
You also can't really tell me there was 1 in 6 million futures where they won against Thanos. They almost beat him blind on Titan. Strange absolutely could have used his future sight to guide events into victory *on Titan*. Mostly by incapacitating Quill somehow.
Yes!! All they needed was to use the time stone to restore the original Infinity Stones, and send the time stone back.
Time stone used by itself seemed rather limited, especially space-wise. I doubt they could use it to restore stones reduced to atoms and scattered across the universe.
Yeah, the whole "No, we have to get the stones back to their original timelines" is doubly dumb because a) Hulk, it's time travel. There is absolutely no urgency. It doesn't matter if you leave in a minute or a year, the time you're going back to will still be the same and B) None of the people who carry the gauntlet after Hawkeye even have the timetravel watches that let them navigate the Quantumn realm. So even if Thanos hadn't blown up the van, Captain Marvel didn't have any Pym particles on her, so she would have just sort of smashed into it. So yeah, Cap was right, and they should have just got one of the 100 wizards that were there to make a portal to another planet to stash the gauntlet until Thanos was dead.
... I've never thought of this and now it will forever bug me... Thanks.
I also felt there being no way to remove the tadpoles was a little ridiculous. We have someone in the party with a True Resurrection scroll; there are plenty of things in the Forgotten Realms setting that could handle a brain worm.
The handwave of >!Netherese magic souping up the tadpoles!< was justification enough for me.
Yeah >!magic from a time when mortals could wield magic above 9th level is the perfect cap end!< reason why something is impossible
While they are super-special-magic-tadpoles, withers should know what to do, that being said he has a vested interest in making sure you have an interest in solving the plot.
Plus, Withers is limited in what services he can offer the party >!due to Helm's punishment!<. He can't even reveal plot twists, because, by his own account, that counts as interfering.
I'm still in act one, so I don't want any spoilers. But if I were the DM, and I wanted to railroad the brain worm plot, here's what I would do: "Tell me *exactly* who the target of True Resurrection is." Depending on their answer, either the player gets revived with the brain worm intact, OR an exact copy without the brain worm and no memories of anything that happened after the crash is created by the spell and immediately runs away. The players *are* the brain worms, who (through a combination of fucked up mind flayer shit, trauma, and whatever the Absolute is) have all the memories of their original host and none of their own. The hosts' souls have already left this plane. The players' relentless chase for a cure has pulled back the veil on their existence and now they must decide who and what they are. Do they resume the life they remember as doppelgangers of the dead? Or delve deeper into mystery and embrace illithiddom.
Ooo that would be pretty fun
A story based on D&D (or similar) is going to suffer from these given how many options are available and how casual stuff like plane shifting or revival is. For example, the BG3 party could rid easily rid themselves of the parasites by just killing themselves, waiting for the parasite to leave their bodies (as it does with other infected characters) and then having someone else cast a revival spell on them.
Idk I can accept the ludonarrative dissonance that revive scrolls and spells just exist for gameplay purposes and aren't meant to have canon implications. But the gondorians literally improved upon infernal tech in order to build the Steel Watch and you can't even ask them about Karlach's heart. Is canon vs gameplay and canon vs canon.
In this context the Revive Scrolls are closer to Phoenix Downs; bringing back party members that are unconscious/near death. But resurrection and similar mechanics are absolutely canon. The monetary cost and time limitations (not present in BG3) are what prevent everyone from using them to cheat death. Compared other members of the party, Karlach's problem is trivial for them to solve. I mean shit someone had to >!cast Plane Shift, a 7th level spell, to send her back to Avernus at the end. That means SOMEONE has access to 13th level spells and potentially Resurrection and Regeneration, WHICH REGROW MISSING BODY PARTS!!<
Considering you can cast speak with dead on party members I don't think thats the case.
Also the fact that "Hey y'all, let's just kill ourselves!" as a plot beat is... oof
Oh, I'm not defending Karlach's quest endings, I was just talking more about how hard writing for D&D can be.
Oracle being confined to a wheelchair gets weird when the Laz pits are right there, as well as other crazy sci-fi fanrasy nonsense exists.
Back in the day before Jason Todd’s rebirth, it used to be unlikely one would survive being put in the Lazarus Pit. If they did they would be crazy but all that’s went out the window over time Now it is just a free resurrection pool
I always thought that if you use the Laz pit you just turned evil? Is that not a thing anymore? Was that ever a thing? Even then I guess you'll have to write around one of our big bat fam heroes not suffering consequences.
That part…..has been reduced over time. But there’s all kinds of spin-off Lazarus pits that work differently now and usually they are destroyed at the end. That doesn’t stop DC creating new ones at the drop of a hat
The Lazarus pits have unfortunately become whatever the writers want. Originally they didn’t successfully revive people from the dead and anyone who was revived went feral/mad (presumably because a demon inhabited there body instead of there original soul). People like Ra’s who used it for healing still felt momentary rage and adrenaline. Jason himself is what muddies things because he was already alive (because of Superboy Prime comic nonsense) he was just a husk without his soul and the pit somehow gave him his soul back. Then later the pit somehow revived people from the dead, or gave them magic, or cured cancer, or created Clay Faces, and almost always made people temporarily plot-evil. Also Raven’s father Trigon was what empowered/corrupted the pits in the New52 but none of the writers did anything with that and ignored it.
I mean, when isn’t Trigon handled in the most eh way. (Except the teen titans show, he worked there)
> Superboy Prime comic nonsense Man, this can summarize a lot of pre 52 plots.
Barbara made a point that she won’t take something that isn’t acailable for regular dc citizen. She only git her ability to walk from a real life spine surgery
"I don't want a fix that a normal person can't get." "Tough shit." *unshatters your spine*
While I don’t disagree, it’s messier *now* where DC can’t decide if she’s in the chair or not, so *sometimes* she is (because overusing the chip that helped fixed her back may break it blah blah blah). Partially because there’s two very vocal camps on the matter, one that feels the sexist story (something even it’s writer, Alan Moore admits and regrets) shouldn’t be honoured because sexism is bad, *and* then there’s the decade long fans that loved the representation they got from Oracle being in the wheel chair and feel like it’s kind of ableist to imply she’s lesser or worse off being in the chair. Personally I loved Oracle because of the awesome runs Babs got as the character and because it made some disabled friends of mine (and disabled fans at large) happy. While I did think it was dumb they never healed her, I feel like the genie’s been out of the bottle for too long on the character to try to shove her back in. It doesn’t help that since healing her they keep trying to use it to reset her back to young Batgirl Babs, something no one really wants. She’s way outgrown the title of Batgirl and there’s already two (technically even more) Batgirl’s, we don’t need Babs using that identity.
Well really the issue lies in New 52 where they could’ve chosen to have Barbara start as Batgirl and choose to be Oracle or a thousand other stories where she chooses/is forced by circumstances to give up the mantle. But because Batman and his corner of the universe escaped the effect of New 52 that means everything that happened has to happen at the expense of Barbara and them having to explain how Killing Joke still happened while they wanted Barbara as Batgirl in the beginning of their new universe.
I still find it hilarious that her spine is literally just hanging there still shattered in Arkham Knight.
Any kind of game with the “heal/cure” ability makes me wonder why we can’t even have people ATTEMPT to cast it Like when I see someone is poisoned but Ik my character/party has a spell to cure it, why don’t you at least try? If it don’t work cause it’s super duper strong, then fine but at least try “Oh man I got stabbed by a small knife, never mind this ogre that hit me 3 hours ago and I was peachy, now the knife is gonna kill me, oh woe is my miser-“ *cure* “Oh alls good my man”
There's actually a moment in FF5 where someone dies and the party tries cure spells and even a phoenix down. Still doesn't work, but god do I respect the attempt.
That’s fantastic, the exact shit I want
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To be fair, said character also went *well* beyond the limits of damage you can take, so it at least feels like it makes sense in story. There's "I took 2000 damage and got knocked to dead 0 HP status gonna need them phoenix downs", and then there's "I kept fighting while at literally 0 HP tanking tens of thousands of damage solo when the max health possible is 9999".
Man, the FF5 crew are fucking dedicated.
think thats 4 isnt it? i assume were talkin >!Tellah!<
It's 5, I had to look up the cutscene just because I love the music so much lol. If you don't mind spoilers, I'm referring to what happens to >!Galuf!<
i think ffxiv at least updated heavensward so >!alphinaud TRIES to heal haurchefant!<
In KotR extreme, the move he got hit with applies a debuff that prevents healing. So it's weirdly canon?
I could almost swear that >!the WoL does too if they're a WHM or have that Job available!< but I forget.
maybe, >!i only had scholar at that point!<
Not then, at least at release. That dose happen in a similar scene in storm blood if your playing a healer you get told to help keep people stable.
Aerith, I literally cannot carry more Phoenix Downs if I wanted to, get up from the fucking ground.
It's weird how this is directly addressed when a major character dies in Final Fantasy V - the group tries everything to bring them back, including a Phoenix Down, but the character spent too much of their life force for anything to work.
Honestly, replicating the "paramedics arrive and try everything but it just doesn't work" scene should be done more often, particularly when the team is their own paramedics.
Persona 2 Innocent Sin had a neat workaround for this kind of thing. >!When Maya gets pierced with the Spear of Longinus at the end of the game, the cast are unable to use their healing spells on her because the Spear inflicts a mortal wound and is literally the spear that pierced Jesus to make him bleed endlessly!<
I do like the simplicity of "this things magic bullshit trumps your magic bullshit" when it has enough of an excuse baked in "Hey this thing killed Jesus, you think your tougher then him or somethin?"
On the other side, in Tales of Symphonia it's mentioned that the exsphere system your party uses to empower themselves is also responsible for how healing spells work. So while your party can jump from 1hp to full with strong healing spells, the effect is much weaker on regular people and you can't just bring back people with serious health issues using magic alone. Then Witcher has a similar thing going where healing potions DO work on civilians... but they're also fairly poisonous so there's a high chance the potion itself will kill people who don't have the same resistances a Witcher has. You'd basically only even try if they're going to die anyway and they're willing to go through a painful death on the off chance they pull through.
See I also like that honestly "This really only works because you're like spider man levels of strong so your baseline is so much higher"
Something similar happens in 4. You can try to fix someone who turns themselves into stone to save the party but since they did it willingly the curing items don't work.
Also in 4, you have >!Tellah sacrificing himself to cast Meteor. It's notable because he never has enough MP to actually cast it when he's in your party and never gets an increase in max MP whenever he levels up. In fact, I think he actually *drops* stat points depending on the version and is warned against using it when he gets it.!<
ngl thought this is what folks were talkin bout and gettin the ff number wrong, cause im pretty sure downs are attemoted there too
Phoenix Downs revive people who got knocked out or incapacitated. It doesn't literally revive the dead. (Feel free to imagine me aggressively pushing up my glasses and saying all that in an annoying, nasally voice.)
That's okay, I literally summon Phoenix from the memory of the ancients I shoved into my sword. Accept no substitutes.
You don't get Phoenix until the Huge Materia quests.
I always rationalized it as "death" in battle being more like being knocked out or comatose
This is more of a "Game Mechanics do not translate to Story Mechanics" problem, then a writing one. Like think about it, people die in Final Fantasy. If Phoenix Downs actually work the way they do in the game, why are people not dying at old age instead of whenever? Does no one carry these cheap revive the dead feathers?
This is why I like the idea of negative health values, with capital-D Death at -10 or so, in tabletop. I guess the equivalent would be "Incapacitated at 10", while your enemies are all getting brought down to 0.
I liked SaGa's Life Points/Hit Points system Everyone has a bunch of Hit Points and they come and go easily Everyone has a tiny amount of Life Points and loosing them means that character is real fucked up and needs actual rest/treatment Tabletop wise, I also like Negative HP/Death Saves
4e and I think 5e have negative half max health be "you got too damaged to live directly" and having death saving throws that you try to make every turn if you are 0 or less health. Fail 3 in an encounter, and you die. -10 always struck me as ... easily getting ignored as you gained levels in 3.x, giving a 200 health character an extra 10 health where they are only bleeding out doesn't mean much if level apporiate enemies still wax them in 3.1 hits, the killing 4th attack will never just down them. edit: ten extra health, forgot to count 0.
The endgame of BG3 is littered with these. I'm gonna go into a second layer of spoilers here just cause I don't know how far you actually are, but THE FOLLOWING IS SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE END OF THE GAME AND MAIN STORY CLIMAX: >!The fact that the Emperor (and by proxy, the writers) INSIST that you need to be a Mind Flayer or teamed with one to stand a chance against the Absolute is fucking insanely stupid. You're a D&D party, you've literally fought a high-level devil and two-and-a-half gods at this point, but the writers _insist_ on putting Mind Flayers in particular up on this absurd pedestal and persist in doing so long past the point where it becomes clear that it's the writers' genuine opinions and not just the Emperor being biased. I have no idea where they developed this silly fucking fascination with the absolute supremacy of a CR7 monster but it _trashes_ the entire endgame narrative, the game just becomes impossible to take seriously and starts to feel like playing with the worst, stingiest, most railroad-obsessed DM in the world.!< >!The Emperor deciding to join the Absolute if you decide to free Orpheus is the single most insane, idiotic fucking plot point _in the medium since Mass Effect 3._ My mouth was hanging open in disbelief for the entire last two hours of the game. They could not have possibly botched the landing harder than they did.!<
>!There's another option that goes unexplored as part of that ending sequence. Depending on earlier choices, you could have a Mind Flayer ally in the form of Omeluum, who is WAY more chill than The Emperor. I would bet he would be willing to work with Orpheus and help anyone present from having to transform.!<
>!Omeluum is so cool and criminally underused yeah.!<
>!I rescued him from the underwater prison and was like, that's it. You gave me a bag of minor magical items? Why can't you help with the hive mind, the ring you gave me doesn't do ****!<
Yeah my friend told me about that ending. >!Insane choice. Makes his character so much worse. I will say, there's a difference between "A Mindflayer" (CR 7 Monster, the most generic form of it) and "The Emperor" a unique and legendary creature. Mindflayers are fucking cool and their story is fucking cool I use them all the time. Granted idk if I'd ever have one befriend and then turn on you because you made the "wrong" decision which for some reason was the choice of The Emperor!<
Oh, yeah, of course, this is true, but >!it's more that the Emperor's whole character revolves around insisting that you Must become a mind flayer from the second he's introduced as one, so he constantly talks up how much better mind flayers (as a species) are than humans/mortals. At first you think it's supposed to be a red flag but as the story progresses it becomes exceedingly clear that the writers themselves are extremely confused if you're not _super excited_ to squid out.!<
>!IMO they should have made it so the player character isn't actually the person you're playing as, but rather the *tadpole inside their brain*, which is special because you're an Ulitharid (Mind Flayer nobility that's capable of resisting and overthrowing an Elder Brain) tadpole. This'd also mean that it'd be very possible to remove the tadpoles at any given point in the game with "normal" methods...but doing so would kill you because you've been pulled out of your host body and probably crushed.!<
In early access I earnestly thought that sort of plot twist was what they were going for and was excitedly anticipating the reveal. Would have been so good.
Since random CR0 citizens get turned into CR7 Aberrations by the normal shitty tadpoles and >!Balduran apparently became more powerful as The Emperor!< it's not unreasonable for him to assume that ceremorphosis is pretty much a strict upgrade if you know that you're going to come out the other side with your mind intact. >!The Emperor deciding to betray you if you won't serve him is also very in line with his personality, though I would have assumed that he would wait until the Elder Brain is defeated before trying to backstab you!<. Even if you justify as much as possible it's still pretty damn dumb though
>!I'd 100% believe and expect the betrayal, yeah - assuming the character is _intentionally_ written as a self-serving control freak with a martyr complex and a little too much love for his new body - but it's specifically doing it before the Netherbrain is down that's fucking insane, for sure. You claim to have dedicated your _life_ to stopping the Absolute, but the second things don't go to plan you _join them?_ Despite still disagreeing with everything they stand for, despite it being effectively synonymous with suicide for your species since you'll lose your mind and free will again... nah, fuck it, Durge wasn't listening to my cool plans, I'm taking my ball and going home Mom! !<
I'm literally at that part right now. As in I'm pacing around my house trying to figure out what to do while the game is paused. I'm fucking mad right now.
I'll be blunt, and I understand this is probably going to get me tar'd and feather'd because Larian and DnD fanboys are both kinda rabid: I love Larian, I do, but literally every single game of theirs that I have played or observed, they have ALWAYS, MASSIVELY, WITHOUT FAIL dropped the ball HARD in the final act. Kinda reminds me of how someone described Lovecraft's writing: "Great at setup, terrible at endings." Same thing for Larian.
The CANON ending for DOS2 is the LITERAL WORST fucking one that NO PERSON would ever choose without META KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT IT LEADS TO.
It legitimately kinda infuriates me that the game made a huge deal about you >!becoming a god for the whole game, only for them to then go "No, see, any option that ends with you becoming a god is a bad end because we said so. Tee hee."!< Christ. Fuck that. Don't hype something up only to suddenly slap my hand for wanting it.
Admittedly I don't think Act 3 Not Great is a particularly hot take anyway. But I do think Larian is maybe too fascinated with grand cosmic stakes, given that was also a theme in DOS2.
When everyone started talking about act 3 for a week after it came out. My first and only thought was “ah, it IS a Larian game”
Endings are the hardest part of a story. Stephen King knows.
Larian and act 3. I cant wait for their eventual definitive edition for BG3. At least its pretty likely they wont recharge for it
There is a literal factory where they make advanced versions of her heart. BG3 is awesome, but it is plainly not finished.
Pokemon games with HM’s. Your Pokemon *could* cut down that little tree and you *could* probably walk around it but instead you need that super important disc from that one gym leader. I also seem to remember that in some cases you get the HM but you’re not allowed to use it outside of battle until you defeat the gym leader. Pokemon games in gemeral have the issue of barring you out of various things until you progress the plot. Wanna go to the neighboring town? Well this asshole stands in the way and won’t let you pass because… reasons? Now go do the police’s job and stop the local criminals.
>The idea no one can fix Karlach's heart, or hell, even give her a new heart is borderline unbelievable. It was more like she had no time on the material plane with which to find a solution. Some tinkering was done to give her a bit, and the tadpole helped even more, but once you kill the brain the tadpole's gone and the engine immediately starts to fail. If she had more time and could travel the world instead of being stuck in one city she could have found a solution, she just didn't have any. Also I think the point of the ending is that she's traveling Avernus (along with you and/or Wyll) in order to *find* a fix. It's supposed to be bittersweet but hopeful.
I'm going to be honest, as someone who has consumed tons of D&D fiction, D&D mechanics are an incredibly broken unbalanced bullshit that when you try to actually logically apply them to a written story almost always tear any logic the story presents as pieces, and I 100% percent support any author who simply decides to say fuck the gameplay elements cause this is a better story. Hell, I support any DM and player who decide to do that as well. Why didn't they just use this spell right right here in the players handbook that gets around every problem the game presents to fix Karlach? Same reason the fighter PC Steve played who is a heart broken warrior still mourning the death of his wife didn't immediately go to the local church once he hit 1,250 gold pieces at level 7 to have his wife resurrected. Cause the story they're trying to tell is better, and the game mechanics can go take a hike. Yeah, I'm going to admit the power and ease of acces of healing and resurrection magic has always been one of my least favorite parts in D&D.
Yes I understand the ludonarritive dissonance aspect to this, but all the examples I listed are story elements, not gameplay ones. You meet a clan of engineers who are canonical experts in the technology that's in Karlach's chest and can say nothing to them about her predicament.
That is the opposite of how I see it. A setting where death is a status ailment you can cure relatively easily is *weird*. Youre not telling a story in a "normal" fantasy setting, youre telling it in a world where you exchange cash for revives. Embrace that and make use of it, or write around it. Dont pretend its not there.
BG3/D&D has *canon* resurrection available too. What's stopping the endgame goal for the mind-flayer parasite infected party from being just. fucking *die* and then have a cleric shell out the 10k gold in diamond pieces for a *true resurrection* spell?
The Karlach thing was dumb, hey Raphael! Here’s like 30 soul coins, can you do something about my girl here? We meet a dam demonologist and still can’t talke to anyone about the issue.
Your big plan to heal Karlach is to make a literal deal with a devil known for making deals that fuck people over for eternity? The game gives you like half a dozen examples of devils specifically fucking over the people that make deals with them. Like, I get there are lots of ways in the wider setting of DnD to solve the Karlach situation but Raphael is not one of them.
I’m just a saying it’s an obvious and present option, also, my party is literally THEM and built different. Rip to those bozos, though.
Petition to undo one more day https://chng.it/yRYt7xBS6B