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It was a studio of 9, I think...and a female dog. It's a non-story.

I must admit, while playing the latest build of BG3 early access, I was thinking to myself: I miss times when I was the target audience. As far as I am concerned if someone wants Astarion in their game, they don't deserve games.

Oh, that's a pretty game-breaking exploit xD And unfortunately easy way fixes like setting duration (infinite -> x seconds), or clearing via keyword immunity don't work. Atm I see only 3 non-elegant ways to address it: v1. remove Imprint spells from all grimoires (and substitute with some other spells of corresponding rank) v2. make all wizards auto-learn Imprint spells when they reach respective rank (like bonus spells from priest/druid subclasses) v3. check if it's possible to auto-learn Imprint spells when equipping respective grimoires (not sure if possible; and if it is - it is very tedious) Does anyone see another (hopefully implementable) solution?

It's so ridiculous, you start wondering if they are secretly right wing and their agenda is to undermine social issues.

I'd hate for being a teen in Shadowrun, imagin goblinizing in school... Yikes.

Hello, just a quick discovery I made 5 minutes ago: if you use The Willbreaker with a Wizard and also with the Wizard's phantom you can not only stack 5 instances of "Relentless" (-3 Will per hit) on enemies but actually 2x5 stacks - which results in -30 Will (alongside -25 Fortitude if you use Body Blows of course).* This works really well in combination with Caedebald's Blackbow (I mean if a second Wizard uses it) since it targets Fortitude (weapon dmg) and Will (terrify). The Helm of the White Void applies its bonus to both rolls. In combination with the double Willbreaker dude it's really hard to mess up the Blackbow's shots... )* the Willbreaker also can apply shaken with "Oppressive Fear" which would lower Will even further (-10, stacks with Relentless). Bewildering Blows (-25 Will) also stack with those. Aaand even further down with Miasma...

I am concerned why there is only one dog. That's not a healthy people to dog ratio.

V1 seems like the best solution IMO. Works around the bug without really changing balance issues. a possible alternate idea; tweak enchantment subclass so they get these imprint spells as bonus spells for free (and remove it for everyone else) since bonus PL on enchantment is a bit less good than bonus PL on some other schools. This is if one is fine introducing balance changes as part of the fix.

It should also be noted that the paladin and fighter passives that give +20 defense against affliction attacks also work in a similar way. e.g. It is much harder to mule kick a fighter who has the associated ability because mule kick inflicts a perception affliction.

Ardberg 10 year. I think my first experience with Scotch was some blended **** that tasted like gasoline. This is different, very smoky but very smooth. Very pleasant and didn't break my bank.

I’d bet Azdeus, Malc and the other guys from the real north get a chuckle out of me saying slightly below freezing was cold. But dammit I’m from the south I’m not acclimated to that kind of nonsense! Especially not so early in the year. Hoping I can take G & B out to dinner tonight. Have to go home tomorrow. There are some documents coming to my house via Fed Ex on Friday and I need to be there to get them. Lots of good stuff going on at once.

Randi is banished from Potos by stupid superstitious villagers- left to starve to death. After the Trio defeats the villain, he goes back home (why?) Primm leaves home because she doesn't want to go through a forced marriage. After the Trio defeats the villain, she goes back home (why?) Popoi is stuck in the regular world, but doesn't want to go back home. After the Trio defeats the villain, he's stuck in the sprite realm (at least this part made some sense based on the story). No villager apologizes to Randi for trying to kill him and Primm's dad never terminates the marriage arrangement. So why do the characters go back? It made no sense.

the workaround does work in many (not all) situations. the switch to rt need only be for an instant, during which time gameplay is auto-paused. re-establishing turn-base has a high percentage o' clearing the problem, and does not mess with battlefield control as even after the momentary switch to rt, all battle participants keep their initiative order. however, am gonna suggest that if the switch to rt does not fix the issue, then is a good idea to use the alt+b bug reporting feature to create a save during combat, 'cause you may need do a reload to regain tb functionality. 'course crusade battles getting borked is not salvageable using the aforementioned option. is in fact a whole lotta features still busted which do not have fixes, and predictably, a few fixes has made broken stuff more busted. HA! Good Fun!

meta? nothing at all sinister 'bout that. why not just go all in and call it, OMEGA? HA! Good Fun!

Steve Buscemi was Fain in my head canon.

I don't think we need game that attract a wide audience - what else can we be elitist about?

I saw Fain as MacKenzie Crook. Though Brad Dourif would be fine too.

Yes, Divine Purpose is almost a must-pick as it helps you avoid a lot of crowd control. Especially on a Herald Pallegina, you don't want to get stunned/paralyzed since that halts chanting. Coupled with a Cloak of Greater Protection, Pallegina is more or less immune to most afflictions.

So, just a hypothesis from someone without any technical grasp of what's really going on under the hood of Deadfire: In my experience this exploit is purely related to casting Imprint from a grimoire without knowing the spell. It is actually not related to doing that plus grimoire switching. I keep spells forever when I cast Imprint from a grimoire and keep using that same grimoire. So if it's not about the switching, maybe the Imprint spells that exist in grimoires don't have the component required to clear stolen spells at the end of an encounter, unlike the learnt spells? Is that possible at all that 2 instances of the spell exist in the game? EDIT: could it be then related to the fact that when you cast Imprint from a grimoire on hirelings, they keep forever a buggy "Imprint" debuff in their character sheet?

Yes it's true and because they're passives, they work on top of everything else. A well-built, fully buffed Arcane Knight with Divine Purpose = incredible defense against any hard CC in the game. Except Charm/Dominate but Infuse with Vital Essence works as a counter for INT/CON Afflictions anyway; and you can also pick Mental Fortress.

It's almost here. Excitement Level = CRITICAL

Getting gas and coffee (not in that order) and heading south. I took G & B out to dinner last night and it was fun. B seems to like me now so that means things are going well with G. I am quite certain of that already anyway LOL. I hate this drive. It’s only a four hour flight but you can’t go direct. you have to change planes in Minneapolis or Madison. Plus I think 11 hours driving in my truck listening to the radio is preferable to four hours in a flying can next to other humans ugh.

The WSJ gives you 5 free per month. After that it’s paywalled. I kept a e-subscription for a long time to WSJ, WaPo, and a few others. I cancelled all of it. Except National Geographic. I love that one. I’m finding as I get older I really don’t give a damn about what’s going on in the world anymore.

That is true when you’re writing for a more sophisticated audience they will see right through that trash. Someone who knows what they’re talking about will always be able to spot someone who is faking it. But if you wanted to sneak something past a harried and stressed out high school teacher or junior college professor that method definitely works

There is always that fun quote "England is a country where we have weather. Other countries get to have a climate." Not to be taken too seriously, but the sheer variety and mercurial nature of weather on this isle is a key reason to why the cliche of Brit's talking about the weather is such a big thing.

Yeah. I mean, I don't necessarily mind "random" events occurring if they take us somewhere interesting (all sorts of mundane as well as strange events in own lives occur randomly all the time with little to no reason to discern why they happened, after all - most things don't need an explanation beyond "it just happened" so long as they don't raise major logic or suspension of disbelief questions...and assuming they aren't horridly boring), but I definitely do not want my characters feeling like they're behaving and doing things randomly, and Ponyo frustrated me for exactly that reason. When I feel like I don't understand the characters in a work, I usually feel like I don't understand anything at all, and that is an unpleasant feeling.

Terranigma is good, but the English translation leaves a bit to be desired. Still, I enjoyed it. Secret of Mana....the English translation is outright terrible I think like 99% of the time and the gameplay, setting, story, or characters really weren't able to grab me at all*, especially since I had just played all of the MOTHER/EarthBound games right before for the first time, and it didn't really even hold a candle to them in my opinion. I do like the music of SoM, though. *I am biased against most types of fantasy, though - any kind of fantasy where characters are wearing insane and ridiculous clothing and hair styles, I'm probably using the exit door immediately. Yeah, I'm the opposite: if it wasn't for the fact that I played it as a KEED, I would not have been able to tolerate it. Random encounters stink...at the very least like EarthBound makes it so they're not so random, so you can see them as you approach enemies, which is so much better...and MOTHER did enough other things right that I could forgive it (plus, it was on the NES where having moving enemy sprites would've been taxing on the hardware - probably!). Speaking of EarthBound/MOTHER, Amentep just mentioned it too...and I should eventually, one day, give Chrono Trigger another try. It'll happen someday... Sakura:

Yeah the 16-core SKUs don't look as interesting as the 10-core and 12-core SKUs. 12600k and 12700k are obvious winners since they have as many big cores as the Zen 3 equivalents, but the 5900X and 5950X are still unmatched in that department. Still, the price on the 12900k isn't that bad compared to them. True and these will probably be scalped to stupid prices, as every new hot product (hopefully only figuratively) is nowadays. Almost everyone, including the efficiency gods Apple, use a big+little architecture nowadays to get more performance and battery life with less die area. I'd be surprised if AMD didn't also have plans for a big+little architecture in future parts, at least for laptops.

no... depending on what you mean. no skald gets kenning, which is a big deal. the other stuff which didn't work, still doesn't work. in fact, the ability to take rage powers has been removed, so the question regarding the capacity to share such with party members is now m00t. a slight buff to spell damage has been added to replace the removed stances. the one thing the court poet does do which is not capable o' replication is its ability to pump party member intelligence and charisma scores and ignore any kinda stacking limits. if you got a party which is heavy with paladins and intelligence or charisma-based casters, the court poet is still a good choice, but is in not working as one would expect based on the original descriptions. HA! Good Fun!

WoT spoilers again

the thing is, am suspecting if an author wrote a shadowrun story which focused on a school in the setting, following multiple students post matriculation, the institution in question would not be based on front range community college. HA! Good Fun!

I've watched Ponyo twice, the first time by myself and the second with my nieces. Didn't care for it the first time, actually really disliked it on the second. Really strange characters that would just do things for no apparent rhyme or reason, and the incredibly bizarre mom that was total pants on/in the head was especially the object of my ire. She was constantly switching between like four very contrary different states: 1. very sweet, 2. unreasonably aggressive, 3. helicopter mom, 4. accepting everything that was happening without question, no matter how insane it was. So many times during it I asked myself "what the hell is wrong with this mom?". So combine that with the entire tone and style of the movie seeming decidedly more aimed at only children than his other works, I would consider it easily the worst Hayao Miyazaki film. ...But it's still not as bad as most of Yoneyabashi's and Goro's Ghibli stuff, so there is that. I have a friend that said Ponyo was so bad they never tried a single other Ghibli film released after it, which I thought was a pretty extreme reaction, especially considering this is the same person who had their life changed by Princess Mononoke. While there is a bit of a fall-off after Ponyo for Ghibli, they should've at least tried The Wind Rises and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. @majestic If you love literally endless random encounters that make it so you can take anywhere between pretty literally 1 and maybe 20 steps before running into another, you'll love Quest 64. Let's just say that the game is much improved by Cheat Engine's speedhack, which I used liberally when I replayed it. ...I still own it along with an actual working N64, mind you, but I never play on actual consoles if I can avoid it for a plethora of reasons. Samurai Champloo: It really does seem quite good, though obviously there will be an issue of personal appeal. Tomoyo: Yeah, I felt bad realizing that Meiling had replaced her at some point as my favorite character, but it is something that happened. Between her crazy expressions, emotions, body language, voice-acting...and her tragedy and actual character development (which is probably the biggest contrast to Tomoyo, who has stayed static except in perhaps some very small ways in contrast), she's just such a fun and good character. Tomoyo was awesome in a way that felt totally right for her in this episode too, which I was thankful for because she's been a little too...meta and meme-ish without enough to balance it out in this final arc, I think. Yeah...she sat there with that sad, knowing smile. She knows all too well, Meiling...

Open world, level-based, linear, metroidvania, I don't really have a preference. If it's good it's good. I just don't like the industry following trends, which happens all the time. Open world gets popular and suddenly everybody is making open world games almost exclusively. I like variety. Luckily, there are always indies to buck the trend.

we got no problem with egalitarian magic, accessible to the plebs, but am thinking the author o' the article doesn't know her audience. even in pnp a computer rpgs where it is reasonable to have magic be balanced with sword havers and other users o' mundane tools, is common to see players complain if magic is not special enuff. so what we get in fantasy lit is the traditional school o' magic, which appears to be based exeter or similar real world prep schools or colleges, but the protagonist is frequent a character straight outta a horatio alger tale. even if the protagonist is special and maybe even marked before birth by prophecy, she had to work twice as hard to get into the magic school and once there she is constant needing overcome the prejudices o' her classmates and even her teachers-- through moxie and perhaps a bit o' luck, she overcomes all odds and obstacles. *groan* am not happy with such fare, but is understandable how we get to such a place, 'cause is the audiences who want magic to be special. HA! Good Fun!

Also just a quick note, in case it wasn't widely known, that Forbidden Fist gets the Accuracy bonus on both the Damage roll and the Enfeebled roll. Sweet! And the same is true for Rogue attacks that have a secondary Affliction component ("if successful, then...") : tested with Arterial Strike, Gouging Strike, Toxic Strike, Sap of course Pernicious Cloud etc. both Damage rolls and Affliction rolls get +10 ACC. EDIT: Also, the Helm gives +10 ACC to Thunderous Report, both Damage and Daze rolls.

Fixed that for you.

@MaxQuest