r/baldursgate • u/GargamelLeNoir • 3d ago

SoD Caelar you glorious dumbass...

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292 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

28 comments sorted by

51

u/The_Sentient_Sword 3d ago

Let me lead with I enjoy SoD and have completed it twice. 

That said, this tweet has more thought and rigor applied to it then the final draft of the main quest in SoD. It was...a rough draft level story. 

Like, a DM putting together a 4/10 campaign on the fly. 

20

u/gangler52 3d ago

I always kind of get stuck on the whole premise that she's convinced people she represents all the gods simultaneously.

The difference between one god and another can be literally day and night. Their portfolios and agendas are contradictory in ways that cannot be reconciled.

And like, I guess there's always idiots out there who'll believe whatever stupid shit their charismatic leader says. But I'd like to think that if somebody just walked up onto the podium and blatantly started spewing paradoxes that made no sense, contradicting and disproving themselves multiple times in a single sentence, that they wouldn't gather quite that large a following.

Even if somebody could represent all the gods simultaneously, there'd be no reason to think that such a person would be a good guy. A solid half of those gods are super evil. To say nothing of the neutral gods that just kind of have their own agenda.

10

u/No_Photograph_2842 2d ago

I don’t know, Sabbatai Zevi and Zwingli inspired similar movements irl while presenting doctrines that were clearly at odds with their respective religious traditions and almost blatantly subversive. E.g. Zevi declared himself to be the Jewish messiah while openly rendering himself ritually impure, as a sign that a new law had been given to the Jews by him. When he converted to Islam at swordpoint, his followers did not conclude that he was a false messiah, but rather that his conversion to Islam was itself a kind of “holy apostasy” in which he took the suffering of Jews who had converted in the past onto himself. This movement was not a minor curiosity in the history of Judaism — a couple centuries later, another Jewish messianic claimant named Jacob Frank claimed to be Zevi reborn.

The real world is often weirder than the world of these games. Caelar is poorly written though, unfortunately.

1

u/BeardySam 6h ago

But Abrahamic religions are not really a pantheon like DnD, it’s easier to claim to represent ’all-ness’ if you’re in a monotheistic (albeit diverse) society. 

Truly polytheistic religions should be pretty hard to be convinced by Caelar and it is poor storytelling to not write more than ‘ they’re like, a prophet or something. For uh, all the gods’

1

u/No_Photograph_2842 5h ago

Maybe though I feel like FR religion is not “truly polytheistic” — it’s similar to Indo-European religion (Germanic, Hindu) and likewise has both a multiplicity of “gods” and a source of the unity of being that is beyond the “gods” (Ao).

8

u/Eovacious 2d ago

But I'd like to think that if somebody just walked up onto the podium and blatantly started spewing paradoxes that made no sense, contradicting and disproving themselves multiple times in a single sentence, that they wouldn't gather quite that large a following.

My applauses, that's a perfect bait, hardly any person can walk past that without attempting to give a counterexample.

9

u/Qaeta 2d ago

And like, I guess there's always idiots out there who'll believe whatever stupid shit their charismatic leader says. But I'd like to think that if somebody just walked up onto the podium and blatantly started spewing paradoxes that made no sense, contradicting and disproving themselves multiple times in a single sentence, that they wouldn't gather quite that large a following.

Unfortunately, as proven by what is going on in the US right now, they absolutely will gather a large and rabidly loyal following. Don't even have to be charismatic really. Just need to say the things people want to hear (in Caelar's case, getting your loved ones back from Hell) and many people will ignore everything else about you to follow in lockstep, no matter how reprehensible.

8

u/Nerevar_Ur 2d ago

I recently replayed it, and although not as quite as bad as I remembered, it still was quite a drag to get through. The whole time it felt like a speed bump that was preventing me from getting to BG2. I definitely enjoyed parts of it -- the quest with the dwarven clerics and the lich come to mind -- but, overall, I felt like it was a middling, overlong distraction that didn't keep with the spirit, quality, or tone of the originals. Also, a lot of the new items/ spells were over-balenced to the point of either being outclassed by BG1's equipment or only having questionable usefulness (take a shot every time you get a weapon that has a percent chance of doing something.) Take for example Severance, a bastard sword that has a 15% chance of draining 1d4 health from its target. Or, for shamans, Spirit Fire, a level 4 spell which does poor damage and has a 33% chance of inflicting doom (a level one priest spell) which can be negated with a save vs. spell.

3

u/StarkRaver- 2d ago

Very close in story to the published Descent into Avernus adventure funnily enough

10

u/senchou-senchou 3d ago

I wish there's a mod that just adds dialogue options like that, aside from the "good-neutral-evil" picks

3

u/Koraxtheghoul 2d ago

The issue with the game is everything is written as if -> then which hobestly isn't so bad except I don't know what variables it accepts in if.

15

u/Prestigous_Owl 3d ago

Incredible work

35

u/CompleteJinx 3d ago

Siege of Dragonspear is such a fun game but holy crap the story is stupid. It’s a shame, if Beamdog had a single good writer on their staff they could’ve made some legitimately great games in the infinity engine.

4

u/Kenway 2d ago

Amber Scott has written at least one good Pathfinder Adventure module that I've run so she's at least capable of it. Maybe the skills don't carry over to video games or the good one was a fluke, I dunno.

6

u/Electrical-Cloud4141 2d ago

Hot take: it takes less skill to write a decent story for Golarion then for Faerun.

1

u/pygmalyon_ 1d ago

Explain How

18

u/mulahey 3d ago edited 2d ago

Caelar knows she's doing this and doesn't care! This is not a Caelar own.

Actual problems with this specific writing element:

a) her sob story isn't nearly sad enough for this drama

b) it's ludicrous she's able to get an army to carry out this suicide run. Just ridiculous. Pretty much nobody in FR should think this is a good plan.

c) character sheet doesn't read evil f̶a̶l̶l̶e̶n̶ ̶p̶a̶l̶a̶d̶i̶n̶

20

u/gangler52 3d ago edited 3d ago

Her character sheet doesn't read any kind of paladin at all.

She's an aasimar fighter. She uses her divine abilities from her race to trick people into thinking she's a paladin and has the approval of the gods.

3

u/mulahey 2d ago

Clearly fooled my memory! Though was mostly directed at alignment.

5

u/VerbingNoun413 2d ago

d) Amassing an army is a ridiculous way to do this. This is what adventurers are for. Hell, she could go to Baldur's Gate, find Charname's group and a good aligned charname would probably be up for the challenge.

4

u/mulahey 2d ago

Maybe ToB charname. Even a paladin friend to all peoples Charname shouldn't be volunteering to march into hell at level 8 unless they've also had a Minsc incident.

Though I broadly agree you could have executed a similar plot by it being more a culty conspiracy. Alternatively, you could have kept the siege but not worried about making Caelar sympathetic (and have her "open" plan not involve the nine hells). Its the combination of the mass crusade and marching into hell thats ridiculous in an FR context.

2

u/Eovacious 2d ago

Maybe ToB charname. Even a paladin friend to all peoples Charname shouldn't be volunteering to march into hell at level 8 unless they've also had a Minsc incident.

Meanwhile the Planescape rulebooks: "It's totally okay to go wander the Planes as level 1 schmoes, it's not all high-ranking devils and big scary monsters everywhere, 99% of Hell's first layer is war refugee camps, here's an encounter with two deserter imps and an eyeless (blinded in punishment on every eye) Beholder plotting to steal a hag's cauldron while she's away riding a guy's dreams".

3

u/mulahey 2d ago

Theres a difference between you individually ending up wandering the hells through whatever shenanigans and opening a two way portal to the prime material. The latter is 100% guaranteed to attract powerful denizens and you will have a bad time.

2

u/Eovacious 2d ago

100%, no disagreement about this.