Triple - A Foxy Lad

Any of u systems/maths dudes got a good take on how to 'fix' penetration? from what i can see its achieving its goal of forcing u to switch up or diversify ur damage types - which i like - but causing a lot of unecessary grief in process, esp when numbers hit a certain point. Like I dont have the head for this so i dont know if problem is fundamental concept or a maths thing. I dont know how much can be gleaned from it, but id always quite liked SMT's double risk/double reward system regarding types of damage. U could lose or gain entire turns with it through choice of attack or protection.

All this auxillary steam stuff baffles me no end. I just want to play games, not be part of some community and stack gamerpoints and achievements or whatever theyre called. Honestly thats what really puts me off about steam, the sprawl of it. It makes me feel like an idiot whenever i boot it up cos i dont know what half of it does. If i want to talk **** with folk about games, im a big enough boy to go find my own outlets.

As charming as tekehu is. he strikes me as the kind of pretty, talented, but sad, self-absorbed ****boi many folk are sick of dating, esp if they live in a metropolitan boho area. Like hes a nice dude, but i think ud need hella resources to deal with his **** and the mother in law. Maybe youth + energy or money + competence. Hes always gonna be the rose and not the gardener. Guess the watchers good at getting stuff done. If someone meets the requirements for maintaining a piece of arm candy it would be them.

Im now thinking if ur a narrative designer and a sociopath u could really mess with a colleague by subjecting them to five million requests for interjections.

Ooh, missed this one out. why am i so bad at internet. never felt this was a weakness tbh. gave me more incentive to swap around party members and make up little stories in my head about them. i dont mean to dimiss all the work thats been done since re: narrative design in rpgs, but i feel minimalism has its place. who hasnt got attached to their mute little gun turrets in x-com.

not entirely on board with that tbh. i feel bg2's power comes from its ability to convey joy in every trope it can get its grasping hands on. despite its reach, most of its writing is efficient enough that it rarely fieels messy. its not a small achievement. however, i dont feel it centres any ideas as bracing as IWD2's nasty fatalism. cant remember off-hand, but didnt one of bg2's designers say straight-up they werent all that interested in enabling an evil playthrough? and that they wanted to focus on giving the player good deeds to accomplish? it sounds vaguely gaider-ish but i could be wrong.

hi there. thought this would be fun for people at a loose end over christmas. dont think its been posted here yet. alex scokels written a hefty tumblr post on how companion interjections are implemented. its interesting stuff. i think my brain would short circuit keeping on top of all asepcts of game design. reckon ill stick to scribbling prose as a hobby.

this correct. bg2 is mid to high level campaign. is where mages become prominent and archers fall off. ur melee characters eventually get access to nasty on-hit items like celestial fury and flail of ages etc. so they can be more impactful. pls no go bard or ranger. stick with pure class fighter for an archer type - esp for bg1. rangers are gimped fighters and bards are gimped mages. for bg2, rangers at least get the free dual wielding proficiencies but pure fighters still outclass them in pretty much all instances. a pure class elven fighter with 18/xx STR 19 DEX, 17 CON and 3+ proficiency points in longsword and longbow will shift effortlessly between ranged and melee depending on point in campaign. u could also consider the half-orc racial bonus to STR which is crazy powerful early game if u want to be more melee focused. it eventually becomes irrelevant late game in bg2/tob as even edwin gets a spare belt of hill giant strength - meanwhile the elven bonuses to longsword+bow become trivial, but never obsolete. bg1's got a gentle, innocent vibe that's less widespread than is thought. the expansion 'tales of the sword coast' deserved more recognition imo. werewolf island is a great little stand-alone campaign. i found it both gripping and sad. durlags tower remains a yardstick crpg dungeon experience. it is true that bg2 was big leap forward, but bg1's far less pushy. it's a wistful, nostalgic game that was appealingly out of step, even in 1998 when it first dropped. id highly recommend starting with bg1 and treating the game as a means to slow down from a busy life and flick through the past. its very good for that. Also mark me down as someone else who enjoyed T:ToN. i feel it worked better as a short story compilation rather than an epic tale. part of this due to numenera setting, i feel. ive run it myself. for better or worse, the ninth world has no 'centre' beyond what a dm imposes on it. is telling that game required the confines of the bloom to really define its world. numenera better for small stories with closed arcs. not big ones. I loved having the responsibility of protecting Rhin. the game allowed u to cripple ur partys effectiveness in return for the gratification of looking after a kid. the mechanical sacrifice u had to make was palpable and all the better for it. i felt real pride as she grew useful with experience... and i felt awful the first time she killed someone with a basic physical attack. for me, she was the games masterstroke. i doubt i would have cared half as much otherwise. without going into too much detail, theres one particular ending where roles are sort of reversed and the lost little girl becomes the parental figure - and she does it so readily that i found myself tearing up. ah, i do get sentimental at times.

well... if a few tips help. THAC0 (ur attack score) and AC get better the *lower* they get. THAC0 15 is better than 20. AC -3 is better than +8. DEX has to be 18+ on ur main character, regardless of class. no exceptions. CON ideally 16 on classes that arent Fighter/Ranger/Paladin. for those classes, go as high as u can. STR less important than ud think. archery is the mutts nutts in BG1. if ur front line, than u prob want 14/15+ to wear full plate comfortably. later on, ull eventually find the gauntlets of ogre strength if u want ur vanguard to be something more than a wall. u dont really want any more than 2 front liners, and one should be designated the main tank who gets priority on all the best armour. if they dont have dex 18 already, then make sure to grab the gauntlets of dex from the start of the gnoll stronghold when it becomes available. u want to aim for an AC of about -12ish for ur main tank late game, better if possible. easy character to start the game with is an elf fighter with STR 18 / DEX 19 / CON 17 - rest of stats irrelevant, but dump INT and WIS before CHA for better prices in shops. go two points in longsword and two in longbow. Ull be starting the game with 2 THAC0 15 attacks a round at lv 1 with a longbow, which is mad. (20 base -1 proficiency, -2 dex, -1 elf, -1 longbow if u want the breakdown) ur melee THAC0 will depend on how good those two numbers after ur STR score are, but i think it should be 17 at the worst. wear the heaviest armour possible. u get no penalties for doing so, u retain ur whole DEX bonus. Play a good aligned character. they get easier party compositions than anyone else - they get access to all the best archers. (Coran, Khalid + Kivan) and the most practical mage (Imoen, u can dual class her whenever its convenient. ideally when shes lv 4-6 and u can stick someone else on thief duty) thieves should prioritise open locks and find traps.dont bother with anything else. i cant really comment on the EE characters and items as i dont have EE. i could go on about bg1 for ages and ages and ages. its become my 'comfort' game. god knows why. theres nothing it does that other games havent done better. for some reason it just helps me forget myself. (anyhoo resuming topic about turn-based mode in deadfire. isnt it exciting?)

"Trilogy pack"? There's no trilogy - there's been Prey back in ... Prehistoric ages and in 2017, a game of the same name got released. Later, 2 DLCs came out, both very different from the base game. We're talking about the 2017 base game here (I believe?) 2006 version of prey not readily available. guess what uve bought there is the base game + the dlcs, mooncrash and typhon hunter. im not all that interested in typhon hunter. (multiplayer, meh) mooncrash is a nifty little standalone campaign thats off-piste enough to complement the base game with a fresh take on similar themes. the higher reviews ur seeing are prob for the base game, which is as it should be. mooncrash just an experimental little diversion by comparison. base game stone cold masterpiece imo. cant comment on typhon hunter, but its free afaik, so whatevs.

Skaen would be proud. All my characters are sweethearts but if i were to end up in eora, id totes be a skaenite. I WILL MAKE WOEDICA LOOK LIKE A ****ING ANARCHIST etc. Prob just as well i was born here.

Main concern i have regarding huana is that any great effort to subjugate them potentially sows wind for future whirlwind. Native identity has decent chance of going underground, hardening then erupting years later in rebellion and sabotage. is one thing that puts me off siding with rauatai, especially with their oh so exploitable powder stores. Hmmm, arm the roparu and see what happens imo. Could be a laugh.

Think there might also be some correlation between rtwp's height and flowering of rts genre. Infinity engine hopped on contemporary trends to hawk its wares.

if i remember correctly, microsoft were very lenient and co-operative with harebrained schemes regarding the shadowrun licence. Like is easy to see why. ms werent doing anything with the licence themselves, so why not let someone else do the hard work of ressurecting it? Still, sense often not play part in corporate decisions. They could have been **** about it. They couldve been greedy and controlling and so forth, but - as far as i know - they werent. I feel theyve got it in them to take the odd chance, fingers crossed.

The prey reboot is legit one of my favourite games ever. I cant stan it enough. System shock 1 + 2 are cut from similar cloth. Bioshocks a far different beast. Its a theatrical fps without any of the metroidvania influence. I dont say that as a criticism, btw. Bioshock works on its own terms.

this... is actually a good idea. like, u could have an 'all damage done' counter and a 'damage done since reset counter', just to name one variant. i play mobas, and its always handy to go through the numbers at the end of each game. checking at the end of each skirmish will show u how well each character/build performed. it might be too late to include it in deadfire, maybe? but id say its deffo worth keeping in mind for the future.

pathfinders easy enough to grasp. its built on the d20 system, which is 18 years old now and familiar to many. the systems nice and linear. 2 points in an attribute = 1 bonus to a skill = 1 bonus to a roll. most checks are d20+(relevant skill) = DC it does have a hard pass/fail, so RNG is a bit more salient than in deadfires d100 miss/graze/hit/crit system. it also makes it harder for undertuned characters to deal with high DC/AC challenges. one issue with pathfinder is there are far too many trap builds - and too much mixing and matching required to create optimal characters - so its easy to create characters that run into the brick wall described above. focus on building correctly is not 100% a bad thing. is fun looking up busted combos on internet and developing ur own. however system expects player to be doing this, so someone who wants to get their RP on and just play an un-optimised, pure class, non-spellcaster is going to suffer. u need patience for meta-gamey stuff like making all ur characters lawful for monk/paladin abuse, and giving everyone level in alchemist for mutagen (vivisectionist for sneak attack or grenadier for martial weapons) this not so much a problem with flexible DM who can scale in real time, but for a video game, it can get rough. as for the whole griping about the 'might' abstraction, every system does it. like, has d&d ever settled on what 'Charisma' is supposed to be? In Numenera, you can injure urself by expending ur Intellect pool. and dont get me started on 'health points'. like does a high level character grow more flesh like tetsuo in akira? so it takes longer to hack em to bits with a scimitar? Also d&d's armour system where u wear plate to avoid damage, not absorb it. most of these things dissolve v quickly when viewed through lens of reflecting 'reality'. As for the attack speed/recovery time craziness, as boeroer listed above, it is rather bonkers. and hes got reputation around these parts for knowing his ****. im lucky in a way because im in a good position to deal with it. Im a guy with pretty mediocre brainpower who has friends who are Very Good At Maths. This means im acclimatised to maths being pretty counter-intuitive under the hood. my friends have (unsuccessfully) tried to explain various things to me like how hard it is to emulate true randomness, and ive half grasped a couple of things like how percentages dont cancel out. like theres no way i wouldve worked out the 'double inversion' thing maxquest explained. but im at least familiar with the whole 'a car driving 25% faster gets to its destination 20% quicker, while a car driving 25% slower gets to its destination 33% later'. when i noticed maluses were hitting harder than bonuses my first thought was 'oh, it's *that* thing'. as it happened, i wasnt entirely right, but eh, it was close enough that i could lumber on with it as a working assumption. for the most part, i just check how the numbers are coming out after deadfire conducts its sorcery and if it looks okay, i carry on. ive also played countless other games where whats under the hood is a total mystery. pretty much every attrition based game is up to some craziness underneath, but in such games all ur doing is increasing stats, so it dont really matter. like i havent got a clue what diablos maths are, or that of any final fantasy game, or league of legends, or shin megami tensei, disgaea, etc etc. the list goes on. like one thing that comes to mind is that these are all strictly video games, not pnp systems. with video games, i think were primed to expect utter madness bcs the computers calculating everything. it aint a group of people rolling dice and doing instant arithmetic. deadfire is a dedicated video game. however its made in the tradition of pnp-based games - it presents its ruleset in a similar way - and people will expect that they should be able to parse it as one. if the same system was used in something other than an infinity engine/goldbox game, i doubt it would alienate half as many people. atm system is trying to have cake and eat it, i feel. its trying to combine the chicanery available to computers with something that conjures the sense of playing pnp. is very in character that obsidian would attempt such a thing. i dont think theyre *wrong* to do so, and it doesnt upset me, but - as always - theyre taking the longer road and making work for themselves. i kinda love 'em for it, but hey-ho.

perhaps, but id have to outsource that. im too depraved and lazy for such.

the great virtue of rtwp is being able to steamroll trivial mobs. the devs can safely provide enough of them to give a sense of activity without slowing the game down. also it gives the players a chance to mindlessly enjoy their power for stretches. if every battle is meaningful it can numb a sense of mastery over the world turn based games - that arent attrition based like jrpgs and wizardry - hinge on having talented set piece designers. u have too many trash encounters and the game becomes a chore. too few, and the game feels empty - also if game consists of only a few impeccably sculpted tactical challenges, replayability suffers because everything is a puzzle u solve only once. that said, i dont have a great preference either way. varietys the spice of love and life etc. if they do seriously have a crack at implementing turn-based combat in deadfire, then ill be very eager to play it. i might even try to push the game on a couple of friends who might find the rushing river of rtwp overwhelming.

Solaufein romance mod, ToW edition.

Except that game - like BG - is using a PnP system, so it tries to follow the rules. The initial outrage was caused by the fact that nobody really knew Pathfinder, and the difficulty threw them off. Now? People keep coming up with more and more "solo unfair" builds, and do you know how many balance patches did the game get? NONE. oh very good. looks like my business plan remains viable. im off to golarion to found a vivisection college. i swear pathology is the equivalent of national service over there. got to make sure every child gets their mutagen and 1d6 sneak attack so they can contribute to society.

Different times, different standards bruv. What games and systems could get away with then is far more than now. Internet is bigger and angrier than before. Certain level of qol and balance now expected or moan moan moan moan moan moan. Bg2 would get ripped a new arsehole for its foibles if it dropped as a new game now. I loved ad&d but at its worst is oblique nonsense. Back then most of audience for bg was vaccinated against it. Is not case now. Like u just have to look at the general reponse to knigmakers cavalier attitude re: balancing etc to see what would happen. As for balancing the game, im all for it. I appreciate not being funnelled into one build/comp every single time.

Ye, silent protagonist common in many jrpgs. Features in smt, zelda, dragon quest, shining force, golden sun, bahamut lagoon, breath of fire, chrono trigger, etc. nowt wrong with it. is just a decision like any other. Have spoke of my fondness for smt3 elsewhere. Dont think that would work without silent protagonist. fair play to owlcat. Theyre listening to folk and doing what they can to bring game up to scratch with qol tweaks and bugfixes. Game aint on poe's level but its got real heart. Theyre still making sort of rookie mistakes tho. Just got that latest companion dlc. Tsk tsk. Shouldve kept ur powder dry there lads. Good enough concept that they shouldve kept it back for another game - given it adequate development and pacing. Writing feels like someones first draft. Way is implemented now, it feels jarring and fanfiction-y - like one of those bg2 mods with someones beloved oc. Dont get me wrong, i have all the love in the world for the enthusiastic folk who make such things, but what i expect from them and expect from devs are two different things. Anyhoo tangent. Not played kingdom come: deliverance. Ill lay my cards on the table. Male protags are a hard sell for me. Im a dude irl and id rather be free from being a dude when playing games. Fem protag not be all and end all for me but its a factor. Male protag + low-fantasy/'realistic, setting esp rough combo for me. It often feels in service of enabling some macho/practical/rational fantasy, which is fine. Weve all got our horses to ride. But it aint my kind of ride. Man. Not to minimise obs achievements but it seems like its been a dry year for big studio made crpgs. Eh... I guess we should be used to it by now. Genres been pronounced dead plenty of times before.

Congrats. Poe is indeed a formidable fortress in the old style.

Check out the 'devs: content complete?' thread, ser football. Short answer - it looks like no more dlc but 1 more magrans fire and some balance tweaks.