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Man, if I call you GD by accident, I apologize in advance.

Yeah, can't really agree there. One of the things that Rowling did very well (all imo and ymmv, of course) was to illustrate the difference between someone being merely 'mean' and being 'evil'. Snape was mean, vindictive, grumpy etc, but we never saw him do anything evil- similarly, we saw Draco do a lot of 'mean' stuff but when he had the option to do something actually 'evil' he didn't. And Snape was counterspelling Quirrel as far back as the Philosopher's Stone. That isn't proof absolute of her always having a specific plan, but he was clearly always intended to be set up as an antagonist rather than a villain. It would be pretty difficult and almost certainly more clumsy to have set everything up in the first few books. That is probably the biggest issue. Other similar(ish) series like Wheel of Time or Song of Ice and Fire use the same limited 3rd person perspective, but have multiple people's perspectives rather than one* which allows for more nuance; and whatever else HP is a ~teenage schoolboy. So in ASoIaF you start off with Jaime obviously being the bad guy (and he is one of course, he's just not the worst guy) because you see everything from Eddard's or Catelyn's perspective, but once you start getting Jaime's viewpoint you can at least understand him more. That isn't really an option available to Rowling even if she'd gone the multiple pov route due to Dumbledore and Snape simply knowing too much, but she does at least repeatedly have Dumbledore saying how much he trusts Snape, which is fairly close. *I have noticed some people have difficulty with those perspectives clashing and thinking it makes the writing inconsistent; I've always kind of wondered if it's due to Harry Potter despite there clearly being times when Harry is wrong about something that he strongly believes via his own perspective.

An old show came to mind, Earth Final Conflict. Shamelessly filmed in Toronto, started off ok, but wow did it go off rails. Anyone else, ever watch that?

Unfortunately, New Vegas is there to show that there can be a decent RPG build using FO3 structure and tools. Not that FO3 is without any merit - it just isn’t quite there. Both in content quality and system design. PS. Anyway Fallout3 is Garbage and Here is Why

@Bartimaeus From what I remember, and this was a long while ago, JKR had a board outlining the whole story fairly early on. Here is an example of it: This tells me that she is very much an architect instead of a gardener (outliner instead of a discovery writer). Now she could very well be somewhere in the middle (although the internet says she is very much on the architect side of things), where she outlines plot points, but does discovery writing of how the characters get there, but this still wouldn't affect the main character archetypes in the story, as those are usually closely tied to the plot.

For Lupin, Snape had a very easy way to get him killed (or killing him) had he wanted to since he was making the potion that stopped him from transforming. But the one time it failed it was Lupin's fault, for not drinking it. The issue with Sirius was a bit more than a mere childhood quarrel. Apart from anything else Sirius actively tried to get Snape killed as students and tried to use his supposed friend Lupin to do it in a deniable way. That's how Snape knew Lupin was a werewolf. Under those circumstances- plus him being convicted of effectively killing Lily Potter, though I don't think we knew the significance of that at the time- it's unlikely anything short of God Himself proclaiming Sirius innocent would be enough.

All I have to do is remember the Supreme Court and their ongoing spree of suspect decisions - with the possibility of Trump getting to nominate even more of his justices while also trying to make good on unitary executive theory - and I suddenly get very enthusiastic about voting for Biden again. Of course, I didn't watch the debate in the first place because seeing both of these guys speak makes me uncomfortable, albeit in different ways: ignorance in this particular way, at least, is bliss.

The GoG version also supports rolling the game back to a previous version in the Galaxy client as well: Right click the game in your library and Select Manage installation -> Configure. On the "Installation" tab uncheck "Automatically update to the newest version" Select the "3.07.0.1318" from the list and click ok. The game will reinstall the older version.

I missed the debate completely. Not sure I really want to catch up from the descriptions. The weird thing is that he wasn't that far off. People were researching sunlight (UV) treatments and using lavage at least as a treatment at the time. (Very little chance Trump was thinking of that though. Very little. And as with his shilling of horse dewormer, dangerous to say even if he had been that extensively briefed) Hard to get away from Trump being real when it comes to him being funny. You can laugh at easily mockable characters like Mr Bean as is, but if you had to potentially deal with a very real President Bean it would not be funny. A fictional Trump... well he'd probably be thought of as being a US Alan B'stard, more a unrealistic overdone caricature than mockable per se. (Of course Tory politicians somehow managed to make Mr B'stard look toned down and reserved over the next 30 years, ho hum)

If you're on Steam you should be able to roll back to 3.07 (1.3.8.1318) using the beta branch. You can then stop the update by setting it to only download when launching the game and then only launch PoE with Steam in offline mode. There are other methods of blocking the update but this is the easiest.

If you're on Steam you can still switch back to the legacy branch via the "Beta Participation" feature. Don't think there's an equivalent for other platforms though

I'm really curious to hear what @Gromnir has to say about the recent Supreme Court decisions. Seems like that's where the consequential stuff is happening right now.

Single Class Berserker isn't that common because the Berserker Frenzy gives you Tenacious. It helps with a lot of offensive abilities (be it a damaging spell or weapon attack). Berserker also grants you a nice melee crot chance that can be combined with other classes "on crit" effects (for example Monk's Swift Flurry). Also the self damage of the Berserker tends to scale very steeply. Picking a multiclass that can counter the damage - or at least make the character more sturdy - are more popular than SC. But as @Elric Galad said Driving Roar or Dazing Shout are excellent. And they profit from the Berserker's Tenacious Frenzy, too. You really want high CON and a good healer in the party though. Also make sure to take Blooded. It works with every form of direct damage (so with Driving Roar etc., too) and it helps you to see when you are under 50% health. It also stacks with Humans' racial ability "Fighting Spirit". Human is a good choice for a Berserker because you will be under 50% health a lot and so Fighting Spirit will kick in a lot, too. A Berserker under 50% health with Blooded and Fighting Spirit will deal really nasty AoE damage with Driving Roar. Those shouts do target the enemies' fortitude defense. So imo it's beneficial to take Spirit Frenzy over Blood Frenzy. Spirit Frenzy will daze on any hit (Driving Shout included) and that means -10 fortitude for the enemy. Makes the following shouts a lot easier to hit. Here's a test with Serafen as Barb at level 20 with Driving Roar (and Blood Thirsty as well as the Blood Surge ability to regain some Rage after kills):

I think I've owned every Obsidian game to date. Not sure, but I think so. Considering I'm practicing thread necromancy, I'd better explain this is the first time I've seen this trailer. Then I saw another one clearly farther along on YouTube. Then I saw one with some gameplay on Steam. I'll buy it, sight unseen, because I'm a kind of a lurker fanboy, but it looks good. I get the impression we get to choose our side(s)? I hope being the nominal good guy is hard and being the actual good guy is genuinely tough. I would buy it unfinished and then play the finished product after the full release date hits, as is my custom, but that wasn't a Steam option. I loved Outer Worlds, which was an FPS RPG also a la Prey. This one seems more hardcore RPG, which is also good. I know virtually nothing about the game except for the little I've seen here and I think I'll keep it that way. I'm praying the 2024 release date is still on the docket, but I probably won't have time to play it until next year anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter.

Driving Roar is arguably the best ability for SC Barbarian. It really does a crapload of damages, pushing and interrupting and can be spammed. Dazzing Shout isn't bad though.

They won't. The only thing that can happen now is that Harris takes over once Biden is deemed unfit... but I still think Trump is going to win.