Okay, we all know that the reputation way of handling alignment decisions is awful and terrible. The only question is : why do we think this?

Here is my reasoning. Korgan, the bloodthirsty, money-obsessed goon that he is does not strike me as being the type of dwarf that would object to doing good deeds that bestowed upon him a whole slew of magic items, hundreds of thousands in gold, and worldwide fame. Not to mention the fact that people will think he is a hero and will worship him, instead of trying to kill him. The same goes for all the evil characters.

Of course, Good characters are handled well by the reputation system, leaving as they do if you do lots of nasty things.

So anyway - it seemed to me that the reputation system sucked, so what I did was edited HAPPY.2DA to make evil players grumble a bit when you are 18 or 20 rep, but stay with the party. My question to you, the jury, is - do you think this was a reasonable tweak of a ridiculous rule, or a disgusting cheat to have some cool characters (*cough*Vicky*cough*Korgan*cough*) in my good party?

The choice, my learned friends, is up to you [img]smile.gif[/img]

I think the whole alignment thing is pretty tough to coordinate into gameplay, and it could use some tweaks like you said. However, I do agree with characters of an extreme alignment leaving the company of a party whose reputation is contradictory to their own ethos. While like you said, Korgan wouldn't mind doing just about anything to get riches and magic items, I think he might use a party for a short time to get what he wants but in the long run he would grow tired of "goody two shoes types", and they would see through his evil ambitions as well. In addition another reason for him to leave a party would be that there are plent of evil gangs out there in the "role-playing world" for him to accomplish his goals. So I think in that respect they did a good job of handling reputation.

P.S. As far as you having evil characters remaining in a party of good ones, unless you want to roleplay to the max, it's just a game of killing monsters and getting more powerful so kudos on having a mix of evil and good. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I have no idea what game this is, or it may even be 2 separate games, but these two aspects of "Reputation" beat the BG system's by a mile:

1) Reputation is only a local event. Do a good deed for a town (e.g. Trademeet), and your reputation will skyrocket in that town, but go someplace where they haven't heard of you, and you're back to Average again. Those who really puch the envelope, becoming really good or really evil, will cause news of themselves to spread, becoming well-known wherever they go.

2) Reputation has a counterpart variable: Karma. If you kill an innocent and nobody's there to hear it, your Reputation comes off scot-free; but if you're Good, your Karma takes a hit, possibly changing your Alignment.

That tweak sounds reasonable to me. I myself had a *very* discouraging experience in Trademeet with Viconia. Needless to say, I would have loved to have known about that file at the time. :D

The other thing with reputation is that the most evil fence in Athkatla will give the most goody two shoes Paladin 50% off, and will not sell to the evilist CE necromancer or will force him to pay something like 200% extra. It is the same with NPC's, the Paladin gets a better chance of having a favorable dialogue outcome.

Six: The reputation system your describing sounds almost identical to the one in Fallout, and Fallout 2.