PS Regarding Sarevok, I’ll keep what you say in mind and reassess in my upcoming playthrough. It’s possible I’m misremembering how well it works just because I recall enjoying having Sarevok in my party. Viconia’s reassessment will need to wait longer as I’ll be playing a female character so not romancing her, but as mentioned I do feel the very fact that makes a difference is a strike against her arc.
It's been a while since I went all the way through ToB too, so maybe I'm the one who has to reassess. I started a game a few months ago, but I ran into some problems I've forgotten already.
Getting Tweaks Fixes and Cheats mod is helpful when you're trying to maximize your runs, you can change things like gender/race/alignment blocks and make multiple concurrent romances possible. Of course, back in the day I would just cheat in a stack of remove curse scrolls and the belt of masculinity/femininity, and cobble it together like that.
Viconia should have fallen from Grace and charname left with the difficult decision to bring her back into Shar's good favor (ending the romance) or accepting Viconia as a companion who couldn't cast spells (excepting scrolls) for a prolonged period of time.
It fit with her story - she left Lloth after a crisis of conscience and Shar granted Viconia power at her weakest moment. To become good Viconia would need to learn to stand on her own without the aid of any deity.
Thanks for reminding us of all the brilliant ideas that rpg development times have killed. I really like this, especially how it incorporates the mechanics of the system. A lot of games seem too afraid of handicapping you like that, even in service of the story.
