Neverwinter Nights 2/Fridge

Fridge Brilliance

• Pretty much what Mephasm is made of. He never lies, he never fails to be anything less than absolutely polite, and he tries to give the party every advantage and help that he can, regardless of his circumstances. It's generally accepted that he's a Manipulative Bastard, and the most evil figure in the game, despite him never doing a single thing to justify it -- in fact, it just makes him all the more magnificent. Cue fan complaints when he never shows up in the sequels.
  • It's "generally accepted that he's a Manipulative Bastard" because he's a devil ("baatezu" if you want to use the technical term). Manipulative Bastard is kind of their Hat. That and Rules Lawyer.

Fridge Logic

• Add up everyone you kill in Neverwinter and subtract it from the population set in the Forgotten Realms books. You just killed a sizable chunk of it.
  • The encounters being designed with many weak foes over few stronger ones doesn't really help.
  • It still makes one wonder how the bad guys haven't completely taken over the city if they have an army of that many expendable thugs running around.
  • And why, in the situation mentioned in the above Foregone Victory, Torio didn't just bring up the player character's impressive kill count to get them out of the way, instead of trying to frame them for destroying a village for no apparent reason -- especially if the PC joined with the Shadow Thieves and has been slaughtering dozens of Watch members since arriving in town.
    • Torio's well-informed, sure, but not omniscient, and the Shadow Thieves are decidedly not on her side. While she may have suspected the PC's alliance with the Shadow Thieves, she's still blindsided by their manufactured witness. If she doesn't have proof of the player character's pogrom on the Watch, one that doesn't even necessarily happen depending on whether the player obeys orders from higher up, she's better off with the frame job. That's especially true when you remember that such an accusation would be less about the player at that point, and more about fingering the Shadow Thieves themselves, which would get unhealthy for her.
  • The population demographics in the source books make absolutely no sense whatsoever, especially in terms of military forces. For comparison, Neverwinter (23000+ population) has a militia of about 400, about a third of which are off duty. Port Llast (700 population) has a militia of 130 people. Luskan (16000+ population) has a militia of about 300......and 1330 archers that don't get included in that total because no one seemed to bother doing the math of just how many naval troops are present, and this isn't even counting the actual naval crews. The population numbers jump all over the place, as well. Waterdeep's population increases by five times over during the trade season. This would mean that literally almost the entire population of the surrounding area goes to Waterdeep simultaneously.
• The fact that One of Many appears in Storm of Zehir raises interesting questions about what the canonical Knight-Captain did in Rashemen.
• As in most Dungeons & Dragons CRPGs there's a bit of a chronological issue if the Knight-Captain is any race besides human, halfling, half-elf, half-orc, or planetouched. If you're any other race then you'd logically be too old for the story to make sense. The time factor is figured out mostly through the age of other characters, such as Shandra Jerro, who's implied to be about the same age and whose grandfather was present at your birth (sort of).
  • This adds to the fanbase's negative reaction to Elanee.
  • There's only a chronological issue if you don't alter your elf character's age from the default. Sure, the Player's Handbook states that elves' default age is 120 or so, but the Forgotten Realms novels have been ignoring that forever -- most of The Legend of Drizzt takes place with the title character in his forties. Elves seem to be physically mature around the same time humans are, but other elves don't treat them as adults until they've passed their first century.
  • It's explicitly made unclear whether Ammon Jerro is Shandra's grandfather, great-grandfather, or what. This is probably why.