Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Death by Pop-Up

I recall the brothers say they're from a farm outside of BG, and by extension, so would Mayrina. We're given some details, so we'll likely get to visit. Much of 'Baldur's Gate' is outside the city walls.

Now you've got me curious about Green Lantern, I'll look up his motivation.

Ethel also seems to be aware her plot doesn't work well if you don't play along. She curses, kills the now useless brothers and departs. But your typical murder-hobo is going to take that as a sign she's walking XP with cool loot. Probably the worst thing she could've done, pique the interest of such a dreaded monster.

Yeah, I didn't hear the term "Fridged" until years later, but I knew exactly what it was referring to.

You're average murder-hobo is only going to resent being robbed of that XP...bro.

As for the geography of it all, I'm struggling a little with the scale, also not a new point of contention, living outside BG might be anywhere.

This video talks about the issues with fridging quite nicely. Basically the problem with fridging, fundamentally, is that it takes a character and then uses their death purely as a plot device for another character. It's killing off a significanr character casually, with the main emotional concern being how the death impacts other people and not the fact the character is gone, and usually that impact is brief and doesn't last. She used the example of Lukes aunt and uncle in a new hope. The people who raised him were brutally murdered and his childhood home burned down and there's no indication he ever thinks about it again a few scenes later. She identifies that as a text book example of fridging, and that fridging ultimately is a sign that the writer didn't really think the character was as important as whichever character their death was set to motivate, and that for various cultural bias reasons, this tends to happen a lot more to women, even though the crux of the trope can apply to men as well.

Given that, I still argue that the death of Mayrina's brothers isn't fridging because they're barely even characters. We see them for one scene and they're gone. And one of them is kind of a jerk to us, so the chances of us forming an emotional connection at all are low. Their characters exists solely to make us feel sad. And I don't thinknthey do a good job of that

Do you show sympathy for Ethel because you like the evil side or because you like her potions and hair?

Why'd that comic-writer bother creating a layer of jargon for a straight-forward concept? All we're talking about is death of a loved one done so obviously that it ruins readers buy-in for the male protagonist's motivation. It was done too quickly, with little gravitas and not enough lasting impact.

In BG3 it'd be like Tav saying 'Goblins killed me wife and kids. Raagh! Oh? Hello Minthara...

I do agree that I don't feel much for the brothers' fate either. They're grown men, and they brush off altruistic Tav. Mayrina is as foolish as can be, though credit given for loyalty and follow-through.

I'm going to give Larian writers benefit of the doubt and say these side characters are _not_ supposed to elicit great sympathy. They're designed to show the broken and foolish people drawn into Hags machinations. We saw that at the Druid grove with paralyzed Pandirna who admits to saying she wanted to be as strong as a bugbear and brushed off side-effects. There's an element of 'serves you right' to their fates that some might use to justify leaving them to their fate. Afterall, they're not falling over themselves to help Tav. Ethel even says people created hags and Gandrel hints they came about at first darkness, which could be a Gur expression synonymous with Cain and Abel, i.e. reiterating that evil of people created hags.

I think you kind of answered your own question. What you conveyed in two sentences can be instead conveyed in a brief, evocative phrase or even word. It's why any jargon gets created. The fact it still gets used shows that in general people thought it was a good shorthand.

I don't know who Pandirna is, but as far as where Hags come from its stated in the monster manual that hags are made by a hag eating a newborn then birthing a copy of that newborn who will become a hag when she comes of age. So since we don't know what first darkness actually is, and it's too vague to even infer much, we know that she's lying. Even for those who don't know the lore, believing her seems like an unwise choice.

I wish! Turns out a couple of sentences would have been more succinct than Google searches and videos to confirm it is indeed a loaded expression. Better to write longer careful sentences that can be read as is.

(Pandirna is that Tiefling in the storehouse who can't walk.)

Yeah that 'first darkness' is probably just Gandrel reciting his folklore, nothing much in it. The MM says hags originate from Feywild. 5E lore is solid for backwards compatibility so likely matches FR hag origins.

Sometimes in the Grove, Shadowheart or Lae'zel warn against confiding in Ethel. Astarion beautifully delivers dreadful advice, which is warning too (do the opposite!).

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Back to OP's post. The game really ought to switch to turn-based when a character is dying. Let the player stay in or switch out thereafter, that's fair choice.

been there, especially that I tried to save everyone, it's impossible if you don't cheese it somehow

what worked for me it's the power of F5 → lae zel with speed potion → pray for crits and hits and you can burst her in 1 round , with a bit of luck.

Try soloing the hag with all her pawns at level 3 now that's fun fight!

I think folks kinda got side tracked on what real issue the OP brings up is :P Sure the Hag fight is a tough one but the Death by Popup thing can happen elsewhere and that needs to be fixed. A simple freezing the game clock when these Reward popups occur is the solution.

One would think that when an interface gui appears the game would pause so that these types of thing don't happen.

I suffered two total party kills thanks to this very issue, but the gui involved were skill checks that I couldn't abort.

You would think so, but Larian tought me to not take the obvious solutions that's been around since I remember for granted.

One could point to multiplayer and Larian expectation for companions to be controlled by other players, but surely a solution could and should be found.

yeah sadly mutiplayer impacts BG 3 gameplay all thet ime in all sorts of areas to top it off most of the time it's for the worse not better.