Why does my party turn red?

Fulcanelli wrote:
> I am near the beginning of the game (BG1, the original 5-disk version),
> entering in Nashkel, and on the way down, my characters turned red.
> What's up with this and how does this affect gameplay? Montaron kept
> complaining about wanting to go to Nashkel. At one point while
> still in Beregost, all my party suddenly turned red and started
> fighting, mostly Montaron and Khalid. I didn't save that game and
> restarted and headed straight down to Nashkel, and they didn't fight.
> I didn't get a chance to do a lot of things in Beregost because of
> Montaron's attitude problem.
>
> What's up with the red?

Montaron and Xzar are evil. Khalid is good. More than that, each duo
has--reasons to object to the other duo's presence. They did go through
a dialogue before fighting, right? If not, this might be a bug.

In general, it's risky to mix good and evil characters in the same
party. Not that keeping to all-evil characters will guarantee no
intraparty strife, if (say) one is an evil male misogynist and another
is an evil female misandrist.
 >> Stay informed about: Why does my party turn red? 

I've noticed in my numerous restarts of this game (from the beginning)
that the characters seem to turn red. Maybe it's at night. I think
it's nothing to be concerned with.
 >> Stay informed about: Why does my party turn red? 

Fulcanelli wrote:

> I've noticed in my numerous restarts of this game (from the beginning)
> that the characters seem to turn red. Maybe it's at night. I think
> it's nothing to be concerned with.

You're referring to the character avatars rather than the circles around
their feet, right? If that's the case, it's how the game depicts
infravision. Is your character an elf or half-elf?

Bob
 >> Stay informed about: Why does my party turn red? 

"Fulcanelli" <fulcanelli.DeleteThis@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1142816096.273900.188120@z34g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> I've noticed in my numerous restarts of this game (from the
beginning)
> that the characters seem to turn red. Maybe it's at night. I think
> it's nothing to be concerned with.

When you say "turn red", do you mean "their graphic glows red" or do
you mean "they have red circles around their feet instead of the usual
green, then they go hostile and start attacking each other"?

If the former, it's just an effect of twilight at a particular time of
day.

If the latter, some of your party members don't like each other.

Khalid and Jaheira are a couple, who are members of one particular
faction who are by and large of Good alignment, but also suited to
Neutrality.

Montaron and Xzar belong to a rival faction of Evil alignment, which
is in a clandestine and sometimes open state of war with Khalid and
Jaheira's faction.

If you try to keep one or both of the Good/Neutral pair, and one or
both of the Evil pair, in the party at the same time, there is a
chance that they will come to blows. When this happens, all members of
both pairs will leave your party and begin a fight to the death,
against each other.

At this stage, you have to either take sides or let them get on with
it. The survivors will turn blue again, and you can talk to them and
hope they will rejoin: the losers were killed while outside your
party, so you cannot let them back in in order to raise them from the
dead, so they are permanently gone and all you can do is loot their
corpses for the stuff you gave them. The obvious solution is to not
try and include both pairs in your party.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There is another, specific pair that can come to blows. Again, one is
Good and the other is Evil, and they both fill the same role - the
evil one's first words to you will be asking you to assassinate the
good one. The solution, again, is to only have one of them in the
party.

There is one other party member who can turn violent. He is a person
of Good alignment, but mentally damaged and with Berserker Rage
tendencies, who has a (missing) companion to rescue (the Good one of
the above pair of rivals). You have to attempt to rescue the companion
in question, within ten days, or he will get angry, go berserk, leave
your party and fight to the death. If you succeed with the rescue,
both are loyally yours for life (unless you are evil).

Jonathan.
 >> Stay informed about: Why does my party turn red? 

Thanks. Now that you mention this, I recall from the tutorial about
the circle color changes. I think I happened to chance on both about
the same time, a night scene followed by the members starting to fight.
 >> Stay informed about: Why does my party turn red?