Indrian

Ah, had not realized this had come up before, so my apologies for rehashing old territory.

I agree with you about BG2, but I think the fundamental difference is not the fewer number of PCs but rather the intricate connection every one of them has to TNO (well okay, maybe Fall-From-Grace and Nordrom don't as much, but still). From a story perspective, it seems to me kind of odd that one might choose Ignus early on, learn all the back story about the master/apprentice relationship, and then drop him off at the brothel or the Modron cube and never see him again. Ditto for Dak'hon the slave or Morte and his following TNO around everywhere over his guilt. From a story perspective, we are told over and over that TNO draws tormented souls to him like a lodestone but then poof, there is no payoff with at least two characters. It could be that the designers decided on this method for greater replayability, after all, they knew the limitations of the engine and chose to put in eight PCs, but it leaves messy loose ends in a single playthrough that cannot be resolved. BG2, with its many NPCs that are more tangnetial to the main plot and the main character's story, does not have the same problem.

Ravel's Maze probably can't really be tweaked in a reasonable manner to accomodate that, so it may be best to leave that alone, but I wonder how much work it would be to have the fortress play every cutscene and every fight on a single playthrough. If its a lot of work, I can understand how based on your philosophy on the modifications you want to make it would not be worth it. If it would only take a little effort, however, seems it would make a fair number happy if this has come up before and would still be a completely optional tweak for those who don't care for it. I will say no more on the matter, but I appreciate that you put up with all of us cooky people and our strange thoughts on the game and have put so much work into an incredible mod.

I have no intention of doing this. It'd be a hell of a lot of work for very little gain. It would also make the dialogues where this occurred nonsensical. If you want to see the other dialogue options, play through again with a different class/alignment and take different party members.

Like I said, I am no programmer, so if you say it is too much work then that is that, (and looking at the dialogues more closely you are right about narrative issues) but I think you misunderstood my point. It seems to me the story of Torment is as much the story of TNOs companions as it is the story of TNO himself, and that story is partly compromised by the arbitrary six person limit. This is not the same as deciding to play the game through as good or evil, choosing a faction, or deciding which woman to woo. It would be nice if there was a way to include the complete story of each character in the game. Obviously my first stab was not completely thought out, but I was hoping to engender discussion as opposed to actually presenting a solution on the first go around.

What purpose is there for me doing all the work to make this happen, when you can just, you know, bring everyone besides Vhailor/Ignus with you?

Its about giving each character closure. Vhailor wants his justice, Ignus wants his revenge, the others sacrifice themselves for you and then have a final bit of dialogue bringing the story to a close. Actually, when I said that Vhailor and Ignus should be left untouched, in retrospect it would be kinda cool if you could fight them both one at a time too, though it has been a long while since I have played through the fortess, so that might end up being screwy too. The idea being that this is the only way one can tell the story of the entire group. From a gameplay perspective, there is nothing broken about the way things are now, but from a story perspective, things are left a little damaged.

If you see this as more of a path/choice issue of which characters you bring, I can certainly see that. In the end, you have to do what you think is best for your mod. You did seem a little dismissive about what the story points I was attempting to raise, however, though I could be misconstruing your response. Either way, as the header says, I am trying to engender discussion on the best way to handle these issues as opposed to offering what is necessarily the best solution.

Here's a fun one that might not be fixable/worth the effort. Fighting Ravel, TNO dies. In that split second of action before rez, one of the party manages to kill Ravel. As a result, the maze does not fill with shadows.

Found a small bug. Did Bedai-Lihn's foundry quests and asked her how to join the Anarchists. Gave the password to Scofflaw Penn and got him angry by telling him "That's a pretty skewed view of their beliefs." I next responded with "I'm just kidding" and he teleported me out. Got the journal entry saying the door was locked to me, but the door actually remained open and I could go back in. Talking to him again got me teleported out again, at which point the door was closed and locked like it should be.