Tale

Bhaal's plan succeeded, Volourn. I think a Cyric v Bane and Bhaal conflict could be a decent basis for a new Bhaalspawn story. Bhaal got what he wanted, doesn't care, but Cyric finds some other generational or surviving descendents and starts pushing them around just to start problems. Or at least he starts spreading rumors and lies about it. Heck, Cyric's church were Sarevok's allies because Cyric really doesn't care about anything but causing chaos and Bhaalspawn were a way to do that. So that's just one angle to bring it back.

It seems unimplemented feature. All classes that can swap at level are unable. And it's been persistent through various hotfixes. Like Fighters are supposed to be able to change bonus feats. Inquisitors are supposed to swap spells. And I would think Bards could, too. Maybe they'll implement it eventually, but there's no word on them doing it too soon.

Since you can't swap out spells, taking stuff at 1st level that ends up not being useful at later levels seems a poor choice.

At my last session, my dice would never role higher than 10. Except when I started fighting my own party. Then I kicked ass.

Just because you personally dislike something, that doesn't mean you can dismiss its significance. (edit: double and triple negatives are hard, okay) Granted, the influence that Baldur's Gate had is probably overstated in a place like this one, but to act like it had none is pretty obviously false. It may not have caused dozens of copycats to spring out of and birth a major fad like we see with some properties today, but there are significant titles coming out even recently that owe their existence to Baldur's Gate. And that's part of what being revolutionary is about. Causing change. The modern party based RPG descends from Baldur's Gate. And the retro ones coming out now are explicitly wearing their grandfather's old hats.

You will be using the batmobile a lot in Knight. It's a good portion why it's my least favorite of the series.

The novels can't be that canon. Like I said, Minsc knows Neera from the Enhanced Edition. And a comic published first in 2014 is going to be more canon than a novel published in 1999. At a minimum lots of stuff happened not shown in the novel. Including character appearances. The wiki of the Baldur's Gate novel doesn't even mention Coran. But it is canon that Coran traveled with the Bhaalspawn for a while, alongside Minsc.

Minsc and Coran are still alive. Coran is a noble in Baldur's Gate now. Minsc and boo got petrified and later revived accidentally by a Wild Mage that Minsc mistakes for Neera. They go on an adventure with Coran's son and some others. Any of the other Dwarves or Elves could still be alive, too. Like Viconia, Kagain, Kivan, Aerie. Aerie especially since she was very young, the others I'm less clear on their ages. In what book did Minsc reappear in? Also Jaheira was eaten by a griffen. Legends of Baldur's Gate, followed by Shadows of the Vampire (they get transported to Ravenloft), Frost Giant's Fury (Icewind Dale), and Evil at Baldur's Gate. The last issue of Evil was released in August. I've read all of it up until Evil issue #1. Good fun! And geeze about Jaheira. Why do they have to kill everyone? Why can't they just leave it happy, or at least vague enough we can believe they're on a farm upstate. My parents were at least that decent.

Minsc and Coran are still alive. Coran is a noble in Baldur's Gate now. Minsc and boo got petrified and later revived accidentally by a Wild Mage that Minsc mistakes for Neera. They go on an adventure with Coran's son and some others. Any of the other Dwarves or Elves could still be alive, too. Like Viconia, Kagain, Kivan, Aerie. Aerie especially since she was very young, the others I'm less clear on their ages.

Okay, I'm just reading that Ed Greenwood helped write a campaign where So, I guess player defined endings of BG2 have already been replaced.

If they are to continue the Bhaalspawn story, I would assume it would be a new protagonist. There were 2nd generation Bhaalspawn in the original trilogy, so that would be a route to go down. With potentially unspecified parentage. Of course, the whole saga wasn't shy about having a canon, player choice be damned, so I couldn't hold it against any followups if they did the same. Given the comics, they could bring Minsc back (or what might be an animated statue of him). And include Coran's son and Delina.

I've arrived in the titular Baldur's Gate. I'm branching out from my usual party of Khaleid, Jaheira, Imoen, Viconia, and Whatever-Mage-I-Settle-On-Probably-Edwin. That's a habit due to playing BG2 before BG1. I've got Kagain, Dorn, Safana, Viconia (because of course), and Neera. Would have swapped Neera for Edwin, but Edwin is just too far behind now. I'm looking forward to Siege of Dragonspear, which I've never played. And then I'm looking forward to BG2EE. Last time I played BG2, even though it was EE, I didn't know Hexxat existed.

Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition with Unfinished Business and the NPC pack for more banters. While looking up stuff, I found trivia that Imoen was a late addition to add a non-evil thief. And they just reused dialogue from a cut guard named Pique for her voice. But if that's true, why does she say "it's me, Imoen." That must have been some fun sound editing if true.

I can only get so sold.

Decided to put Kingmaker on the backburner until some more patches. Lots of talk about more issues in later acts and I'd hate to get to one and kill my momentum. But I have an itch. So I started up Baldur's Gate: EE again. Why are good Sorcerer portraits so hard to find? It's an issue with Warlocks too. All the male spellcasters are old men or weirdos. Where's my sophisticated magicy prettyboys? Like Loki from the Marvel movies. Found a portrait of him, but I'll give up video games forever before I use a movie star portrait for a game. Only decent one in the default game is Edwin's. Like I need two of him in the party. Edit: Found a doozy. https://vk.com/photo-34109479_341917808 Rerolled until I had 93 beautiful points to spend and then made all of his stats almost high, 17 or 16 in everything but a 12 in strength and 15 in Charisma. Because Sorcerers in Baldur's Gate don't have a casting stat.

Is the entire Banner Saga trilogy particularly good, even if you like unhappy things? I backed the first part, but never really played it.

Lawful Evil, always. Too many of my favorite characters in fantasy stories are the token evil teammate, I have to take up the mantle myself.

Yeah

Looks like the remaining Telltale members working on Minecraft for Netflix were let go as well. https://twitter.com/anameformyself/status/1047930803634630657 Edit: Correction, not all of the skeleton crew were let go. So I can't even say if it's Minecraft or not. https://twitter.com/anameformyself/status/1047975335235481600

I finished Telltale's Batman season 2. And the final episode was very whelming. It felt like half the size as any other episode in either title. And Joker's ultimate turn ended up being just not as interesting as I hoped it would be. Maybe if the game had spent more time with that version of him it would have been better.

Not good, evil. I got an option to threaten to kill everyone or bluff my way in. I chose to bluff and the second I walked in, one guy screamed bloody murder and the whole place turned hostile. I tried savescumming for other paths to sneak in, but they operated the same. The second I cross the fort wall, get spotted, entire place goes hostile. Nope. Never saw anything even slightly like this. Nobody talked to me other than the gate guard. Who only opened the door. I scouted the entire surrounding area beforehand. Just didn't kill all of the Bandit Brawler/Alchemist groups. I avoided them. So much for brute forcing! Only 1 of these 3 I could get and it required savescumming. Only party member with Nature is Amiri. She failed half the time I tried to make the check. And the Owlbear didn't actually bother doing much to help. He stayed in his cage, I only finally got some help because enemies wandered too close to him. Not because the Owlbear actually went out and tried to help. The only way I beat this fight is because I savescummed a nature check that got an NPC to fight for me. Last time a DM was throwing boss fights at my group that had to be won by NPC, I was rather nonplussed. But at least that NPC was actually there to help and wasn't basically an environmental trap I only got if a single character won the roll. So did I try to brute force? No, I tried to talk through it. And my party got killed. Then I tried sneaking. Killed. I tried cutting the alarm, not an option. I tried setting a trap, except the Stag Lord ignores initiative and in the middle of someone else's turn he shows up, calls in like 5 other guys, buffs himself, and teleports. So I had to resort to MMO pulling. And got lucky when the Stag Lord wandered too close to the Owlbear while out of sight.

And it turns out the boss fights are complete nonse. There goes my enjoyment of the game. Had to cheese the stag lord fight. There was one guy in it who did 1d10+17. And enough attack bonus to hit my Half-Plate + 1, tower shield specialist on a 10. Did I say 1 guy? Make that two. Two other similarly strong guys (the only one of which I checked could hit the tank at an 11 and the last is titular Stag Lord). Then about 3 or 4 regular enemies. Make sure you don't aggro any of the other bandits in the camp, if you pull in one group, you could bring 9 bandits on your head. They can mow you down themselves. I did beat the fight. Using MMO tactics of pulling individual guys and testing their group aggro ranges. And also savescumming to get an Owlbear to tank for me, which it did with no problem. On Normal, this battle did not leave me with the satisfaction of a battle hard won. A bunch of the groups around the boss battle area (which I ended up leaving alive) have enemies in it who are just as tough as those boss guys. I savescummed several times because they mowed my Valerie down before I could kill them. I was making camps in the middle of the enemy camp while a bunch of enemies still lived in it. Just to get the healing I needed to get back in the fight. It felt like I was a good 2 levels or more short of being supposed to fight that. But I'd done every single quest available. I've seen talk about how it's justified that they're giving +17! bonuses to the enemies because we're a 6 member party instead of a 4 and players are smarter than the computer. But they're also doubling and tripling the numbers of enemies.

All disabling auto-updates does is make it so it waits to update when you launch the game. Steam does not like people playing without updates.