The adventures of REAL Man (SoA)

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I give up. I was too intrigued and amused by the concept. I'll run it already.

REAL Man is a human barbarian with 3 intelligence and wisdom, and just about everything else maxed out with the extra points. REAL Man rejects with a disdainful sneer anything even vaguely tricky, stealthy, clever, or tactical. He refuses on principle to do anything anyone on this board has ever classed as "cheesy." REAL Man thinks longevity is for wusses.

I'll provide a few more specifics on his mission, though I'd first like to point out for the record that *I* do not hold this disdain for these things; REAL Man does. I find tactics the most enjoyable aspect of combat, myself.

REAL Man's rules:

1) No cheats, bug exploits, "fake-talk" crap, none of that. That's the easy part; I don't use that stuff anyway.

2) No taking advantage of monsters' inferior AI (stinking-clouds they won't walk out of, leading them up to a doorway they can't get through and throwing pebbles at them while they stand there stupidly and die, getting them to chase the character around in fruitless circles while other NPCs or summoned monsters kill them from behind, etc.) No combat preparations in front of an intended enemy. (Yeah, like the dragon isn't going to notice you all surrounding him and summoning monsters.)

3) No sneak attacks. No backstabbing, no attacking anyone whose circle is still blue. No use of traps or spells that are essentially traps.

4) No munchkin abilities like Quivering Palm or Stunning Blow. No use of Edwin and his munchkin amulet. No use of any munchkin spell or item that has a chance of insta-killing something (Mace of Disruption, Silver Sword, Crom Faeyr, Finger of Death, etc.)

5) No selling and buying back magic items to restore their charges. No stealing stuff from thieves and selling it back to them. No buying anything from the bonus merchants.

6) REAL Man doesn't think *all* magic is cheesy. Damage spells are cool, healing spells are cool, and spells to rid bad guys of their own cheesy protections or dispel cheesy magic effects on him are all right. Absolutely no summoning spells. Absolutely no spells that have effects on a monster's fighting ability like "slow" or "stun" or "greater malison" or anything like that. No "invisibility" or "mislead" or "protection from weapons" or anything else that denies a monster the chance to hit you. No sitting around buffing with spells before a combat REAL Man knows is coming up. "Stoneskin" in the morning doesn't bother him, but no casting "improved haste" as you head up the big stairs to face Firkraag.

7) No magic items with charge effects that simulate anything forbidden in #6.

8) No magic weapons that afflict enemies as per #6. No Celestial Fury or dexterity-draining swords. Magic weapons that get plusses to hit and damage are ok, so are weapons that do fire damage or something like that.

9) REAL Man doesn't have to go solo, but anyone who goes with him must adhere to these rules. If Yoshimo comes with, he has to pick up a katana and swing it, none of this trap or hiding in shadows crap.

10) REAL Man can reload as often as he wants to, cause otherwise it's gonna be one short trip. (-:

Comments welcome. REAL Man probably will not embark until Wally is finished with ToB.

L

 

It takes a REAL WOMAN to play REAL MAN! Go for it! Just make sure that we are constantly informed of.. of.. well, of EVERYTHING! 8-) No, seriously. This will be an interesting roleplay for you I am sure.

 

Another Story thread. Tal Can't you make the BG2 forum change name to Roleplaying Corner?

Anyway Tjek. Good Luck. I am sad that his name isn't NOBLE MAN

 

Dual-wielding wasn't on the "cheese" list, but I definitely recall a couple of people complaining on the board that it was overpowered, so REAL Man has decided it's too munchkinny for him and is going with the classic "One fighter, one weapon" approach. Most of the magical two-handed swords are forbidden to him (Carsomyr, Silver Sword, Soul Reaver, Sarevok's sword, et al), so he's leaning towards halberds and spears, two weapon classes usually ignored by me. That Impaler sure seems like a manly weapon, though. I think it's time to give it a chance!

REAL Man's stats are STR 18%99 (rerolled a bit to get a high one), INT 8, WIS 3, DEX 18, CON 18, CHA 12 (though REAL Man, of course, thinks it's much higher!) I upped the INT from my initial concept of 3 because upon thinking about it, I wanted him to be basically mentally competent, otherwise his party members would be able to talk him out of things or hide their cheesiness from him or something like that. REAL Man isn't a mental vegetable, he just has no common sense at all and a stick up his ass. REAL Man's alignment is Lawful Neutral. For his picture, I used that bald white guy who looks like an American football player.

His first savegame is down and ready to roll. If anyone has additional ideas about cheese to ban from his diet--either things that you genuinely think are cheesy or things that you think would be funny for him to think are cheesy--lemme know.

L

 

REAL men don't need no wussy sleep, and will only rest once everyone's genuinely fatigued (and preferably has been for some time) None of that cheesey, oh I'm all out of fireballs, back to bed rubbish

 

I'm not such REAL man.

STR 18%99, INT 8, WIS 3, DEX 18, CON 18, CHA 12.

Those are not stats of REAL man but of REAL gorilla. Nah, even gorillas have WIS better than 3.

Other presumptions I agree with.
Have fun!

 

Okay, no one else has offered this so.. how will REAL MAN view the truly "cheesey" party member - BOO??? 8-)

 

Perhaps REAL Man thinks it's too 'munchkinny' or cheesy to run away from an enemy. REAL Men Only turn their backs on dead things - and even then not always (vampires, ghouls, etc)

And what about those Cheesy Boots of Speed? If you're not gonna run away from people, why do you need to be faster than them?

 

Cheesy damage-over-time spells. Cheesy finger-of-death spells. How about cheesy Draw Upon Holy Might? Good luck!!

 

lol this ought to be good
how about real MEN instead. It seems to be too much of a challenge.

 

Rest: REAL Man will make it a point to rest as little as possible, only when the party is badly wounded. Aerie should have fun in this group.

Boo: Boo is silly, but not cheesy. He doesn't affect gameplay at all, other than taking up one of Minsc's quick-slots.

Running away: REAL Man will never run or back down from a fight, but if he reloads, I'll let him avoid it in the next reload. Otherwise I'd be sitting there all year bashing my head on that high-level party in the Mithrest, or something.

Finger of death et al: Strictly forbidden.

REAL Gorilla: Well, yes, you have a point there. (-: This guy is hardly my ideal man (much as *he* may think he is), nor is he particularly representative of the male gender. But you need a wisdom of 3 to think it is a good idea to be an adventurer while not allowing your party to use any tactics, guile, or planning!

*************

Ok, REAL Man started his adventure today, fighting his way out of Irenicus' dungeon. (God, it's funny having all the NPCs call me "REAL Man" all the time. Reminds me of my days playing the Ultima series with a character named Hey You.) Anyway, so far so good. Unlike the 966666 characters, I expect REAL Man's game to start easy and work its way up to impossible, on account of the restrictions he's giving himself are ones that cripple a high-level party with high-level opponents much more than a low-level party fighting kobolds. Irenicus' dungeon was meant to be completed with no more than a dagger +1 here or there anyway, so there there was nothing much in it for his silly pride to object to.

REAL Man did not abandon his sister and his two friends in a foul dungeon, for that would have been cowardly. Does anyone know if it's possible to break Jaheira's cage
with high enough strength? I'd never even tried it before today. Of course, 18%99 wasn't high enough, so we had to go find the key. Nothing in the storage room was cheesy. REAL Man chivalrously gave the best armor to Jaheira, putting the leather on himself, as he is the best able to sustain damage, obviously. Imoen cast "Armor" on herself. REAL Man didn't have a problem with that, since it's just the spell equivalent of putting on scale mail, really.

Then we tooled around the first level of the dungeon. Not like I haven't done this dungeon enough times. Mephits and goblins just aren't all that. Imoen picked up a bow and arrows. REAL Man decided that wasn't cheesy because it does, after all, do damage, and not everyone in the party can reach an enemy with a melee weapon at the same time. He sternly warned Imoen against shooting the bow, running further away, and then shooting again, though. Imoen meekly agreed to this, at least while she was in REAL Man's company. The genie also appeared and asked REAL Man if he would sacrifice his sister to save himself. Of course, this would not be manly, so REAL Man said he would take his own punishment, and then killed the ogre mage that appeared. The tasks with Rielev and the golem were simple. Naturally, REAL Man wanted to help the poor helpless dryads escape. He wanted them to come along with his party, especially liking the one with the green hair, but they said they needed him to plant some acorns before he could escape. Weird, but not cheesy, so REAL Man agreed. He was less moved by the genie, who had less cleavage, but still figured that slavery was bad and every servant he freed was one fewer to aid Irenicus, so he did it. I was taken by surprise by those two golems who show up to pound on you when you go into Ellisime's room. I usually kill them while they're deactivated, but REAL Man thought that would be cheesy. Down the portal to level two.

REAL Man did not trust Yoshimo. Why was this shifty-eyed, pansy thief wandering around down here? And just look at the bell-bottoms he was wearing! Still, it was better to keep a thief in front of you than behind you, and it would have been cowardly to kill him while he was just standing there unthreateningly. So the five went cautiously on through level number two. Yoshimo endeared himself to REAL Man slightly by quoting manly martial arts movies and Iron Chef, which is REAL Man's favorite show after Car Talk. Then the mood grew somber as we found Khalid's body. REAL Man had never liked Khalid much because of the wussy way he used to run away in combat. Still, he was sorry to see him dead, and even sorrier to see Jaheira distraught. Imoen, who usually is the one who handles sympathy and such, today was no help at all, instead ranting about her own emotional distress. REAL Man felt very out of his depth with all this angsty stuff and wished something would come along to fight. Peeking into a north room, he found a deranged clone. Good enough. Jaheira and Imoen did not seem totally cheered up by the carnage, but at least they weren't yelling at each other anymore.

We had apparently missed a wand key somewhere (this seems to happen to me more often than not--maybe I just get sloppy in this dungeon), and Jaheira, apparently still distracted by grief, went the wrong way and triggered a cone of cold. That did it, we had to stop for the night. Imoen was having some nightmares or something. Part of REAL Man felt angry and helpless over not having been able to protect his sister from Irenicus' lechery and abuse. The rest of him wished she would go to a therapy circle or something instead of to him, because this hand-holding is just not his strength. Again, relief in a room to the north: a vampire!

Then we found the exit (disposing of the doppelganger Frennedan along the way). And that was that. Not too much learned yet, as few opportunities for cheese present themselves in the very first dungeon unless you are playing a solo and badly handicapped character such as the 966666 crew. REAL Man did identify a new thing he thought was cheesy: reading spell scrolls just to get experience (he refused to waste time on this, and Imoen didn't read any spells he wasn't planning to let her use). He would have liked to be able to eschew identify spells ("REAL Men don't need the stankin' instructions!"), but you're not allowed to use items in this game unless they're ID'ed, so he reluctantly gave up on that.

So Chapter One draws to a close. Real Man has thus far rested once (the whole party was severely wounded), and has not had to reload.

Further bulletins as events warrant!
L


[This message has been edited by tjekanefir (edited October 10, 2001).]

 

REAL Men read the Chronicles of REAL Man! At least they do in the nether world that is Duharrel's current abode and the limbo of the dwarven skalds. All of these former (if dead can be considered 'former') adventurers are inspired by the machismo that REAL Man has exhibited so far. If only they could inform him of the difficulties to come - well, REAL Man wouldn't pay their warnings any attention anyway, now would he? 8-)

Keep it up!

[This message has been edited by Kailynne Johanne (edited October 10, 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Kailynne Johanne (edited October 10, 2001).]

 

Fantastic!

What sort of protections are allowed? You've said Stoneskin and Armor spells are OK, but Protection from Weapons and Invisibility are not; what about spells which protect from monsters' spells? Do REAL men need Chaotic Commands and Negative Plane Protection?

 

My general rule of thumb is that REAL Man accepts any protective spells that last a couple of hours (as long as they don't involve anything extra-cheesy like protection from normal/magical weapons or invisibility of any sort, of course). What he really objects to is buffing the party up before going into an area where there's a combat. That's either cheesy use of foreknowledge (suddenly, I'm getting a premonition that there's a mean party of adventurers up on the second floor of the Mithrest!) or cheesy use of logic (hmm, gigantic stairs. Wonder if something real big lives at the bottom.) (-:

So he wouldn't object to chaotic commands or negative plane protection (or objects that confer those protections), but he's not going to sit around letting Aerie cast them on everyone as combat prep.

*************

Okay, when last we left our hero, REAL Man was in Waukeen's Promenade wondering what to do about the immensely cheesy psycho wizard who had just disappeared with Imoen. Nothing sprang immediately to mind, so he decided to just amble around the map square and see if anyone's kitty needed rescuing, or whatever they were always asking him to do back in BG1. Soon enough, he learned of some kind of disturbance in the circus tent, so REAL Man figured he'd go in there and see what he could find. First he found a genie who gave him a math problem to solve. REAL Man wasn't about to put up with any of that crap. Then the genie shifted gears and asked the party a riddle. The riddle was so easy that refusing to answer would have made REAL Man look stupid in front of his friends, so he grudgingly answered it, and the genie went away. Then they met an ogre with the voice of a cute babe. She claimed the circus tent was some kind of "grand illusion". REAL Man, whose wisdom is so low he couldn't disbelieve a fart if his life depended on it, thought she was referring to a Styx song. She said she needed REAL Man to fetch a key to free her, though, and that was sounding more like his style than math problems were, so he went off and got it, and sure enough, she turned into a cute babe. This was turning out to be REAL Man's lucky day. Well, except for the cheez-wiz kidnapping his little sister. And the torture. That was today, too.

The party easily found and killed the guy who had masterminded this so-called "illusion". He turned out to be a pathetic little gnome who only wanted to be respected, or some such whining. The owner of the circus, meanwhile, turned out to be old BG1 companion Quayle. REAL Man hadn't kept the wimpy, machinating gnome in his party for very long back then, but he seemed to have improved his attitude tremendously after assuming responsibility for Aerie, the cute babe from the illusion. He asked if REAL Man would teach Aerie to be a real adventurer, and REAL Man agreed. After reuniting another woman from the tent with her young son, the party went shopping in the Adventurer's Mart, but most everything there was too expensive and way too cheesy. Finally he bought a halberd +2. Then REAL Man saved the game and went into the Mithrest.

Sure enough, the adventurers on the second floor kicked our butts. There's no way around this for REAL Man at this level. He's too manly to meekly submit to their verbal abuse, it would be cowardly to sneak-attack them, and it would be cheesy to use any of the half-dozen standard tactics that would give the party an edge in this match-up (including casting, say, "haste" before going up the stairs). So REAL Man reloaded, the first of several such instances I'm sure, and conveniently failed to notice the stairs leading up this time. We'll fight that fight another day.

Done with Waukeen's Promenade, REAL Man and his entourage headed for the Slums, and entered Chapter Two!

Further bulletins as events warrant.
L

 

You are the best at making fun of the male gender, and ppl are not only not flaming you, they love you tjek. You are the master of male manipulation

The story? yeah it is crazy. What funny idea . I wish I could reload my life. It would make it so much easier to be a "real" man. Anyway I think you have a great time playing him, so keep it up

[This message has been edited by Nobleman (edited October 10, 2001).]

 

*lol*

this sounds like a character that i once did, i have a short story about him that i never got round to finishing.
http://www15.brinkster.com/deano99/story/chapter1.htm

sounding good anyway Tjek!

i dunno how you guys do this, but you are much more disciplened then i could ever be about the game. ;D

 

Well, it's not *men* I'm making fun of, per se, so much as ultra-purist gamers who think it's cheesy to do anything trickier than walking up to something and banging it with a sword. (-: Though I still think I'd like REAL Man a lot better than Wally, in real life, he's not really meant to be representing the male gender. *He* thinks he's the epitome of masculinity, of course, but then again Minsc thinks his hamster talks to him. (-:

**************

Anyway, some extremely swishy weirdo who kept saying "Coo!" approached REAL Man as he entered the slums, claiming to have news about Imoen. Overcoming his homophobia with some difficulty, REAL Man followed the weirdo home to listen to his deal. 20,000 gold. Hey, no problem. He got 5000 just from selling all the cheesy scrolls he picked up in Irenicus' dungeon.

In search of a quest or two, REAL Man did the only sensible thing and went to the nearest bar. The first person he met there was some arrogant jerk who started trying to shove REAL Man around. This ended in a pit fight, which upset Aerie to no end. REAL Man won this mano-a-mano. Next we were accosted by a young lady who looked like she hadn't slept in several days. Her name was Nalia and she wanted someone to save her family keep. REAL Man chivalrously rose to the task. Then some pretty-boy knight started giving REAL Man the third degree about his moral code. REAL Man didn't like his attitude, but he did look decently tough. However, some unknown force magically prevented REAL Man from having more than six people in the party, so he decided to take a gamble on Nalia's mediocre-looking trap and lock abilities and leave Yoshimo in the bar. It wasn't like he was going to use the guy's cheesy traps and hide-in-shadows abilities, after all, and he'd been very unimpressive in the combat thus far. So now consisting of REAL Man, Minsc, Anomen, Jaheira, Nalia, and Aerie, the party scouted around the bar and with no real effort on their part learned of a slavery ring running out of the bar, as well as a few other quests. The team went back to check the slavery rumors out. Lehtinan didn't want to let REAL Man into the back rooms, but Aerie, who was rather vain and had put on Kalah's charisma ring a while ago, had much better luck. Jaheira interrupted angrily when a madam tried to offer REAL Man her girls' services. REAL Man thought that was rather bossy of her, but he wouldn't have hired a hooker in front of the women anyway. He didn't want them thinking he had to buy sex or anything. REAL Man did not tell the angry wife where her tail-chasing husband was. None of his business, and guys have to stick together a little, anyway. Then, down in the gladiator pits, the party witnessed a troll tearing a dwarven slave apart. This made Anomen angry, and REAL Man agreed. Slavery is very, very cheesy. The slavers were easy to kill, the beasts a little harder than usual, since REAL Man thinks charming animals is lame. Still, no reload necessary. Hendak was appropriately grateful. REAL Man went shopping and bought the mace of strength, only to find that it only raises your strength to 18, and Anomen already has better than that. REAL Man's estimation of Anomen went up a little, and he put the mace away for now, figuring Anomen can always use it when we fight something that needs a magic weapon to hit it, anyway. (There's no point giving it to Aerie, since she never has her hand-to-hand weapon equipped and it does her no good unless it's equipped.)

Then we went down into the sewers in pursuit of the rest of the slavers. The party was really starting to totter a little as it had taken some damage from that Beastmaster and now Nalia missed a couple of traps. REAL Man pushed on, however. The Lilarcor puzzle was solved, and Minsc got an enchanted two-handed sword which he was permitted to use (we'd sold Sarevok's, since REAL Man thinks vampiric weapons are cheese). Then we pitched camp in an attempt to patch up some of our gaping wounds. Aerie and Nalia also had a chance to learn some spells REAL Man would let them use, which will presumably help matters. Next: the slaver ship.

Aerie and Jaheira have both been sweet-talking REAL Man, by the way. Aerie is just talking about her wings so far and Jaheira about missing Khalid, so REAL Man doesn't know they're preludes to a pass yet, but I do. I haven't made any decisions about which, if either, he's going to be interested in. He'll play it by ear, and I'll probably go pick Viconia up at some point just to keep his options open. (-:

Further bulletins as events warrant.

 

he sounds like the cartoon charator jonney bravo

 

Never heard of him. Sorry. )-:

Last night REAL Man finished off the child slavers, much to the pleasure of everyone but Nalia, who whined several times that she didn't see how we were helping the less fortunate doing THIS. Finally figuring out that the "less fortunate" means her *OWN* servants, not poor people she doesn't know, REAL Man led his intrepid group off towards Nalia's keep. It was now nighttime, and Aerie, who'd been chatting away pleasantly enough, suddenly stopped and started whining that it was so dark and scary that she wanted to stop for the night, even though we had just awakened a few hours ago and she wasn't even fatigued yet. REAL Man just stared at her in disbelief. She was scared of the dark. It suddenly occurred to him that maybe Quayle hadn't changed that much after all. He had palmed off a little girl he didn't feel like taking care of anymore onto them, and REAL Man had just assumed she was so tiny and frail because of her race or something. He was going to get that stupid gnome. REAL Man sure as hell wasn't going to drop everything and put her to bed, though, so he just told her to buck up and left for De'Arnise Keep.

However, as we left Athkatla we were interrupted by some assassins and a man they'd poisoned, who begged us to take him back to his home in the Docks. Back to the city to take care of that, and then REAL Man quickly became embroiled in a plot with one-time BG1 campanions Xzar and Montaron. Xzar seemed to have saned up a little, and said he wanted us to investigate Monty's disappearance. The doorman at the Harper building offered to let us in *if* we did a little quest for him, involving killing some mages and their creations. This REAL Man did with no difficulty, and into the Harper building we went. After obligingly playing the Harpers' charade through (this embarrassed even Jaheira), we were finally duped into helping to assassinate Xzar. REAL Man was somewhat pissed off over being used like that, but on the other hand, he'd been thinking someone should probably kill the maniacal necromancer for a long time, so he let it slide. Aerie and Jaheira, meanwhile, had started sniping at each other. Using his colossal wisdom, REAL Man managed not to realize they were fighting over him. I'm not sure how he's going to feel about that. He would've stolen Jaheira from Khalid in a second back when he was alive, but his corpse is barely cool right now. And as for Aerie, she bursts into tears every time her feet hurt. Which is alarmingly frequent. REAL Man has been choosing football-coach style encouragement when she tells him of her woes ("Be strong! Stand tough! You have it in you! Extra effort!") He's not sure if it's helping. REAL Man wonders what coaches of girls' teams tell them. Anyway, as long as we were in the Docks, REAL Man thought we should go get a drink and deal with whatever quest awaited us in the bar. It turned out to be some cretin named Baron Ployer who cursed Jaheira and teleported away. This was basically easy XP for the party: back to the slums to talk to Bernard, then to Ployer's house to kill him. However, while we were doing this, Nalia piped up to complain that we hadn't gone to her keep yet. I didn't want to lose REAL Man's stronghold, and he didn't want Nalia to start crying and set Aerie off, so as soon as Ployer was dead we set off for De'Arnise Keep again. This time we made it. Jaheira is still cursed--IIRC it takes 24 hours to wear off once Ployer's dead.

Further bulletins as events warrant. REAL Man is feeling very uncomfortable with these magic-using girls who are not adapting well to his style of play. I'm very torn between letting him use his chauvenism/chivalry to drop Aerie and Nalia off someplace nice and safe and get some more appropriate teammates, or dropping off the men, picking up Viconia and Mazzy, and making him coach a girls' soccer team in earnest. (-: REAL Man: "Die trolls die on three. One, two, three: DIE TROLLS DIE! Let's go GIRLS!" *laughter*

 

It takes 24 hours of sleep for the curse to wear off, this I know for sure. Just 24 hours of traveling or fighting doesn't cut it (I think), so tell us what happens with that.

Also, too bad you don't know about Johnny Bravo, he is a riot (for a cartoon character)