What's the best way to slightly lower my party's reputation? I have mostly evil characters and a rep of 15 and am about to do the Seven Suns quest where I read that I will get 2 rep points. My characters would do it, but really for the money, not out of kindness... So, what to do?

Is there a simple way to lower the party's rep by maybe 5 points? Is there a cheat for this? I'd rather not do the latter, but I really didn't realize that I'd get reputation points for earlier actions in the game, so it's not out of the question.

Anyway, any helpful suggestions would be welcome. [img]graemlins/bunny.gif[/img]

Whack some peasant somewhere? Don't know, never tried to be evil myself, at least not in the obvious way. Reputation is a good cover and they never know what hit them heh.. Or who pulled the strings.

Save the game, go to some area where is just some lone peasant, whack it and see how much it drops. Go back to the more crowded place and verify if others will turn hostile on you, shouldn't tho. And done.

Also some quests can lower the reputation, if you do not act as a "kind" soul. I suppose the farmer Brun, with his son's body - get the body and then send the old man to he** - that surely will lower the reputation. I think. In Nashkel, where you get that Joseph's Greenstone ring - show it to his wife but tell that "you will keep it as a payment" - I think that may lower the reputation as well. Also there's the Mansion in Nashkel, go in it and smack those uppity nobles, I didn't like them anyway, that will work "wonders" on reputation as well I think.

I'm trying to remember... I recall someone once suggested just slapping commoners around, i.e., barefisted, without weapons, because this somehow avoided the complication of having the Flaming Fist appear due to killing an innocent, and then having to fight all of them, and losing far more rep than you had bargained for as a result of the ensuing melee... Maybe I remember this wrong, though. Anyway, you could test it out (save first of course).

With a Rep of 15, killing an innocent will drop you to 9, and getting caught stealing should drop you by 1 each time, until you get to Disliked.

I have played as an evil party a few times and I always find that keeping your reputation under control requires a little bit of effort. The way I get your Reputation down by a few points is to steal from a house while you are in full view of the owners. Then when the Flaming Fist arrive try to bribe them, it won't work but it will lower your reputation by 1 or 2 points. Don't kill them unless you want to lose a lot of Reputation, just leave the room as quickly as possible.
By the way, I find that the evil NPC's are strong party members, especially the small ones.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Midget Gems:
I have played as an evil party a few times and I always find that keeping your reputation under control requires a little bit of effort...<hr></blockquote>

The game actually had something in it that solved my immediate problem...

There is that bar in Baldur's Gate City where some righteous jerk approaches you and starts attacking your evil party for no reason. He nevers turns 'hostile (red base), despite the fact he's whacking away at you for no reason other than that he 'senses evil.' Anyway, he's dead and reputation is back to a managable 9, then up to 11 after doing Scar's bidding for the crazy cha-ching.

This game, however, is really not set up to play truly evil characters. You're on this quest that you have to finish if you ever want to get to the 'end point' of the game, and this quest is mostly a do-gooder quest. Sure, you could pretend it's all for your over-weening pride, but that just doesn't fly.

Is BG2 better to play evil characters? I adore playing evil so.

not overly so, but there is a nice mechanism to lower rep (2 points at a time) after the half-way mark. its a spoiler and repeating it here would earn me too many flames, but youll find out.

there are also less Evil NPCs in BG2, so its harder to make a balanced party. but then again, its easier to Solo BG2, so you dont need NPCs.

there are also some nice Evil Only items, but they arent stand-out best in the game items, just above average.

And the big quests in BG2 and ToB are easier to justify in terms of why an evil character would do them. because to do otherwise is to die a horrrible and painful death.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Midget Gems:

By the way, I find that the evil NPC's are strong party members, especially the small ones.<hr></blockquote>

You mean you like Kagain? What for? Apart from his 20 CON, he's useless....give him the Gauntlets of Dexterity (which Edwin also needs) and he's still nothing but a decoy.


Katherine: If you want to play BG2 with an Evil party, you should get TOB as well. I was kinda disappointed that there were no new NPCs in ToSC,* but happily BioWare didn't repeat that with TOB. As for Evil NPCs in straight BG2, there's a grand total of only 16 NPC's, only 3 of whom are Evil! All 3 are very good characters, though. Don't worry, the selection is just as slim for Good parties as well, especially if your PC isn't a true-class Thief. Too bad you can't keep the NPCs from BG1.....though I suppose you could 're-create' them with Gatekeeper and import them to a Multiplayer game.


*In BG2, you can choose kits for your true-class character(s). One of the Druid kits allows you to shapeshift into a very powerful version of a werewolf, and I was really hoping I'd meet a recruitable NPC like this on the "Mendas's Island" quest.

Re: the evil wee folk, Montaron turns out to be a very solid character, I think.

Kagain does have lousy dex, it's true. But with his 20 con he regenerates HP and after using the con tome he will get up to 16 HP per level up. Also, re: who to give the gauntlets of dex to, Edwin ain't gonna do much damage by flinging stones... although anyone with 18 dex hurling the darts of wounding and stunning is deadly, to be sure... But then again Edwin will never have more than one prof in missiles... In any case, once Edwin gets his second RoW he can gain up to a whopping 32 level one spell slots for magic missile! (Actually, I have only read this. I have never used Edwin that far into the game. Anyone know if this is true?) Therefore, I think I would probably opt to give the gauntlets of dex to Kagain with an evil party. Boosting Kagain's dex to 18 will also help him as a tank by lowering his AC by -4.

Tiax I have to admit I have never used. His stats do not look impressive.

Katherine: This may not be the worlds most brilliant solution but there is a way to lower ur reputation without cheating. First of all kill an innocent and lose 9 rep points, so ur down to 6 then. Since ur doing the Seven Suns mission u should have over 30 grand yeah? Jus go to a temple and spend 400 bucks to raise 4 rep points.