Stuck inside "The Beginning"

[Brother Rathgar]

Hello DM's (or DM, singular, if there's only one left)

I have a problem with two characters at the moment. As the title says, both are stuck in 'The Beginning'. Now, I understand how this is happening, but I was wondering if I could get some help getting those characters unstuck so that they can go on their merry way adventuring. The Stuck characters names are 'Chipper Bobbins' and 'Rathgaar the Barbarian'.

It's a naming convention problem, I know. I'm an Old School player, former leader of (BoC) on some such server (it was North, East, South, West back when I played). Being the leader I needed to recycle names periodically, or use subtle changes, therefore:

First Name: Brother
Last Name: Rathgar (BoC)

First Name: Brother Rathgar
Last Name: (BoC)

First Name: Brother Rathgar (BoC)
Last Name: <Blank>

would all result in the character name that was desired (for that matter adding <spaces> at the end also allowed one to continue using the same names with different characters, but that's beside the point).

These days it's just not working it would seem. I arrived at the problem in question in two separate ways so far.

Way #1
1. Roll a 'Chipper Bobbins'
2. Level him a little bit
3. Realize I messed up and take him to the Guillotine [Delete him as it were]
4. Reroll a 'Chipper Bobbins'
5. Level him to 15
6. Log off for the night
7. Log back in and find him stuck (albeit still level 15), unable to move or do anything, in 'The Beginning'

Way #2
1. Roll a 'Rathgaar the Barbarian'
2. Level him, mess him up...
3. Roll a new 'Rathgaar the Barbarian' (the database didn't seem to mind, I could log into either toon and they appeared to be separate entities)
4. Guillotine/Delete the messed up version of 'Rathgaar the Barbarian'
5. Log into the new version of the toon, run around a bit, all seems well and good
6. Log off for the night
7. Log back in and find him stuck, unable to move or do anything, in 'The Beginning'

I am just really hoping that I could have these characters freed of their "purgatory" in some way:

1. A DM teleports them out of 'The Beginning' (They might get stuck again when the server resets, I don't know)
2. A DM deletes them both entirely, Server-side (I don't care about whatever gear they might have on them)
3. Someone tells me how to work around this issue
4. DM Clangadin wakes up and says to himself, "Holy Cr@p, Rathgar from 2003 is back and needs my help!"
5. A DM decides, "You know what, there aren't enough players around to worry about whatever 'cheating mechanic' necessitated the whole 'Frozen State' aspect of 'The Beginning' anymore" and removes it (this would be a nice option actually, as the new characters could just walk right out of 'The Beginning' and be on their merry ways)
6. In the complete absence of an active DM a reigning (and retiring) one passes the torch to DM Rathgar! YEAH! (no doubt the least likely scenario)

Anyways, I've apparently become quite long-winded over the last 13 years, I'm just really attached to certain names, as I've used them in nearly every game I've played since their inception in 2003 Neversummer. Which was my first ever Online game.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide,

Rath

[Pros]

I'll change them in database to put them in NS but you need to wait until the next reset to happen before logging in with them. Otherwise you get stuck in the beginning. I'll do the database thing at 9:45 pm eastern, 1/23/2016, so you'll need to wait about 5 hours for next reset then try them.

[Lokey]

Generally don't make characters with too similar names. I think I used a function that returns first name + space + last name to use for ident purposes, but I'm not sure.

I didn't do the character deletion program and didn't test it to breaking so don't know if reusing names is a good idea.

Info on name/login is kept until reset though, and that's really tricky to get at to work cleanly. Still headaches in ns4 over it.

[Brother Rathgar]

Generally don't make characters with too similar names. I think I used a function that returns first name + space + last name to use for ident purposes, but I'm not sure. I didn't do the character deletion program and didn't test it to breaking so don't know if reusing names is a good idea.

Thanks guys, your assistance is much appreciated. Hell, the fact that you're still hosting this mod 13 years on is appreciated. It's great to be "home".

[Brother Rathgar]

Both 'Chipper Bobbins' and 'Rathgaar the Barbarian' are still stuck for some reason. I'm not against you outright deleting them if that'll solve the problem. Thank you again for trying once already to solve the issue, it's much appreciated.

[Pros]

OK try again after the next reset which is 0300 on 1/29 eastern. Do the two characters have a '1' at the end of their names? The bic file has a 1 at the end of the two toons. The database has the names without the 1. Post the results if we are not successful and I'll try again.

[Brother Rathgar]

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Rathgaar the Barbarian is free, and on his merry way adventuring in NS3.5, I haven't checked Chipper Bobbins, but I would imagine he's likewise free if you'd done the same thing to each. There is no '1' after anyone's name, and that's good, since I'd likely get all OCD twitchy were there lol.

Thanks again for your help,

Brother Rathgaar (BoC)

[Lokey]

There's an nwnx module that will pull the file name so you don't have to infer it. The problem is I don't think it's compatible with the current exe + plugins and it'd take a lot of testing to get to another stable platform (because ns3 uses a lot of hacks/bugs in the implementation to get stuff done sometimes reliably).

Guess it's not really a huge job (try, change one script, see if everything still works), but I can't really look at ns3 without ripping out piles of things for being so hackish

Note that nwnx_fixes has some interesting things like changing the bleed-out death hp amount and amount of stat bonuses allowed along with some other interesting things. Sure 80 str or con wouldn't break anything but 80 casting set omg would, so need to be careful there.

[Nuor]

Hello all, long time no see.

Along these lines.

Twice now I've had a character start in beginning and then be booted for , "failed Character check not level 1 or not 0 experience." This is a 5bard/4RDD/8AA on Nuortest name "Red Lightning". Besides the common exception errors which seem to correct themselves eventually this is the most common error I've had and only one makes character unplayable.