Baldur's Gate: The Zero Reload Saga

That explanation I offered is going to have to wait, because we got ambushed again on our way to the city gates.

Well, I say “ambushed”. In truth we stumbled across a group of thugs standing around a man lying on the ground, and they shouted “THERE MUST BE NO WITNESSES KILL THEM ALL BLAAAAGH” and attacked.

This was a mistake for two reasons.

Firstly, even if you absolutely had to permanently silence anyone who happened to spot you here, rather than just playing it cool and making it look like you weren’t doing anything suspicious, would you really go bellowing something like “Kill them all for we must leave no witnesses!” Don’t you think that’s a bit likely to draw more attention from other people that you will also have to kill now? Why not just go out and slaughter the whole city?

I suppose it's possible that they panicked, but that excuse only carries you so far. I mean, if someone's seriously acting like they're on to you then fine, but we're just a bunch of people minding our own business, on our way to an inn. You aren't going to blurt out "I AM PREGNANT AND A HEROIN ADDICT AND I HAVE SYPHILLIS AND NOW I MUST KILL YOU BECAUSE NOBODY CAN EVER KNOW" just because your mother calls and asks how you're doing.

Man, that was a rough period of my life.

Secondly, they’re utter, utter wimps that don’t even carry any weapons. They’re so easy to kill it’s pathetic. I mean, I can literally just set everyone’s script to “Standard Attack” and turn Party AI on and go to the kitchen for a sandwich, then come back and find that they’re all dead and not a single one of my party members has been hit.

With that joke of a battle over and done with, the man lying on the ground addresses me, telling me that he’s been poisoned and needs me to take him to his friends…because in D&D, any poisoning that happens as part of a quest rather than in battle is almost invariably incurable by conventional means.

Now, think about this situation for a second. The man has been poisoned. It’s fairly safe to assume that the thugs we just killed were responsible for this. It’s also a lethal poison, so they obviously had murder on their minds.

Can you see where I’m going with this?

If you want someone dead and you’re in a position to pour poison down their throat or stab them with a poisoned dagger or however they planned to accomplish this, why the HELL would you bother with poison in the first place instead of just killing them then and there? He’s lying there, on the ground, in front of you, unable to fight back, and you want him dead. This is not rocket science, people. Stab him.

Oh wait, you can’t do that because you didn’t bring any weapons, can you? Well, that explains it. You aren’t succumbing to the evil mastermind’s weakness of dispatching one’s foes in needlessly elaborate ways; you’re just the most incompetent murderers ever.

I can just about see how this all went down.

“OK Jimmy, I got him! I got him! Quick, cut his throat!”
“OK, uh…who was supposed to bring the swords?”
“What’re you looking at me for? It was Carl’s turn this week.”
“The hell it was!”
“Crap. OK, I gotta run to the store and get some poison. Don’t let him go anywhere.”
"Hold on, hold on. If you're going to the store, get me some chips."
"OK, well..."
"Me too! I want some chips."
"Alright, I'll just get us one of the big bags and we can..."
"No, I want the hot and spicy flavour. You guys always get the cheesy ones."
"Screw you, Carl."
"Uh, do you guys want me to get dip, or...oh shit, someone's coming! KILL THEM ALL FOR YOU KNOW WE MUST LEAVE NO WITNESSES!"

Bottom line: Because of these people’s stupidity, we’ve now got to haul someone’s sorry carcass over to a building in the Docks. I assume that he dies if you take too long about this, (I’ve never actually tried it, but I’m not taking the chance now) so it’s time for a quick detour.