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Originally Posted by kanisatha
Originally Posted by Thrythlind
Originally Posted by kanisatha
Originally Posted by Thrythlind
So if we the player didn't know ahead of time my response would be "what the hell are you doing with that abusive predator? Girl, your employer is bad. Get out of that job."
Okay. Good. This is now getting somewhere. So you say this to her, and then what? What might her response be, do you think? A "nice girl/decent person" response, or something else entirely? I have my own answer. What is yours?

This being a CRPG, I expect it to be somewhat accelerated as compared to a novel or long-run TV series (which themselves are rather accelerated to real life). My expectation would be a sort of "what do you know?" sort of response which would be an echo of things people say in real life situations as to why they stay in abusive situations. She's had a little bit of this here and there already. Her dialogue is full of risk assessment and a cynical attitude toward people in general. There's next to no intentional malevolence going on and in fact she is supportive of being respectful of people and following through on promises and the like.

Ideally stages should be:

encounter and work with due to mutual problems/survival > the discovery she serves Shar shadowed by the other major problem > trying to get her to move away from Shar > her shifting

And that's really skimming it. Ideally I'd work that story arc to be a character-focused novel or series. But this is a game and it'll cover the shift in about the same length as a law-and-order episode.

But I don't expect too much depth from games like this. They cast too wide a net to reach much depth.

That said, I support the idea of worshippers not necessarily sharing their gods' alignments. That's so very realistic and presents a lot of interesting story options from homicidal/inquisitional priests of Lathander all the way to adherents of Bane that are just don't have much experience with other gods or their worshippers.
Sorry, sounds like a copout to me. Interesting you bring up Lathander, because Lathander is my most favorite god in FR. If I ever play this game, and that's a big if, I hope I am able to play a champion of Lathander. And as such I will press SH hard from the first moment I realize what she is and will not accept her evasiveness for even a second. Then, when she eventually drops the 'nice girl' ACT and reveals her true Sharite self, it'll be off with her head.

Btw, for anyone who wants to understand the true nature of Shar and her minions, I very strongly recommend the Forgotten Realms novels of The Twilight War trilogy. Simply as excellent fantasy fiction these novels are well worth reading because Paul Kemp is an awesome writer. But you will really come to understand a lot of the lore about Shar, Mask, Selune, and Lathander from those books.

You sound like the type of crappy roleplayer who would kill goblin children then claim it is in character for your LG paladin lol. Lathander is the god of redemption, and SH is clearly brainwashed.

Shame they continue to ruin Shadowheart's character to cater to incels. She was great in her prickly initial implementation, and a breath of fresh air from your typical lame cleric waifu. Now we basically have Aeris 2.0.

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It'll be interesting to see for how long you're able to keep up the charade, playing as her.

Dead gods are certainly part of the narrative, but as soon as you get into that kind of conversation most people will just check-out, I mean the players. It as to be spooned in or a clean break when it comes to sticky continuity, still I like the idea but as soon as SH brings it up it immediately becomes suspect, whereas if you have people treat it as a non-issue, it becomes more believable that either, Shar's iconography isn't easily recognizable, or it's generic enough to be a shibboleth.

Personally I just considered it one of these, with Shadowheart's commandos going in without any thought to being incognito.

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Originally Posted by Bossk_Hogg
You sound like the type of crappy roleplayer who would kill goblin children then claim it is in character for your LG paladin lol. Lathander is the god of redemption, and SH is clearly brainwashed.

Shame they continue to ruin Shadowheart's character to cater to incels. She was great in her prickly initial implementation, and a breath of fresh air from your typical lame cleric waifu. Now we basically have Aeris 2.0.

Right, because the grumpy exterior but opens up to only the player character tsundere is unique and not at all catering to the male fantasy just as much as a friendly female character lol

Also, no need to call people incels, that's just a shitty way to kill all possible discussion.

Last edited by Boblawblah; 20/07/21 12:22 AM.
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Originally Posted by CJMPinger
Shar is very very well known and so are her symbols. She has kinda done things warranting that, and part of it becoming an underground doomsday cult as you put it is that her and her worship have been outlawed in faerun and many many people know the symbols on sight and know to avoid them consequently.

I still think shadowheart would be much better if she had a plausible lie and her symbols became just a little more generic. Could claim to worship the dead god Mask who is close to shar. Said lie can be used to gauge our character's reactions, seems in line with trickery domain, and ultimately would seem plausible to those who do not know she is a sharran (even with an added religion check telling us Mask is dead and while not impossible is somewhat suspicious).

Essentially, I want her to be a better liar.
^This. And a big part of why she's been banned in many parts of the Realms is because of her central role in the complete destruction of Sembia in a horribly ruinous war (again strongly recommending The Twilight War trilogy for anyone interested in this lore).

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Originally Posted by Boblawblah
Originally Posted by Bossk_Hogg
You sound like the type of crappy roleplayer who would kill goblin children then claim it is in character for your LG paladin lol. Lathander is the god of redemption, and SH is clearly brainwashed.

Shame they continue to ruin Shadowheart's character to cater to incels. She was great in her prickly initial implementation, and a breath of fresh air from your typical lame cleric waifu. Now we basically have Aeris 2.0.

Right, because the grumpy exterior but opens up to only the player character tsundere is unique and not at all catering to the male fantasy just as much as a friendly female character lol

Also, no need to call people incels, that's just a shitty way to kill all possible discussion.
Thanks, @Boblawblah. It is laughable that this person is trying to lecture me on roleplaying.

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In Tabletop, I had Shadowheart tell the PCs that she was a cleric of Melira Taralen, a minor elven goddess of bards and minstrels. She was a member of the Seldarine. Although she had no true foes of her own, she was opposed to the drow and goblinoid deities. She had a friendly rivalry with the god Milil due to some similarities with their portfolios. Melira Taralen was Chaotic Good, her symbol was the lute, and she dwelled on the plane of Arborea. She was a lover of poetry and song, and her domains were Knowledge, Life and Trickery.

Shadow then hid her Sharite holy symbol spell focus in the palm of her hand or in her own private pocket, not magic pocket. Her armor was specialty made, but I did not describe holy symbols on it. Later, as time went on, her behavior gave it away, especially her reaction to the shrine in the owlbear cave and then the statue that was broken behind the windmill. The PCs then called her on it.

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Originally Posted by Nyloth
Originally Posted by Idgaf
You realise until the update Astarion had the most lines by a 100 more than her, right? Why didn't you say anything then lol. Plus right now she's probably the most popular character overall because her and astarion have the most fan art and discussions about them in social media and her and Gail were the most romanced characters. All of then will get a lot of updates. You cant even get to the creche which is going to be full of Lazael scenes and Astarion has like 4 more voiced dialogues for the 1st act that haven't been released yet.


Are you perhaps telling this to me?

I always said that Shadow constantly knocks down my dialogues with Astarion, I don't care how many lines he has, I don't see or hear them, because the game chooses Shadow's dialogues. I talked about this even before patch 5. To hear Astarion's dialogues, I had to literally go through the game only with him. But Shadow interrupts not only his dialogues, but everyone in general. If I take her in party, then the game chose only her. And yes I dont like it. For Astarion they really added 4 new scenes (they alrdy released if u dont know), but they are not related to the plot at this stage in any way. Shadow's scenes are already connected not only with her personal mission, but also with the main plot.

As I have already said, I am not annoyed by Shadow herself as a character, I am annoyed by her presentation, I want to reduce her importance if I take her to the group. Every companion should be important, this is not the case with her.

For example:

if I take Gale, Lae, Astarion it's 50/50 for all (reactions to dialogues, expressing an opinion)

if I take Lae, Astarion, Shadow it's 90% for Shadow and 10% for others

Now u get it? It's great that you love Shadow, but she's not my favorite, so I want her importance to be the same as others, and not more than that.
So don't care about how many lines each character gets but you post exactly how many each has? Got it. 100% believable
Did you even read what I said tho? Lazael will get more plot related dialogue with the creches, Gale will probably get his story with mistra tied with the main plot later on, Astarion will get more plot related in the second act cause obviously Cazador will be important. Sorry but how does it make sense to give astarion plot related content in the first act when he has nothing to do with what's going on right now? Like lazael has the creche, Shadowheart the box, Wyll the goblins and Gale and Astarion will get more plot related later in BG and Waterdeep. Plus they are updating them 1 by 1 so probably everyone will get the bigger chance at dialogue reactions (even tho I awlays get different people) so they can see the reception of the character. Shadowheart was just the first.

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People here saying they would kill others for their beliefs without knowing their story or the reason they started believing are acting like cultists.

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Originally Posted by Boblawblah
Originally Posted by Bossk_Hogg
You sound like the type of crappy roleplayer who would kill goblin children then claim it is in character for your LG paladin lol. Lathander is the god of redemption, and SH is clearly brainwashed.

Shame they continue to ruin Shadowheart's character to cater to incels. She was great in her prickly initial implementation, and a breath of fresh air from your typical lame cleric waifu. Now we basically have Aeris 2.0.

Right, because the grumpy exterior but opens up to only the player character tsundere is unique and not at all catering to the male fantasy just as much as a friendly female character lol

Also, no need to call people incels, that's just a shitty way to kill all possible discussion.

You are right, they should have kept her more prickly. I actually liked that the characters were kind of jerks, but then everyone whined.

Re incels: I mean, if the shoe fits... Shadowheart 1.0 would have never gotten the level of flack if the character was male.

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Originally Posted by kanisatha
Originally Posted by Boblawblah
Originally Posted by Bossk_Hogg
You sound like the type of crappy roleplayer who would kill goblin children then claim it is in character for your LG paladin lol. Lathander is the god of redemption, and SH is clearly brainwashed.

Shame they continue to ruin Shadowheart's character to cater to incels. She was great in her prickly initial implementation, and a breath of fresh air from your typical lame cleric waifu. Now we basically have Aeris 2.0.

Right, because the grumpy exterior but opens up to only the player character tsundere is unique and not at all catering to the male fantasy just as much as a friendly female character lol

Also, no need to call people incels, that's just a shitty way to kill all possible discussion.
Thanks, @Boblawblah. It is laughable that this person is trying to lecture me on roleplaying.

Says the guy who plays his follower of the god of redemption as a murder hobo looking for an excuse.

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I think some enforced cooling-off time is required. Everyone play nice, please.


J'aime le fromage.
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