How powerful Nameless One once was?

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as for his most powerful form ever...

 

His most powerful form is the one you make him. None of the others ever defeated the Transendant One.

 

SPOILERS AHEAD! (this thread will probably be full of them anyway)

I used to think that the Transcendent One was his most powerful form (if you consider it as one - it's not really one of his incarnations), what with having built the Fortress of Regrets, commanding all the shadows, and so on. Then I paid a bit more attention to some of the final dialog options and noticed you can point out to him the limits of his power, such as the fact that even thoug he's very powerful in the Fortress he cannot go anywhere, and his control over the shadows is limited.

If you set aside the current incarnation (which I agree is the most powerful), many of the other ones were very powerful. Yemeth was a master arcane magic user, Practical was a good fighter and a first-rate manipulator (the way he manipulates Deionarra, Dak'kon and Morte, not to mention he had to go into Baator to get Morte in the first place) and Paranoid was very devious despite being crazy (or maybe because he was).

 

Spoiler:

Spoiler

The Transcendent One isn't an incarnation at all, dear friend. It's The Nameless One's mortality, which Ravel separated from The Nameless One all those many years ago, given a green and thorny form.

Exactly which incarnation of The Nameless One was most powerful? It's purposely left as an open-ended question, dear friends. If you grind enough (you may need to use an XP cap remover) and use the Wish scroll, you can eventually get 25s in all stats, which is insanely powerful, at which point, your current incarnation arguably becomes the most powerful. It's suggested that your current incarnation is "somehow different" since this one doesn't forget when he dies.

If you rush through the game and end up with wimpy stats, or if you just choose to believe the horrendous stories and scary recalled memories about paranoid or practical, you can just as easily assume that some form of either of those was the most powerful.

 

I've never noticed an XP cap in Planescape:Torment, I do not believe any cap remover is necessary.

 

Have you tried reading the thread title aloud?

 

How powerful was that "full glory" Deionarra has mentioned ? Anyone has clues?

 

One of the writers (not Chris Avellone I think, but another one) listed each of the people Deionarra mentions, including the "full glory" bit.

Spoiler

The shades of good, evil and neutrality are Trias, Fhjull and Ravel, each twisted by the Planes for reasons that are more or less obvious. Trias is a deva but his nick is The Betrayer (not to mention he staged an attack on Elysium), Fhjull is a fiend who is forced to do good and help those in need, and Ravel is completely and utterly barmy. "Yourself in your full glory" is the Transcendent One who, even if he's not one of TNO's incarnations, is still a rather major part of him.

 

I dont know why but I always thought that the story was that he lost his memory when killed by the shadows.

 

Nope, Tranny just sent shadows after Nameless whenever he got nervous about kicking the bucket. The shadows are all drawn to Nameless anyway as they are the innocents that have suffered at his long and varied lives and denied vengence in the afterlife. Driven mad by eternities of hunting and pushed by the thorny boughs of a flailing, nervous concept-made-flesh.

The full glory refers to Nameless as a whole, not just his mortality, which itself is simply a shadow. Before the input of the developers most people presumed the full glory was Deionarras obsession, the Practical One.

 

Actually the shadows are the souls of those who died in TNO's place. Every time TNO "dies" and resurrects, another soul has to die in his place to keep the balance. I think Ravel is the one who explains this aspect of the curse. It's also the reason why you can only die a limited number of times (six with a full party) in the Fortress of Regrets: you resurrect once for each party member you have with you, and the last one you die "for good".

Oh and I'm sure the full glory bit is canonically TTO. I was wrong, it was Chris Avellone who posted this originally. Here's the whole bit.

 

Funny, I was under the impression that the "full glory" part was to the nameless one himself, I also don't really understand how TTO can be considered the nameless one in his full glory, since he's only a part of him anyhow. At first I thought the enemies three also were a reference to the three incarnations until I read to whom they really refer to. The paranoid incarnation being the neutral one in that case, allthough he certainly seemed chaotic evil to me but then even ravel seems more like neutral evil than anything else in my opinion. Also as night hags are typically evil I don't see her as a shade of neutrality even if she as an individual would happen to be one.

 

I also believe that post was expanded on at a later date. I read the Chris Avellone stuff years ago when I first played the game, I seem to remember that post sparking cries of disbelief I guess prophecies are meant to be vague and winding however, plus others on the team may also have their own takes on who the four figures are.

I'd say Ravel is Neutral, she did cruel things as a means to an end and the paranoid incarnation is simply and purely, almost reasonably, insane. His murderous rampages were of convinced self preservation and fear - much like that of a wild animal terrified in a corner with flight no longer being an option - add the cunning of previous lifetimes and the roundabout nature of human imagination and you have quite a killer on your hands.

I had forgotten to mention that aspect of the curse, it simply slipped my mind in the euphoria of having something to read after weeks sat with nothing I'm pretty sure someone else mentions the shadows though, I will have to check when I am back at a computer that has PS:T on it.

 

I think the prophecy was made by someone else who decided how to describe Ravel in the game, since someone obviously made an effort for her to seem evil. She is described in the game to have killed people who answered incorrectly to her question "what can save the nature of a man" and she killed them even though they could not have answered the question correctly, since the only answer she cared for was the answer of the nameless one.

I don't think they quite thought it through when they made the prophecy. Not that it's all that important anyhow, but that's how it seems to me.

 

Yeah I remember this too I think the one fans most had trouble with was Fhjull. Everyone was crying and raving about how inconsequential he is to the plot - never mind that there are hints that he and TNO have crossed paths in the past, that both himself and Trias are involved in something to do with TNO, and that he really, really would like to do horrible to TNO and would happily do them if it weren't for Trias's geas forcing him to be helpful.

Agreed. Paranoid is Chaotic Neutral taken to its furthest extreme - he has far, far too weak a grasp on reality to be considered truly Evil and none of his horrible actions are as a means to an end (like Practical) or because he likes being evil; he just truly believes everyone is out to get him and that he's acting out of self-defense.

Keep in mind that a lot of the information you hear about Ravel in Sigil is completely twisted and deformed, or just plain wrong. Not surprising when you consider that she was banished by the Lady of Pain (and history is written by the victors - especially when they're a very tall, unreal woman with knives all around her face who can kill you just by looking at you funny). I think this is one of the best aspects of the game: you think Ravel will be evil because that's how the people in Sigil describe her and you're used to everyone being omniscient in RPGs and no one giving you false information. Then you meet her and talk to her and you realise everyone in Sigil was wrong about her (remember her real reason for trying to open portals in Sigil? not to let other gods in, but to free the Lady of Pain from her Cage).

This also works on the three incarnations to an extent: if Paranoid is Chaotic Neutral (see above) and Practical is Neutral Evil then you get the 3 alignments. It's another example of everything following the Rule of Three in Planescape (the game does this really nicely with its themes). But I always thought, even before reading Avellone's explanation, that the 3 shards were Trias, Fhjull and Ravel. Ravel is actually the most difficult to fit in, until you meet her and talk to her - then it becomes very apparent that most of the stories about her are wrong and she's not evil, even though she's a Grey Hag. None of her actions which are ascribed (by the people in Sigil) as being evil turn out to be quite what they think they are, including the reason for her riddle in the first place and her reason for opening the Cage.

But yeah, even with all this there's still some ambiguity and room for alternative explanations. That's the beauty of it

 

Probably because they didn't expect anybody to check

 

I think we'll just have to agree to disagree here since I think your explanation is somewhat far fetched. Meeting with Ravel definently did not make her less evil in my book. Allthough her intentions might have been to free the lady she did a lot of other horrible things. I think she herself admitted those killings in dialogue and Nameless One can expose that she was only interested in his answer. In my opinion the meeting with Ravel only makes her evil more apparent. Granted she's not your typical evil character, but she's still far on the evil side in my books. Even Paranoid Incarnation is evil in my opinion though but he leaves somewhat more up to debate than Ravel.

 

Some of these are odd, especially Practical; he's not Neutral and he's certainly not Lawful! It could be the same problem as with BG2 - they used the stats from one creature as a template for another and forgot to change the alignment. IIRC some of the Irenicus creature files listed him as Lawful Good (!) because they were copied off Elminster. Something similar might have happened here, and as 8 said they never expected someone to go look it up!

As I said earlier there's definitely room for multiple interpretations. I like mine because it fits with Chris Avellone's listing of the three shards, but it's not perfect and it's certainly not the only one. Of course the definition of Evil in D&D is a little ambiguous to begin with.