Jediphile

I think we can attribute/blame this piece of information to Wikipedia. Not that I mind the comment, but I really do prefer people give their sources when saying these things, especially if that source is Wikipedia (or similar), where anyone can revise the articles and add their own speculation, which is then taken as facts by subsequent readers. Heck, I could rewrite the article to fit with my own conjecture about Nihilus' origin, but that would still just be speculation. The only ones who can tells us the truth here are the developers... or George Lucas. So let's just accept that we 'nihil' about the origin of Nihilus

One thing to ponder in connection with Nihilus is some of the things the masters tell the Exile (LS) when they meet again on Dantooine... "The last Jedi conclave was on Katarr, a Miraluka colony. And all of Katarr was destroyed, all of the Jedi killed...Including Master Zhar... Master Vandar... A Jedi doesn't care if he dies. Everyone does, but when we fight, when we sacrifice ourselves, it is for others, for the greater good. But our presence must not endanger others. And as long as we were visible targets, we were a threat to everything around us.There was a gathering of Jedi on the planet - when we realized that something was attacking us, we resolved to meet secretly to attempt to find this threat.Then... Katarr was no more.When we felt Katarr die, there is something we felt, something we'd felt once before. An echo in the Force.We'd felt it before when you stood before us. Whatever this threat, whatever this hunger is, it is something tied to you, something you have experienced directly. This echo travels in the places where death has walked, where planets have died. Massacres fuel its power, the death of life fuels it." And later during the meeting... "The Sith are a threat, it is true. But the threat they present... it is tied to you in some way. The echo we have felt on the worlds we have walked - we have encountered it only once before, when you stood before us at your trial.We believe that somehow, you are creating this - or that the Sith have learned this technique from you." Obviously I have my own speculation about what this means, but I'll let you draw your own conclusions for now, since the above quotes are directly from the game.

Well, it's exactly the same, so it would follow that the name is the same. It's a completely untrue title, of course, since we know that the Ebon Hawk survives in the LS ending, while we just don't hear about it again in the DS ending, as you don't leave the planet at that point.

Nowhere. I looked at the dialog.tlk file and did a search on "mandalorian prisoner" and "sense the force". The second gave no result relating to a mandalorian prisoner and the first gave no result at all...

I cast my vote for Jolee - definitely the most complex and rich character in the game. And I like the fact that he doesn't use his age and experience to impose his authority on Revan. When it's revealed, Jolee is just 'hey, I knew, but so what - you figure what you should do. I can offer perspective if you ask for it, but only you can decide what to do". I liked him for that. :cool: Not sure who I would choose after that. I like Bastila, but she can be fairly annoying and have rather high opinions of herself at times. It's her major flaw that causes her to fall to the dark side, of course, but it's a pretty big and unattractive one. But she's still very sweet and lovely The rest of the characters are pretty much so-so for me. I though T3 was pretty useless, but I didn't dislike him as a character. Some call Carth annoying, but I never saw him as such - he was just understandably bitter and disillusioned. Canderous was more complex and I liked his strategic view and warstories, but under it all he seemed like little more than a glorified thug, and I don't like those in general, so that's a big drawback. I fear and love HK-47, though. How can you not love such a shamelessly blunt and brutal character completely devoid of any sort of morality or ethical compass. He is a perverse and disgusting being, but precisely for that reason he makes some truly wonderful comments and observations. No KotOR without HK-47's comments, please

Don't waste time looking for it. It's never revealed. I have my own suspicions about why that is, but naturally that is purely conjecture on my part. Suffice it to say that if I'm correct, this may be revealed in a potential K3.

One way to discourage monster slashing is to give out more xp for a peaceful solution than for a violent one. I always do this myself to discourage hack 'n slash. After all, D&D does push hard for combat, so just killing the fifteen orcs attacking the caravan of merchants is easy, but negotiating with them and get them to fall back peacefully, now that is a challenge indeed. As for a plot, you could run a pretty standard adventure with a village being plundered on a regular basis by a recently settled tribe of orcs. Then encourage the PCs to scout the orcs strengths and weaknesses before a confrontation, and when they do so, they find that the orcs really only do it because they have no food and no resources. Now the PCs have a social and moral dilemma to solve rather than just to kill the evil orcs and be done with it. The way to true and intelligent role-playing is never to stereotype any of your characters (including monsters), since they're all unique individuals with their own backstories and motives, even if those are fairly simple ones. These orcs might have been pushed out of their former home by a competing orcish tribe, for example, and so they had no choice but to look for a new home by whatever means, since the alternative was to die. Do they deserve death just for being orcs?

Yes, exactly. And note that I agree with your position, since I too think that Kreia is Kae. I mean, just think Kae + Traya = Kraya = Kreia. Sounds very compelling to me. But while I agree, we have to accept that we can only argue for the position - it must be an informed argument, and since there is no absolute proof that Kreia is Kae, then we must accept that Kreia being Kae is merely conjecture and cannot be anything else. If not, we cannot demand the same standard from those who argue against that position. Yes, except for Kreia saying that she was Revan's master (and probably the first given the references to "returning to his first master"-comments), Kae is indeed the master the furthest back that we hear of. It supports the idea that Kreia is Kae, but that's all it does... Oh please no - don't reveal Kreia's secrets - this is too much fun...

Since this is the spoiler forum, I'll just mention that you can get a complete file on which influence options work for which characters here. It's written for the Xbox, but I've used without problems for the pc.

Ah, but she did. Remember how the masters respond when she joins your meeting with them on Dantooine. Kavar: "I thought you had died in the Mandalorian Wars..." Kreia: "Die? No - became stronger, yes." Vrook: "Is this your new Master, exile? If so, then you follow Revan's path. Her teachings will cause you to fall as surely as he did.We sought to lure the Sith out... and now they have come to us." If you want to doubt what SSgtSniper says above, then you're better off questioning the comment that sources in the game claim that Kae was Revan's first master, as I don't think it actually ever says - it just says that Revan was her padawan and never discounts the possibility that she may have been his/her first master. But there is no doubt Kreia fought in the war - the masters know she did, and she doesn't deny it - she even confirms it.

"No need to wonder what it was she did to your eyes any more". Sweet! I haven't played KotOR2 in a while now, but I'm really looking forward to revisiting it once the mod is done. Good job.

What does R2-D2 stand for? Or C-3PO?

The thing with Bao-Dur is that he responds only to what you do and not what you say, so you can't talk to him just to gain influence. You lose influence with him if you do DS acts and can gain it if you behave LS. But knowing that, it isn't so difficult to build influence with him, especially you use an influence guide, so you know which situations he responds to. But of course, this makes building influence with him a pain if you're aiming for being the next dark lord...

It is very peculiar that I have played this game countless, upon countless, times and I have yet to ever see this bit of dialogue from Mical. Where did you find this? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The above is cut and pasted directly from dialog.tlk file, but I do believe I've heard it in-game as well. But like several other characters (Mira, for example), Disciple has a few comments that are associated with bugs and which you therefore get to hear only if certain things happen at just the right time during the game. If memory serves correctly, this comment is heard only if you pass the very first influence check with him when you ask about his past. I could be mistaken, though. Can anyone confirm or deny?

Agreed. I still think they should have had the HK-50 unit greet a female Exile with the question, "Query: Are you Sarah Connor?" :D

Never did like expansion packs much, since they always seemed like an attempt to do only "half a game" or so. Up until a few years ago, they were mostly there to let the developers write a quick continued plot using the same engine, but these days this is less relevant since everything has to be in 3D and all dialogue has to spoken, thus making any 'continued plot' release, whether Expansion pack or otherwise, a major undertaking. So that makes them even less relevant, since it's almost as easy (or difficult) as writing a new game, especially now that 'recycled' graphics engines have been acceptable. And then you run into the problem of whether the audience will accept it as part of the evolving plot. Could you imagine Monkey Island 3.5 or so? Does sound problematic for as plot-driven a game series as KotOR, I think. After all, what can you do plotwise in an Expansion that follows up on K2, yet is not plot-heavy enough to be K3? For example, we can count the entire Clone Wars animated series as Episode 2.5, but how many of us see it as canon Star Wars and how many do not? A lot of people still refuse to accept the comics and books of the Expanded Universe as canon even though they are approved by the company and the creator himself. So in the interest of not alienated such people, the developers will always choose a "light" enough plot for an Expansion pack in order to make the "real" sequel relevant to all the potential customers, and therefore limit the amount of potential plot development in the Expansion pack. Taking all that into consideration, I'd much rather move right onto K3 than some expansion pack.

Yes Yes No. What Mical says is this: Disciple: "Revan sought out many other teachers to learn certain techniques. I do not recall who Revan's master was... strange. As a Padawan, Revan was trained by Master Kae, before she was exiled. Strange, I do not recall who Revan's master was after that.And it is said that he went to his first - and final - master to learn how to leave the order entirely, as she had.And such teachings and their teachers is why I harbor doubts, why I wonder if something is missing from the Jedi code." He just says that he doesn't remember who Revan's master was after Kae, and obviously that does not discount the possibility that she might have been the first. I'm fairly certain that we are never conclusively told who Revan's first master was, though it is certainly implied that it was Kreia. But again, this does not say that Kreia cannot be Kae.

*he <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Quiet you. She in my little game world. The great Revan would sense such deception like Yoda did and deal with the lowly clone accordingly. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Besides, being level 20, Revan has way too much vitality to be killed by the measely damage a laser blast could do even on a sniper shot

I just don't see that any RPG really falls into that category. Sure, there are loads of RPG systems that are infinitely better than D&D - I'd even go as far as to say that most of them are, but all still do incorporate the combat side, so... Besides, where strategy and tactics are concerned, D&D is one of the worst games you could play - the basic principles are still those of a game more than three decades old, and it really is showing these days. It's fast-paced action, sure, but suspending disbelief (for anyone over the age of 10) is a challenge indeed, when the rules are as unbelievably simplistic as they are in D&D. Yes, White Wolf's storyteller system has some focus on the actual role-playing, but it certainly involves lots and lots of combat rules as well, as do most other systems we could mention. Besides, skills aren't good in and off themselves. I like GURPS, but it really does have so many skills that it's doubtful you'll ever use them all...

A nice one is always to frame the PCs for some crime. Murder is the most obvious, but less will do as well. This forces intelligent play, because it's the only way to identify your enemy - you can be as angry as you want to and be as much of a bad-ass warrior as you like, it won't help you one bit if you don't know where to direct your abilities. Of course, this is just a pretext for the later fight once the enemy has been identified, but it's not a bad place to begin, methinks. Another way is for the real enemy to manipulate the PCs into thinking that his enemies are the PCs' enemies (think Palpatine). The PCs will learn to think before they pull out their swords that way. The problem with that is that the PCs can into more trouble than they can get out of again in many situations. After all, saying you were deceived is not really going to matter much once you've mistakenly chopped up an entire family you thought was out to get you... It might be better to let the PCs identify the real villian, and then once they come to confront him, they discover that he has manipulated some other people into thinking the PCs are guilty of something, and while the PCs try to explain it all, he makes sure to slip away quietly. Once he has manipulated people like that against the PCs a few times, they tend to catch on - why fight myself if I can trick others to do it for me?

It's probably safe to assume that this was a reference to material that was cut from the game. Originally several of your crewmembers were supposed to seek out and confront Kreia on their own (I suppose the Exile was momentarily injured when the Ebon Hawk crashed - we may know when the Restoration Project is finished), but they would all be captured. On entering the Trayus Academy, the Exile would then have to choose whether to spend time saving his friends and so face harder opposition in the endgame or whether to sacrifice them, so he could seek out Kreia immediately. I think...

Leia is 16 in ANH?!? How do you figure that? I think you're wrong. In fact, I know you are. According to the official Star Wars site Episode III takes place 19 years before A New Hope (Episode IV). Since we saw Leia being born in Episode III, this suggests something else. Yes, I know that time passes during that episode (Anakin only learns of Padme's pregnancy in the beginning, suggesting it's still fairly early on), but a full year did not pass, so Leia could have been no younger than 18 in Hope. Personally I still think that she and Luke were both 19 at the time.

But why does it need a specific Epic ruleset? How does that ensure balance? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Actually, if it wasn't because the two first KotOR games used the d20 system, I'd rather have them use WEG's Star Wars RPG system, which was way better than d20 IMHO. For me d20 was actually a reason against playing KotOR, but I like Star Wars and found the plot interesting, so I played it anyway and liked it. But that was in spite of it being d20. Those are not good rules in my book.

Yes, but so what? I mean, what RPG system isn't designed to handle combat? They all are, so in a game without battles there will always be a large proportion of the rules that you will not be using. Not that that's a bad thing, mind you. I actually run an AD&D 2e campaign myself, which is definitely geared more toward investigation, politics and plotting than straight combat, so I know it can be done. I haven't removed combat, because the players deserve to see their characters grow and gain new powers, but I've certainly scaled it down a fair bit. They're all level 13+, so I'm really not going to bother playing a random encounter with 13 orcs (since it would just be a pointless dice-rolling exercise...). The encounters do happen, I just tell the players that they did, that the orcs were defeated or chased off, and then I move on... No problem.

Hmm, there seems to be some uncertainty about when exactly the traditions were implemented by the Sith. I had the impression that the 'only one dark lord' rule was set up by Darth Bane in the 'Jedi vs. Sith' comic book set a millennia before the movies, but the information at both Wikipedia and answers.com both seem to use the phrase: "To guard against the Sith again engaging in fratricidal internecine war or losing sight of their "ideals" again, Bane took only one apprentice, starting a "one master, one apprentice" tradition to prevent the Sith from destroying themselves again." This, of course, suggests that you might be right in the 'only one dark lord' principle having been in place for a long time before that, though not that of only one apprentice that Darth Bane apparently implemented. Even so, I still don't think this tells that the 'only one dark lord' principle was in use during the KotOR era. In fact, I continue to see the Ludo Kressh vs. Naga Sadow confrontations as suggesting otherwise (they only postponed war from the beginning of the 'Golden Age of the Sith' comic books because the spirit of departed Marka Ragnos forbids it). We might yet see the principle being established in the KotOR era.