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Pesonally, I see a point of some NPCs having just voiceovers. For example some bartender. You add him one greeting line of dialoge, just to add atmosphere, but on the other hand nobody really cares how he looks like. As for having just portrait and no voice, I actually agree that that is bad. And that is something I really dislikes in "super silent" Shadowrun Returns. So I an strongly agains RPG game without any voice overs. The way I see it, major NPCs need to have portrait and some key parts of dialoge voiced over. Exception would be a game with very large PC/NPC models (they are huuuge in 640x480), like original Planscape Torment, where you could clearly see character features, unlike PoE.

Interesting. My assumption was that having bash weapon would slow down primary attack, due to using two weapon fighting speed times. I guess I was wrong and bash is actually pure extra bonus to weapon and board users.

Hmm... Are there acually any concept art of similar done for some key NPCs (like Lady Web or Roderick), that was released to the public?

Still, it is kinda interesting question. How much does it cost to create one mini-portrait for major NPC, over voice overing his key lines of dialog? Is it possible that voice work is less expensive that portrait creation?

The problem is that key NPCs have no portrait (like LadyW, Roderik, or Duc). Yet it was not an issue for the budget to have them with voice overs. Sure there are NPCs where portrait is not relevant, like vairous merchants or bartenders. But those that have character development should include portrait, to at least be able to visualise them. If you do 3d, no portrait is needed, all can be done in engine. If you do cinematic 3d, full voice over is required, or old KotOR/Jade Empire tricks, with NPCs talking in foreign language. But if you do 2d isometric, then use what is available for that platform to present important NPCs, that player should care about. Voice is one way, portraits are the another way. Portraits are cheper, yet not included in the game. If anything, it seems more like oversight, then deliberate choice, in this game.

Yeah, I was curious myself about how I got that slide. I was doing a custom party run so I just picked him up for his quest. So I went and picked him up after I got to Defiance Bay (no talking about Maerwald) and went to get his record, went to Ciliban Rilag, and straight to Brackenbury to have the item read. I picked the passionate response and dropped him. That was my only interaction with him. How did you handle Skaen cult? My theory is that those two are related since 1st ending is talking about Eder expelling last remains of them.

Yeah, I undestand that voice overs are expensive and need to be budgeted in game like this, but what is really jarring in that pretty much all NPCs in the game are lacking portraits. In fact, total of 2 NPCs in the game have portraits. And in letters, "two". The most jarring thing is that key story NPCs are lacking portraits. And due to isometric view, you barely have idea how some NPCs in the story look alike (even with hacked in extra zoom). Why is this done? Is voice over budget more expensive then comnissioning artist to make in-game portraits? In my humble oppinions, portraits should take higher priority then voice overs. As future guidelines, please, if NPC is deemed important enough to have spoken likes, make sure that is has portrait also. Also, it is better to have NPC with portrait only, instead with spoken lines and no portrait.

Do you know that you can kill prisner while they are in dungeon and get their loot that way?

Some of the origin stories in DAO were dark. Rest of the game not so much.

I can also confirm this one using patch 1.06.

I guess the only proper scenario where this message should show up would be when party us completelly broke?

Lures as such are AI exploit. AI should be improved to prevent exploits. Also encounters should be designed in such way to make it more difficult to do the exploits, and not to factor exploit awereness of the player as part of difficulty curve. Ideally, exploit should not exist, not to kill the fun for a few gamers who like luring, but to make better game overall. As for the whole, "tank on chokepoint" strategy, it is result of flawed system unfortunatelly used in most RPG systems. Ideally, firing on enemy that is engaged in melee with friendly party should be a risk for both enagaged characters and discouraged. Similary, most of the direct fire attacks (like fireball or arrows) should not work, if there is target between them and destination. Instead, only lobbing attacks should be possible in that case (like grenade, or missile attacks that fires in air and then falls on targets). If game layer was upgraded to be similar to that, then of course chokepoint strategy would be much less overeffective then it is now, when backend characters are allowed to use full range of ranged DPS options without any penalty.

Apperently, or confirmed? Link or it did not happen.

Isnt't that useless? Since those tanks are using shields, and thus not using one-handed style.

Try it out and share your experience in the forum. I'm also curious about this.

Actually, they are not faster. Average one-handed weapons have same rate of attack as slow two-handed weapons.

>>>As for Resolve, you will require, I believe, at least the ability to reach 19-20 to make the biggest speech choices (making someone drink poison). In my playthrough I solved that one by one 19 resolve and one 19 perception check.

The lure mechanic is so "90ties". And it should have stayed in 90ties. Just because game is spiritual successor to old game does not excuse of (non)intentionally introducing old flaws back to the genre.

This is great point. Since proofing behavies differently depending is it on armor or not, then stacking mechanism needs to be revised for it.

Interesting enough, armors where mitigating weakness with proofing is best, are those that do not have weaknesses as such, but two +25% strengths, and 3rd physical protection without any weakness. Like Padded and Plate. In those cases using proffing for slashing (padded) and crushing (plate) is great, since it adds full +3DR bonus, and as result you get all around great armor.

Hmm... it seems that +3 crush is applied before calculating armor vulnerability. Mail is very vulnerable to crush, so has 50% DR agains crush. DR 13 + 3 = 16, but if you then calculate 50% vunlerability you get 8 DR.

On the other hand, most of the time you do not need to enchant armors, and can keep those ingredients for something else more useful, then putting them on bare clothes. While enchanting armor to fine has some merit, it is more effective to just find/buy exceptional and superb armors. Plus, it's not just 4DR, its 4DR and extra 2DR for pierce and crush (if fine padded armor used). And the more game progresses the less reliably you can keep rear companions from harm (area spells, ranged attacks, stray melee enemies). And that DR becomes effectively 8DR/12DR in case of grazes. 20% less DPS will not make or break the fight, but lack of extra protection can. If fight is easy, +20% DPS just means more quicker fight. If fight is hard, due to positioning, enemy power and mass, extra DR is definitivelty more worth, since rear combatants will get hit, as a fact. It is just matter of not wasting too much recovery on getting most effective DR for least DPS penalty. Also it is suprisingly effective to "tank" shadows with wizards. 9DR from scale greatly reduces offensive power of shadows and add to that small shield and any wizard will surivive close encounter with shadows.

I usually do have rear combatants in cloth only, but only in early game (shadows* are exceptions). When fine armor starts appearing, those rear combatants switch to padded. 6DR global, and 8DR pierce and crush, is really great for just 20% recovery penalty. They also get fine leather for backup, if there are enemies with extremly lot of slashing attacks. 12DR slash for 30% is great deal. While those armors do reduce DPS, they decrease risk in just right amount for when things get serious. *As for shadows, it's hide or scale armor for them.

Interesting enough, I did similar test to check something else. In my game I was always getting those bad visitor events. At that point of time I had 0 hirelings and prety well build up prestige and security. Then I experimented before one such event triggers by adding hirelings. What I noticed was that after I reached specific threshold in sum of prestige and security that I started getting other events. Bandits, good guests etc... I know it depended on sum of prestige and security, since I had as an option crucible knight (+4p +2s) and bunch of +2p, +2s, +1s/p hirelings and in all tests crucible knight was worth as much 3 other hirelings.

I would prefer just nerfing Plate. -2DR and that's it. All armors exempt plate gradually increase effectiveness and recovery penalty. Only plate armor is different in that regard. And truth to be told, when comparing regular plate mail and fine brigandine, as currently in the game, they really look balanced. EDIT: Alternatively, keep DR as is, and up recovery penalty to 60% for plate.