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I am the expert, asshat.

King Arthur: Knight's Tale Neocore still making King Arthur games. This one is still a ways off from funding but I enjoyed the other games of theirs that I've played

i prefer plate early, but extremely early you don't have much of a choice (port maje and shortly after), only brigandine is available to buy. all armors have weaknesses, yes, but pierce weakness is particularly glaring IMO early on for tanks because most every early ranged weapon is piercing or part piercing (and of those that are part piercing, the other part is generally slashing, which plate is not weak to either) and they tend to be the biggest combat threats early on. YMMV based on your experiences in turn-based though, perhaps melee is a bigger deal for your tanks.

also another thing is - i don't know when the alst time you playd potd rtwp was, but kind of what elohnin was saying is that 1-8ish is the hardest part of the game honestly. even on RTWP it can be extremely brutal because the encounter scaling/balancing early on is brutal and you don't have plenty of options. these days i have a pretty systematic way of doing lots of combat-free questing in port maje and nekataka to get up to level 8 or so with cash and items before engaging in some of the more combat-heavy quests.

as a thought experiment, typically melee weapons range from 6-8 PEN mundane. at PotD they get +2 by default. 7 armor might as well be 0 for all the protection it's going to give your tanks (not quite, because of overpenetration). exceptional medium or mundane heavy may give you a small -25% damage mitigation or so, but if you can really get above the curve you can typically get the bulk of your damage to -50 to -75%, which will do wonders for your survivability, especially if those attacks also graze. edit - to add, based on what kaylon is saying, and your experience (esp TB), and my experience (lots of rtwp potd), part of hte problem is that you're not getting the damage mitigation you need. grazes can add up, but a -50% graze malus on top of a -50% or -75% AR malus is a vanishingly small amount of damage. edit 2 - for additional CC, consider daze (wizard and priest have tier one spell sources). -4 PEN will help you a lot.

More SJW Cultural Marxist indoctrination, no doubt.

I think the most obvious application is not wanting to get hit by disengagement attacks. For Monks who want to be very mobile it can be benefical to be able to disengage without too much risk early on in the game and improve that later without the use of unique items etc. But as I said: +5 Reflex is okay.

Gipon Prudensco is a padded armor. And obviously it's an exception because it has some very good unique enchantments that help with tanking (giving you more deflection AND immunity to flanked which means 1 more AR and 10 more deflection than a char who gets flanked) and also comes legendary.

I think your tanks aren't sturdy enough... Their defenses should be high enough to reduce the critical chance of the enemies at least to single digits (to avoid over penetration from crits), while the biggest chunk of the damage should be reduced by their armor (the enemies should always have their damage reduced by 75% when they hit them). With your party you can easily achieve very high armor (brigandines+Woodskin+Pain Block) and your tanks have enough passive healing to become immortals (Exalted Endurance+Ancient Memory+Pain Block). Also don't forget to use Shield Wall when facing ranged attackers... You also have summons and your ranger's pet (a bear can become pretty sturdy too if you have one) at your disposal to take care of the enemies who manage to pass your tanks.

Hi, since Swift Flurry always procs attack rolls that are done with the main hand even if the offhand triggered it (see Sun & Moon in offhand and Battle Axe with Bleeding Cuts in main hand: lots of Bleeding Cuts from Swift Flurry without the recovery malus) I thought I'd give it a shot* and try if that also works with a ranged weapon in the main hand (and a melee weapon in the offhand obviously). And it does! Forget the times when you thought you couldn't use Fire in the Hole with Swift Flurry - you can! It even seems that Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming procs from the ranged weapon can proc additional procs. It's pretty crazy, I can tell you. Other good ranged weapons for this: Current's Rush (High Tide is powerful once it procs) Hand Mortar (with Blinding Smoke + Avenging Storm: ridiculous) Blunderbusses (every pellet seems to be able to trigger another shot) Tried it with SC Monk with Whispers of the Wind (awesome) and also with Monk/Ranger using Driving Flight (higher chance to get proc-chains with Stunning Surge: also great. Especially nice is that you can combine it with Hunter's Claw which also works ranged weapons in the main hand- Using a blunderbuss or mortar lets you get those stacks pretty quickly. Enjoy! *

So I ran my initial Fellowship of the Rings group for about 8 levels, and I found turn-based to be much harder than I expected - certainly harder than real-time with pause for now. Like most, I went in with the belief that having full control of the combat phase would let me dominate the AI even more. But there were two fundamental aspects of this game's turn-based implementation I had ignored - or I had at least underestimated their impact. First, because every character essentially gets one offensive action per turn, I no longer have a decisive edge in term of action economy. This equalization means in practice the AI now gets more turns per round than I do, because the AI fields more characters on the field. In particular, the insufficient number of attacks from my single target DPS-oriented team meant that I was really struggling to mow down hordes of AI characters than in the past. Conversely, I am taking a lot more damage on my characters than I am used to, because there are more attacks coming in my direction than before - which brings up the second issue. Namely, the widening of the graze range meant that even my tanks have a hard time surviving. For instance, my main tank had a Deflection of over 100, I think, by level 5 or so. But the AI was hardly ever missing him, because of the outrageous graze range. So I am re-starting and adjusting my approaches a bit. Most fundamentally, I need either a lot of AoE or CC, rather than a lot of single target DPS that I am used to bringing. As a result, I will likely add another Chanter multi-class and bring the number of Chanters to 2; it seems like 2 Chanters rotating their stun AoE per turn can lock down a large portion of the AI horde. I will also likely have to put the heaviest armor possible on all front-liners, because Deflection-based tanking is not really a possibility as far as I can see.

Woodskin gives +5pierce AR, that's why brigandines are the best option if you have a druid in your party. Also you don't need to find some expensive unique armors - looting fine/exceptional items at his level isn't that hard (bounties/ships).

Students are tested on Social Science in 8th grade, and the test breakdown was pretty much 4 questions on 6th grade content, 3 questions on 7th, and 4 questions on 8th grade content. It has actually shifted quite a bit in the last few years and is no longer the silly multiple guess format. I also teach in an area with a lot of parent involvement and it is predominately Asian, so I am spoiled by not having to really worry about the test scores. I have taught in lower socio-economic schools and it matches that clip from The Wire to a tee.

Thinking back many of my professors and teachers certainly thought of us as intellectual deserts. One used to tell us as much

I voted yesterday. There was a short wait but no biggie. For President I voted for Jorgensen of course. And no it was far from a “wasted” vote. The winner of the electoral votes of my state is an absolute foregone conclusion. A vote for Trump or Biden would’ve been wasted. Not that I would ever cast my vote for either of them. On the other hand every single vote that Jorgensen receives is invaluable. Not because it will make her president. That is mathematically impossible. But every vote the Libertarian candidate receives improves the standing of the Libertarian party, improves their process for getting ballot access in 2024, and move them one vote closer to major party status. So a vote for the third-party candidates that have nationwide access is anything but wasted. And the best of all I don’t have to lose sleep knowing I voted for a scoundrel.

Its not that far. But yeah, it can be risky early if you don't know what you're doing. I tend to go after sea bounties early and get some good cannons & train the crew, probably buy a Dhow. So its less risky then. And, like Boeroer wrote, you need a pretty high combined Mechanics score nowadays.

I'm sure we all are at this point.

Yep, that's basically it. We have certain educational standards we have to cover. We have a textbook that covers those standards. How we teach it is going to vary greatly, and is why we all go to school for 5+ years, student teach, take credentialing tests, attend professional development, etc. New teachers lean heavily on the textbook. You have to figure a new teacher relies on it for about 80% of the year's content and instruction. As you get further along in teaching, it becomes easier to streamline the boring textbook content and introduce more varied sources and lessons to students. I'd say I was down to about 30% with the previous textbooks while still covering the standards. We just adopted new books, and I have less teaching time in digital learning, so I'm probably back up to about 60% on the textbook this year. I am sure some states, districts, and administrations are way more heavy handed in forcing lessons on teachers. I know it is a lot more stifling to do math and ELA in my district. But Social Science is a pretty magical subject.

You need a hell lot of mechanics for that. Don't think you can have that at lvl 8 when you're not optimized for lockpicking. With BErath's Blessings you can buy it right away though.

This issue has been found to be due to xbox cloud saves not uploading to the cloud correctly. They thought they had it fixed in patch 3.3 but it didn't help. Hopefully they have this out during this weeks content update patch. Would rather see this patched than see new content to be honest because seems like many of us can't play at all.

Speaking of stealing, there is a very sweet armor (in fact, strongest defensive armor) at the merchant located on the slaver island beach.

yeah, 7 is not going to protect your tanks. typically i have to steal better gear (at that level you can find some exceptional medium armor which almost fills the same hole, sometimes even better since its weaknesses and recovery penatly aren't as bad as mundane heavy) or blow all my money at e.g. mahiri to get fine heavy armor. but even mundane brigandine (available in port maje) isn't great because its weakness is pierce, which IME means my tanks get shot down real fast from the almost-unfair ranged rogues at the early stages of the game.

this is a minor detail/possible brainstorming point, but what kind of armor do you have your tanks on? it's hard getting a clear picture of your gear. one problem with PotD scaling and item balancing is that heavy armor is relatively uncommon, and you start getting mundane heavy armor when you have already started getting magical light and medium armor. this is a problem because on PotD the +2 PEN enemies get for free means that heavy armor itemization is effectively no real improvement over medium armor in terms of damage mitigation. you need to go out of your way to get fine and exceptional heavy armor ASAP, and make sure you are keeping up with game progression (e.g. use non-PL scaling as a goal i.e. fine at level 5-8, exceptional at 9-12, etc) and rock some additional stuff (e.g. hardy inspiration, potions of spirit shield, etc.) to actually get decent mitigation. obviously i don't have much experience with turn-based, but on PotD a melee character with appropriate heavy+ armor (a buff or enemy debuff plus e.g. generic tank with appropriately scaled heavy armor, or a stalker with above-curve medium armor [because stalkers get an additional +1 AR]) is basically unkillable unless i get really unlucky with the damage types in the fight.

I'm mostly trying to figure out how to cover that story without sounding like a preacher, but also in a timely manner. Trying to find good material for it is a huge minefield. Are you trying to make my job more difficult?

Special powers allow the government to largely bypass the straitjacket of, uh, the rule of law. Contrary to the version the media are peddling, the government is not bound to respect the stated intention and self-imposed limits to the powers granted by the state of alarm declaration. They claimed it's only to be applied to certain regions, and only to impose certain restrictions, but legally that's hogwash. There are no such limitations. The last state of alarm saw the government abuse its special powers to push through decrees and rules that had little or nothing to do with 'rona — which was deliberate because otherwise they would have been torn to pieces by Parliament. And seeing as how pushback against this overreach was marginal at best and the population largely supports kicking limits on executive power to the curb, I can guarantee that we'll see even more of that. After the state of alarm ceased last time, they pledged to make legislative efforts to avoid resorting to exceptional constitutional measures. Instead, they went on vacation and did **** all. Four months later, new state of alarm. TL;DR: what politician would say no to more power?

Bummer.

Nope, I will check this. Yes, I think it was the purpose. I don't want to change too much abilities (source of bugs too). And I have already coded the change (I was waiting for feedbacks about the other proposed changes but this one seemed rather painless). I also wanted to keep the stackability with Tumbling because... ... the most obvious application is for Riposte or Imagined Pain builds. And even in this case, Nomad Brigandine is the easy choice. I don't like talents to have too narrow goals. And monks do have great choices to pick from so waiting for Tumbling was a too obvious possibility if one does not absolutely need to stack them. That's why I thought this one could have just a little more raw power. +5 Reflex is indeed small, but worth half a talent on its own. I'm extremely curious about the proposed changes about the 5 Empower Talents and Inspired Defense by the way. I am really not sure what to do about them. (and to a lesser extant, spell resistant buff).

Down ballot, though. I mean the specific conditions of this election makes the Presidential election especially consequential, but local elections are much more important to your daily life, regardless of the election year.

Nostalgia time... from my early teen years. A pair of Queen classics. White Queen and March of the Black Queen

No, we do not. I just texted my wife and she sent me pictures of our voter registration cards. I didnt even know I was registered! Bastards better not call me for jury duty again.

fair enough. perhaps is a quibble, but am thinking is worth stressing how the epidemiologists is emphatic that the vaccine is not a cure. fauci and others are worried that far too americans (we can't speak to south africans) is confused 'bout how the vaccine will protect a population from covid-19. even after old people and healthcare workers start getting the vaccine, will be a considerable 'mount o' time 'fore we see a return to normal and that time may increase if too many people either refuse to take the vaccine or discontinue covid-19 protocols mistaken believing that the vaccine = safety. the vaccine is not a solution in the short term if people continue to behave ignorant. perhaps a quibble, but is what we do. HA! Good Fun!

wasn't our prediction. zor were claiming sanctions were gonna be laughed off by russia 'cause o' their vast currency reserves. in response we quoted a harvard economist who said if russia didn't take drastic measures, they could be bankrupt in 6-18 months, and that sanctions would make all that much more difficult for russia to avoid such a fate. 'course russia took severe austerity measures, but fact remains we were referencing the opinions o' a harvard economist to refute zor's belief sanctions were a non issue. btw, johnson admitted in a follow-up interview that he simply forgot aleppo, and didn't make any claim o' gotcha. additional, johnson made numerous other foreign affairs blunders during the campaign. regardless, is best not to take zor claims at face value. HA! Good Fun!

*sigh* what you actual said were, johnson flub hardly occurs 'cause previous string o' questions has been similar to queries 'bout car mechanics and then he get hit with microbes. first question had johnson literal respond 'bout regime change. and why on earth do you feel need to reimagine the questions when those questions are there for all to see? is no need to try and invent a simile when exact words and context is available. question 1) "GEIST: That’s a good place to start. For people who don’t know a lot about you and haven’t had a chance to hear and learn about where you stand on the issues, what is the lane for the Johnson-Weld ticket between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton? What do you bring that’s different from those two? "JOHNSON: Well, I think there’s a big six-lane highway down the middle that encompasses 60 percent of Americans. And broadly speaking, fiscally conservative, socially inclusive, skeptical when it comes to our military intervention. Skeptical when it comes to our going in and supporting regime changes that have not resulted in a more safe world — free markets. "So I think that that encompasses about 60 percent of the electorate and I think that the two-party system has really, really got to the fringes on both sides." again, since appears lost on zor, johnson specific identifies regime change in response to what is a "who are you," question. question 2) "BARNICLE: Which of those candidates of the two-party system — Republican candidate, Democratic candidate — do you draw the most votes from? "JOHNSON: You know, in all of these polls it’s just, remarkably, 50-50. Amazingly, I think, though, that with the exception of just a few polls it’s more votes from Hillary. "BARNICLE: Do you — "JOHNSON: But I think — I think when it ends up it will really be 50-50." second question asks candidate from which party johnson is drawing more voters. question 3) "BARNICLE: But do you worry about the Nader effect in 2000? "JOHNSON: I don’t worry one bit about it. I really do think that the two-party system is broken. I don’t think Democrats are able to balance a checkbook these days. That’s it’s all about bigger government and higher taxes. And then Republicans with, I think, the social agenda. Look, whatever your social inclinations are just don’t force it on me. And I think the Republican Party has gotten really extreme in that category." question three is no more than a follow-up to question two. ... and then aleppo no bs. no reimagine. you are comic exposing self with this silliness and nobody here requires a reimagining o' questions when questions and full context is readily available and discernable. were interviewer hitting johnson with question after question on tax reform and then sudden drops a query 'bout some obscure hamlet nobody save those with a subscription to foreign affairs is aware? were like, "asking a series of questions about car mechanics" before hitting johnson with aleppo? is gotcha only 'cause you misremembered or read somewheres on reddit that it were a gotcha w/o bothering to do the incidental research needed to see actual questions and context. trend. if this were a gotcha it were the worst gotcha setup we ever seen. heck, if you need explain how it were a gotcha, then it likely weren't. as @Hurlshot surmises, am suspecting johnson just didn't know aleppo from ankara. after all, once syria were mentioned, johnson responded as follows: "JOHNSON: Well, with regard to Syria, I do think that it’s a mess. I think that the only way that we deal with Syria is to join hands with Russia to diplomatically bring that at an end. But when we’ve aligned ourselves with — when we’ve supported the opposition of the Free Syrian Army — the Free Syrian Army is also coupled with the Islamists. "And then the fact that we’re also supporting the Kurds and this is — it’s just — it’s just a mess. And that this is the result of regime change that we end up supporting. And, inevitably, these regime changes have led a less-safe world." again johnson mentions regime change in response to first actual question. he were aware and conscious o' regime change topic and am suspecting he were prepared to talk 'bout syria... had a clear prepared response for syria. johnson simple didn't know or recognize the significance o' aleppo. try and imagine a gotcha outta this is mild amusing. hang on so tenacious to gotcha narrative when is utter unsupportable from actual questions and context is laughable... and predictable. HA! Good Fun! ps "hans blix berkeley"

Try watching the English dubs by DiC

misplaced hope. there is many reasons epidemiologists such as fauci, who is cautiously optimistic there will be multiple safe and effective vaccines by the end o' the year, has said we will need to keep basic covid-19 protocols in place for much o' 2021. the US may have as many as 100 million doses o' vaccine available by the end o' this year. maybe. 100 mil is assuming all vaccine candidates is successes. even if there is 100 million doses, that don't mean 100 million is inoculated. multiple vaccine candidates require a second dose administered ~ one month after the initial injection. so 100 million actual means somewhere indefinite 'tween 50 million and 100 million... which ignores fact there will be production fails and distribution fails and unpredictable but nevertheless inevitable everyday human error fails which will further reduce real numbers o' possible vaccinations also, has taken 8 months to administer 129 million covid tests in the US, and the testing efforts has been fraught with innumerable logistical issues. is not analogous situations for various reasons. tests need be administered, sent to a lab where they is processed and then results is needing be communicated back to individual tested. more complex than administering a vaccine, no? well, not so much as you will likely need go to a dr. office to get injection and the vaccines themselves is needing be stored cold... a few candidates need be stored extreme cold. is a whole host o' logistical hurdles which need be addressed by states and fed and so far the fed has not been communicating with states 'bout vaccine delivery efforts. initial vaccine efforts is gonna be a mess unless drastic changes occur... yesterday. additional, we won't know the initial efficacy o' the vaccines save for whether they reach some kinda basement effectiveness. one candidate will be measured at minimum 50% efficacy. another will be set at 60% minimum. have explained previous, and am knowing such attempts has been fruitless, but a 50-60% effective vaccine is more than sufficient for stopping the pandemic, but only if everybody takes the vaccine (current near 50% o' people will not volunteer to take initial) and just so long as people continue to follow basic mask behaviours for months and months and months. social distance is best, but social distance is not possible for every and all. masks and other covid-19 behaviours should continue to be routine everyday aspects o' life for the better part o' 2021, regardless o' vaccine. even if we have multiple viable vaccine candidates by the end o' this year, is a misplaced hope to see a return to anything approaching normal life before late summer or early fall o' 2021, and that is only if people actual follow guidelines. timeline will be stretched if science-challenged yahoos reuse to take vaccine or converse, take vaccine and pretend as if they no longer need follow basic covid-19 protocols 'cause they has been innoculated. in places such as the US and europe, something approaching normal will return w/i the next year or so but is worth recognizing the world population is in the ballpark range o' 7.8 billion. if you genuine wanna stop pandemic, you need get a significant % o' that population inoculated or everytime there is an outbreak in bangladesh or malawi, the threat o' a worldwide surge will be real. a whole lotta inoculations need occur before real normal happens. HA! Good Fun!

Logged in today and none of my recent saves are showing. My last save is from Sept. 30. All the manual saves auto saves and log out saves gone. Only 4 saves in my list. Time to take a break until the saves are fixed. I'm tired of having to redo everything I just completed.

On PC Riposte was working fine for me. In fact, with the Community Patch, in Turn Based it was much stronger then it ever was in Real Time. One of the very few ways to build an effective martial character for Turn Based. Conversely, my advice is to use the heaviest armor, use the slowest weapons and slowest modal weapon/shield abilities for maximum impact and protection. IF you REALLY want, you could designate 1 character as interrupter who could go lighter and try to interrupt important enemy actions. But as I wrote before, I've found that very tricky: to properly interrupt you need to execute the action between enemy start of cast and spell/ability resolve. Well, but you cannot control the turn order, so that you land in the time window after the enemy starts but before he finishes. Spell-based hard CC with lasting effects are mostly Cast actions, so again, cannot be pulled off before the enemies charge you. Better to wait untill they've arrived (maybe setting tank in position first) and only then properly aim the aoe CC.

What is fishy about not wanting to touch Epic Store even with a 10-foot pole

Outer Worlds is actually out now.

I believe I mentioned that I can’t delete old saves. I can go through the motions but when I quit and come back they are still there. I’ve uninstalled/reinstalled 3x. Each time I lose all progress after day 84. I’m at day 154 now. I’m done. Just done. I’ll prolly come back to this once they finish the full game.

Baldur’s Gate III: The Black Hound. Icewind Dale and NWN2 + expansions are probably my favorite incarnations of FR, I like how Black Isle and Obsidian, and Sawyer as a game director, approaches the setting and thought BG3 sounding very interesting, even though using the BG name was a bit if a cop out. And even after the game was canceled, I wish Josh had had the time ( / had been allowed?) to finish the NWN2 module he was working on.

This thread ain't for the faint of heart! The Prey reboot is the real System Shock 3 nobody knew they wanted.

Scalebound is the first one that comes to mind, mainly because it was being developed by Platinum Games, and I'm a big fan of theirs. I concur about Prey 2. Sure, we got a "reboot" instead that has nothing whatsoever to do with the original, but is a good game, however I still really wanted to play Prey 2. I'll also throw Star Wars 1313 out there. I personally didn't care since my inner Star Wars fan died a long time ago (in a galaxy far away), but it was a high profile cancellation a lot of people were devastated about. P.S. When can we put BG&E2 and Star Citizen on this list? /hides