Crucis

I have to disagree. I think that risking the death of the AC so quickly hurts the effectiveness of the ranger over the long haul of the battle, and is a poor use of said AC. I think that it's better to hold the AC out of the first wave, and use it as a second wave flanker, or a reserve to plug holes or intercept enemy flankers, or to act as a rear area defender in battles like those where Shades teleport into your rear. The AC may still die, but it's better than throwing it away as you suggest at the certain cost of a hefty -20 penalty to the ranger's accuracy.

While there's a certain amount of logic to this, I'd say that Stoic is the opposite of Passionate for the following reason. Passionate sort of means wearing your emotions on your sleeve for all to see, for the most part, whereas Stoic sort of means holding your emotions inside and keeping them to yourself. I see Pallegina as more of a Passionate character than actually being outright Aggressive. The Passionate character lets people know how they feel about things verbally, whereas I think that one could say that the Aggressive character will tend to act on those feelings, rather than merely express them in words. And I just get the feeling that Pallegina is more of one to let people know how she feels verbally than to translate those feelings into action and violence at the drop of a hat. ... As for what Pallegina's second favored disposition might be, I don't really know. I think that I would say that if one sees here as Passionate, then Stoic should be one of her disfavored dispositions. In at least one dialog with her, she appears to take a dim view of the PC responding to the Valian ambassador in a Stoic manner, so that seems like a strong clue that she disfavors Stoicism. I also get the feeling that Diplomatic isn't one of her preferred dispositions, since one at least one occasion she refers to herself as a warrior more than a diplomat (during her diplomatic trade talks, IIRC). Of course, as someone pointed out above, what Pallegina's personal dispositions may be almost certainly don't align perfectly with what her order's favored and disfavored dispositions are. I do think that Diplomatic probably should be one of her order's favored dispositions. Of course, this creates the "problem" that if the faith and conviction bonuses were fully function for NPC paladin's, Pallegina would be taking a hit because she wasn't well aligned with her order's dispositions. Of course, I suppose that some of this could be countered by having her take the "Untroubled Faith" (?) talent/class ability.

Much as I like being able to get hats/helmets with stat enhancing enchantments, I think that the best way to deal with this would be to simply remove all enchantments from headgear. That said, there's probably one effect that one could argue that helmets (as opposed to mere hats) could give and that could be some sort of reduction of crit hit chance or crit hit damage, or perhaps a small number of physical DR. This wouldn't be a true enchantment so much as merely a reflection of the purely physical protective effect of a (hard) helmet vs a soft hat. I don't think that anyone could reasonably argue that a good solid helmet offers more protection than a mere hat.

Actually, there is a piece of enchanted headgear that uses the duelist's hat. It's called "The Dandy Hat of the Diseased Yak" and gives +2 RES and -1 INT. Unfortunately, in one's inventory slots is uses the acorn helm graphic, rather than the duelist's hat graphic. I wish that the Devs would make fix this minor thing, because you'd never know that this hat uses an entirely different graphic when placed on the character's paper doll. This is also a problem for a number of other hats. There's a headgear item that's actually a monocle. It displays as a monocle on the paper doll, but as a helm in the inventory slots. There are other headgear items that have this problem as well, though perhaps not to as great a degree. I find the Diseased Yak hat's improper inventory graphic probably the most annoying because that duelist's hat is perfect for any character that wants to be portrayed as a stylish adventurer. Plus, it's a near perfect match for a couple of the portraits, one is the black woman wearing stylish clothes and a duelist's hat, and the other is a male pic of a fairly stereotypical pirate, looking rather like the Peter Pan villain, Captain Hook.

But this isn't a p&p game. As implemented, camping supplies can't even properly be called a mechanic. Partial mechanic is more like it. It suggests a mechanic, but it doesn't close the deal, instead expecting the player to do it. I consider such an implementation bad design. If you want it to be an optional mechanic, then you set a toggle in the options menu. Something like "can camp without supplies." And/or "no random encounters." That way if players want to opt out, they can skip the tedium of backtracking, or have risk-free camping/retreats. But as it is now it's just half-done and half-baked. And you missed the point I was making in pointing out the p&p thing. The point was that GM's are human and can be adaptable. The program isn't and adaptability is difficult. I notice that you completed skipped over my discussion of playing according to the spirit of the rules vs the letter of the rules. If you play to the spirit of the rules, camping supplies work just fine. And I don't think that it's either half-baked or half-done. I think that there are just a bunch of players who don't understand the idea of playing according to the spirit of the rules rather than the letter of the rules, and will push every rule to its limit and beyond if they can, and then complain about it.

BAdler, any idea on when this patch will be out of beta and be officially live? I'm kinda of hesitant to start a new party until it goes live. And my internet connection isn't particularly lightning fast, so I'm hesitant to download the beta version now only to have to DL the official version all over again in a couple of days. Curious minds wish to know. Thx.

Personally, I like the camping supplies thing. What I don't like is how it's 100% safe to rest. Nor do I like how it's 100% safe to travel from place to place outside of a city. There should be random encounters when you're on the road, and there should be a risk of having your rest interrupted when you rest away from an inn. And there should be camping supplies. As for whether it increases the challenge or not, I personally think that it does. Some of us don't actually run back to an inn after every battle just so that we can abuse the game. If this was a p&p game and someone tried to run back to town after every battle in a dungeon, that party would find themselves running into an awful lot of encounters on the road. And if there were no limits (no camping supplies) and a party tried resting after every encounter IN the dungeon, I'd have the party get attacked while they rested with increasing frequency. If you play to the spirit of the rules, camping supplies are a bit of a limiting factor. It's only when players go against the spirit of the rules and stick within the letter of the rules (i.e. that the game program allows because that's how it was programmed) that abuses occur and the limiting factors start to no longer matter. So if you want camping supplies to be a limiting factor, play to the spirit of the rules, not the letter of the rules.

Any news on when this patch 1.05 is going to be officially released?

OMG! OMG! Gods forbid that there's a class of spellcasters that has to learn to pace themselves and not throw everything AND the kitchen sink into every battle! OMG! The world is ending because one can't cast every spell in one's grimoire or memory or whatever in every single battle without resting! /sarcasm

I can't agree with #4, but I agree with the general sentiment of the post. Resting shouldn't be abused. As I said above, I wrote that p&p DM's would find inventive ways to deal with players who tried to abuse resting. But cRPG's aren't capable of being as adaptable in the same way that a human GM can be. So all the devs can do is try to deal with the potential methods of abuse they can foresee.

I really wish that the devs would investigate this issue. I'm probably a LOT more patient than a lot of you fellow players, but even for me, the load times seem overly long. I'm not saying that the area loading needs to be instantaneous, but it'd be nice if it could be cut down to say 5-10 seconds?

Why thank you! It's actually meant to be a BG avatar; that's my Photoshopped Imoen. :-D This is also what I was thinking of. I agree that turning PoE into a modern-style multiplayer game would be a huge resource-suck and a mistake. But Baldur's-Gate-style multiplayer is a completely different thing and seems like a relatively minor project. (We need different names for these two things.) I've never used the multiplayer in BG, but it seems like it might be worth the effort to implement given how much some people would get out of that. I could be wrong on this, but I seem to recall reading where the devs said that adding multiplayer support is more difficult than people appear to assume. But regardless, as RJshae points out, people who gave money to the kickstarter effort for this game because it was stated that it would be a single player game might be rather unhappy to see their money diverted to including multiplayer support rather than further enhancing the single player experience.

Because I parse those sentences differently from you.

Where? Every other member of your party is an ally. I could have all 6 members of the party attacking the same target, but if only one is close to the Marker, only that one could get the bonus, if I understand you properly.

How drastically? I have two save files, one autosave file, and one quicksave file. That's all. It takes over a minute for every single area transition and 15+ seconds to quicksve/load. The game is already exceedingly hard to play, I would hate to see it being much worse than this. Wow, this is rather extreme. Over a minute to load a new area? Damn. Mine ranges from about 15 to 20 seconds most of the time. As for save files, I try to go with more than just the Autosave and the Quicksave, just because I like having some fall back saves. That said, I don't keep my manual saves around for long. I try to thin the herd every so often. I also have turned off the Steam save file auto-sync, which seemed to improve loading up the "Load Game" screen a fair bit.

Because it's a waste of time and resources that could be better spent on other almost any other more important game things. More items. More plot. More quests. More dialog. More and/or better pretty much anything.

I'm not so sure that I'd say that Durance and GM belong in the asylum. I'd say that Durance belongs in a Magranic monastery, while GM needs a lot of psychological counseling. It's not like GM can't function out in the world. But her issues are pretty severe. And I agree about Eder. His problem is entirely something that many people can relate to. And he's very laid back and likeable.

I disagree that the per-rest system is flawed and that arguments about rest abuse are an indication of this. The thing is that in normal p&p DnD a dungeon master can stop rest abuse rather simply by having the players' rests get interrupted increasingly often and y increasingly difficult ambushers. But in PoE where your rests are NEVER ONCE interrupted, the only penalty is the cost in terms of camping supplies. And in the old IE games, there was no limiter of camping supplies so you could rest as often as you wanted. Now I have to say that the idea of resting quite often in BG2 when you were adventuring in the city didn't bother me much from a pseudo-realism PoV. You go down to the docks and get in a hard fight with whatever, and go back to the inn for the night. No big deal. Seems rather reasonable, as long as there's no actual time pressure. OTOH, it does seem a bit unseemly to rest after every battle when you're in a dungeon and you really should be at risk of having said rest interrupted. It's one of the flaws that are sort of the nature of these games that the monsters are pinned to a specific location and rarely seem to roam around. I mean, seriously, you shouldn't be able to rest safely when you KNOW that there's a group of Ogres just around the corner. It'd be great if on some levels of a dungeon like the EP dungeon if a given level is 100% controlled by a certain group of monsters, those monsters should be patrolling that level and interrupting rests. Or done another way, perhaps you shouldn't be allowed to rest on a dungeon level that hasn't been cleared, with the possible exception of a room with a door that you can close and have it be deemed resting safe. So anyways, the problem IMO isn't the per-rest system of magic, but the way that rests are allowed and handled in these games, without a greater effort towards preventing rest abuse. Or at least creating a serious risk of interruption in areas deemed unsafe. EDIT: Speaking of Hook Horrors (I'd forgotten that name), I actually liked those waves after waves after waves of Hook Horrors. I also liked how they would attack you from both the front and rear at the same time, meaning that you had to adjust your formation to put your squishy spellcasters in the 3-4 slots rather than the 5-6 slots, and you needed a decent tank to cover your rear as well as your front. I really enjoyed those Hook Horror battles in IWD2! And wish that there were battles like them in PoE!

Poor Aloth. Died before his time. And speaking of time, it's time to head off to an inn to find another sucker .... I mean, mercenary .... wizard who's ready to join your PC's band of fun loving adventurers!

How so? It's pretty easy to set a formation to ensure that the Marker is always besides the rogue. The other members would be in front or to the OTHER side of the rogue. The Marking buff is always given to my rogue with this formation. How so? You really have to ask? It's patently obvious. The in-game description says nothing about having to be close to the Marker. It implies that any and all of your allies will benefit from the marking without any requirement to be near the marker. That by itself represents a significant degradation of the power of Marking.

Yeah, "best weapon" discussions really need to happen in the context of itemization to have any meaning. That said, weapon focus ruffian covers stilettos and clubs in addition to sabers, so you still have some excellent weapon options for Eder even if another character is hogging the only good sabers. True, but the thing is that I believe in having lots of options. And in Eder's case, I have him armed with a saber and shield in one weapon slot, and a club and shield in another weapon slot. As an aside.... I wish that the PoE devs had gotten rid of what I see as a flaw from the old IE games. Just because you choose to switch 1H weapons shouldn't mean that you need a second shield for the second 1H weapon.

Yeah, if you toss a Superb onto Cloudpiercer, it's probably the best bow in the game, bar none. I happened to add a Shocking Lash to it in my last party because it felt like a perfect fit. It already has the spell-striking: Jolting Touch, and a Shocking Lash felt so right for that bow. I don't remember if I added Superb to any weapon during that run. I get wary of using the extremely limited ingredients (sky dragon eyes, ardra dragon scales, for example) for making Superb items, and honestly probably end up wasting them by not using them at all by the end of the game. (Ooops.)

Yeah, it does sort of stink that perhaps the best Warbow, Cloudpiercer, is a quest reward from the Dozens, perhaps the most annoying of the factions. I accidentally ended up picking them in my last run and got cloudpiercer. I don't remember what the reward for the Knights quest was (I think that it was a Sword), nor do I even know what the Domenals' quest reward item is, since I haven't done them yet. I'm tempted to try to picking the Domenals the next time, though Cloudpiercer is one darned fine weapon and hard to pass up. (I have read that you can get it by killing the Dozens' head guy though. I almost never play evil characters and wouldn't usually consider killing this guy. Also, I wouldn't want to risk losing access to the Dozens' store.)

Yeah, I probably am. Sue me for being .... over 40 ... and liking this sort of game. I should say that I recognize a few other people here whose handles I recognize from back then. Gromniir. Wanderon. And some others a bit more vaguely. There are plenty of people who liked the DnD IE games from back then. And heck, it wouldn't surprise me if some of those are old enough to have played the even older SSI gold and silver box DnD computer games as well. Wow, Wanderon is on these forums? Obi-Wanderon, now that is a name I haven't heard in a very long time... Yeah, Mr. "All who wander are not necessarily lost" Wanderon is a member here and shows up occasionally.

This . People who does not agree are simply low level "theorycrafters" or speculators . Or they just prefer to use a different weapon and aren't so bothered about efficiency. I use an Arbalest on my Rogue and don't care about the faster rate of fire because it works well for me. Very true. And I often use a warbow on a ranger or a rogue when others insist that I should be using something like an arquebus or other higher damaging weapon. I don't play the game to worry about maximum efficiency and maximum DPS. And these arguments by min-maxing powergamers get really annoying to those who don't subscribe to this attitude. They were annoying back when BG1/2 were new and are no less annoying today, except perhaps that their arguments are filled with gamer geekspeak that I don't understand, like proc or kiting and so forth. (Back when BG1/2 were new, I don't recall any of that sort of gamer geek speak. As I remember it, we actually spoke regular English back then.) I don't mind min/max, but when people get insulting to others who don't subscribe to the same gameplay style it's a little sad. Back on topic, I think the "correct" answer would actually be "both". You use the Arbalest vs high DR opponents or for the initial alpha-strike. You'd use the warbow vs. lower DR enemies, or with some levels under your belt, it'd be possible to replace the Arbalest with a Warbow altogether assuming you can set up sneak attacks constantly, use DR debuffs and know where to find the good bows early on. I like the idea of using a high alpha weapon for the first strike and then switching to a faster weapon for the rest of the battle for characters like rangers or archers, though if the enemy is tough enough, I could just stick with the high alpha weapon. I also like having my front liners carry a high alpha weapon for a first strike at range before switching to melee weapons. Slow reloading, high alpha weapons are perfect for that task, since I'm not really intending to take any more than a single shot anyways before switching to melee weapons. I have to say that I like taking the Arms Bearer talent on almost every character because I really like having as many options as reasonably possible. And only 2 weapons slots seems a little limiting to me.