Jediphile

You can't have tried to many other systems then... Sure, d20 is easy to learn, but only because it's about the most rigid and inflexible system around. If you like having no options as a player, then d20 is for you. Personally I'll stick with just about anything else...

As you know, Eldar, that was one of the key selling points by WotC, (aside from 3e being streamlined) that there would be a concise singular ruleset without many variants, no more kits..etc. I remember that campaign. Ironic how the reality is different from what they had first claimed. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yes, I remember it as well. And I was actually looking forward to tossing out all of my old house rules. No more gazillion "optional" books, no more rules spread out all over the books, no more 100+ pages of house rules to reconcile it all... Oh, how mistaken I was... Oh no, there were no "kits" anymore, but it hardly matters when it's just called something else instead. Now there are no character classes and spells in every single new supplement, issue of dragon, revised rulebook, etc. etc. Not to mention that 3e is every bit as rigid as 2e if not more so, and the 2e-to-3e conversion rules were just horrible - there was no way to fairly convert the 11th level minotaur fighter or 10th/10th level dwarven fighter/cleric to 3e screwing the players over royally, and with all the other stupid rules I kept hearing about, it was one of the easiest choices I ever made as a GM - I had no reason whatsoever to invest in 3e, because it was embarrasingly obvious that it would not enhance my game in any way. That's not to say there aren't good things in 3e. The to-hit rules and Armor Classes are better than in 2e. I don't agree with Lancer here. I find it just easier in 3e, so I adopted it into my 2e campaign. Very easy. Just 20 - old AC = new AC. 20 - old THAC0 = new class to-hit modifier. That's it - end of conversion. But that is all the impact 3e had on my campaign. The rest was worthless. I like other things. If I began a new campaign today, I would use 3e multi-class rules under 2e rules, since they make more sense to me. But 3e skills are terrible next to 2e proficiencies (which is just another word for skills). 3e forcing skills to be tied to class+level is just about the most idiotic thing I ever heard of, and the skill points are awarded very haphazardly as well. It doesn't look to me like a system that is in any way founded on any firmly established base as much as just applied according to what the creators "assume" players will choose - wizards will "probably" choose a high Intelligence, so they get few skill points, while Concentration is based on Constitution, because it would be unfair to base it on Wisdom (which is a measure of willpower even according to the 3e PHB, but apparently that is not relevant to a character's ability to concentrate ), because that favors clerics... So instead logic is thrown to the winds, which just tastes like an unfinished product to me. I preferred the proficiency rules from the Player Option: Skills & Powers, where you buy a skill with a beginning rating, modified by relevant ability, and can be increased to a maximum of 16 whenever you want to pay for it. Far more relevant. But 3e killed it because it insisted on enforcing fixed and inflexible classes over player choice, which is unkind, unflattering and very poor game design, if you ask me. Why should I waste any money on 3e? I still have no answer to that question, probably because there isn't one. I'm not a die-hard 2e gamer. I did give 3e a chance. It just failed miserably because it was so pathetic, and I will not hesitate in saying that I think so. It's not a particularly bad system as such, but it's not D&D (and I know 3e players who say so) and is woefully outdated for a game released after 2000. Most other new interesting RPGs out there have far better design than 3e has. It's no better than 2e even after more than a decade of RPG experience, which was disappointing in the extreme. I'm not going to deny that there could be advantages to having only one RPG base around. The problem is that if there is to be such a base, then 3e/d20 is about the LAST system ever that should be chosen for it, since it's the most rigid and inflexible system around at all. GURPS would be far better suited for that sort of thing IMHO.

So? I don't insult people and get all hostile if they prefer 2nd edition. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Quoted for truth. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> We were talking about how intuitive it is compared to 2nd edition, not which is better. Given the responses that have occurred while you were gone, seems like I'm not the only person. Surely you will put in your quibble about AoO right about now. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> If not, I will. I don't agree with him that AD&D armor classes going down is better, but AoOs are an additional rule of top of the other rules that just serve to slow the game down more. You can ignore them, of course, but then game balance is out the window, because the rules are written with the assumption that you'll play with them. So? You were alleging that the only reason why I could make the relationship that a higher number in armor rating would be better is because of previous precedent. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Eye of the Beholder was fairly crap and was a total rip-off of the classic "Dungeon Master" anyway, only without most of the atmosphere...

Crap! Now it's Italy vs. France in the final :angry: I can't think of two teams that play more boring football, since they both defend, defend, defend I hate it when defensive play is rewarded, especially since one of them now will be world champions, and none of them deserve it IMHO.

Kreia says so, and there are voice files from a cutscene which is now cut content, where Atris orders Brianna to spy on the Exile. The male Exile, that is. You must have missed the cutscene where Kreia steps out to the handmaidens and says that their mistress has something to tell them, then they all run in to Atris' chambers and we just hear the thumbs. Never left much doubt in my mind that Atris killed them all, but I suppose we could also argue they sat down for tea and a chat... I'm not the only one, it seems. He's a bit boring, but hating him seems unfair.

As I have argued before, Mical is part of the Exile's past, but doesn't add much to the Exile's present IMHO. He's not insignificant, but he has very little impact on the plot beyond making a connection to a past that the Exile has left behind and explaining some of the Exile's connection (or lack thereof) with the force that you also learn about from other characters anyway... The handmaiden sisters did not have Master Kae as their mother, which is fairly essential to Brianna's story (and which is now lost to canon). How is Brianna in any way present in the game beyond a cameo at best in the female Exile's story?!? If you like the female Exile's plot, then fair enough, but I'll maintain that female Exile means no jedi Handmaiden, no betrayal of Atris, and no Brianna in the end at all. She becomes a lost character so uninteresting that the plot doesn't even pick on her when the Exile returns to Telos. Female Exile = No Brianna!

I read the new KotOR comic books, though I've been unable to get a hold of issue 1 yet Nice so far, though it's a bit hard to believe that benign jedi masters would casually decide to murder their own padawans like that just from having a single vision, the interpretation of which is highly doubtful. That's hard to swallow, but then their deception may serve as the beginning of the dissent within the jedi order, in which case it would be a beginning that demands further explanation. I still trust the story enough to give it the benefit of the doubt in that regard. As for the tales of the Jedi, I have all of them, except the "Jedi vs. Sith" series (which is much closer to the movie era than the KotOR era).

Just don't say that around the Revan fanboys... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I disagree - please DO say it around them, preferably repeatedly and loud

That's inviting quite an argument there <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Agreed - very compelling... I doubt it would be possible for me to disagree more... In the female Exile story, Sion went from being a terrifying, all-powerful, and haunting sith lord to being a love-sick little puppy-boy with an unfortunate undead condition... To call it anti-climactic would be the understatement of the year, I think - more appropriate to call it sickening

Yes, but she was still unable to understand the nature of the Exile's bond with Kreia, so it's not as if you're going to find a big revelation, even if you dig through the cut content. In fact, what she says is this: Master Vash: "We were mentally bonded.Kaah was pulled to the Dark Side through his fear. He could no longer feel our bond.It is painful to lose one to whom you are bonded. But it is not fatal.{concerned}That is most unnatural. This bond you share with Kreia is not like any I've ever heard of. How did it come to be?{pensive}Look within for the answer. We are each solely accountable for everything in our lives. Nothing ever happens to us unless we allow it."

Why? Because as near as I can figure, Brianna is DEAD in the female Exile plot! Note how Atris kills all the handmaidens. Now, if Brianna is still on the academy, then what does that mean? And do you see her when you return to the academy as the female Exile? No, you don't - look through all the rooms, if you want. You're not going to find her. The last you'll ever see her is the one place where you actually get to talk to her in the entire game as a female Exile. Or are we going to presume that that Atris killed all the handmaidens sisters, but left precisely Brianna alive for some odd reason in the female Exile's story? Perhaps that will happen in order to not completely annoy people who actually cared a little about Brianna, such as myself, but honestly - that's some pretty bad storytelling, which is worse than seeing her dead IMHO A curse on Leland Chee - may his car have flats on all tires and may he be barked at by a dog named Rover! LA hasn't considered these consequences one bit, I fear... And why would the Exile's companions found an academy on Telos? That makes no sense to me whatsoever. If they going to do so, it is far more likely to be in a place where the jedi order has some reputation, such as Dantooine, or - even better - Coruscant. I don't get that at all. I find Sion's "love" for the female Exile both sickening, inappropriate, uncompelling, and - worse - an unflattering add-on which is there only to mirror Atris' love for the male Exile, but which has no basis in the plot and it just splashed all over the plot very unattractively as an impolite afterthought. Yuck! And Atris doesn't care as much for the female Exile as she did for the male Exile. If she had, then she would have sent Brianna to spy on the female Exile as well, and we all know that she didn't. I don't see that Atton was any more interesting in the female Exile's story than in the male's - he's a lost soul in either case, and I actually find his ruin to be more poignant without the romance option in the picture. Still, I might have felt different about it, if they hadn't cut the Sion/Atton or Disciple/Atton fights from the game. But I must say that I don't understand why peole hate Mical so much. Yes, I find him rather annoying too, though mainly for the poor voice-acting. As for being a goodie-boy, he would have been far more interesting, if his own inablility to influence the Exile's decision to leave for the war had weighed upon him rather than listening to him preach to us all the time. But other than that, he's not a bad character, and he's not useless either - I frequently had him in my party once I turned him into a jedi, because his healing and meditation skills are very convenient. Yes, Mical has his voice and manners a bit against him, but I don't see why this makes people hate him quite that much...

McAfee is anti-virus, not a firewall, isn't it? Anyway, it is limited in duration if free (and actually if you pay too...), so I don't use it. For free anti-virus with endless updates and no deadline in sight (so far - it says there is one but keeps pushing it whenever I get within three months of it...), I use anti-vir, which I believe is a german program, but then who cares - a professional computer geek adviced to me a few years back, and I've never had problems with it. http://www.free-av.com/ As for the reasoning behind not trusting such a program, I don't agree with it. After all, it's in everyone else's interest that I don't spread vira or other stuff around, so giving me a free program that doesn't work is a very bad idea, unless they want to spread the very vira they claim to fight. I've never had to pay for firewalls or anti-virus, and I don't intend to either. The same goes for anti-spyware programs, where I use both Spybot and Ad-Aware.

Well, that seems to confirm that LA decided to assign gender based solely on a basis of equality - Revan was male, Exile must be female, no matter what Consequences: Brianna is a non-entity now. She barely exists. And there is no betrayal for Atris anymore. Disciple gets to be in there with his musings instead. A shame for K2, I think, since I thought the male version was a far stronger story. Yes, you may now flame me for having the nerve to like the male Exile's story better than the female's - see if I care...

No, it's not freeware, but you can download and use it without paying link

So did I, but they closed the support for it when someone bought the company (Symantic, I think). A damn shame too. That was a good program

I think my system is doing a number on me, because it won't let me initialize Zonealarm properly on start-up anymore, and it won't let me reinstall it either... So farewell to it. What can I use instead, if I'm too much of a cheapskate to pay a single penny?

I'd second that, but that would seem pathetic... Oh!

Geez... I've watched those vids now, and I gotta say - there are some really depraved people out there...

Alas, I was mistaken. Farewell to Spain. Then again, I didn't see the Spanish team in the second half that I've seen in the rest of the tournament. They seemed a bit scared of the french and didn't support their strikers with fast movements forward as they have in their previous games, which made it rather too easy for the french defense to to unravel. France wasn't really that dangerous, but when have four or five chances to score while Spain has none, it becomes very difficult for Spain to win. I'm sad now - I thought Spain was the better team and a strong contender for the cup. I suppose my money's on Argentina now

Kreia: Gives extra xp. Disciple (once jedi): Can heal and restore force points. Visas: Already a jedi. As various other characters are "jedified", they may enter the party instead of Visas or Disciple, but no particular preference.

That looked awesome. :D <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Agreed. Thanks for the link. And hearing Monty Python can never be bad, as you watch various players make complete and utter fools of themselves

1-1 between France and Spain so far. What an excellent game with lots of good football. The French have surprised me today - they're much better than previously in the cup, though I still think Spain will wear them down and win the game. Still, with the game they have today and their obvious routine, France may yet walk away in triumph.

Well, so long to Ghana... They were a breath of fresh air in the cup, but were punished heavily for being very aggressive in their game (aggressive in the sense of trying very hard to go on the offense and score goals) and forgetting their defense. Though I'll join those who cry foul over the second goal for being off-side, I do think Brazil earned their win, and could easily have scored several goals in the last 15 minutes or so. Ghana's goalkeeper got to show his skills, at least. So Brazil is through to the next round. Still, if it turns out as I expect, Spain will win later tonight against France, and then Brazil will be kicked out by Spain in the next round. If Spain can keep up their game, they're strong contenders to win the cup, methinks.

Amen I'm not so impressed by Ghana. Sure they can win - football being a very random game - but I doubt it will happen. Brazil will win that game. I think Spain will win against France, though. The French game has been horrible in this world cup and was in the last one too. Why they haven't built a new team is completely beyond me, but they'll pay the price for it, I think... again! Besides, if Spain can play up to the high standards they demonstrated in their first two matches, France won't have a prayer (and Spain's last game doesn't really count, since they didn't even try to win... and won anyway). EDIT: Brazil leads 1-0 against Ghana. That's it for Ghana, I fear...

Precisely.