Monte Carlo

^ Thanks, TBH I never really thought about the ranger option. 2 Questions - 1. My WIS is low, how many points do I need to put in there? 2. Does a fighters extra feats make up for the ranger bonuses? The whole point of taking maybe up to 6 or 7 Rog levels was for skills and sneak attack. SA is a big part of my idea for a build, if I was evil this wouldn't even be an issue because I've already seen a well-crafted Blackguard / RDD build on the NWN character builder site.

I've started a character, I'm only in the early stages of the OC: Human, Chaotic Good (currently level 4, thus the +1 I dumped in DEX). STR 14 DEX 15 CON 14 INT 14 WIS 10 CHA 14 Bard 1 Fighter 1 Rogue 2 FEATS Power Attack Cleave Dodge Able Learner I'm investing skill points heavily in dialogue skills, lore, crafting, disable device / lock, UMD and tumble. Not interested in stealth. The plan is to build up some good sneak attack damage and extra skills, then use fighter levels to develop monkey-gripped dual wielded Falchions (crit hit x 3 + power criticals). Then start as a Red Dragon Disciple for added twinkiness, extra INT and STR. I'm putting my level based extra abiltity points into DEX and CHA, any spare feats into mobility / spring attack. The intended result is a combat-heavy skills monkey with superb melee / sneak attack / critical hit opportunities. Any thoughts?

As long as you don't actually believe that ****e, bravo.

Sure, if Bioware told them that they had to wear clothes made from pineapples and sing Happy Birthday backwards some of the folks on the Bio forums would agree. Adding a brothel is perfectly OK in a game - hey they might even be really mature and add some content about the inhumanity of much of the 'World's oldest Profession'. Alternatively, you could make an awkward, gauche gag about it. I'm hardly a killjoy (I thought the gnome gigolo from NWN1 OC was quite amusing). But the hype is telling us that this is a new type of fantasy, maybe even one where brothels aren't full of tarts-with-a-heart. Interesting brothel moment in popular culture of late: Titus Pullo and Vorenius rescuing the girl from the mining camp brothel in Rome. The girls are slaves, the brothel is hellish and the two ex-legionnaires slaughter the pimps and punters alike, as you probably would in ancient Rome. That would be interesting and dare I say it mature. Edit: When you are reduced to saying that to people who have supported and respected your games design work for years, your natural customers and fan base, then you've lost already. It's as simple as that.

A few points that might assist the debate - 1. The Daily Express is an ailing dead tree press outfit that specialises in salacious, headline grabbing stories that tend to be light on actualite. 2. The current government has a definitely nasty authoritarian streak in it. People are tiring of it though, not that Mr. Balls has noticed. 3. The UK has generous welfare provision that is a talking point amongst taxpayers, focus group data will be telling the politicians that there is electoral mileage in the issue. There is, unambiguously, a problem with the economically inactive living on benefits in the UK, the data is pretty compelling to mainstream politicians of both the centre left and right. 4. The current government is heading for crushing defeat - it has about seven or eight meaningful legislative months left in it before it is utterly wiped off of the political map at the next UK General Election by the centre right Conservative Party. Therefore this is one of those scoping reports designed deliberately to get papers like The Express to crank out a front page about it. No doubt they'll also be promising free BMWs, flat screen TVs and massage therapy on the NHS next, knowing full well that it'll never happen but might save a marginal seat in some obscure East Midlands consituency. 5. Please carry on, but this is more of a bit of cynical media management by a dead government walking than 1984. Cheers MC

Hey, why not make a cute and ironic Star Wars game where all the characters are made out of Lego?

It would be ironic if a potentially critical success was marred by an attempt to be 'mature' for the sake of it. Not that the brothel feature mentioned above is in any way mature, in fact quite the opposite. No doubt over at EA / Bio towers some management android will already be picking the 'learning points' out of the marketing debacle. I've never felt the need, personally, to play Grand Theft Auto: Ferelden.

^ Thanks Grom, but what I'm wondering is how to integrate the Red Dragon Disciple into my favourite overall build, Ftr / Rog? I want a dual-wielding character, I prefer STR based tanking augmented by sneak attack to the weapon finesse route (but am open to persuasion) and I'm thinking something outrageous (i.e. two monkey-gripped weapons, specialised and looking at critical hit-enhancing feats). Obviously, as I'm playing thru OC / MotB I want to be skill-boy with lots of dialogue options. Any suggestions, especially - Race (I'm thinking human for obvious reasons, not a fan of ECL races as a rule) What base Class for RDD and when to take it, i.e. Bard or Sorc (am thinking a level of bard for the skill points and low-level song), do I only take the one level? Able learner seems a must-have feat, any others I'm missing bearing in mind that I'm going to be spending a few getting my dual-wielding / crit hit abilities going? Alignments / Dieties that provide interesting in-game stuff? Cheers MC

How about calibrating their pocket money with treasure looted in the dungeon? 100 gp = 1 real-world dollar / pound / euro seems fair to me.

C minus for sophistry. You qualified that with a 'unpopular' revolution. A popular violent one would be OK though, especially if there were hammers and sickles all over the uniforms. Revolutions are almost always violent and the counter-revolutions even more so, the 'Velvet Revolutions' of the early 90's weren't actually revolutions - they were the consequences of collapse so they don't count. Unless you believe that one morning class consciousness will be acheived without Year Zero. History teaches us that the left are far more accomplished at terror and repression than the political right, especially in the latter half of the twentieth century. As for the trolling, stop behaving like one comrade and I'll consider it. Cheers tovaritch, MC p.s. as I said in another thread, it's twenty years since I stood and watched the Berlin Wall come down - there's nothing more enervating than watching totalitarianism crumble, literally, in front of your eyes.

Am looking for an interesting fighter build, maybe one like Jaesun's but will be fun developing. I note that a lot of these builds are all about outcomes at level 30, but I want a character that's fun to play on the way there, if you get my drift. Any ideas? Cheers MC

Ergo, we should attempt to overthrow their democratically elected government in a rightist military coup, right? While simultaneously leaving the governments of countries like Zimbabwe intact? Go on, admit it, you think it would be OK to overthrow democratically elected governments in a leftist military coup. Maybe you'd love to put on your Che-like beret and bandolier and machinegun the running dogs of capitalism. Think about it: is there about a quarter of an inch between the position you espouse and that of those you purport to despise? I do wonder if you are in fact a troll, role-playing an extreme left-wing stereotype to provoke debate, if so I take my hat off to you. Bravo. Cheers MC

^ I suspect you're right, I'm just useless at WASD + mouse, I'll persevere but I've got four other interesting games of MTW2, BG2, SoZ and Majesty going on at the moment. No biggie, it's nice to have a new game in reserve - M&B and Majesty Gold came in at fifteen quid on a two-for-one deal which is great value. Cheers MC

^ Dude, if William Tell had tried that apple trick with a sawn-off Remmy pump gun the legend might have been slightly different in the telling

I'm liking that a lot. Does this game have shotguns?

Am playing Monut & Blade. Badly. I am to combat in this game what Jabba the Hutt is to hang-gliding. I don't, to be honest, like it very much.

Trying Mount & Blade based on the positive comments on this here forum.

IIRC you simply increases your existing spellcasting levels, if you have more than one you choose which. I don't really dig it because I'm not into standing at the back and throwing things.

^ It would have been a bit more convincing if he'd had some sort of character change after he'd become a monk. But as far as I could work out, he didn't really, his quest for spiritual enlightenment was merely a vehicle for learning new ways to beat people up. Anyway, if I play it again he'll not be taking the monk class.

It's the principle: I paid for it, I didn't hire it or rent it or lease it. It's my property. I did my personal boycott of Empires: TW because of the mandatory online activation / Steam issue. This is why I loathe piracy so much - they cause this pox to be visited on honest people like me. Anyway, we are now completely O/T, this is about comparative pricing of console / PC titles

The pound has taken a hammering over the past year or so, especially against the Euro. At Xmas it was almost one-for-one, it's rallied to about 1.16 Euros to the pound. Still not too bad on the dollar, but I remember the halcyon days of

Gfted1, old chap, pay for a round of drinks in a Swedish bar... and re-mortgage your home to get the second in. EDIT: My currency converter shows 1.00 British pounds sterling = 12.23 Swedish kronor.

^ I know Sweden is a social democratic nirvana, with fresh air and extremely gorgeous women... but by ODIN'S RAVEN stuff is expensive there.

From The Compendium of Bowl World Loot & Treasure (Splat Book 37), Monte Carlo publishing, $49.99 (softback): Bowl World is noted for the large number of crates and barrels littered over it's strangely bowl-shaped landscape. Some of them are trapped, and glow red as a warning. Others contain a couple of gold coins and a hand axe, although a far larger number contain returning frost darts. And, from the Tome of Bowl World Lore and Mystic Miscellany (Splat Book 68), MC publishing, $69.99 (hardback): The lowest circle of hell on the outer planes of Bowl World is Cratehalla, an eternal, misty dirge-like place full of containers to be opened for infinity. The containers often contain nothing of interest, not even a returning frost dart.

Tried crazy STR-based Barbarian / Bard build in my MotB try-out frenzy, looking for a sort of heavy metal skald. He sucked. Big Time.