does having a low reputation have any benefits

[Gunsaremagic]

or does it just make everything more expensive in shops

[Sstavix]

There are some companions who will leave you if your reputation is too high (mainly the evil ones). I think you may be able to get more valuable rewards by making choices that lower your reputation, too (e.g. doing the evil things, like demanding payment for your actions). But, all in all, I think the benefits of a high reputation are better than the ones for having a low one.

[Gunsaremagic]

Originally posted by Sstavix:

There are some companions who will leave you if your reputation is too high (mainly the evil ones). I think you may be able to get more valuable rewards by making choices that lower your reputation, too (e.g. doing the evil things, like demanding payment for your actions). But, all in all, I think the benefits of a high reputation are better than the ones for having a low one.

Thx Just felt like killing a bunch of useless civilian for xp since they aren’t merchants if they don’t benefit me in any way why keep them alive

[wendigo211]

There are a couple of quests that are low rep only, but really it's all drawback. Even the dream powers are worse for low rep vs. high rep.

These are the quests:

• Cordyr and the Sirines
  
• A corpse for Arkion
  
• Arkion's Bloodstone Necklace

[Gunsaremagic]

Originally posted by wendigo211:

There are a couple of quests that are low rep only, but really it's all drawback. Even the dream powers are worse for low rep vs. high rep.

These are the quests:

• Cordyr and the Sirines
  
• A corpse for Arkion
  
• Arkion's Bloodstone Necklace

Well that’s disappointing do you think it’s a bad idea for a for a first play through? There any different endings for going evil

I do the opposite of what most people do in rpgs go evil on my first playthrough and play as good the second time it’s usually more fun.

If an npc doesn’t benefit me in any they don’t need to live anymore if they already rewarded me for a quest and im certain that this person won’t give me anything else In the future I can just kill them and take the extra xp or just for that little bit of extra loot they have on them lol.

You gotta squeeze everything out of them until there’s nothing useful left on them.

Except merchants you always need them never kill the merchants

[Centurion]

All you really get is the Low Rep Steam achievement. But don't stress. Even a party of Drow sadists will end the game with a dragon's horde of gold.

[Gunsaremagic]

Originally posted by Centurion:

All you really get is the Low Rep Steam achievement. But don't stress. Even a party of Drow sadists will end the game with a dragon's horde of gold.

Well that’s good to know

[JC]

Try going with rep 2 or 3 and see what happens..

[Wicket W. Warrick]

Originally posted by Gunsaremagic:

Well that’s disappointing do you think it’s a bad idea for a for a first play through? There any different endings for going evil

I do the opposite of what most people do in rpgs go evil on my first playthrough and play as good the second time it’s usually more fun.

If an npc doesn’t benefit me in any they don’t need to live anymore if they already rewarded me for a quest and im certain that this person won’t give me anything else In the future I can just kill them and take the extra xp or just for that little bit of extra loot they have on them lol.

You gotta squeeze everything out of them until there’s nothing useful left on them.

Except merchants you always need them never kill the merchants

Why do people continue to think that playing evil mean kill everything? This is not what playing evil is on D&D or any roleplaying game. This is what you do in stupid mobile games.

You can play evil, also as a first walkthrough, but absolutely you can't play this way, the game prevents it sending lots of soldier and mages that kill you in few seconds.

Anyway the game follow a railroad, so the main story wont' change too much, while you can choose quests, companions and dialogues that suit more your allignmen.

Just remember that playing evil is not beiing a mad killer annihilating everything that breaths, this is beaing crazy and ending your game in 3 minutes. This is a roleplaying game not a nuke em all. Want to be evil? Roleplaying it.

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

Originally posted by wendigo211:

• A corpse for Arkion

This depends on low CHA, not low Reputation.

[Wicket W. Warrick]

Originally posted by wendigo211:

Even the dream powers are worse for low rep vs. high rep.

Maybe not at all.
Draw upon holy might for sure and it is the best ability IF you play a front fighting character. Being a mage are both quite useless.
Larloch's Minor Drain (low rep) can be less effective in curing, but more effective in interrupting spells. I prefer cure, but it depends on playing style and on the character.
Horror (low rep) is better than slow poison (good rep).
I would say
1-2 quite the same
3-4 better low rep
5-6 better high rep

Anyway when you play evil you can mantain the rep that you want decreasing it through action and increasing it through donations. That's what many people do in real world...

[wendigo211]

Originally posted by Wicket W. Warrick:

Horror (low rep) is better than slow poison (good rep).

Don't discount slow poison, the dream ability has a lower casting time than the divine spell and you get it right when you're going through cloakwood with all it's spiders and wyverns. It's even better in SoD with the greater wyverns.

Horror is a good spell, but you have Wands of Fear to cast the same spell. It also makes enemies run all around the map, possibly aggroing other groups if you're chasing after them.

[wendigo211]

Originally posted by D'amarr from Darshiva:

Originally posted by wendigo211:

• A corpse for Arkion

This depends on low CHA, not low Reputation.

Actually it's Reaction (a combo of CHA and Reputation).

[Wicket W. Warrick]

Originally posted by wendigo211:

Originally posted by Wicket W. Warrick:

Horror (low rep) is better than slow poison (good rep).

Don't discount slow poison, the dream ability has a lower casting time than the divine spell and you get it right when you're going through cloakwood with all it's spiders and wyverns. It's even better in SoD with the greater wyverns.

Horror is a good spell, but you have Wands of Fear to cast the same spell. It also makes enemies run all around the map, possibly aggroing other groups if you're chasing after them.

Yes, but I still prefer horror, because i get hit by poison rarely and in that case there are also potions. But no need to debate I think we all agree that much depends on player preferences, except DUHM that is the only real game changing ability. It is the only one that makes the difference. But much depends on class. A divine caster would prefer arcane spells, while arcane caste will prefer diviine spells. And a pure caster will not need DUHM, but since he doesn't need vampiric touch either...
I don't disagree with you, I just say that someone could prefer for some character the "evil" abilities. Or both of them, since they are 2 for level. And that if you play evil you can manage reputation, so choosing the ability that you want, while if you play good you will be constantly over 15.

[Kamuizin]

Reputation has the following effects:

Companions - good companions leave the party at rep 1/2, evil companions leave the party at reputation 19/20 and neutral companions leave the party at reputation 1.

Quests - some quests requires a high or low rep to be done (like the find a corpse in the sewers for a necromancer in Baldur’s Gate city).

Merchants - the price of items may receive a discount or increase on the base price. (Obs: reputation 1 increase prices by 10x).

Guards/mercenary hostility - if you rep hit 4 or less (i believe that these are the numbers), hostile guards will start to attack you in cities. Specfically in Naskhel, i believe that, 6- rep will make bounty hunters start to spawn and attack you. I don’t remember of they changed it in the enhanced edition, but the original game made these spawns infinite, to the point of be impossible to walk in Naskhel with that low rep.

To be precise, low reputation was never meant as a roleplay by BG original devs, which is a terrible mistake and the biggest flaw of this jewel.

The old game idea was that play evil was play wrong and evil character, mostly, have advantages over good, because they’re meant to prevent you to reach 19/20 reputation by controling your quest rewards.

This is a completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of the time (remember that BG1 was made in the nineties).

To counter this, install the tweaks anthology mode that Cawdang update in beamdog’s forum. There are 2 choices there among many:

U table for merchant reputation, where neutral is base price, and the more extreme is the reputation, the higher the discount.

Another module is happy NPC, that disable the leaving banters of NPCs based on reputation.

[Wicket W. Warrick]

Originally posted by Kamuizin:

To be precise, low reputation was never meant as a roleplay by BG original devs, which is a terrible mistake and the biggest flaw of this jewel.

The old game idea was that play evil was play wrong and evil character,

I think this is because there is a confusion between reputation and evil. Having a low rep is wrong, not playing evil.

Evilness and reputation are 2 different things.
Can we say that Sarevok is the model of evil character in this game?
At some point it reputation is so high that he is taking controlo of Baldur's gate.
And you finish being the hero of Baldur's gate, no matter how you acted good or evil.

Except obviously crazy actons (killing innocent people, try to corrupt soldier, ...) and few rep related quests, you are free to act in an evil way without problems. Roleplaying in this game is left to the player, with dialogues or actions that don't influence the story.

The real problem is that the story is a railroad, so you finish doing the same things playing evil or good. The evil or good behaviour must be played in your mind, with coherent choices in game, but choices that mostly doesn't influence too much.

From a mechanical point of view reputation was the key to prevent illogical and gam breking behaviour, like killing all the people in all the world, risking to break the game and the quests.