Triple - A Foxy Lad

I grew up on FF. i could prattle on about them forever. not sure what my favourite would be off-hand. that would take some digging. off-hand, i like stephen hand's work (Moonrunner, Legend of the Shadow Warriors, Dead of Night) paul mason's (Slaves of the Abyss, Black Vein Prophecy in particular). carl sargent could compose one hell of a straight-up sword and sorcery campaign. dont think he dropped the ball once. i could go on about this subject for so, so long. i havent just got FF books knocking around, ive got Lone Wolf, a lot of random series that Mark Smith, Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson wrote. Ive got a lot of J.H. Brennan's stuff I also adapted Jonathan Green's 'Howl of the Werewolf' as a campaign for my friends and wasted some of my best writing doing that. lol. oh god, im starting to prattle already. this subject is near and dear to my heart.

https://www.fig.co/campaigns/deathtrap-dungeon Anyone else have an eye on this? Like im alreay sold because i have a gamebook t'ing. the aesthetic and use of the original artwork is totes up my bracket. dunno how much appeal it would have beyond folk like me but id thought id run it up a flag and see who salutes.

I sure hope so. Not as in "Lucky enough", more in the capacity of "You've not played it yet? What is wrong with you, the game was insanely ahead of its time. Just go ahead and play it, it's practically free at this point, especially with the amount of fun it'll provide." Preach. even a friend who id put in the category of 'will be put off by its age' loved BaK. wonderful game. i know its part of the pantheon amongst crpg nuts, but it deserves so much more recognition. so ye, if anyone reading this aint got round to BaK yet, i kind of envy you. get on that train lads. (i know this is supposed to be about kingmaker so ill just remark that its patching now, time to bust out that charismatic inquistor/thug thing)

i hope it speaks with his voice.

Anyone lucky enough to remember Betrayal at Krondor? Considering the games insistence on having the right counter to each battle, this is fantastic news. Implemented right, this could go a long way to improve the experience.

im trying to think where my roleplaying builds taking me next. my mc until now was an attempt to recreate the original inquisitor - reborn and hunting for redemption. echoing the past without realising it - a former petty criminal turned priest of eothas. she was a wood elf to match iovaras race. resolve was maxed to reflect the personal strength required to persist through lifetimes, even unknowingly. she had a sideline in mechanics and bows. in poe2 i was torn between multi-classing to itinerant or zealot. went with ghost-heart itinerant in the end. had an antelope that i named iovara - a manifestation of forgiveness from beyond the grave. now im feeling my mc has to reflect someone being screwed over by circumstances beyond their control. an unwilling vessel for a guilt-ridden soul, dragged into other peoples battles, lumbered with unwanted responsibility, forced to bear witness to world changing events - yet someone who survives and occasionally triumphs. we had ulysses in new vegas. the poe mc is now starting to feel like odysseus. i need to come up with an appropriate class/race/stat combo. swashbuckler's feeling good atm, but we'll see.

right, instead of working, im tinkering with this intimidate based inquisitor/thug thing. im feeling less the gorum smash thing and more 'seductive, yet brutal crimelord of calistria' vibe with trickery domain. i know i should go human but ive found a half-elf portrait i want to use, so half-elf it is. at least the adaptability bonus can go into persuasion. I'm feeling something along the lines of 15 STR, WIS and CHA. as i progress, i can level two of those stats up to 16 then either STR or CHA up to 18. Racial bonus of +2 would go on either STR or CHA - probably STR, but i might go CHA for more 'flavour'. this leaves me with 4 point buy for the remainder. so maybe DEX 12 and INT 12? i dont feel any great inclination towards the 13 DEX (dodge etc) or 13 INT (combat expertise) trees for this build, but maybe theres a feat in one of those trees im underestimating. i usually err on the side of being a skill point whore, but ur party can fill in the gaps most of the time. CON will prob just stay at 10. so lets provisionally say either 17/12/10/12/15/15 or 15/12/10/12/15/17 Current plan is kinda basic - Thug 3/Inquisitor 17. is there anything tasty im missing here? like, my background is 3.5 not pathfinder, so im prob missing a few tricks.

Preach Ive got a soft spot for shadows of undrentide simply because it was a solid low level campaign and u dont see nearly enough of them. I also revisit bg1 a fair bit cos it caps out at lv 9ish. High level lunacy can be funny and satisfying in rp context but games often stop feeling like games at that point - either number crunching or screensaver. All love to those who enjoy epic level nonsense. Without them, we wouldnt have the work of art that is the neutronium golem, but it aint my personal jam.

Nice! I got a lot of mileage out of nwn2's character creation. I expect to have the same fun with this.

Ye i think everyone stopped playing pokemon for the same reason. Whats the point in levelling up pikachu from lv 1 for twenty games running.

Ye i stan Serafen. Great example of a 'chaotic good' archetype. Dude might be a pirate but hes got a moral compass and id trust him to watch my back. Hes also debauched without being wacky. He was by Alex Scokel werent he? I look forward to seeing more of his work.

Now i really want a high CHA fighter/thug who uses all of those feats. It sounds hella fun.

tbh final fantasy's gone strange from XII onward and - tellingly - thats happened alongside a relative decline in its popularity. XII was an attempt at a western style RPG. XIII was aggressively bare bones then took a sharp left term into chaos with attempts at myth-making. XV looked west again and tried to incorporate sandbox elements. like i understand why u brought it up as an example as something staying the same. the formula set by FFIV survived right through until FFX. but the series has been floundering for an identity for many years. FFXII is 12 years old - i think u could predict more accurately what PoE would do next than you could final fantasy. also fwiw id say the original final fantasy was based on wizardry via dragon quest, not d&d directly.

eeeh, i cant think off-hand, im at work, but id say there are quite a few builds where - even if theyre not optimal - going 50/50, or close enough, would be fine. splitting fighter/rogue would work - in fact its probably what you should do if wanted a 'pure' rogue archetype. ud get enough skill points to at least keep ur trickery and stealth maxed, ud get more hp, better basic attack bonus, still prob enough rogue specific feats to eke the best stuff out of that class. when i used to play 3.5e, i used to run a STR based rogue/fighter with DEX capped at 16. im thinking i might dust that one off for kingmaker at some point. fighter/paladin would probably work. thats what im doing on my current playthrough and it hasnt bitten me on the arse yet. iirc paladins get most of the really tasty stuff before lv 10 and divine grace unlocks at lv 2. if u see a lot of 2 lv paladin builds that will be why. if you want to go for a rogue/wizard, you can take 3 in rogue 7 in wizard and 10 in arcane trickster. the companion Octavias already set up for this. generally i wouldnt go for a martial/spellcasting combo without access to a prestige class. i think u need 17 levels in most spellcasting classes to access ur full repertoire. think fighter/wizards can use eldritch knight but i havent looked at that too closely.

U and me both lad. Hahaha. Im good at buying games and not getting round to them.

Ooh i didnt consider that angle. Most of my characters have 1-3 rogue levels for sneak attack/accomplished sneak attack abuse. Didnt think of doing it with palle... *ahem* valerie to apply her CHA to that thug thing - or the rest of those feats u mentioned. Then again i didnt think of using her much at all. Lol.

I feel the game deserves some kind of storytelling plaudit if only because we're unlikely to see its blend of colonial politics, cosmic pessimism, ernst bloch and frivolous pirate romp ever again. Theres a good reason for that, because that combo has an audience of about five people but damn if im not in awe of its bloody-mindedness. Ur character is the plaything of forces beyond their control, bounced off walls like odysseus by a collection of bickering gods. The biggest atheist in the setting is the god most obviously aligned with christianity. Ur best friends are: a sweet, if slighty stupid and embarrassing, farmer going through a midlife crisis - and a pretty boy with a stick up his arse who has conversations with his id. Dont get me started on the paladin with dysmorphia who cares about her country more than she'll ever care about u. This is all in a genre meant to deliver a fantasy that you can define urself, express urself, change the world and matter to people.

http://officialfightingfantasy.blogspot.com/2018/11/carl-sargent-1952-2018.html I dont know how relevant this is to here, but i felt obliged to post it somewhere. I got into RPGs via gamebooks. When i was 10 years old, I got a copy of 'The Legend of Zagor', which was ghostwritten by Carl Sargent. It opened up a whole new world for me. My bookshelves still sag under the weight of all the Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf books I scavenged from charity shops. If it weren't for them, I probably wouldn't have got into Dungeons and Dragons and then CRPGs. Many people out there are mourning Stan Lee. Fewer people are mourning Carl Sargent, but to this ageing kid, he made a huge difference. My copy of 'Night Dragon' might be the most well-thumbed paperback I own. I keep picking it up, even if only to look at Tony Hough's awesome illustrations. I know that Sargent wrote for Shadowrun at some point, but I'm afraid I don't know the nature of his contributions. My knowledge on that franchise is a bit murky. At the end of 'Night Dragon', you meet a cat who transforms into a golden dragon and flies you to the land of dreams. I like to think that's what he's experiencing now. RIP.

VtmB is 14 yrs old? fml i didnt need to hear that. i remember getting excited for redemption cos i played the tabletop game - then getting pissed off cos a brujah shouldnt have access to all those disciplines. prob should replay VtmB when i get a chance. its fitting that a game about vampires should refuse to die.

im actually a big fan of steamy time in games but i got vns for that. idea of obs having a proper crack at such makes me cringe. id trust them with romantic tragedy or comic thirst but not my libido. That said. 'Pillar of liquidity' hahahahahaha

She doesnt even get 13 INT for combat expertise and the cc manoeuvres. Double rip. At best u can make her a teamwork feat delivery system. CONs always been a bit of a meh stat anyway cos dnds set up around avoiding damage, not absorbing it. At least in bg, u got plenty of 'set x to x' items and 2e characters scaled far more from levels and class than attributes. Ye i feel sorry for the unitiated approaching kingmaker. Games set up to punish ye for not knowing ur ****.

ye, this is true. like i think i dodged a bullet here. when poe1 dropped, i had a lot of irl stuff to deal with. it meant that i couldnt do more than potter about in it and rush tf out of the critical path. by the time i had the chance to do a proper playthrough, it think it was just before WM1. after *that* i didnt get back to the game properly until both expansions had dropped. if id had time to engage while the game was still rough, maybe id be less charitable? who knows. ive long long long been used to rpgs being wonky af when they drop. things are hella better now and have to meet higher standards i think, so people less forgiving. unfortunately devs still in adorable habit of trying to cram too much into one game in short space of time like always. my favourite was when i bought outcast and the game *automatically uninstalled itself* upon installation - this was before universal broadband btw - that was a laugh riot. the list of showstoppers goes on and on. fml u should check out the original dungeon lords. i think for the 90s and early 00s rpg just meant *japanese whimsy or unplayable bugfest* so now i think ive got the worst possible standards for game states at launch. lol. its prob for the best not everyones been vaccinated like i have.

also, why tf are the queer romance options a femme half-elf girl and a masc half-orc. boooooring. i want more pretty boys and butch women to play with. meh, i might go dominate tristian with that pregenerated halfling cleric. that sounds like fun.

im proper enjoying this game. its kind of nwn3 but strictly single player. i like the little star trail camping menu as well. thats something id like to see elsewhere. main gripe i have so far isnt really a gripe. the game plays with a very straight bat. like poe pushes things in odd ways. this is just a straight-up fun fantasy lark with the odd narrative pea**** flush. but id be lying if i said i wouldnt buy this type of game over and over. also, lol, valeries total bait for newbs who think she'll make a good tank. hahaha. god her stat spread is awful. esp next to the borderline optimised reg + octavia and the overpowered-for-no-reason ekundayo like whats going on with those random point-buy totals amongst ur npcs. it just seems at odds with what the devs are doing. i can understand jaethal having great stats to make up for the undead inconvenience but not the others.