As far as gameplay, Fighter/Thief multiclasses are so much better than Swashbucklers at higher levels it's silly. Swashbuckerls don't get to backstab for one-shot nearly anything levels of damage with attack rolls that will actually hit. Plus, you can do that in heavy armor with invisibilty potions/rings.
A Swashbuckler would level MUCH faster though. And once you reach Use Any Item, you could use the same armor/invisibility tactics if you wanted to.
It kind of depends on what mods you've got installed. With removed level cap and un-nerfed THAC0 tables, Swashbucklers eventually reach level 50 with a base THAC0 of -10, a bonus 10 damage on every hit, an AC bonus of 11, and many, many Whirlwind attacks. F/Ts have more health, backstabs, all the non WW fighter HLAs, and will have more APR when not using WW or GWW. A solo swashie is great fun until you hit the level cap at the end of chapter 2 and realize that nothing will change about your character beyond equipment for the rest of the series.
As far as gameplay, Fighter/Thief multiclasses are so much better than Swashbucklers at higher levels it's silly. Swashbuckerls don't get to backstab for one-shot nearly anything levels of damage with attack rolls that will actually hit. Plus, you can do that in heavy armor with invisibilty potions/rings.
A Swashbuckler would level MUCH faster though. And once you reach Use Any Item, you could use the same armor/invisibility tactics if you wanted to.
It kind of depends on what mods you've got installed. With removed level cap and un-nerfed THAC0 tables, Swashbucklers eventually reach level 50 with a base THAC0 of -10, a bonus 10 damage on every hit, an AC bonus of 11, and many, many Whirlwind attacks. F/Ts have more health, backstabs, all the non WW fighter HLAs, and will have more APR when not using WW or GWW. A solo swashie is great fun until you hit the level cap at the end of chapter 2 and realize that nothing will change about your character beyond equipment for the rest of the series.
Well that was just talking about vanilla. But yes, that's why you do a Mage/Swashbuckler instead, buff yourself with stoneskins, mirror images, improved haste, etc and just wreck faces. By the end of ToB, mine ended up being 44 mage and was still capped at 50 on swashbuckler, had been for a few levels or so at least. It was pretty good.
As far as gameplay, Fighter/Thief multiclasses are so much better than Swashbucklers at higher levels it's silly. Swashbuckerls don't get to backstab for one-shot nearly anything levels of damage with attack rolls that will actually hit. Plus, you can do that in heavy armor with invisibilty potions/rings.
A Swashbuckler would level MUCH faster though. And once you reach Use Any Item, you could use the same armor/invisibility tactics if you wanted to.
It kind of depends on what mods you've got installed. With removed level cap and un-nerfed THAC0 tables, Swashbucklers eventually reach level 50 with a base THAC0 of -10, a bonus 10 damage on every hit, an AC bonus of 11, and many, many Whirlwind attacks. F/Ts have more health, backstabs, all the non WW fighter HLAs, and will have more APR when not using WW or GWW. A solo swashie is great fun until you hit the level cap at the end of chapter 2 and realize that nothing will change about your character beyond equipment for the rest of the series.
Well that was just talking about vanilla. But yes, that's why you do a Mage/Swashbuckler instead, buff yourself with stoneskins, mirror images, improved haste, etc and just wreck faces. By the end of ToB, mine ended up being 44 mage and was still capped at 50 on swashbuckler, had been for a few levels or so at least. It was pretty good.
Wait, if you duel class you can hit 50 in all classes?
So if I was crazy, I could be 50 fighter/50mage/50cleric or something?
Well, no. I mean, I did virtually everything you could possibly do, I guess aside from trying to seek out some of the respawning enemies. A fighter/thief might be able to hit 50/50 without too much issue, I think, but there's almost no way you'd get anywhere near 50s as a triple class. Especially since Mage and Cleric are some of the highest Exp classes at the top end.
Keep in mind, this is with the level cap removed of course, but all exp is divided up between your classes. There's a hard cap of 50 hard coded into the game though, that's why it ends there.
Multi-classing works how you'd expect; you have two classes and they level up independently, splitting your XP between them. You have to be non-human to multi-class.
Dual-classing is what humans have instead of multi-class; you stop advancing in your old class completely and pick a new one. Its a weird relic of 2e, but can be more powerful than multi-classing under certain circumstances. Typically I use it to get a few levels in fighter and then switch to a caster class so that I have a less squishy caster who can hold his own in a melee, which is better than a multi-class fighter/mage later on when your fighter levels aren't doing much for you but you're forced to keep pouring XP into them. Its worth noting though that once you dual-class, you lose all of your old classes abilities until you catch up with your new class, so you'll be weak as a kitten for a little while and should plan accordingly.
Thief/Mage is another popular combo since you can grab enough thief skills to be useful early on, and then basically become a pure mage/cleric/whatever who can also pick locks. Imoen is a dual-class thief/mage in BG2, and Anomen is a Fighter/Cleric. Both are good combos.
mage/thief still works better as a multi, dualing doesn't give you much and takes sorcerer and specialist mages off the table(wild/conjurer). as a multi you can really take advantage of backstab
Well, no. I mean, I did virtually everything you could possibly do, I guess aside from trying to seek out some of the respawning enemies. A fighter/thief might be able to hit 50/50 without too much issue, I think, but there's almost no way you'd get anywhere near 50s as a triple class. Especially since Mage and Cleric are some of the highest Exp classes at the top end.
Keep in mind, this is with the level cap removed of course, but all exp is divided up between your classes. There's a hard cap of 50 hard coded into the game though, that's why it ends there.
But, for sake of if I wanted to be stupid, couldn't I play the game once, export/import and get a stupidly high character for no reason other than to have one?
While I do think the provocative line from Minsc being cut is fine, I think it's a mistake to suggest that a trans character somehow needs to be "special" or "better developed" to be a valid character in the world. I think that sends the wrong message (basically, that the "standard" person needs no justification, but anything unusual has to have a character built around it), and frankly, I didn't see anything wrong with the initial conversation.
That people lack the imagination to picture a fantasy world where being trans isn't nearly as big of an issue as it is in the 21st century baffles me. The original character and conversation show a character who is totally comfortable with who they are, and it doesn't even really stand out, given that NPCs in RPGs are constantly offering personal details/exposition. This simple act of inclusion was a good one.
Sure, but dropping trans characters in with no context is ahistorical and stupid and immersion-breaking. Fantasy world-building needs to offer explanations for when we depart from the expected setting (i.e. earth middle ages, illiterate, uneducated populace where women only have agency in domestic sphere).
I thought dragon's age did a very good job with world building to explain how its world departed from our history w/r/t gender dynamics.
Beamdog cut-and-pasted modern notions of "trans" and "transitioning" which are inextricably tied up with modern notions of gender identity, dysphoria, and technology to allow "transitions" to happen. The notion that Mizhena's parents would just be totally okay with this without any explanation or context is dumb. Not that this is being articulated very well, it feels like a fourth-wall breaking tip of the hat to modern-day, worthy goals of diversity or inclusion without thinking how that diversity would look within the forgotten realms.
I would have liked to have seen something more contextually plausible along the lines of a two-spirit (http://twospirits.org/) or an Albanian sworn virgin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkan_sworn_virgins), or some sociological exploration of how people who seek to use magic to change gender are received in the world.
Instead it's just plopped in like Mizhena's parents are tolerant baby boomers, instead of reflective of the likely cultural baggage any average person in the forgotten realms would carry.
Ah yes, dragons, magic, potions that can change your gender are all totally fine, but someones parents not freaking out about them being trans is totally unbelievable. How fucking dare they suggest that anyone might be accepting of a trans person.
Honestly I think this is people projecting their own issues onto the game.
How deep do they have to go before its acceptable for the character to exist? Do they need to be recruitable? A questline? how many lines of dialogue? I've been told that "this whole thing reeks of tokenism" so I'm really perplexed as to the goal here. Are people saying that to have a trans character you either have to go deep into their backstory or just don't include them?
This whole thing boggles my mind and I can only imagine that the people objecting to the character are just looking for an excuse to demand they remove it.
I think that no one in-game cares all that much and that Mizhena isn't ashamed or afraid to share the story and all of that is very informative to the world.
A place where magic exists is a place where someone can be trans without drama or persecution, and that is awesome.
Well, I'm not, I was talking about multi-classing the whole time. I didn't realize he had asked about duel(sic) class. You can only dual class once however, so in that case no, you couldn't go fighter, to mage, to cleric @DyasAlure. You only get end up with 2 total classes in dual classing. And you don't regain your dormant class' abilities until you reach/exceed your previous class' level. You could technically 50/50 a dual classed character, but it would basically be like single classing twice until you finally hit 50 the second time.
So, hmm, if you are going into the new expansion directly from Sarevok battle, make sure you remove anything you want to keep out of Imoen's inventory....
While I do think the provocative line from Minsc being cut is fine, I think it's a mistake to suggest that a trans character somehow needs to be "special" or "better developed" to be a valid character in the world. I think that sends the wrong message (basically, that the "standard" person needs no justification, but anything unusual has to have a character built around it), and frankly, I didn't see anything wrong with the initial conversation.
That people lack the imagination to picture a fantasy world where being trans isn't nearly as big of an issue as it is in the 21st century baffles me. The original character and conversation show a character who is totally comfortable with who they are, and it doesn't even really stand out, given that NPCs in RPGs are constantly offering personal details/exposition. This simple act of inclusion was a good one.
Sure, but dropping trans characters in with no context is ahistorical and stupid and immersion-breaking. Fantasy world-building needs to offer explanations for when we depart from the expected setting (i.e. earth middle ages, illiterate, uneducated populace where women only have agency in domestic sphere).
I thought dragon's age did a very good job with world building to explain how its world departed from our history w/r/t gender dynamics.
Beamdog cut-and-pasted modern notions of "trans" and "transitioning" which are inextricably tied up with modern notions of gender identity, dysphoria, and technology to allow "transitions" to happen. The notion that Mizhena's parents would just be totally okay with this without any explanation or context is dumb. Not that this is being articulated very well, it feels like a fourth-wall breaking tip of the hat to modern-day, worthy goals of diversity or inclusion without thinking how that diversity would look within the forgotten realms.
I would have liked to have seen something more contextually plausible along the lines of a two-spirit (http://twospirits.org/) or an Albanian sworn virgin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkan_sworn_virgins), or some sociological exploration of how people who seek to use magic to change gender are received in the world.
Instead it's just plopped in like Mizhena's parents are tolerant baby boomers, instead of reflective of the likely cultural baggage any average person in the forgotten realms would carry.
I must be missing something important here. Blame it on being the end of the week and my brain being fried... but I read this as you saying that fantasy games need to either be sexist as a default, or need to offer a detailed world-building explanation as to why they aren't sexist as a default.
And you can't actually be saying that, as that's fucking moronic. So I have to be reading your post wrong somehow.
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
Oh man, no steam cloud saves? What kind of prehistoric savagery is this? How am I supposed to adventure on my lunch hour when my saves are 4 city blocks away?
Nosf on
+1
Options
Brainiac 8Don't call me Shirley...Registered Userregular
We are all heroes; you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!
Oh man, no steam cloud saves? What kind of prehistoric savagery is this? How am I supposed to adventure on my lunch hour when my saves are 4 city blocks away?
Pretty sure last night i saw something in the options about it.
The dual class I used the last time I played this (in 2005? maybe), was a Fighter/Cleric. I didn't do any modding, so I just looked at the level tables and got to (max cleric level) - 1 fighter, then switched to cleric. Made sure to max two-weapon fighting as the fighter, then got to four pips for mace and flail (the fifth pip in each was from Cleric). Then I used Crom Faeyr and the Flail of Ages +5. Didn't gib things quite as quickly as a Fighter/Mage with stoneskin and haste would have done, but I didn't have to fiddle with armor, either (AFAIK, mages still have to respect the no-armor rules, so the best raw AC you can get is like -1?)
Of course, I had to decide on this before starting BG1, as I couldn't switch until somewhere during BG2.
Sure, but dropping trans characters in with no context is ahistorical and stupid and immersion-breaking. Fantasy world-building needs to offer explanations for when we depart from the expected setting (i.e. earth middle ages, illiterate, uneducated populace where women only have agency in domestic sphere).
To be honest, this particular argument doesn't convince me. I'm not going to pretend to have a lot of knowledge of medieval history in general, or history of the trans identity in particular, but my understanding is that the presentation of everything that we get in fantasy RPGs is already ahistorical; it's more like a romanticized, Hollywood-ized version of medieval history. For example, we routinely see video games depicting, side-by-side, various types of weapons and armor that weren't widely used during the same time periods, or the same geographic locations. My understanding is that, for example, a katana - a slashing weapon - would not be particularly effective against full plate armor, and indeed these two types of equipment weren't developed to ever go up against each other; yet, BG2 lets you wear plate, dual-wield katanas, and get into a fight with someone else wearing full plate - and win, because your numbers are higher! And this is fine, because plate is cool, katanas are cool, and games want you to feel cool!
Then you get into pedantic, biological factors, like for example: where are the rivers of filth and feces that should be flowing through every densely-populated city? We see kitchens (because an inn that's cooking up some delicious stew and has a fully-stocked larder is a tasty component of fantasy), but we hardly ever see latrines, or at the least waste buckets.
Further, my impression is that the morals and ethics that we usually see in fantasy games are more akin to modern Western thought than they are to medieval thought. In a fantasy game, if you come across a poor serf who's starving, it's generally considered a morally-good action to give him some money and food, and maybe fight to give him his freedom. In a more genuinely-medieval setting, would that still be the case? Or is it more likely that people would go "welp, he's a serf, this is God's plan for him, who am I to interfere."?
This is before you even bring magic into the equation. Magic is like Kurzweil's AI: it creates a singularity. We can't really predict how society might be changed with the introduction of magic; we can just come up with entertaining guesses.
(Oh, and incidentally, folks who say things like "When you have magical girdles that can change your physical sex, 'trans' shouldn't even be a thing", I'm curious: how do you know that Mizhena ISN'T wearing such a girdle? I haven't played the game, so I don't know how the whole interaction is presented, but the descriptions of the scene don't mention whether she wears such a girdle or not, and the conversation interactions would be equally valid if she were wearing it.)
TL;DR - Fantasy video games that AREN'T trying to be rigorous medieval simulators (the way flight sims try to rigorously simulate real aircraft) are already ahistorical and immersion-breaking. To me, it doesn't seem like adding representatives of under-represented groups would be any more or less immersion-breaking than what we already get.
So, hmm, if you are going into the new expansion directly from Sarevok battle, make sure you remove anything you want to keep out of Imoen's inventory....
I found at least two chests that had Imoen's inventory in them, though I didn't do a full inventory so maybe some of it was missing?
Oh maybe? I just started it, didn't move past first room yet as it was late.
But yes, they take her away to apprentice to some mage regardless if you dual specced her or not, presumably to line up BG2 if you left her as a thief.
The stuff that your party has in their inventories goes into your personal chest, but not what they have equipped. You can load the Final Save and immediately pause, then move all the equipped stuff into their bags and it'll be waiting for you when you start the expansion. Also, some characters return in SoD and will have their stuff still equipped when you meet them again, but if it's a character that doesn't return it appears to just be gone.
"Ahistorical?" What in the good trundling fuck does Earth's history have to do with Faerun? I hate to break it to anyone who thinks otherwise, but you do know we didn't have a period of time on Earth where the God of Murder walked the land, leaving behind a score of mortal progeny, right?
I mean, even setting aside the fact that it's a made up reality that doesn't really exist (and thus can be whatever the hell it wants to be), The Forgotten Realms doesn't have the same social, political, or hell even metaphysical basis as we do by a country fucking mile.
That's like getting mad at Final Fantasy for having zeppelins because those weren't invented until the 1900s. What?
Guys I'll end the argument in this right now: There's a belt in the first game that changes your gender, and it's cursed. A BELT. As in a magical item accepted by the game's lore and rooted history. Furthering this is a Wild Surge effect for Wild Mages that does the same thing: change your gender because some wacky eldritch bs got out of hand (technically YOUR hand).
This is a lore-based setting where if you're confused by ANYTHING, it falls under 3 simple categories of explanation: 1)Magic, 2) The Divines made it that way, 3) The DM said so, now deal with it.
XBL: GamingFreak5514
PSN: GamingFreak1234
0
Options
Zxerolfor the smaller pieces, my shovel wouldn't doso i took off my boot and used my shoeRegistered Userregular
And this "ahistorical" argument predicates on the assertion that trans or other nonconfirming gender fluidity wasn't a thing throughout history.
Wait, so the Forgotten Realms isn't our Earth, circa the Year of Our Lord 1300?
You know, I was wondering why nobody referenced the excommunication of the Knights Templar or the rise of King Robert the Bruce of Scotland.
EDIT: Installing BG:EE and Siege. Sigh. I had hoped to get the PoE expansions now that I finished up Shadowrun: Hong Kong, but I can't let transphobic asshole behavior go unpunished.
Now I gotta figure out what character to play. An Avenger/Thief, maybe?
And this "ahistorical" argument predicates on the assertion that trans or other nonconfirming gender fluidity wasn't a thing throughout history.
Which is completely bogus.
The Navajo are a great example of this. They actually have five gender roles. Turns out the world is more complex than some would have us believe, and far more interesting. RPGs have been breaking out of the stale middle ages setting for years now and we are much better off for it.
"I see everything twice!"
+4
Options
WhiteZinfandelYour insidesLet me show you themRegistered Userregular
It looks like my mod installation order has rendered Lum the Mad's Machine nonfunctional, breaking my ability to complete Watcher's Keep. My WEIDU log is attached. Can anybody tell me where I went wrong?
Hmm... is this EE or original? Because I believe the Fixpack is obsolete with regards to EE, so installing it could be an issue. Similarly, I'm not sure what the DDrawFix is for, though I kind of doubt it would be needed for EE. I haven't used Item Revisions myself, so I'm not sure what it could cause.
The other main thing that catches my attention is Dungeon Be Gone, which I haven't used myself, but I think was the Irenicus starting dungeon skipper that could cause 'problems', though I don't think I ever saw anyone specify what sort of problems it could cause.
The other weird thing I ran into while using Rogues Rebalanced was with regards to the major event/cutscene thing the mod adds late in the game. After I finished it and was trying to leave the area, the game would crash repeatedly. On my next playthrough, I ended up removing the tweak that makes the shorter Chapter 1 and 2 cutscenes and dreams because I thought it might interfere... then the major event didn't trigger at all, I had to use the console to force it to start, but when I completed it, it didn't crash at least. I don't know that making the early cutscenes and dreams shorter would interfere with anything else, but then, I'm not entirely sure just how the scripting for the game works. It's already a bit wonky, given the idiotic way they handle conversations, and previous conversations. So who knows?
I'm also not sure what Level1 NPCs is for though doesn't the Tweakpack have an option where you get to level up NPC companions when they first join?
0
Options
WhiteZinfandelYour insidesLet me show you themRegistered Userregular
Original. I uninstalled and reinstalled everything in essentially the same order, plugged the old save in, and now it works. If anyone wants me to upload the new WEIDU log, let me know. Dungeon Be Gone has never caused any issues that I've seen, same with shorter cutscenes. Level 1 NPCs is a really useful gizmo that lets you change the NPCs. It lets me set any prospective party member to any class, kit, or multiclass WITH one kit (functioning!), dictate stats, and so forth. It intelligently assigns bonuses and innates when changing a person to level 0 of (class) via Shadowkeeper would bollix some things. It doesn't work with EE, which is the single biggest reason I'm still using the original.
Huh, does seem pretty neat. Sort of extremely cheaty, but eh, who cares. Glad it works but don't you just love that kind of thing? Really nothing changed, just works now.
Edit: I was originally going to say you could just make a custom party to do that, but I realized you wouldn't have any of the banter and dialog types of interactions. So yeah, actually I can see how that's a pretty useful mod.
Posts
"Oh, yes, indeed..I'm aquainted with his wife, Incontentia Buttux"
It kind of depends on what mods you've got installed. With removed level cap and un-nerfed THAC0 tables, Swashbucklers eventually reach level 50 with a base THAC0 of -10, a bonus 10 damage on every hit, an AC bonus of 11, and many, many Whirlwind attacks. F/Ts have more health, backstabs, all the non WW fighter HLAs, and will have more APR when not using WW or GWW. A solo swashie is great fun until you hit the level cap at the end of chapter 2 and realize that nothing will change about your character beyond equipment for the rest of the series.
Well that was just talking about vanilla. But yes, that's why you do a Mage/Swashbuckler instead, buff yourself with stoneskins, mirror images, improved haste, etc and just wreck faces. By the end of ToB, mine ended up being 44 mage and was still capped at 50 on swashbuckler, had been for a few levels or so at least. It was pretty good.
Wait, if you duel class you can hit 50 in all classes?
So if I was crazy, I could be 50 fighter/50mage/50cleric or something?
Keep in mind, this is with the level cap removed of course, but all exp is divided up between your classes. There's a hard cap of 50 hard coded into the game though, that's why it ends there.
I've never messed with it before.
Dual-classing is what humans have instead of multi-class; you stop advancing in your old class completely and pick a new one. Its a weird relic of 2e, but can be more powerful than multi-classing under certain circumstances. Typically I use it to get a few levels in fighter and then switch to a caster class so that I have a less squishy caster who can hold his own in a melee, which is better than a multi-class fighter/mage later on when your fighter levels aren't doing much for you but you're forced to keep pouring XP into them. Its worth noting though that once you dual-class, you lose all of your old classes abilities until you catch up with your new class, so you'll be weak as a kitten for a little while and should plan accordingly.
Thief/Mage is another popular combo since you can grab enough thief skills to be useful early on, and then basically become a pure mage/cleric/whatever who can also pick locks. Imoen is a dual-class thief/mage in BG2, and Anomen is a Fighter/Cleric. Both are good combos.
Never played a mage before.
I've already died several times, but I can cast magic missile twice thanks to the Ring of Wizardry, so I have that going for me.
Sleep is da bess.
But, for sake of if I wanted to be stupid, couldn't I play the game once, export/import and get a stupidly high character for no reason other than to have one?
If Steam ever gets Temple of Elemental Evil I'm in trouble
Sure, but dropping trans characters in with no context is ahistorical and stupid and immersion-breaking. Fantasy world-building needs to offer explanations for when we depart from the expected setting (i.e. earth middle ages, illiterate, uneducated populace where women only have agency in domestic sphere).
I thought dragon's age did a very good job with world building to explain how its world departed from our history w/r/t gender dynamics.
Beamdog cut-and-pasted modern notions of "trans" and "transitioning" which are inextricably tied up with modern notions of gender identity, dysphoria, and technology to allow "transitions" to happen. The notion that Mizhena's parents would just be totally okay with this without any explanation or context is dumb. Not that this is being articulated very well, it feels like a fourth-wall breaking tip of the hat to modern-day, worthy goals of diversity or inclusion without thinking how that diversity would look within the forgotten realms.
I would have liked to have seen something more contextually plausible along the lines of a two-spirit (http://twospirits.org/) or an Albanian sworn virgin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkan_sworn_virgins), or some sociological exploration of how people who seek to use magic to change gender are received in the world.
Instead it's just plopped in like Mizhena's parents are tolerant baby boomers, instead of reflective of the likely cultural baggage any average person in the forgotten realms would carry.
Honestly I think this is people projecting their own issues onto the game.
How deep do they have to go before its acceptable for the character to exist? Do they need to be recruitable? A questline? how many lines of dialogue? I've been told that "this whole thing reeks of tokenism" so I'm really perplexed as to the goal here. Are people saying that to have a trans character you either have to go deep into their backstory or just don't include them?
This whole thing boggles my mind and I can only imagine that the people objecting to the character are just looking for an excuse to demand they remove it.
I think that no one in-game cares all that much and that Mizhena isn't ashamed or afraid to share the story and all of that is very informative to the world.
A place where magic exists is a place where someone can be trans without drama or persecution, and that is awesome.
Well, I'm not, I was talking about multi-classing the whole time. I didn't realize he had asked about duel(sic) class. You can only dual class once however, so in that case no, you couldn't go fighter, to mage, to cleric @DyasAlure. You only get end up with 2 total classes in dual classing. And you don't regain your dormant class' abilities until you reach/exceed your previous class' level. You could technically 50/50 a dual classed character, but it would basically be like single classing twice until you finally hit 50 the second time.
In BG1 I put the ring of wizardry on Edwin and killed the final boss with like 9 magic missiles. It was delightful. Clerics not needed.
I must be missing something important here. Blame it on being the end of the week and my brain being fried... but I read this as you saying that fantasy games need to either be sexist as a default, or need to offer a detailed world-building explanation as to why they aren't sexist as a default.
And you can't actually be saying that, as that's fucking moronic. So I have to be reading your post wrong somehow.
I love this game.
Nintendo Network ID - Brainiac_8
PSN - Brainiac_8
Steam - http://steamcommunity.com/id/BRAINIAC8/
Add me!
Pretty sure last night i saw something in the options about it.
Of course, I had to decide on this before starting BG1, as I couldn't switch until somewhere during BG2.
To be honest, this particular argument doesn't convince me. I'm not going to pretend to have a lot of knowledge of medieval history in general, or history of the trans identity in particular, but my understanding is that the presentation of everything that we get in fantasy RPGs is already ahistorical; it's more like a romanticized, Hollywood-ized version of medieval history. For example, we routinely see video games depicting, side-by-side, various types of weapons and armor that weren't widely used during the same time periods, or the same geographic locations. My understanding is that, for example, a katana - a slashing weapon - would not be particularly effective against full plate armor, and indeed these two types of equipment weren't developed to ever go up against each other; yet, BG2 lets you wear plate, dual-wield katanas, and get into a fight with someone else wearing full plate - and win, because your numbers are higher! And this is fine, because plate is cool, katanas are cool, and games want you to feel cool!
Then you get into pedantic, biological factors, like for example: where are the rivers of filth and feces that should be flowing through every densely-populated city? We see kitchens (because an inn that's cooking up some delicious stew and has a fully-stocked larder is a tasty component of fantasy), but we hardly ever see latrines, or at the least waste buckets.
Further, my impression is that the morals and ethics that we usually see in fantasy games are more akin to modern Western thought than they are to medieval thought. In a fantasy game, if you come across a poor serf who's starving, it's generally considered a morally-good action to give him some money and food, and maybe fight to give him his freedom. In a more genuinely-medieval setting, would that still be the case? Or is it more likely that people would go "welp, he's a serf, this is God's plan for him, who am I to interfere."?
This is before you even bring magic into the equation. Magic is like Kurzweil's AI: it creates a singularity. We can't really predict how society might be changed with the introduction of magic; we can just come up with entertaining guesses.
(Oh, and incidentally, folks who say things like "When you have magical girdles that can change your physical sex, 'trans' shouldn't even be a thing", I'm curious: how do you know that Mizhena ISN'T wearing such a girdle? I haven't played the game, so I don't know how the whole interaction is presented, but the descriptions of the scene don't mention whether she wears such a girdle or not, and the conversation interactions would be equally valid if she were wearing it.)
TL;DR - Fantasy video games that AREN'T trying to be rigorous medieval simulators (the way flight sims try to rigorously simulate real aircraft) are already ahistorical and immersion-breaking. To me, it doesn't seem like adding representatives of under-represented groups would be any more or less immersion-breaking than what we already get.
What, again?!
Oh maybe? I just started it, didn't move past first room yet as it was late.
that must have been totsc because in vanilla BG1 he had something like 100% magic resist
I mean, even setting aside the fact that it's a made up reality that doesn't really exist (and thus can be whatever the hell it wants to be), The Forgotten Realms doesn't have the same social, political, or hell even metaphysical basis as we do by a country fucking mile.
That's like getting mad at Final Fantasy for having zeppelins because those weren't invented until the 1900s. What?
This is a lore-based setting where if you're confused by ANYTHING, it falls under 3 simple categories of explanation: 1)Magic, 2) The Divines made it that way, 3) The DM said so, now deal with it.
XBL: GamingFreak5514
PSN: GamingFreak1234
Which is completely bogus.
You know, I was wondering why nobody referenced the excommunication of the Knights Templar or the rise of King Robert the Bruce of Scotland.
EDIT: Installing BG:EE and Siege. Sigh. I had hoped to get the PoE expansions now that I finished up Shadowrun: Hong Kong, but I can't let transphobic asshole behavior go unpunished.
Now I gotta figure out what character to play. An Avenger/Thief, maybe?
The other main thing that catches my attention is Dungeon Be Gone, which I haven't used myself, but I think was the Irenicus starting dungeon skipper that could cause 'problems', though I don't think I ever saw anyone specify what sort of problems it could cause.
The other weird thing I ran into while using Rogues Rebalanced was with regards to the major event/cutscene thing the mod adds late in the game. After I finished it and was trying to leave the area, the game would crash repeatedly. On my next playthrough, I ended up removing the tweak that makes the shorter Chapter 1 and 2 cutscenes and dreams because I thought it might interfere... then the major event didn't trigger at all, I had to use the console to force it to start, but when I completed it, it didn't crash at least. I don't know that making the early cutscenes and dreams shorter would interfere with anything else, but then, I'm not entirely sure just how the scripting for the game works. It's already a bit wonky, given the idiotic way they handle conversations, and previous conversations. So who knows?
I'm also not sure what Level1 NPCs is for though doesn't the Tweakpack have an option where you get to level up NPC companions when they first join?
Edit: I was originally going to say you could just make a custom party to do that, but I realized you wouldn't have any of the banter and dialog types of interactions. So yeah, actually I can see how that's a pretty useful mod.