Hey, Niara. I hear about you quite a bit from a friend who likes your posts, and I like a lot of your posts by proxy, but I'm rarely on these forums to catch them myself. I know this post is a bit more like a recap with your personal flair on it, but I figured I should try to get my voice on the forums a bit more instead of letting it drown out in the sea of words Discord can become during and after a panel.
I heard about this post as I hear about many of your posts from my friend, so I'd like to touch on what he mentioned to me first.
This is just this viewers personal opinion but, sorry Larian, No. That's a contradiction. I'll feel like the custom character You created. By all means, tell me what my character experiences, and what comes to them through their senses, but if you start telling me what I'm thinking or what I'm feeling, or how I feel about various different things, then I'm no longer playing my character – I'm playing yours, and I'm not interested. There is a distinct line here which I do not feel that Larian's writing has ever really understood, and sadly, what they revel and discuss here does nothing to dissuade that concern.
Totally right that it's a contradiction. I will say, however, that it did not feel particularly oppressive in the Gale scene. Granted this was a small snippet, but it seemed more akin to an intrusive thought from a supernatural or divine source than outright dictating the character's feelings, philosophies or thoughts.
That said. I share the fears nevertheless. I like the concept behind TUD, it seems to be an allegory and Larian's personal take on Bhaalspawn... but that is tricky ground, and I've never trusted Larian's writers to make good on a concept I like. If they try to make him a literal Bhaalspawn, we've retreat ground where there is no ground to tread. If they just make him an edgy, indulgent self-insert, we're left with just what you're suggesting; a character with a pre-defined role that I move around, not a character I can project my own role onto.
Despite liking the concept, though, TUD is undoubtedly a slap in the face to anyone that was hoping Tav would meet up to any Origin standards. The ribbon features that were unique to Tav are all presumably removed, such as changing race, class, background, and name. The name is up in the air... Swen's TUD did have an option to refer to himself as The Dark Urge. What a dialogue option. To paraphrase...
"Hello, I am The Dark Urge, sorcerer, at your service."
Hopefully this is just the default name, and it can indeed be changed by the player. This much I do think they will do.
That still doesn't solve the problem that Tav has of being almost entirely unconnected to the plot outside of the tadpole. Where every Origin has some sort of background story going on for them, most of them some misguided attempt to one-up the last (from alien to vampire to god-loving turbowizard to two very seasoned, apparently, heroes... you get the idea,) Tav just flounders in the pool of mediocrity that tag dialogue options are. Maybe they're hiding something for him, but I won't hold my breath, and given I would have had no input on what that background for Tav could theoretically be, I'm not sure I even want it at this point.
I'll probably be playing my drow monk as TUD, based on what I know, and doing my best to ignore moments where I feel like my thoughts have been forced on me. We'll see if I last long enough to not just make a throwaway review character.
I won't get into everything you've talked about here right away, even though I'd love to. The bear thing has annoyed me greatly, and we're of one mind that it's silly for Halsin to be 'losing control' of a fairly basic druid ability.
I'm going to talk about the monk section before I leave my post be for now.
I just want to cover some of what I noticed on top of what you did, monk is my most played class in the rare chances I get to be a player.
First, flurry of blows seemed incapable of spreading its attacks across multiple targets, on top of the ability you mentioned to use it without having used your action to attack. Now, honestly, I don't find this to be a mechanically broken issue. It's a minor buff, and Monk does need those if we're looking at them from a PHB perspective. It is narratively strange, though, since it's meant to be a continuation. However... it seemed like there was no ki-less flurry option? Admittedly, perhaps I missed it, but their attempt to increase how much ki we get won't mean much if our ki-less features get removed.
I'm glad you noticed things about deflect missiles, because at this point I was just trying to make it through the panel and didn't want to pause much for closer looks at tooltips. It seems poorly implemented entirely. To top it off, Tactician placed a Warg on the roof of the opposite building, because obviously that's a narratively preserving way to make combat harder. Airdrop wargs on us.
Anyway, it was a treat to read this, and maybe I won't lose interest in the forum as quickly as usual and I'll respond here and there to some people on here. I'm much more active in their Discord than anywhere else, as it stands.
