Grossol the Grim

Looking at the bestiary on this site there are only 22 enemies who start out with a fortitude defense that's lower than their deflection, 15 enemies whose fortitude defense becomes lower than their deflection with threatening presence active, and 26 enemies whose fortitude defense is at least 20 higher than their deflection. Wouldn't it be better, easier, and cheaper to use blinding attacks or something instead of spending points on these abilities? I'm still not very far into the game so I wanted to know what you all think about this.

I don't care about the level 1 skill personally, that said I am reffering more to their stats, race, name, background, you know all the stuff that matters to them as a character not a munchkin rating report. One person says you could dump Eder's intelligence and it wouldn't effect him in game. You are right, it wouldn't, but would he make any damn sense as a character if he had intelligence 3 and behaved like he does? No he wouldn't. That is exactly my point!

I am fairly certain you gained attributes in Ice Wind Dale, and I'm pretty sure that IWD was mentioned in the White March description. But, maybe I am wrong. It has been a very long time since I have played those games. I've played IWD recently and no, you don't gain any attribute points. IWD2 does give you 1 point every 4 levels (adapted D&D3 ruleset). Ah, then IWD2 must be the game I remember playing. Sorry about the confusion.

I think you inadvertently hit the nail on the head. You are 100% right, a big part of RPG's is being able to totally control and customize your characters.... but is Eder your character? Nope, he isn't. He is an NPC that just happens to be willing to join your fight and take orders from you. The characters in the game that are your characters (the watcher, hired mercs from the inn) are your characters because you create them, you get to envision whatever backstory they have, you get to pick their race, sex, class, even name. Etc etc. All you get to decide about Eder is his leveling choices for level 2 and up. Yeah, I am well aware that Eder and the others are premade characters. I was trying to say that being able to re-spec their attributes wouldn't bother me *because* the impact it would have is moderate at best, negligible at worst. For instance, if you were to dump Eder's intellect it would not turn him into some drooling oaf in the game and the same goes for your own character. It wouldn't even prevent the casting of spells, or the disabling of traps, etc. On the other hand re-speccing the premade companions *would* bother me from a role-playing perspective had attributes and other character building choices been made less trivial. All that aside, I am really enjoying the game so far.

I am fairly certain you gained attributes in Ice Wind Dale, and I'm pretty sure that IWD was mentioned in the White March description. But, maybe I am wrong. It has been a very long time since I have played those games.

Dunno why they just didn't do it like in the old games where you get an attribute every 5 levels? Not sure, it's been well over a decade since I played iwd/baldurs... Either way it's no big deal.

Ok, I went through the 74 portraits that came with the game and tallied up the number of portraits for each race as best I could. Coastal Aumaua - male: 2, female: 1, unique: 2, total: 3 Island Aumaua - male: 1, female: 2, total: 3 Boreal Dwarf - male: 1, female: 2, total: 3 Mountain Dwarf - male: 1, female: 1, total: 3 Wood Elf - male: 5, female: 3, unique: 7, total: 8 Pale Elf - male: 3, female: 2, unique: 4, total: 5 Death Godlike - male: 2, female: 2, total: 4 Nature Godlike - male: 2, female: 4, unique: 4, total: 6 Fire Godlike - male: 2, female: 2, total: 4 Moon Godlike - male: 2, female: 2, total: 4 Human - male: 13, female: 9, total: 20 Meadow - male: 7, female: 2, unique: 1, total: 9 Savannah - male: 2, female: 2, unique: 1, total: 4 Ocean - male: 4, female: 4, total: 8 Orlan - male: 2, female: 3, total: 5 Uknown - male 3, female: 3, unique: 5, total: 6 *notes: Female island and coastal aumuau both have the same portrait with different colors Male elves have three near identical portraits with different colors, one is a pale elf Human meadow and savannah folk are very similar. I'm sort of just going with my gut here The above also applies to boreal and mountain dwarves Female nature godlikes share three portraits, one has a different hair style the other two are nearly identical Uknown includes 2 males? in helmets, two females in helmets, one hooded male, and one hooded female So, total there are 68? unique portraits if I did the math right, and 14 races or whatever, and 2 genders each. Thats an average of 2.5~ unique portraits for every gender/race combination. If you take into account the godlike's head models that leaves a chunk of them without any unique portraits whatsoever. So based on the above, these are the race/gender combos that I think are in the most need of new portraits: Portraits for the missing Godlike head models Boreal Dwarves Mountain Dwarves Male Island Aumua Female Coastal or Island Aumua Female Meadow/ Savannah Folk

Yeah, and I must have looked through hundreds of them. I have only found two portraits of the default male death godlike. One of them is OK(the other has a purple hue..), but when I resize the image to the appropriate resolutions the results are low quality and noticeably stick out.

I just found out about this game and I'm using the pre-made companions for the added dialogue, atmosphere, whatever you want to call it. As for re-speccing them, that wouldn't really bother me too much either way because, as others have pointed out, the attributes are more or less impotent. That last part kind of bugs me though. To me a big part of what makes an rpg an rpg is being able to customize as many aspects of your character as possible(stats/perks/trees/items/etc) in meaningful ways that make them unique from others. If anyone who plays a fighter is more or less the same at the end of the day despite the choices they've made in character progression then is it really any more of an rpg than every other game out there. Just my two cents I guess.

I would really like a portrait of the default male death godlike specifically.