DavesGaming

A Celebration of Mediocrity

A couple of exceedingly mediocre characters.  Both will have exactly 70 combined ability points (official minimum is 76).

I already envision the great challenge of this run for me, will be how to write things up with a simpleton of a main character.  I would love if readers could offer feedback and ideas. To be clear, I’m not looking for advice on how to play stupid. I can do that just fine, thank you. I’m looking for insight into a moron’s view of the World and adventure. A very *nice* moron. 
This could be fun and I’m open to input. At this point I’m not feeling completely up to the challenge.  You all will know, if I show more updates from Christopher’s perspective, it means Jill has defeated me.
And yes, I’m exaggerating it a little. Jill is almost average.

*****

Jill has always lived at Candlekeep. Her father, Gorion loves her, and has always encouraged Jill to do right by all those who come into her life. These have been key words, a theme for her life.  But Jill has to admit, she often struggles to understand what would actually be most helpful and most appreciated to most people? She is just not intuitive (or insightful) about how to treat people.

Jill has tried several times to find a skill, a profession that would mean something to her and let her help people…   with whatever it was they thought they needed.  But everything she tried proved really hard for her. She tried learning magic like Gorion, that was hopeless. The weird words and letters made no sense to her.
Her father suggested she had a big heart, maybe some sort of clergy?  It was embarrassing the things the priests said to her about that. She was apparently too stupid for a cleric too.
Jill’s friend Imoen said she could be a great warrior, she was clearly the bigger and stronger of the two of them. Doesn’t that mean she’s above average? The Watchers tried to talk her out of this too, and she was actually smaller than all of them. Jill was getting really discouraged. She heard one of the old guys say something about “good thing you’re cute, you don’t need to do anything else.” Well poo to that. What does that even mean?
Fortunately, something unexpected presented itself.  Jill was dancing one night at the Candlekeep Inn, when a Watcher suggested she was graceful, maybe she should be an archer or a scout. She knew Imoen did some of that scouting stuff, but when Jill tried to tag along she just wound up giggling and ruining whatever Imoen thought she was scouting.

But an archer, using a bow. That was a thought.  And it has worked out pretty well for her. She now knows, that really just made her a sort of warrior.  She has learned how to use a sword, how to move around in different sorts of armor, a little about things like self defense and tactics (okay honestly, Jill might have failed that last class). But mostly, Jill has become a good shot with a bow.  She knows she’s not world class or anything. But she has become a good enough shot she can be useful.  The Watchers wouldn’t chase her off the wall now if an attacker came. Her trainer said she was good enough to be helpful!  Actually he called her an “asset to Candlekeep”. Once she understood what that meant it made her feel good all the way to her toes. 

In these last couple weeks some interesting things have happened. First, a young cleric came visiting the library to do research on, um, something Jill completely didn’t understand.  But he is sweet, and he makes her laugh, and they’ve been spending a lot of time together. His name is Christopher, and he has just finished training as a Cleric of Lathander. He is way nicer than that Cleric of Oghma who told her she was stupid.  Jill has really enjoyed spending whatever time she could with him.  He is really the first boy she has ever known that she wants to kiss. But he is just passing through? And she knows her father never wants her to leave Candlekeep!  This is hard!

But then this morning, her father tells her they have to leave Candlekeep at once. This afternoon!  He told her to go buy supplies for a trip. What does she need for a trip?  Jill found Christopher and asked him.  He had some ideas and helped her find some weapons and armor. He asked what was going on and if he could help more.  Jill was almost in a panic over so much changing, Christopher said it would be all right. He would go find Imoen and they would follow along, that way they would all be together.
That makes Jill feel a lot better.  She knew Christopher would be able to help.

Jill. A single class fighter. Short Bow specialist.
(Human Female, age 20, English, vivid purple hair in a pony tail, round face, soft shape, friendly smile, chain mail armor, yellow cape, bow, short sword)
9 – 16 – 12 – 10 – 8 – 15

Christopher grew up in Baldur’s Gate. Most his life he’s struggled to be useful to his family, or his friends.  He’s always been smart! But more intuitive than book smart. He likes reading and learning, but only when it interests him.  He isn’t physically very capable, he knows this. He isn’t very strong, and he is so clumsy it is beyond embarrassing. For all that, he desperately wants to help people. And he wants to be the sort that people know they can come to when they need help.

Becoming a Cleric seemed to satisfy all his interests and best abilities. He did well in his studies. Not as well with weapon training.  And although he understands his studies, he struggles with articulating higher ideas.  He had hoped that meant he was destined for work with the common folk. But the clergy higher-ups weren’t so sure. He was sent to run a remote temple, that he learned was really just a shrine. His duties consisted of passing offerings on to the main temple, and keeping the weeds trimmed.  It wasn’t very fulfilling. He commented on this to a superior, to his surprise he was given a research project that required travel to Candlekeep. That was exciting! The subject he was researching was actually pretty theoretical and obtuse, he suppressed the thought it was busy work.

Candlekeep has been an electrifying experience for Christopher. The research was actually fascinating to him. But even better, he met a girl. It sounds so ordinary to say that, but she is amazing.  He recognizes she isn’t a deep thinker, but she has a huge heart and will go out of her way to help with almost anything.  She seems to smile and laugh as naturally as breathing. He is certain, if in the Great Library of Candlekeep he looked up the phrase “breath of fresh air” he would find Jill’s portrait attached.
His only concern, and he’s hardly had time to think on it much, is that Jill seems pretty locked in to remaining at Candlekeep.  He is already dreaming of showing her all of Faerun, but he knows he’s getting ahead of things.

But then today something dramatic changed. Jill is anxious that her father has decided they must leave on a trip *today*.  He helped her get some things together for the trip, and he met up with Jill’s friend Imoen and they agreed they would follow along on this journey. They would hold back out of sight, Jill’s father does not seem to want the company.  But they could follow, maybe help if needed. At least be together (?!) wherever Jill was going.

Christopher. A single class Cleric of Lathander.
(Human Male, Age 25, English, Dark blonde hair, a little chubby, soft, bashful smile, thin beard, chain mail armor, blue surcoat, blue shield with a yellow sunburst)
10 – 7 – 10 – 13 – 17 – 14

*****

A few comments as we launch into this. 

Jill is the same character I used with “Aias and the Aliens” a few months back. She is based on a PnP character from my own game setting.  She was intentionally nothing special. But she was a “Mutant” in that setting, her purple hair is the only visual tell. She also had “Kinetic Absorption”, an ability that reduced damage from physical attacks. I will amend her with EEKeeper to have 25% Piercing/Slashing/Missile resistance and 50% Crushing resistance. It will provide no help against magic/elemental/energy type attacks.  But will help some with her lack of constitution bonus. 
Both her hair and absorption will be considered artifacts of her unusual parentage.
Funny thing, this version of Jill does have one significant difference from PnP. She was originally a Cleric, but when I built the Aias team I didn’t need another cleric so I flipped her dexterity and wisdom.  I had a lot of fun with that re-invention of the character, so she’s back!

Christopher is unique to this run. He has never appeared elsewhere.

It’s also worth mentioning these characters are mediocre, not *bad*. Their scores are shifted and optimized for the roles they play. They just have low point totals (both have 70) so they won’t be good at much else.  As I mentioned up top, I think the real challenge here will be writing up the tale.  How to describe the adventures of two unremarkable heroes.  That may be its own sort of heroism.

The game builds will be the same as used previously on “Gerold and Louisa”, with a few new additions to BG2; “Dark Tidings” (an older Acifer mod I only just recently learned of), and a few from Lava’s Athkatlan Grounds series (Tangled Oak Isle, Alabaster Sands, Southern Edge).

Update 1

Jill and company have gotten off to a pretty good start. I had wanted to have this update done last Saturday, but the Microsoft Generative AI I favor was broken. It wasn’t actually fixed until someday Monday. The good news is, that led to me playing around with something I will share below. The bad news is, this is running four days behind.

*****

Jill

Setting out from Candlekeep turned into something really bad. Gorion ordered me to run, I obeyed. But I heard horrible sounds of fighting behind me. I finally collapsed in tears after running as long as I could.

Christopher stood watch nearby, let the two of us have this time.

[This opening led to an interesting first act. Christopher was on point, the team tank. He had 8 hit points, Scale Mail armor and shield, a war hammer that he has no bonuses with. But Jill and Imoen are quite dangerous with their bows. Well, more dangerous with their bows than in melee]

As we walked through the woods, we were forced to fight a few times. Once I had to use my sword.

After a really scary journey, we made it to the Friendly Arms Inn.

We entered and found Gorion’s friends Khalid and Jaheira.

They had a mission, something about bad metal, so we agreed to travel south with them. This worked out quite well as they were both more serious kinds of fighters. They could block so Imoen and I could use our bows. Christopher stayed back with his sling, so he could heal too.
This seemed to work well.

In the next city, B something. Oh, I know! It was a bear and a ghost. Funny. But anyway, we met a mage girl. Her hair was as cool as mine! But she was being chased by some really nasty mages who wanted to cut her up. We couldn’t have that, so I asked her to stay with us.

She traveled with us down to Neshkill (?). But then she decided to go somewhere else. I think she wasn’t as scared any more.

We had to fight some woman who wanted to kill me. That made Christopher really angry. He even called her a bad name! We were going to head off to the mines next, but we met a confused Ranger who talked to his hamster a lot. But he said his witch was missing. I asked if she’d been turned into a hamster. I think I confused him more.
But no, he thought some nasty Gnolls had taken her, to eat her.

So we all set out to find Dina-somebody. We found a bunch of Gnolls in a ruined old fort. Chistopher knew a name for it and everything, but I’ll just call it old fort. We had to fight a bunch of those Gnoll things. Christopher used up all his healing magic because Khalid and Jaheira kept getting hurt.

But we found Dina! Minsc was really happy, and we got them back to the Inn in Neshkill.

Imoen had been studying a couple books she had and thought she could be a mage. Just like Gorion! That was exciting. But it meant she wouldn’t be as good a scout for us, so we’ll look for a new one.

We went the carnival, that was fun! I ate too much. We explored around the area some, and then got to the mines. It was full of those little Kobold things. Like dogmen with scales. And they smell! Especially underground. Oof, do not go there if you can avoid it.

We fought a lot of them, I used a whole bunch of arrows! And there was a big Orc guy deep into the mine. Christopher thought he was the bad guy’s boss, so we told he had to stop hurting people and ruining the metal. He looked at me like I was coocoo. So I had to shoot him, a couple times. What a jerk.

Later, we were exploring around the area when we found a halfling village. We met the nicest woman! She said she could help us with the scouting stuff. That made Christopher and Jaheira really happy. Imoen said really, she could do both jobs now. But Jaheira was worried she couldn’t “devote the attention it requires”. Oh boy! I asked them all to remember we’re all friends here, and this Alora was a scout AND a really good archer. So we could all be like bow sisters, and just go “Thwack” and kill the monsters! We laughed, and were ready to explore some more.

*****

I’ve done a few things different in this run. Some is just to be different. But I’m also trying to stretch the definition of a balanced team and see how effective we can be. And yeah, I’ve got three archers and slinger going now. A lot of missiles.

I think this will be the final form of the party, its now Jaheira on point with Minsc. I kept Khalid a lot longer than I normally do, I saw some “NPC Project” lines from him I’ve not seen before. But you know, by the 50th time I hear “My heart’s really not in this” he just had to go. So Minsc will hit harder but be less tanky.
Christopher will be a good cleric, and not much else. He does have the Gauntlets of Dexterity, which of course gives both plusses to hit and armor class. Bonus.
Jill is right alongside him. She has Mastery now with her short bow. And “The Dale’s Protector” gauntlets. So she hits often and pretty hard. She currently has over 40% of party kills.
The rear rank is Imoen and Alora. Imoen dualled to mage at 2nd level. Obviously she’s our mage. Who can use a bow. But she won’t be hugely effective with it.
Alora was rebuilt as a Fighter-Thief, short bow specialist. As a multi-class she won’t be as good an archer as Jill. But she will be pretty darn good!

One thing this party build will do is cause some scarcity of certain things. First, three archers using short bow. So short bows and arrows will be in demand. It may be a while before everyone has magic. Of course Imoen is a mage, so when she needs magic she can cast it herself.
All three of these women also use short sword! So another weapon we’ll have a tight supply of. Imoen will be able to use Quarter Staff, so she’ll likely do that.

Jill

I’ve been talking with Jaheira and Christopher about making us all into a strong team. Outside of Candlekeep, Faerun is a dangerous place. And people are after me. So we’re trying to all get better working together. I like all my friends, I don’t want any of them getting hurt because some big brute is after me.

So we’ve been exploring together. Eventually, we need to head north to fight some bandits. But Christopher and Jaheira both think we need some more practice together as a team before we go looking for trouble.

*****

Am I overdoing it? I hope not. I’m having fun trying to look at things from Jill’s perspective. And in spite of what I said earlier, she’d not really *stupid*. Intelligence 10 and wisdom 8. So *almost* average. She can actually use the miscellaneous protection scrolls.
But I’m trying to write this from a very simple perspective. Jill cares about right and wrong. But that mostly means only hurting those who try to hurt her first. I think she vaguely understands there is real evil in the world, and she will fight it. But she will often need the help of her friends to figure out what that means.

I think the social dynamic of the group will have Jill the leader mainly in the charismatic sense of the term. Everyone likes her, she can keep the peace and she makes everyone feel wanted and needed.
Jaheira, and especially Christopher are the real brain trust of the group. Jaheira has the most worldly sort of experience. Christopher is clearly the wisest of the group.
Imoen is more of a puzzle solving sort of smart. And Alora is obviously needed for her skills.

That all means this is a fun team. Definitely less hard hitting than many of my previous runs. With Jaheira and Minsc on point, we have sort of a thin front line. Neither of them is extremely tanky. Archery is the team’s strength, especially Jill continues to rock for pure damage dealing. Obviously, I’ll need to rethink some of this in BG2 (more opponents immune to that sort of damage). But for now, a fun team.

Update 3

We’ve continued to grow and develop as a team. Jaheira seems confident we can face a range of threats, the sort we’re likely to face as we explore more deeply into local bandit problems and the iron crisis.

*****

Some major party growth in this period, but I’d still rate this crew as one of the weaker teams I’ve run. Significantly, I now have Jaheira equipped with the Boots of Speed and Gauntlets of Ogre Power. Her share of experience has jumped from around 20% to over 30% for this chapter. She is now the deadliest member of the team. Basically she has become the sort of alpha I always want on point. Jill’s percentage of kills has dropped, but she still is dangerous in her own right. She doesn’t hit as hard as Jaheira, but she hits more often.
My role playing challenge at this point is to show Jill’s growing confidence and capability, while still keeping her pretty simple and uncomplicated. I want to keep her as my primary narrator all the way through, and as I indicated before, she’s the leader in a charismatic sense and because the plot centers on her. But Jaheira and Christopher are the brains of the team. I don’t think its fair to describe any one of them as the leader.

Update 4

We finally took care of things for Scar, his buddies business was taken over by dopplegangers! These guys are hard to spot! Christopher says it easier if you know the people, ’cause they don’t know stuff. But I think knowing them would be worse for other reasons!
But we didn’t know Scar’s buddy. But we killed a bunch of dopplegangers.
We took care of another chore for Scar, then we checked out the Iron Throne building. We didn’t find anything very useful, although a few people attacked us. We did learn that the leaders had gone off to Candlekeep. So we all had to go to my old home. For some reason I’m a little nervous about this. It won’t be like home without Gorion there.

He was. Things started off pretty easy here.

We found the leaders of the Iron Throne. They made some threats. But it was just hot air in Candlekeep. Its not like anyone is going to get hurt here.

What a mess.

They locked us all up. Ulrant came and said some mean things to me, then Tethtoril stopped by and helped us escape into the catacombs.

I was right, fighting dopplegangers is hard when you know who they’re trying to be.

We talked about what to do next. Honestly I have no idea. Christopher and Jaheira said we should stay away from Baldur’s Gate, maybe things will sort out, or cool off. So for now, we’re heading to that haunted tower south of here to look for that dwarf’s missing dagger.

Update 5

A big update this time, finishing the main story of BG1 and moving into SoD. More comments after.

*****

We talked with the ghost of Durlag himself. I think. Christopher and Imoen got into a long talk about what all this was. All I know is this place is haunted. We killed a demon on that lower level. I had thought a demon fight would be harder? He was just full of hot air.

Then it was time to head back to Baldur’s Gate and see if we were still in trouble. We were. But soon enough Christopher was able to explain to the City Dukes how we’d been set-up by my brother, Sarevok. He was standing right there at the time. Awkward! He started a fight and we had to chase him down.

We defeated Sarevok, we really filled him with a lot of arrows. Fast.

We were allowed to rest up at the Duke’s palace after, Imoen was getting some proper mage training from a nice Duke lady. The rest of us made a quick run to round up some of Sarevok’s followers.

Then Christopher and I got married! Wow! Married in a palace! To the best guy I’ve ever known. Then we said some goodbyes, everyone had things to do. The city is getting crowded now with refugees coming from some trouble up north. I think we’ll need to look into this. I’m working with my sword a little more, if its just Christopher and I, I should be able to cover him so he can pray and cast spells.

*****

A few thoughts on this sub-optimal team. Its really been fun, and with a combination of sensible tactics, and a lot of buffing sometimes, the team has been very successful.

One minor challenge, neither of my melee types (Jaheira and Minsc) were proficient in Long Sword, Bastard Sword or Dagger. Those are the only specific weapons that can harm the Greater Werewolves. That meant Minsc needed to take a weapon he wasn’t proficient in and buff up a little. It worked fine. Scratch three Greater dogboys.

Now getting into SoD there will be some changes to my team. Imoen and Alora are just not available. Jaheira is available late, but my plan is not to use her on this part.

So continuing with my theme of a sub-optimal team, Jill will take Jaheira’s place on point. She currently has High Mastery in Short Bow and Specialization in Short Sword. So yeah, she’ll be using her short sword for now. The “good” news is she can take Mastery in the sword at 9th level, which should come by the mid-point of SoD. The bad news is, that means she won’t have Grand Mastery of Short Bow until she hits 12th level sometime in BG2.
Remember Jill has a unique (if minor) form of damage reduction, that makes up for her middling constitution. Also now, with Draw Upon Holy Might she can get a 15 constitution.
But equipment-wise we’re in a good place for this change. Jill can take the Boots of Speed, Gauntlets of Ogre Power, a +3 Short Sword, a suit of Full Plate Armor, and a few other helpful things. That should all add up to saying between the build and the gear, Jill will be effective in her new role.

Minsc will remain in the second spot. He rocks, and he knows it! Or at least Boo knows.

Christopher is up next. All he’s really good at is being a cleric. We need one of those!

Then we have Dynaheir, Minsc’s witch. She is a capable mage and will fill the spot nicely. I like how having her along for this part of the adventure adds a little more drama to the start of BG2.

Flaming Fist Captain Corwin will join with us. With her at archer, Jill is less needed in that role.

And finally, the team recruits the refugee half-elf Erato, who they met at the Elfsong Tavern. She’s a Cleric of Tymora and a “Scout”. She is a custom created NPC via A7’s NPC Generator.

As with all things on this run, this is mostly a mediocre team. Corwin might be the ringer? She can tear up a battlefield. Let’s see how this goes!

Update 6

The mediocre team tore through Siege of Dragonspear in pretty good time. Jill was plenty effective on point, at least to say she makes a pretty solid tank. She is not extremely hard hitting (single wielding a short sword with shield). But that’s sort of the point with mediocrity, you can make up for a few deficiencies with *stuff*. But you can’t make up for everything.
The rest of the team is not particularly powerful either. Jill’s husband Christopher has a really good wisdom, but no bonuses anywhere else. Minsc is strong and can hit hard with his sword, but he’s actually more fragile than Jill. Dynaheir is a competent mage. And the new NPC Erato is a useful but not powerful cleric/thief. Corwin of course, as a Ranger-Archer IS powerful.
For those following along, it is true. I have created Bhaal-spawn Barbie. Often these renders really make me laugh.
This post will likely be all I do with SoD.

*****

After getting a few friends together it was time to march out with the army. Christopher and I thought it might be good to have Captain Corwin with us, with me using a sword for now we were down to the scout Erato as our only archer. And she’s not really a trained warrior at all.

Wow does Corwin make a big difference. She might be the best archer I’ve ever seen!

Captain Corwin is sort of a grumpy one. I think I annoy her.

We fought more scary undead. We saw a Dwarf turn into an undead right in front of us! Wow, but obviously he was sort of stupid. We had to kill him then. I mean, shoot. Destroy him? That sounds better. If he hadn’t turned into undead maybe we all could have been friends, but yeah. He was stupid.

The Crusade blew up the bridge we were going to use, so we had to head to the next one. On the way we found an old Temple of Bhaal. It might even be where I was born? Some of the story seemed right for that. But it was all a pretty big deal, we killed a dragon! Wild right?

There was a whole lot of evil going on in that Temple. We found a few Crusade prisoners, we let them go. I won’t let anyone suffer like they were if I can stop it. I hope they quit the Crusade and we don’t have to fight them again, I’d feel bad to have to hurt them after saving them.
What Christopher called “The Mad God” had taken over the temple, but another group led by a purple squid head was fighting them. Evil all around! It made it easy to just fight everyone. The old temple isn’t so evil anymore! I wish we could have just burnt it.

We finally got to the other bridge, it was under attack by the Crusaders, but Christopher and Dynaheir had figured a way in for us.

We got into the fort, and found our friend Khalid was running it now! Good for him! Actually it was a little bad because there were so many Crusaders just outside. So we came up with a plan where we brought the rest of our army to attack outside while the guys in the fort attacked coming out. Big battle. Just a lot going on.

Then it was time to move out. Something really bad tried to take me on that bridge. I know it has a dark history connected to my bloodline. But wow. It was like something tried to take me over for a moment, I felt like I had to hold it in and beat it all at once, or it would hurt more people. THAT was not going to happen!
But now most of the soldiers think I’m something evil. At least my friends are all still with me. Although they understand this fight as well as I do, maybe better.

We finally made it to the camp. I could quickly tell we weren’t entirely welcome here. The Generals had a mission for us, Christopher said it was a really stupid mission, but at least it got us out of the camp.

We wound up at an underground entrance that led to Dragonspear Castle. We needed some information in there.

Amongst other things we did find Haephernon, Caelar’s number two guy, is working with some sort of Demon? Wild, but it proves this Crusade is evil at its core.

We rushed back to camp, and had a last meeting with Caelar before the fighting really got started.

The Generals said my team was back in camp as a last defense. Apparently, I was supposed to be in charge of this!

And we did. We kept the camp safe from several attacks. The day’s fighting seemed to break the Crusade. Most of their army was either killed, or melted away. Corwin said this is common with “such rabbles”.
Whatever she meant, the Crusade was down just to the forces defending their Castle. And we had an attack all set up for the next morning.

When we blew up the gate and entered the castle, I was challenged to a duel by Ashateal, another of Caelar’s lieutenants.

I felt really bad about killing Ashateal. But the Crusaders felt worse and most of the ones still fighting just sort of quit after that.
Then we got into the Castle, and found Caelar and Haephernon in the basement. He wanted to open a gateway to the Abyss. I would ask “what was he thinking?” But we found very soon that he was some sort of little demon. A demonette? Or was he a devil? Ask Christopher.
We had to fight Haephernon and his boss. Caelar never wanted things to go like this, so we welcomed her to join our fight. She was a really good warrior! But what did she think was going to happen? I mean, sometimes I feel like a stupid fool next to my husband. (Hah! Joke’s on him, he married me!). But anyway, Caelar was really the stupid fool. She made me feel smart! At least she saw her mistake and switched sides. When the Abyss was dropping in on her…

We defeated the Demons and returned home. Then, well, after the celebration that night; a friend of ours, Skie was murdered. I saw it all in a fuzzy dream. And I woke up next to her dead body in morning. Everyone thinks I killed her. I get it. But I didn’t!

That all led to us being kicked out of Baldur’s Gate in the middle of the night.

*****

Obviously, my next update will start with BG2.

A few thoughts as this continues on, I am really enjoying this run. I had worried a bit about finding the voice for writing up Jill. I was worried about a simpleton, good natured, but with an overly simplified view of things. Specifically worried about how to write this up. It turns out, I’m having a great time! Its quite different from how I’ve done it before. If you look at something like “Psyche and Diomedes” or “Chuck and Sarah“, those runs had much more insightful narrators. I don’t mean to sound smug, but to me their tone and narration seems more normal.
With Jill, I try to reduce thoughts to their most basic level and not look at much of the nuance. I do still see Jill as having some sense of humor, and a sense of wonder about the many things she can’t wrap her mind around. And maybe being a bit overly enthusiastic about her friends and loved ones.
And I just let her ramble more. She’s more “stream of consciousness”, less structured and edited.

The renders have proven more challenging than expected in one dimension. Jill’s description is so overly “cute”, the AIs either want to show her as an Anime or Disney character. I have dealt with that by building a model of her at OpenArt, so on these last couple updates whenever you can see Jill’s face I’m using that AI. But as before, it is a more limited AI for fantastical subjects. So we’re working around that as best as I can. One more challenge, just to keep things interesting!

Yeah, Jill is Bhaal-spawn Barbie.

I’d also mention the video-render of Dynaheir. The image it was based off shows flame erupting from her hand, my idea was a Fireball launched away. But as a video it came out curiously, like she created a little spurt and directed it like a flame-thrower.
Well I love that! My previously mentioned character Psyche, in a PnP game, had developed a spell called “Flame Bolt” which would be almost exactly like this. A third level spell that’s less area effect but more easily targeted than Fireball. So this video is a keeper!

Update 7

ill, her new husband Christopher, and company have finally made it to BG2, Irenicus’ welcome center. The mediocre run continues. As I’ve noted before, these characters and this team are not *bad*. They are even “optimized” somewhat for their roles. But they started with below minimum points as the IE games go. Jill and Christopher each started with 70 total points. They are perhaps more normal, less extraordinary than most of the heroes we’ve all played .
This has primarily been a role playing challenge. Jill in particular has a simple understanding of the world around her. She’s not stupid, but some of Irenicus’ taunts about her cluelessness do strike close to home. She is clearly good-aligned, and big hearted; but her understanding of good and evil is mostly obvious and not nuanced.

Honestly, I’m finding this to be a refreshing sort of run. I’ll have more comments after about the team build.

*****

I woke up in a blur of pain, in a cage. The hooded man is sort of a jerk! He ran off on some other business and Imoen was right there to set Christopher and I free. We quickly found Jaheira and Minsc. It was good to have old friends right here, even if its sort of bad for them! But I’m happy to see them. Minsc informs us he saw Dynaheir murdered. My heart broke, so often I didn’t understand her, but she was a friend and will be missed. I’m worried for Khalid who is still missing.

Then we found Khalid. Jaheira’s husband had been all cut up. It was tragic and horrible. I feel Jaheira’s pain, she plays tough but that almost makes it worse.

We finally made it out of this scary place, right into a fight. We saw our enemy, he was fighting off thieves, and then wizards? He seems to upset everyone. He was arrested by the wizards, but they took Imoen too!
We’ve all lost so much. I need to cry! But I can stay strong for everyone, we have to figure out what is going on on what to do next. I think Christopher and Jaheira are sorting things out.

Then we stumble across a circus of all things! But something went wrong and a little boy is crying looking for his mom. Maybe we can make one thing right today? So we head into a cursed tent.

We got the mom back to her little boy. Aerie will stay with us. I like her! She’s really smart and a Wizard, we need one since Imoen was taken. I think finding my sister is my number one thing? Then stopping that crazy hooded man, Irenicus.

We stopped by an outfitter and sorted out what gear we had, sold a few things we’d swiped from our prison and bought some of what we needed. We also had the dagger that had killed our friend Skie, we found someone who would help us find out if we could get her out of the dagger (?). Really, I don’t get it, but Christopher thinks her soul is inside the dagger somehow. It feels like I’ve failed my dear friends these last few days. Maybe we can still make things right for Skie.

Soon, we met with a man who said he could help us get to Imoen. What a relief! Yoshimo said he was part of the local Thieves Guild. That makes me nervous. But I think the government here is pretty awful, I’ll work with thieves if I have to. And I’ll just live with the sick feeling that gives me.

We parted ways with Yoshimo, then met a woman looking for help fighting some monsters that took her family home. We agreed to help her, then realized what bad place we were in! They were running slave fights! Oh no they don’t, not while we’re here.

Our new friend Aerie *really* hates slavers. She is so sweet and gentle! Until she hears about slaves.

After this we got some much needed rest.

The next day we tried to move out and help Nalia, but we kept getting distracted and things kept coming up! We fought more slavers, and Jaheira had some business with the Harpers that turned bad. I think she’s now a bad guy to the Harpers. Because of me. Swell.
Oh and we had to make a trip into that dagger. Suddenly I feel a headache coming on. But we went into the dagger and apparently freed Skie’s soul.

But we finally made it Nalia’s “home”. Hah! Her family home is a castle, over-run with trolls.

We’re a good team now, I think. Christopher and I, Jaheira and Minsc all know each other well and fight pretty well together. Aerie and Nalia are both a big help too. Our equipment still isn’t as good as what we lost, but we can do some good now.

We cleared out the trolls pretty fast. We were too late for most of Nalia’s friends and family. One nasty old aunt and a couple soldiers survived. But I think Nalia has lost more than I have. Then she gave me her Castle! I can’t run a Castle! I don’t even know how to cook or do laundry. How can I run a Castle!

We started clean-up right away, and Nalia helped us with the staff that would really run the castle. And do the cooking and laundry. I was feeling much better.
Next day we ran off to a town called Trademeet. They were having problems with a bad group of Druids… and Genies! Awesome! The Genies are so big and blue, and they talk funny. We were able to make the Genies happy, and we had to kill some Druids. Jaheira explained they were a group that didn’t like people. Hey, even I had figured that out!
After, we were big heroes in Trademeet. Its nice to be liked somewhere.

After we went back to “our” Castle (!). Along the way a messenger caught up to us and said Skie was alive back in Baldur’s Gate! We did good by her! I really did cry this time. We had a big party. I worried this was rude for Jaheira and Minsc, with all they’d lost. But Jaheira said it was good to celebrate the wins, so that’s what we did.
It was mentioned our Army was really small right now. So many soldiers were killed by the trolls, and I guess there were now bandits picking on the people who lived nearby. So we decided to hire more troops. But most were really young. Yeah, yeah, I’m the old woman now. I’ll be 21 next month. No grey yet. We decided to leave Minsc to help train the soldiers.

Next we went back to Athkatla, there seemed to be a lot of work we could do there. And we needed to raise money to get to Imoen.

It was great to see her! Skie was an archer in the Flaming Fists, she fights a lot like me. So we rearranged the team a little. I’ll fight up front alongside Jaheira and Skie will take my spot.

*****

First off, apologies. I could not do GIFs on two of these videos. I generated all of them using the “Pro” setting on OpenArt/Seedance. This makes for smarter renders, and allows for fun things like angry Minsc *and* a Goblin running away. This and the hi-res output makes for huge files. Of course GIF is not an efficient format, so these got to be 150m files! The Minsc and Skie GIFs just were not stable here, so I posted them as videos. You’ll have to hit play. The Aerie GIF seems to work. Let me know if you have any problems, I may have to post it as a MP4 also.

This write-up has gotten a little wordier than my last one, writing as Jill is entertaining for me. I think she’s simple and funny. Which means I like “channeling” her. As before, any thoughts on what she should or should not be thinking or saying are welcome.

The team is not quite in final form yet. I hated parting with Minsc, but I usually do at this point. Skie is very redundant with Jill Apart from being a slightly *stronger* character, Skie doesn’t really add anything. But I think Jill would just *have to* spend some time with her at this point. Jill has the Girdle of Hill Giant Strength, and with a good dexterity and a shield she has a great armor class. She’s actually more tanky than you might expect. And shockingly capable on point.
My plan for now is to do several Lava mods involving new districts of the city, and Acifer’s Dark Tidings. This will all be with the current party build.
Then, I will switch Skie for Keldorn, and Jill will move back to the archer position (and give the Girdle to Jaheira). That then, should be the final form of the party.

Update 8

Let me start this update with a little clarification, a thought left incomplete on the last post.
I always rebuild Skie as a single class unkitted fighter. In my head canon, she was never really a thief. Just a bored and spoiled daughter of nobility. Who went through a minor sort of teen rebellion. Her first and only professional training came when she joined the Flaming Fist and became an archer (a *Fighter*, not the very specialized Ranger sort. Maybe call that small *a* archer). So in my run, Skie is a Fighter who started with two pips each in Short Bow and Short Sword. In essence, her build is the same as Jill’s. Although Skie has better total scores. So when Skie joins the team she is a perfect replacement for Jill, and Jill switches back to being the fighter on point. That is where we are at now.

The bulk of this write up will involve the mods “Dark Tidings” by Acifer and “Tangled Oak Isle”, “Southern Edge” and “Alabaster Sands” by Lava. I won’t spoil much, except I’ll say here that all add some nice character and minor adventures in and around the City of Athkatla.
All together, they add maybe 4 hours of gameplay? A lot of this is just fetch quests. A lot is character and world building. “Dark Tidings” and “Tangled Oak Isle” have the biggest adventures and involve some combat. Both are a ton of fun.

*****

We all talked about what to do next. We have a bunch of things we could be doing. We are now responsible for a small Castle and its land. We have made contact with the local Thieves’ Guild. They promise to put us onto Imoen’s trail. But we are currently broke. Frustrating, we were loaded not too long ago! But the Castle cost money, getting the thieves help cost money, and trying to buy new equipment costs money. Oof! Christopher thinks we should do a quick pass through the city and see what little jobs we can pick up. Adventuring seems to make money in a hurry, and Christopher and Jaheira both think we are poorly equipped. So a little asking around to see if we can make a little before we head off. Maybe just a couple days?

I hate not knowing where Imoen is, or if she’s okay. But I agree with the others, we just don’t have as much gear or as much of the good stuff as we had back in Baldur’s Gate. So a little exploring and questing for now.

We met a mage who was looking for adventurers to run over to the small Island of Irphong to investigate why its light went out.

This all led to some fighting, and a trip into the Shadow Realm.

Then we went back to the Castle to get some rest. There had been some more trouble with bandits in the area. Our militia is training, but I asked Skie to stay and help them with archery. She’s really good at that.

Then we went back into the City. We discussed finding another melee warrior type, and came across Keldorn.

Now its off to the Graveyard.

Update 9

Our team needed to get into the tombs of Athkatla, to clear out Bodhi and her coven of Vampires.

Towards the end we faced Bodhi, who managed to confuse me a bit. She claimed to know some things about the thieves we didn’t. Like they weren’t being honest with us? Maybe thief means something different where she’s from? Maybe next she’ll expose that my hair is a funny color?

Christopher mentioned it was interesting she claimed to be Irenicus’ sister. Sorry, I missed that while I was laughing.

We made a last quick run to the Castle. We decided to leave Nahlia there. She had real experience running the place, so we decided she should run the business part of things. There’s a technical name for her job, that I don’t remember.
We returned to the City and found Yoshimo, who joined with us when we went to report our findings to Aran.

This seemed to wrap things up in Athkatla for now, we were ready to heads out to find Imoen. She was apparently at a um… crazy place where they store mages. We were going to break her out!

We sailed into a small fishing village. Jaheira and Christopher thought it looked like pirates had over run the town. I was briefly worried what that meant, but Keldorn mentioned this was a lawless and dishonorable place. This might work out well for us?

We were attacked by vampires again right as we got off the boat. We swatted them like the mosquitos they are! I just made that up. Not funny?

We saved a poor working girl who was about to be killed by her boss. What a jerk lady! We reunited her with her husband and they told us how to get into the mage prison.

When we got there we found it had been taken over by Irenicus. Then we found out Yoshimo had poisoned us. I knew it! I mean, I never got any of his jokes. He had to be evil, right?

I had some sort of weird dream while I was asleep. Imoen and I fought Sarevok again. Or was it Bhaal? Whatever.

After we found Irenicus we recruited a bunch of the prisoners to help us fight him. He got away.

We went back to town, and joined back up with our ship captain to get out of here, he said he knew where Irenicus had fled to. Wasn’t I mad at him for something? Too much going on. I think I was more annoyed with him, like he’s a weasel more than a villain? Later I’ll ask Christopher to help me sort this out again.

Then a bunch of fish men, oh we met these guys before! Under Dragonspear Castle! But they destroyed our ship.

Jaheira wanted to argue with him about it. But I think Keldorn was right, they kept killing each other. And they talked about killing us. We were supposed to go kill one of their king’s sons for him. Really not nice people! Errr, fish?

When we escaped the fish-men we were really in the Underdark. This is sort of a place of nightmares, we’ve all heard stories. But we stuck together and did okay. We learned Irenicus and Bodhi had fled to a Drow city. The bad kind, not like Mr. Drizzt. Some gnomes told us how to meet a dragon who could help us get into the city. But they didn’t tell us she was dragon! She was big and silver and beautiful.

Christopher and Imoen kept telling me not to laugh around the Drow. We should be serious! No funny business.

“You can smile if you want to honey, just don’t point it at me!”

*****

One little tidbit not covered in the text, the party now has a second strength device. So Jill will be keeping in the number 1 slot. Even with lousy hit points she is *very* tanky. And she will have Grand Mastery in Short Sword soon enough. I think Jaheira will still hit harder? But Jill hits fast and often.

Update 10

This run is getting more updates than I expected! It turns out Jill is fun for me to write and to render. Let’s see where this one takes us.

*****

We completed our mission for the cranky dragon lady pretty fast. She was very happy to get her eggs back. And all of us were glad to be done with those very rude Drow. It made me sad we had to kill a few. But we met at least one, named Solaufein, who wasn’t completely nasty. He was still sort of a jerk, but when we were supposed to kill him we let him go. It was sort of fun being like spies… actually I guess we really were spies in their city. Cool!

We met some more rude Elves when we escaped the Underdark. But at least they were more interested in talking and understanding things than just stabbing first. So we think Bodhi has something the Elves need to find a City they lost. We’ll track her down to find the city finder.

We decided to go check out the Umar Hills area. We met an Avarial in town! He was another jerk, some sort of scammer. We exposed his scams. Poor Aerie, she was so excited at first to see another of her kind.

But that large silver sphere thing we’d seen in Athkatla is some sort of traveling machine made by an old family member of his. He thought we needed to check it out and see what all it was, before anyone did experiments on him.

The sphere was a wild place! Much bigger inside than outside. There were several groups from all over the place living inside. There was a group of savage halflings that were the toughest to deal with. Halflings!

We met Valygar’s old relative! Something was in his head, like when Bhaal comes for me. Its awful! Something like that. But we were able to beat the demon-thing. And fixed some of the sphere. Oh yeah. The sphere took us to hell so we had to fix it. But then we got home. Valygar’s old relative died, just when they were getting to know each other!

We were home now. So of course the Cowled Wizards show up and tell us they’ll let us use “their” sphere if we train some new mages for them.

We left Valygar and rejoined with Keldorn. He said as soon as we were done he was retiring to stay home with his wife. They must have made up really nice?

Then we went to the Windspear Hills to see what we could help Lord Firkraag with monsters. Oof. What a mess we stepped into. He tricked us into killing some knights that Keldorn knew. We met the former lord of these lands, and then Lord Firkraag kidnapped his son! Well, jerk alert. We found an old ruined temple in the side of mountain, that had to be where the jerk was. We had to fight all sorts of monsters and orcs and stuff.

We finally fought our way to Firkraag. He was a big Red Dragon. He wanted to mess with me because my father injured him a long time ago. Before I was born.

Update 11

Over the period of this update I got a lot of little things done, Stronghold adventures for Paladin, Cleric and Mage… Planar Prison, cleared all the Liches out of Athkatla, Helped Captain Dennis find his gong…. the biggest thing was Throne of the Mad God.

I won’t even try to make a narrative of all this, just some images with their captions.

*****

*****

I’m still playing around with styles and renderers. GPT-40 can make characters more human, less animated. And it seems to understand complicated prompts more easily. But it is very slow, and sometimes that lack of animation is problematic.

I used simpler video renderers so these would work as GIFs. Overall pretty good I think, but it would have been nice if I could have gotten that thistle closer to Jill for its dramatic death scene!

Update 12

This will be a simple update. I was crazy busy in the last week and did very little gaming. Jill’s team finished the “Bloodied Stings of Barovia” and the Fighter Stronghold Quest… and *just” started “Call of the Lost Goddess”. So really, not much. I expect I’ll finish SoA this weekend? We’ll see.

This week, I’m just taking a look my team now in its final form. In spite of a mediocre Jill and Christopher they have all become a very dangerous bunch. It is always the lesson of AD&D, levels matter more than anything else (as it should be, experience can make up for many deficiencies). Stuff matters too, in any D&D game it can make up for many other shortcomings.

*****

I still have so much to learn about video renders. You choose from a long list of models to convert the image to a video. Well, with image renders, if you don’t like what you get, you just re-render and you’ll get a new image, or four, to choose from. For video renders, if you re-use the same description and model, you will get virtually the same result. Maybe some minor variation, but anything bad will likely be exactly the same. So you need to change the description *or* the model for each new render. This one took five tries, oof!

Update 13

This covers the end part of Shadows of Amn. I did “Call of the Lost Goddess” mod, Watcher’s Keep and then the end game of Suldanesslar and the Abyss. I feel like I’m a little burned out on narratives, but we can still take a look at the team.

*****

[Seriously, my melee types fought on a broad front while the spellcasters kept busy breaching and dispelling. Jill finished against Maretta first, and got a piece of several others. She had 65% of party kills in the last chapter]

[At the end of Watcher’s Keep, Keldorn is very hot about the betrayal of the false watch knights. Jill got to show restraint and moderation in dealing with them. It may be she didn’t really understand how deliberately she’d been betrayed, she just will not understand such duplicity]

*****

I’ll leave it at that before Jill leads her crew into the story’s last act. This has been a fun run. I feel like I’ve grown close to a couple of characters I never really knew before. And in spite of some reservations heading into this, I really enjoy Jill as a protagonist. She is simple but not really stupid. She deconstructs threats down to how dangerous they are, doesn’t worry about much nuance. If someone is getting hurt she will put a stop to it. And I love that just once, she was wiser than Keldorn. That last video render may be favorite one of her yet.

Update 14

We had some time celebrating with the elves after saving saving their city, and my soul. Irenicus had been the monster of my nightmares, sometimes really in my nightmares, for a few months.

That was some spirit thing in the witch’s swamp. I would laugh, but the thing had real power, it had to be destroyed.

Then we had to face another dragon.

Somehow that sounded better in my head. He was actually the toughest dragon we’ve fought. Our casters and Keldorn kept busy knocking down his defenses while Jaheira and I fought him. At least, it was nice to work outside in the sunshine for a bit.

We fought through a bunch of nasties until we finally killed the boss dragon. He was much easier than the watch dragon out front.

It seems like mostly cleaning up details after that, nothing else was very hard. Finally I had to decide if I wanted to be a god or not. They couldn’t guarantee pizza or chocolate so I stayed with my husband. Hah! as if. No way I was leaving. I’d miss Christopher too much. And we were both getting to like the idea of having kids. And living in a castle. While Imoen poked fun of the Cowled Wizards. This life just has too much to offer!

Christopher says my hair is “dominant”. He read about it in some weird old book by a monk he found in the library back at the Planar Sphere. He thinks our grandkids might have more different hair. We kept trying for a while, six kids all purple! Christopher thinks in the name of science we need to have a few more. I really have no idea who this “science” is, but we’re not calling any of our kids that!

*****

That’s a wrap on another Bhaalspawn saga. Once again, I’ll really miss this crew. It was seriously a lot of fun to run a dingbat main character, I find her endearing.
As I mentioned previously, it is interesting to me how little difference the scores can actually make. Jill’s only native bonuses came from dexterity, but in the end, Grand Mastery and a few good magic items made her a force to be reckoned with.