I'm playing through both games using the excellent BG Trilogy mod and it works beautifully so far. I'm only in BG1 at the moment.

I'm also playing through with an evil party for the first time. I saw this as a chance to use some of the NPC's that I never played with when I played through the game the first time back in the late 90's. Tiax, Viconia, Shar-Teel, etc. They're fun. I kept Imoen so they'd have someone to pick on. ;^)

However, in my opinion this has revealed the essentially flawed nature of "Reputation" in the BG series.

As I'm sure you know, evil characters like low Reputation. When my Reputation was 1 for a while, Viconia would often remark that Shar was smiling on us. Montaron would tell me that maybe he won't have to kill me after all. We were one big, happy, evil family... well, except for Imoen.

How did my party get there? For starters, we *did not* start randomly killing civilians. We didn't even rob houses and the like. Sure, we made some shady and dishonest deals, but Silke paid us for that job fair and square... if those guys were innocent that blood is on Silke's hands, not ours (hehehe!).

Stuff like the Silke deal above contributed to our reputation loss, but our biggest drops came from quests out in the wilderness. For instance, we let those lugheads in the woods chop down the dryad's tree. That was a biggie: -4 Reputation (clearly some hippie at Bioware wrote that quest. -4?! Really?!).

The point is this: our party lost reputation by doing wicked things, but *not* by breaking the law per se. In other words, a judge would have a hard time pinning us down as having strictly broken any particular city's or government's laws. Even where we may have slain an innocent or two, it was far away from public perception and prying eyes. Even if some witness in the woods saw us, it would be their word against ours.

And that gets us to where Reputation is broken. With a Reputation of 1, random Flaming Fist patrols spawn in any town and immediately take down our party (the spawns are ridiculously overpowered). They claim it's because we're outlaws and criminals. But again, I want my date in court. How does the Flaming Fist even know that I was involved with the dryad incident (for instance)? And it wasn't even me that cut the tree down, it was those hicks out in the woods! I agree that if you get caught stealing or killing civilians, then all bets are off, but that's not what happened.

Basically, Reputation is just plain broken. It's not logical and it makes playing an evil party unreasonably difficult. Honestly, there's very little my party did that couldn't be justified from a LAWFUL evil point of view... and the whole point of LAWFUL evil is that you play a morally reprehensible person that manipulates and uses the LAWS to their personal advantage. Bioware really dropped the ball on that one.

I looked for a mod that would dispense with the Flaming Fist patrols but couldn't find one. If you're aware of some way of disabling the patrols, please let me know!

Anyhow, that's my opinion of the Reputation system. What's yours?

I agree that it's broken. I was constantly being nagged by Jaheira because by reputation was too high. That was annoying, but mostly harmless...

That is until I get closer to the end of the game, (spoiler) happens, and now my reputation is low. Flaming Fist mercenaries appear in the city and automatically attack, and my character auto-attack and kill them, the reputation score goes even lower, which pisses off all of my GOOD characters...so I ended up reloading an old save and running away, just to avoid the nagging.

I'm glad they corrected that foolishness in BG2, because it was totally broken.

Happy patch, characters don't bitch about reputation. I never, ever fail to install that tweak.

I actually don't mind if the characters in my party whine and complain (or conversely, praise and admire) the reputation situation.

It's the overpowered Flaming Fist spawns claiming that I broke some law that no one saw me commit in the middle of the wilderness that I don't like. :^)

I wonder if the flaming fist spawn is in the global script? Would be nice option to remove that affect. I've never liked reputation, also because it's so easy to change it one way or the other.

I've never tried it myself, but the Virtue mod is supposed to kinda-sort fix this issue. It might be worth a try:
http://www.pocketplane.net/mambo/index.php?option=content&task=blogcategory&id=107&Itemid=82

Virtue adds a new variable that affects the way the characters in your party look at you. It won't change the way the outside world like the Flaming Fist look at you. Very low reputation will still cause them (the FF guards) to attack you.

I think the problem is that the first game at least really intends you to play a good or at least neutral party. Apart from being penalised by the FF patrols who seem to have a telepathic understanding of any evil deeds you do you also get financial penalties from shopkeepers. Also you risk missing out on quests as many involve you helping people which as an evil character you're less inclinded to do without an incentive. There are game incentives but then you;re not really role playing then but playing the system.

I do occasional good deed to keep my rep higher and then convince myself its part of the price of keeping out of the authorities way. I may be evil but I'm not stupid (well unless its my 3 WIS and INT dwarf figher!)

Good way of RPing the rep in BG but the problem is on lawful evil thinks that way. Neutral Evils will not care about laws and Chaotic Evils will actually prefer to take the laws down including the FF if they see this laws taking mayor parts of their way of life.

I completely failed in playing a Neutral Evil PC half-orc barbarian, because for enjoying the fun of the game by doing quests and thereby experiencing adventure (and getting xp), I often had to either offer to help people or just tell them to bugger off, but then there's no adventure to be had. Taking into account I got a very NG mentality myself (I like helping people, I like taking care of the environment etc.), my NE half-orc ended up being just as helpful as all my other characters and my ordinary me. Putting it bluntly, choosing Evil is an option in the character screen, but nowhere else in the game.

What I do to play an evil character is before having a conversation I think if my character will actually have interest in that person. Then depending of what the person says I decide the course of action, if they are asking for help for an Item they lost I might just steal it and miss on the exp. Right now my character is a female TN Elf who hates Humans. I completely missed Minsc on purpose and he is my favorite NPC. You don't have to do every quest in the game, and also it can bring a new challenge and change the story mentally, meaning the motivations for the character to do things to move the plot. My character hunt down the bandit camp not to help the roads and trade but to stop the attempts on her to kill her. This way of playing also chooses the NPC that will join you which it can help on having different party combos with different characters that you create.

I have to say, I did come here myself after deciding to replay the fun and get to the end in my typical RPG way (morally questionable at the best of times). The flaming fist guards quite simply beat the daylights out of me. Perhaps it is my party composition or far from perfect build ect, but I wanted to know if it was just me sent into thirty minute respawn nightmares.

Rather literally, my solution became running for my life. I do not mind party comments, I quite like them really. The spawns though, dear hell they are murderous. Does anyone have any tips for surviving them, besides turning around the moment you hear the hum of a protection from missiles shield?

In my head I am trying to justify the money I shoved into the temple's donation plate as a bribe to keep those pesky paladins at bay, but it feels like I should not have to do that just to survive.

If your evil try to keep yourself over 4 or 5 not sure. your bribing the system, the best evil character do it :D. Mine is neutral character and I went down to 7 because I killed a druid and I had to pay my crimes back because I told him I was a bandit just to get info to actually been attack by him.

This might be of interest: A lesser-known mod for BG2 called Morrow Gate contains several tweaks for roleplaying Evil characters. Some of these tweaks can be applied to BG via Tutu or BGT.

http://forums.rpgdungeon.net/index.php/topic,1237.0.html

Some features relating to Evil characters (from readme, modified for brevity):

- Allow player to bribe or pay a restitution fee to Amnian guardsmen instead of fighting

*Note: The mod is not designed for Tutu or BGT, so there's no equivalent component for the Flaming Fist at present.

- Nullify the effect of reputation on item prices (reputation will not affect the price of items in shops; item pricing becomes a function of Charisma)

- Allow trueclass Rangers of any alignment (this does not apply to Ranger kits; Fallen Rangers retain and continue to gain abilities)

- Rename Fallen Rangers to either Rangers or Dark Rangers (player choice)

- Allow trueclass Paladins of any alignment (this does not apply to Paladin kits; Fallen Paladins retain and continue to gain abilities)

- Cause Fallen Paladins to gain opposite abilities (Detect Good and Protection From Good) and add Detect Good, Protection From Good, and Protection From Good 10' Radius to Fallen Paladins' spellbooks

- Rename Fallen Paladins to Paladins, Dark Paladins, or Blackguards (player choice)

- Cause Good-aligned Clerics to fall at a reputation of 8 (all spellcasting and divine abilities are lost)

- Allow Druids (and all Druid kits including those added by mods) of Neutral Good, Lawful Neutral, True Neutral, Chaotic Neutral, or Neutral Evil alignment

- Add Hellion (Fighter kit; see Morrow Gate readme for full kit description)

"The Hellion is a fierce warrior who honors the Dark Prince of the Hells. He or she respects strength, power, and cunning above all else. The Hellion is a student of the Black Arts and may summon Fiends to his side in battle (though these are apt to turn on the Hellion if he or she has not cast protective magics)."

- Add Darkfriend (Druid kit; see Morrow Gate readme for full kit description)

"Darkfriends are Druids that have a special connection with creatures that most people think of as monsters. To a Darkfriend, a wyvern is just as natural as a wolf. Darkfriends often have poor reputations among cities, towns, and villages and are most at home in the deep woods."

- Expand evil roleplaying opportunities (beta component):
-- Ally with Kalah by trading Aerie to him or boasting of your strength when he threatens you
-- Use and abuse Kalah's slave Aerie
-- Use Kalah's Tower as a basic stronghold
-- Defeat Thaxll'ssillyia the Shadow Dragon and bind him to your service as guardian of Kalah's Tower

Nice! I like the sound of that Darkfriend class. ^_^