Ymarsakar

I preferred the dungeon mechanics of Planescape Torment, where the Cube was an item you brought along with you, so it wasn't a physical fortress people had to go several loading screens to travel to. Instead of just accessing the stronghold ui from anywhere, the steward could be brought alone as a portable and the entire fortress enclosed in a more conveniently reached location. Scripting wise, they would probably have to use the adventure text screen as a ui.

A druid's self buffed storm spells will still stun lock enemies, with phantom and rangers and prone on crit added on top as bonuses. Druid isn't a support class, that's why their aoes do damage and also stun lock plus some other effects. People who spend 5 minutes going through loading screens to complain about loading screens, have OCD issues. Just fight until all melee has red health, it works better that way challenge wise.

The best hybrid of real time with pause and turn based I've seen would be Paradox's Crusader King 2 type games, where discrete units or turns of time pass, but the rate can be modified. Gameplay wise, it's closer to Pillars slow mode and dividing time up into discrete seconds and partials of seconds than the turns in Xcom. Turn based has issues where in the end game things need to be sped up but can't be. And real time, has the opposite issue, where things need to be slowed down into more discrete chunks. Since they function very well in their respective domains, hybridizing them would be an interesting design project. Original Sin's combat mechanics made for some creative tactics. For some reason, Shadowrun's turn based system also feels very smooth, perhaps because you don't need to do a lot per turn.

A lot of the White March content that was based off the Pillars main game is very well done, expanded in quality and scale. The new mechanics is like a writer trying to proof read his own work. He can fix a lot of it, but there will be certain things only alpha readers and editors can resolve, with the addition of a fresh pov. They would have done better to make more uniques for weapon classes that have relative weaknesses. If they are ignoring weapon focus specializations, instead using omni, then that is already making it obvious that certain weapon groups are too limited or weak. To then make it class limited without any role playing purpose but only combat mechanics, is certainly an interesting design decision.

Console it in, won't be random any more.

I think what detracts from the game is that people are OCD and they like clicking on npcs that they don't want to talk to. IE Mod only goes to the extent of changing some of the names around and making the tombstones different.

Stop rest spamming, problem solves itself. A lot of the stronghold mechanics didn't have a lot of good ideas for content, so it's very bare bones. It was added as as a stretch goal, so they probably de prioritized it from critical to secondary B level, which shows. They said they would be adding more content to the stronghold in Pillars 2. Creating a small village experience is something the Japanese are known for, the West doesn't really know how that feudal vibe works.

Planning on artificially leveling to 9, going to white march and enable high level content, grab the npcs, then run back and de level back to normal and play the regular campaign with White march npcs, then later finish the high level content. I've used the console addxp command to add negative xp, which reduces it. Can also just manually de level by not taking any more levels with respec option.

"The most annoying in-game thing about it is all the immersion-breaking backer stuff (there truly could not be a worse type of game for including this) which I wish you could turn off, but I'm sure that's already been discussed a thousand times." Why do you want to break your immersion by clicking on the content then? "Perhaps I'm being silly, I don't know if anyone else is annoyed by this, but I think it would be great if noticeable speech in the walla could be removed or reduced." I suggest going to audio and tweaking the settings to see if one will decrease the sound for that.

The in game description hinted at it, when it said only one mind control can be active on a subject. Meaning, either the enemy's control or yours.

You're assuming everyone who uses this forum is not typing on a phone / tablet. Aren't those people using voice to text software already? Phones seem to have that already for search engines. That'll have errors but should take less time than typing.

As I mentioned before, if you want to role play out the mechanics, what you should be going for is adventure text games inside Pillars, not changing the fundamental stat balances. "Why the hell is a barbarian damage radius with a sword effected by his intelligence?" Because intelligence would become a dump stat otherwise for melee characters if it had no effect on their abilities at all, as mentioned before. "Right now it feels like a tactical strategy game with a story beaten around it." That's what it was pitched as, due to BG2 and PST and Icewind Dale. PST was heavy into dialogue role playing and some stat role playing as well. Icewind dale was more combat focused. BG2 was somewhere in the middle. Even though the DnD stat system was kind of not so good for computers. "Balance was probably one of the best of the games." Your definition of "balance" is very different than the process this game went through, I can guess at that. It is impossible to get 100% role play and also 100% stat specialization for combat, because role play that relies entirely on numbers... isn't role playing. It's closer to dice gambling games, chance games, or just combat simulators using war game formulas. For example, in the Banner Saga, there is the turn based combat system and then there's the role playing as a caravan master keeping people alive. In Shadowrun, there's role play via how to resolve quests and how to deal with npcs/companions, vs automatic healing at end of turn. Trying to "balance" the role play system by making it attached to the healing system would break both sides of the equation. For most people's idea of "role playing" is Diablo I and Diablo II, where RPG means Action RPG and it's all about the numbers. It has nothing to do with whether the stats make sense or not, if it is just about a number cruncher simulating a fight.

Are you talking about the steam guides?

Go for paladin for dual tank/healer. Dual use. Stat is 15 might at least. Other healers are priest>druid>cipher Almost any class can tank if they have weapon/shield talent, defensive talents, and full plate. Their health pool limits how long they can tank however. So generally people go with the martial classes for tanking. Fighters, paladins, rangers, monks. Chanters too. Wizards sometimes. 15 might, 15 per for those classes, strikes a relatively good balance. The stat that has the least effect for long range attackers and healers is resolve. Assuming you aren't getting hit. If you are getting hit, then a high resolve might save whomever you are trying to heal.

The paladin is near unkillable if you have full plate, solid 80 plus deflection, and enough lay on hands to heal through spike/focus damage. Of course, you will run out of lay on hands and healing sooner or later. People have two weapon slots, so they can always go for big sword, shield + warhammer on the paladin soldier build. It just doesn't leave room for a ranged weapon to focus fire dps at range. The reason why the paladin's order doesn't matter all that much is because the special powers are talents. So it's not like a standard paladin like Pallegina is weaker because they lack an order abilities. It just makes her build different. Also, the flavors of various paladin order abilities favor some kind of playstyle over other playstyles. It's more role playish and modifies a playstyle just a tad. For example, the extra deflection on lay of hands is really good when helping medium or light armor party members not die, but you can take reinforcing exhortation for 25 deflection... it's not exactly equivalent, but it's still the equivalent of one talent. As for the blood pool, I think that was a reference to some other game like PST. But it's not very well done compared to say... experimenting on live captives in your stronghold ala intro of BG2 or sacrificing prisoners to the blood pool for kicks and giggles. If one speaks of equal exchange, that isn't even close. How much would you have to get in game plot and loot equipment wise, to justify permanently killing off a companion npc? Maybe for a superb weapon. Maybe if a skaen priest gets a few per encounter special abilities...

This is the danger when necroing threads if they don't have something new to add as info. For very specific issues like you raised, GS, the simplest and most direct way I use to verify information is to test it and see for myself.

When people shorten words like you are to ur or use various emoticons. It gets complicated since there's different sub cultures that use their own slang. The Japanese have some very nice looking text speech, however. There's also various symbols like orz which symbolizes a person in a full prostration. orz see how the body connects together... well this typography doesn't do it much justice. Also various internet mmo subgroups have their own sort of symbology like Eve Online with the o/ or the o7. Some of it is shared amongst other net denizens, but some are just unique.

Ever try to clear Caed Nua's quest at party level 2, Kana at level 3 on POTD?

Immunity isn't DR. It's immunity, something very special. No proc on hits even although I haven't tested that thoroughly, just heard it mentioned. If they mathed immunity out as say 100 DR, then the lash might still apply damage from fire vs fire dr. But if it is .25 x zero damage (fire damage is negated entirely) then it's still zero damage applied. Change the damage type of the lash and it should begin applying, assuming no immunities vs that damage type.

Editors are probably going to try to strain all the "uniqueness" out, which is why it is taking so long. Fight the Power, Chris Avellone!

I don't have a problem on this issue. Then again I watch subtitled foreign shows, so my reading and audio data processing is on its own parallel tracks by now.

GOG is designed for Good Old Games, to reverse engineer code and make the games compatible, which they do a very good job at. Their coding system was not designed to pump out weekly patches for modern games, especially not modern engines like Unity. Galaxy will or should solve that, but coding Galaxy to make it equal to steam's efficiency will take time, which is why Galaxy is still beta more or less.

The ciphers benefit a lot from the 3 offensive abilities, might, per, and dex. Dex applies more to some builds, like gunners, although they still apply to Persistence shortbow or warbow builds too. Might and per is pretty good together. They multiply each other's benefit, for the cipher due to the way the class gains focus and spends it. Dex's effects are felt in longer fights or when casting long duration spells more.

"Conclusion: lash enchantment ignore DR or NOT? Does type of lash matter?" They don't ignore all of the Dr, just some of it. Some people say 25% of Dr is applied to lash. Shrugs, test it out yourself. The type of lash might matter too because corrosive has lowest DR resistance against enemies. Every time of damage is applied to their specific DR, not the base one. If you had read the posts here, you should have came to a similar conclusion yourself...

" 1.) Skip Hold the Line - engagements don't make any difference at all, especially not worth a talent." They do make a difference since an advanced AI casting an ability will freely move to their preferred target if they are not in an engagement. There are other ways to engage them than using up a talent however. By free;y move I don't mean they will take a hit from an engagement attack, but they will engage in melee with whomever is engaging them, but once the engagement links are broken, their AI then starts attacking the backline using specials. This doesn't generally apply to the base Pillars game since most of the AI there isn't the upgraded White March ones.