perilisk

Are you sure the god-gnawed priest didn't turn into Hiravius? He sort of fits the description.

Nah, it should go in the direction of either Fallout 2 or Freedom Force.

Truthfully, it doesn't even have to be smart. It just has to have enough different attack patterns, strengths, and weaknesses that you can't utilize the same strategy for every battle. That is, it doesn't matter whether the enemy is smart, so long as it forces the player to be smart.

You'll romance Durance, and you'll like it. And if I hear any complaining, you'll get downgraded to Anomen. I'll take Anomen. He doesn't look half bad, so I can gag him and tie him up to make him sufferable, while Durance has absolutely no attractive qualities whatsoever. Hey, Durance has a sense of humor, albeit a filthy one as befits him.

You'll romance Durance, and you'll like it. And if I hear any complaining, you'll get downgraded to Anomen.

He isn't talking about his own personal quest?

Including the one that isn't in Defiance Bay.

Complaining that your characters can only see maybe fifty feet, tops, in open terrain in broad daylight is like saying Tetris has too many blocks? Wha?

Well, the initial companion arcs are pretty familiar; you, your dog, and three friends you met (and Durance) are traveling down the same road together, seeking answers from a powerful Wiz... err, Watcher, who lives in a castle with this whole green rock theme. As for your own reasons, well, you got smacked by a windstorm so hard you're in a completely different world (sort of), and you want to go back home, metaphorically. A kindly wi... err, animancer points you in the direction of the Watcher as someone who can help. But the Watcher turns out to be a disappointment, blah blah blah, and you learn that the all-powerful entities you encountered and sought aid from are actually a sham concocted by a guy from the same nation you came from back in the day, and everyone learns a valuable lesson about looking inside themselves for answers/strength/whatnot.

Take a left out of... Searing Falls, I think? Aside from Persoq, there isn't much there aside from a loot cave and a bounty, so it's easy to miss.

I take exception to "all the backers". I didn't say anything on that issue. (Or most others, to be honest.) OTOH, special loot (anyone has a similarly cool name for that?) always feels like the game master / developers cheating. "In lieu of doing AI to make things harder, we just give our Xaurips spears+3. No, you can't loot them." Or: "We made this very cool bad guy who wears really nice armour. No, we didn't make it wearable, and its armour class travels at the speed of plot. Also, it won't turn up as loot, of course." It's annoying both ways. Special loot is annoying, sure, but it could be justified -- e.g. the item is powered by the user's soul rather than an intrinsic enchantment, so in the hands of anyone unworthy or untrained, it's just a normal or uselessly magical item. I sort of feel like that would even be a good approach for having some class abilities that are tied to an item (say, a set of paladin abilities based in the use of a particular relic venerated by the Paladin's order, like a Holy Avenger).

The first is Terra Arcanum backwards.

Your character is a Watcher, surely they of all people would be able to clearly see inner beauty and all that. Your response sparked writers gold for any game writer who wants to use this. This is clever actually. So you would make two versions of the female companion: In the normal physical world she is ugly & mannish, but when you use your watcher powers to peer into her soul, you are treated to her ethereal representation in which she is drop dead gorgeous, beautiful. How she looks in spirit form is similar to a super model, because she is beautiful on the inside. This would satisfy a straight male gamers need to see a beautiful woman, but also take a step back to understand that on the outside she is not attractive. But then Jack Black would steal her away from you. :`(

Yeah, it's the detours and dead ends that make relationships in drama interesting. And if they did do romances, there should definitely be potential to flirt with a character only to be told "Let's not make things weird. We're trying to save the world here."

Your character is a Watcher, surely they of all people would be able to clearly see inner beauty and all that.

The Curio shop and Botanical gardens are useful if you get them early on, before doing many quests. The Warden unlocks the bounties, which is good. The rest of it... meh.

Yes! Mainly because it would irritate you, and fair is fair.

Anything else to contribute besides unearthing old threads? I think someone has declared this Let's Talk About The Stronghold day.

I think that means in this context that you can loot all of the items that each enemy carries, rather than just some designated "loot" items.

Maybe he will be a religious leader, somewhat below a priest in ranking, in one of their dragon cults. Sort of a deacon, if you will.

As much as I enjoy playing the stealthy sort of pacifist, it would be great if the expansions or sequels introduced more nonlethal options, including some aggressive ones. You get no combat XP for fighting kith, and the game's mechanics are set up so that people are normally taken out of combat by losing endurance, not health. There's no reason you can't loot a KO'd body as easily as a dead one. All of that suggests it would be very rewarding (from a C&C perspective) to set up a Gothic-style system where kith-on-kith combat often boils down to beating people up and taking their stuff, where killing a fallen opponent is usually a deliberate choice with moral weight. It also means that it's reasonable to have alternate means of beating enemies other than dropping endurance to 0; breaking morale could be more than just a debuff system -- unless you really had your heart set on their loot or truly wanted them eliminated, terrifying an enemy into fleeing the map is essentially as much a win as killing them all. Reputation could come into play here too. If you have a reputation for being honorable and benevolent, enemies might be more likely to lay down arms and surrender once it's clear the fight is going badly, the leader is killed, etc. On the other hand, people might just try to avoiding getting into combat with a Bleak Walker in the first place.

One way around the level cap blues (even if it is a little regimented and metagamey) is to differentiate between systems of vertical and horizontal progression. Keep vertical progression (HP, skill ranks, total number of equipped talents and ability uses) bound tightly to main quest progression. Let the side quests, bestiary, etc. expand horizontal progression (maybe unlocking extra talents or powers that could be swapped out at rest, bonus spells known, etc.). Since the horizontal progression component is more about versatility than power, you can leave it essentially unbounded without worrying about trivializing endgame content.

If they were going to go a different direction with the character system in future games, I would probably prefer a classless system along the lines of GURPS/Fallout/Arcanum to any variant of D&D. Of course, that would run the BG nostalgia train off the rails, so I don't expect it.

On the subject of xaurips, the expansion should have a side quest where you create a robot dragon with animancy, and then trick a xaurip tribe into worshipping it, so that they end up following whatever commands you input. You know, for irony.

Needs a trigger warning.