MortyTheGobbo

It doesn't look like the bug is even going to come into play, fix or no fix, because I'm unlikely to be able to stun enough enemies with Kana before I'm finished with the game. But he's doing alright shooting the arbalest and providing defensive buffs and ranged attack speed to the party. Even if all my usual problems with chanters still apply.

I can confirm that neither of my Hawkes have ever had Anders come on to them this way. One of them was pro-Templar, the other pro-Mage, so they covered the spectrum of their relation to Anders.

I wasn't sure I believed you, so I Googled it. Now I'm not sure what to think, but I have to admire the audacity on some level. I remember having some flirty dialogue options with Lohse and Ifan, but I wasn't sure what it was going to lead to...

I suppose that, whatever happens, it can't get any worse than Dragon Age: Origins' sex scenes. We can take some comfort in that.

I do have Sure Handed Ila, but I don't think I've taken Gunner let. I'll take it and see how it goes. I prefer to have varied weapons in my party, so if Sagani uses a hunting bow and Devil of Caroc uses a war bow, it's well-rounded.

It seems that Kana's low dexterity makes his shots with an arbalest very slow. Though it does make for some good damage in the early combat. The highest upgrades should make it faster, with the patch, but it'll be a long time before I get there.

Well congrats on your dialog-fu I could never figure out how to avoid having somebody in the ME2 crew think I was romancing them when I wasn't. Jack was the worst. And there was no way to tell what dialog options were of romance interest in that game. There was no heart dialog and it was very difficult to tell what exactly you were going to say or what tone you were going to say it in just based on the dialog option. In any case that was a joke. I like Bioware. I like their romances. You don't need to rush to their defense. But this isn't about them. This about Obsidian's games...like KOTOR 2. I cannot believe you would imply KOTOR 2 was not an Obsidian game on Obsidian's own boards. Come on man, they get enough disrespect as it is. I regularly see games like PS:T being called a 'Bioware Game'. I do remember Jack thinking my Shep wanted to bang her, once. I told her he wasn't and that was that. That's why I liked the heart icons from DA2, DA:I and ME:A, though. As metagamey as they are, they let us avoid this exact situation. Anyway, fair enough. It was a knee-jerk reaction on my part to the befuddling level of hostility some people do display. Though I doubt Deadfire's romances are going to look like KOTOR 2's... those were all tragic and/or dysfunctional in some fashion.

Only by suicide could one avoid the romances in ME2. That's funny, because I had never pursued a romance in ME2 until a recent playthrough. And once I did, it was 5-10 minutes of content at most. All I had to do was avoid the dialogue options that indicated a romantic interest. I felt much more pushed towards a romance when I played KOTOR as a male character. KOTOR 2 even assumes that a Light Side Revan did fall in love with Bastila or Carth, something later games would never do. One can like or dislike romances in BioWare games at any point in their career, but they're always avoidable and they've become more so with years. Hating them so much gives them weight and gravity they don't merit. And frankly speaks much more about your own perspective than anything the games do.

For some reason, "BW games are dating sims" has become a meme. I'm honestly not sure why, since romance has been there since the first KOTOR. All that's changed is the number of options and flirt dialogue choices being clearly marked. If anything, it became less obligatory afterwards, since you won't make someone deeply in love with you just by being nice to them. My first DA:I playthrough was completely romance-free and that was fine.

That's why I always gave it to Aloth, yeah. This time I was going to give him Rod of Pale Shades, for chain-stuns using Blast. I might still do that.

Am I missing something, or is Gyrd Háewanes Sténes pretty impractical for a druid? I gave it to my MC druid this time, instead of letting Aloth have it. But while it's a nice enough weapon, I'm just not seeing much use in the restore spiritshift function. It means I have to spiritshift early, then go back to ranged attacks and have a chance to get it back... except by that time, the battle may well be over.

Interesting, thank you. Now I have an actual choice here.

Well. That's quite the bummer, isn't it. Stormcaller it is, then. He'll just use another bow until I complete it.

I could also get him the new soulbound arbalest, which apparently works with chanters.

Sounds like Kana can get Stormcaller, then. He'll just need another bow in the meantime. Doesn't matter if it's a hunting bow, since soulbound weapons work with any talent.

I liked the idea of the health/endurance split, but the execution always felt very awkward. One character would always end up focus-fired by enemies and lose a bunch of health. And there's really not a whole not you can do about it. This was particularly brutal for characters with less health and/or armor who wandered over to the front line. But ranged attacks could mess up your back line this way as well, even if you protected them. I'd still like some sort of compromise between everyone being fine as long as they don't drop to 0 and unforgiving attrition, but it'd have to be something else. I guess I do wish Obsidian had tried to refine it, rather than drop it altogether.

Of course. Wouldn't have it any other way.

There's no experience anymore. Instead, we use gold to buy chests that may or may not contain some experience, but might also contain new skins for our weapons. Gold can also be bought using real money.

Having the Watcher be the protagonist of the third game would considerably stretch their ability to start us at level one and with no gear.

I've rarely ever used the ogre-summoning invocation and I play on the PC, so I can't tell you.

Hmm. I do have Sagani, so either I'd give her something else or I'd need a new plan.

So I'm making my way through Pillars once again, and this time I decided to put Grieving Mother in the front-line, or close to it anyway. But I figure once Zahua and Maneha join up, it'll get crowded there, particularly since I'm playing a druid who often goes melee as well. So I'm thinking that instead of having Kana Rua tank in the front-line, I might put him in the back, so he focuses more on support. But I'm not sure if I can get away with giving him a ranged weapon, or if it should be a pike or other long melee weapon. Or what phrases/invocations would be best for this purpose.

Per-rest spells started out, like many things, as something Gygax thought was a good idea at the time. I have a soft spot for the method, myself. It makes magic feel like kind of a big deal while restricting it. I enjoyed it in Dying Earth and Discworld. But as a balancing method in a game, it loses what effectiveness it had the moment you step out of an old-school dungeon crawl. In a tabletop game, it relies heavily on the GM's willingness and ability to enforce strict pacing. If the players manage to control their own pace, or the story the GM envisioned just doesn't work with having exactly four fights or challenges before the PCs have a chance to rest. In a video game, there's not even that, because there's no GM. The most the game can do is just decide the player can't rest in a given place. At which point the player will simply sit on those spells, just in case. There might be a way to somehow balance it, but I'd really rather they spent the time and effort it requires on more than three classes. To add to the above, it's very easy for a player to find ways around rest limitation mechanics usually employed in these games. Can't rest in a given place or ran out of supplies? No matter, just go back to the place where you can rest infinite times, and then head back. In a system like Pillars the only big waste in retreading, aside from the player's real-life time, is in-game time, but stronghold aside there's very little in the game that uses time as a resource. So there's probably some system out there where backtracking could be penalized in some fashion - maybe quests are time-critical, or food items rot or the likes, and so it's not convenient to head back to the nearest tavern to rest - but that's really not the case for Pillars and so ultimately resting is more of a mere nuissance than a critical resource. Which, when you add it all up, means that the game's tactics revolve around squeezing every ounce of power from the three spell-casting classes before the game makes you stop.

Per-rest spells started out, like many things, as something Gygax thought was a good idea at the time. I have a soft spot for the method, myself. It makes magic feel like kind of a big deal while restricting it. I enjoyed it in Dying Earth and Discworld. But as a balancing method in a game, it loses what effectiveness it had the moment you step out of an old-school dungeon crawl. In a tabletop game, it relies heavily on the GM's willingness and ability to enforce strict pacing. If the players manage to control their own pace, or the story the GM envisioned just doesn't work with having exactly four fights or challenges before the PCs have a chance to rest. In a video game, there's not even that, because there's no GM. The most the game can do is just decide the player can't rest in a given place. At which point the player will simply sit on those spells, just in case. There might be a way to somehow balance it, but I'd really rather they spent the time and effort it requires on more than three classes.

The only RPG that uses daily spells is D&D and the cRPGs it's based on. And no, it did not work for them and it's not balanced. D&D's method of making wizards suck at low levels and turn into nerd demigods is awful, and Pillars removes even the first part. Wizards are reasonably competent on low levels and only get better from there, as long as they're willing to unleash their spells. You're making one unfounded assertion after another, starting with claiming that removing per-rest spells is... making everyone the same, somehow. Is priest the same as the wizard just because they use per-rest spells, in Pillars 1? And it's really, really telling that once again complaints about changing the magic system stem from a wizard-oriented power fantasy.