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It's funded now, and with 800 backers, too! That's nice.

Yup. Now I'm going to up my pledge to help fund some of those stretch goals.

I had a discussion with two NPCs in Solasta, about soraks, ancient ruins, fireballs, the usual. A few times during the discussion, with my sorcerer taking the lead, the NPCs referred to someone named Annie, who had told them about my party's exploits and about soraks etc. I hadn't played in a while... So I said "I need to check who Annie is" said I. Sorted my inventory, who would carry which magic item - the usual. Hadn't played in a while, as I said. Suddenly realise that Annie is the name of my rogue (the one who insists on separate beds at the inn). Turns out my rogue talks to the npcs on her own before the party goes to talk to them as a group. No wonder she keeps quiet during discussions and skulks in the background

Dang, I really thought he'd suddenly be terrible for no reason this year. Well, better luck next year.

Yes, the Ukrainians should also do what Russia and throw thousands over thousands of soldiers, run them over with their own BMPs while dropping them of, and hope that at least one percent of the soldiers would not get cluster****ed so they could put thier flag in the middle of a destroyed wasteland. That’s how proper offensive looks like, right?

I've been theorycrafting a Conjurer build that makes use of the +2 PL bonus with Conjuration spells in a way that's more substantive than the conventional wisdom of using summoned weapons with them, as I find that the mere +duration you get with Conjurer summoned weapons isn't a particularly advantageous usage of the power level bonus, especially for the tradeoff of losing two other spell schools for it. I was looking at the damage spells from the Conjuration school to better leverage the subclass bonus when it occurred to me that Voidwheel can cast Necrotic Lance and Engoliero do Espirs can cast Ghost Blades, both of which are Conjuration spells. I wanted to see if the spells cast from these weapons would get the Conjurer PL bonus on top of the weapon quality scaling. To that end, I tested this by creating two single-classed Wizards, one a Conjurer and the other no-subclass, with identical stats. For a control group, I had them cast Necrotic Lance and Ghost Blades as spells from their spellbooks. As expected, the Conjurer got +0.5 higher penetration and had longer duration in the case of Necrotic Lance's secondary DoT damage effect. However, proccing these spells from the weapons did not get the Conjurer's +2 Conjuration PL bonus. While you do get scaling from the weapon quality, these weapon-triggered spells performed the same in the hands of both the subclass-less Wizard and Conjurer. One interesting thing I noted was that the duration of the secondary DoT from Voidwheel's Necrotic Lance was lower than the duration of the casted spell version. I suspect the weapon just uses base duration (it, however, still gets Intellect scaling as normal since casting Infuse With Vital Essence increased the duration). While I was at it, I wanted to test if Substantial Phantom got the Conjurer's PL bonus since it does get Necrotic Lance as part of the selection of spells it's able to cast. Unfortunately, the Conjurer's PL bonus does not get carried over to the Substantial Phantom copy when it casts the relevant Conjuration spell. Again, the Substantial Phantom performed identically between the Conjurer and no-subclass Wizard. Interestingly, the version of Necrotic Lance casted by the Substantial Phantom was slightly inferior to the no-subclass Wizard, having less penetration and secondary DoT length. Weapons copied over to the Phantoms also didn't make any difference in terms of the spells procced from them. Just thought I should share these findings to the board for the sake of posterity and in case anyone else was curious about this interaction. This is on the vanilla version of the game without the community or balance patches, by the way. I'm posting this on my lunchbreak but I'll throw up the hard numbers from the test later when I get back home.

Nah, there are quite a few bangers that have come out. Maybe there is more manga in general so there are more bad manga.

Afghanistan(Mujahideen) won against Soviet Union. After nine years of waring Soviet Union collapsed and war evolved as Afghan civil war, which lead to taliban taking over the country.

Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985). I sometimes forget how good Tim Burton and the creative talents around and collaborating with him used to be. It's such a weird contrast to most everything he's made in the last 20 years being these corpulent nightmares. Maybe I'll try Batman next.

Given the numerical discrepancy in personnel, the counter-attack was always a bit of a stretch, and unfortunately, as you say, Russia can keep the current war going a lot longer than Ukraine. I don't know the extent to which it's an accepted wisdom, but I've read several military personnel comment that an attack generally needs approximately three times the amount of personnel the enemy has, and obviously Ukraine never had that, not even close. It seems very, very unlikely that Ukraine could fall or fail catastrophically[*] anymore (in the war, that is), but it also seems very, very hard to see a good way out of this. [*] Meaning, essentially, in the way that Russia envisioned on day 1. EDIT: I've been working on material concerning this war for months now. It is really something to see how blatant Russia's plans were, and had been for years. Years ago, the bottom line was, "If we can ensure that our men rule Ukraine from their government, there will be no need for us to tear Ukraine apart." Ukraine's recent political development led to the invasion, because Ukraine was not willing to be as subservient as Russia demanded. So Russia has always, or at least for a long time, regarded Ukraine as its legitimate prey / vassal / subordinate / take your pick.

Pull of Eora spam with Arcane Archer can very easily lead to enemies being stuck in place for more or less the entire fight. The more you stack the more likely it is that the enemy will just get permanently stuck in the ragdoll animation and be entirely unable to act.

@Hurlshort https://sanjosetheaters.org/theaters/san-jose-civic/#event=reclaiming-food;instance=20231028120000 you should make t-shirts. "i spent $250 to see rfk jr. and all i got was a (another) lousy measles outbreak." but serious, even in san jose, who is spending $250 to hear a bunch o' crackpots repeat the same doggerel they is sharing for free online? edit: Ex-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows granted immunity, tells special counsel he warned Trump about 2020 claims: Sources meadows cooperation were assumed back in june but it were a tea leaves reading situation. also, keep in mind this is an "according to sources," story which ain't been confirmed, so am advising caution. update: am gonna repeat our caution about placing too much trust in online "according to sources," reporting. narrow use immunity for meadows as 'posed to blanket use and derivative is a plausible explanation, but am thinking by now a few obsidian posters recognize that we got a policy o' waiting for reliable evidence before we start proselytizing. is so many ways to look like an internet a$$bag, so why set yourself up for predictable tyson fury moments when a little patience will insulate you from deserved mockery? HA! Good Fun!

You know, you could've just started with the "driving drunk" bit and I would've already said "good". Still waiting for the consequences of continuing to do everything he's not supposed to do, seemingly but hopefully not actually forevermore...the wheels of justice just seem to be too slow for a creature like Trump.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/grapeocean/black-geyser-dlc-tales-of-the-moon-cult

Continuing on with my Solasta playthrough with the Unfinished Business mod. The 6-person party is just so awesome! Exactly how the game should be played. I'm not using too many other features from the mod, mainly the option of removing attunement and including multi-classing. Difficulty has not been affected in any meaningful way. I've made a few tweaks here and there to keep the challenge balanced, and that's it. Only wish the game had more story and characters heft.

There are a lot of problems with phantoms and duplicates in general, like some equipped item effects not working correctly on phantoms, different weapon penetration values, etc. I've tested them a lot before but am too lazy to find the post... Good but unsurprising findings about power level bonuses from weapon-spells...IIRC there are other stats that aren't reflected in item-spells, like accuracy? I think it's anything derived from a player stat, so also this would include duration. My 2k hours of Deadfire memories are fading rapidly, I'm afraid. Probably start playing again at some point. I think BG3 may have killed these forums at least for a while.

I've seen a lot of BG1 comparisons already, and combined with some of the gameplay I watched, I wonder whether exploration is at least party some like this (or Kingdom Come Deliverance). Sort of tired of game worlds as amusement parks or movie set pieces, as it makes everything feel gamey and predictable (you KNOW that once you find a shack in a forest in a "modern" game, that hut will contain an NPC, quest or loot even before entering it, as else nobody would have placed it there, let alone created the art assets). Not concerned about the low/er budget, personally. I think it's rather impressive (and hopeful) that even very tiny teams can create finished games like this -- the staff for the original BG1 was well over 30 at the start, and 50-60 once the game had shipped. I'd take a "hit" in production values any time over the vice versa, in particular in an age where AAA RPG development means increasingly streamlining games this much they play just like any action/adventure or looter shooter on the market in an attempt to fit in and attract ever wider audiences, and often times, quests solving themselves outside of inevitable combat.

I think you guys are far too eager to dismiss. May be also a heavy dose of unreasonably high expectations. This is not a AAA game, nor even a AA game. It is a very low-budget game specifically meant to recreate the IE games feel and experience. So they even *intentionally* have made the game look like those games from 20 years ago. If that's not your thing, fine. Perfectly reasonable. But that doesn't make it a bad game. I myself have not yet played it because I don't play betas or EA games as a rule. But I backed its KS, at a somewhat high cost, and have followed its development very closely. And I'm quite satisfied with it. It's my second most anticipated game right now, only behind P:WotR.

No movie. And you aren't really missing much. These first episodes are not the best.

Richard Roundtree