FlintlockJazz

As per the title, does the Ranger's stunning shots work with melee? With things like Swift Aim working with melee but Vicious Aim not, it can get a bit annoying working out whether something is working as it is supposed to be.

I love that line, it starts off sounding all sneaky and zen but then he goes "actually wait..." and you're like "oh yeah..." Didn't realise all those lines were by the same person, they should like get to write more, chain her to the desk and get her pumping that stuff out!! Or not... One thing I missed from the old IE games that they didn't do in Pillars was the funny lines you'd get when clicking on a character repeatedly. Maybe not fourth wall breaking like they were in Baldur's Gate, but something more than the two different lines you get currently that quite often consist of a single word (Eder's "Hey" for instance).

I do know NWN2 had a random name generator as I went through them all then assembled my own names by taking parts of different ones and sticking them together. A name generator would be nice, but if they did that they would have to do it for all the nations and I suspect that some of them may not yet have a finalised 'naming style' yet. For instance, Zahua was originally going to be named Forton way back when he was gonna be in the base game, and I believe I recall them saying they changed it to better fit in with the then finalised naming style for the Ixamitl Plains when they added him to the expansion. I suspect certain nations may not have a definite naming style decided yet or at least when Pillars was released they weren't. Aedyr (and by extension the Dyrwood), Glanfath, and Old Vailia (and by extension the Vailian Republics), are the ones whose naming styles are the most well-known and therefore most defined, the others not so much.

It's hard to say. Most fixes and features tend to be retroactive, but not all of them—and it's unlikely that the patch notes will be complete at all, let alone that they mention whether fixes are retroactive. Waiting until TWM pt. II comes out is the safest bet to experience all the changes and features; however, YOLO and if you want to play the game now, you should. Even if you missed out on a couple fixes/features for this play through, you'd still get the bulk of it and you could always play the game again at any time in the future I second this and also add that if you're anything like me you'll probably restart a few times anyway before you settle on a character anyway so might as well get those restarts out the way beforehand.

BG1 and 2 did NOT have a random name generator. I also don't recall the Elder Scrolls games having a random name generator (not counting TES Online), but will check on that.

His "Fye, yer itching for the kindling touch of yer sister, ye coxfither!" when you first meet him is what I love to quote the most, but all his Iselmyr lines are hilarious.

I agree with the Dr., the Honest reputation just seems to get you through some tricky situations and Resolve has an impact in most conversations. Lore is also good, especially if you don't actually have a high Intelligence stat in some cases, and is the main skill to go for in regards to opening up convo options, followed by a Survival. Interestingly enough, Fighters have a bonus to both these skills which makes Explorer a good choice for them (and is going to be one of my next characters actually). I also agree with PJ about class and race, Orlan Ciphers will get a ton of dialogue, and I believe that if you add the background culture The White That Wends to that mix then you get even more, though I cannot (yet) confirm that.

Having multiple paladins in a group is also not a bad thing, so you can still pick up the paladin companion and not feel bad for it. You can have one paladin with one Zealous aura and the other with a different one. Then again, most of the classes can be built in different ways so you can pretty much play any class and still pick up the companion with the same class and still feel that they are different. Just MHO of course, others may feel differently.

I agree with most of this, except that Old Vailian Dwarfs are meant to be more 'classy' looking such as in the beard department and not stereotypically vikingy yet none of the male dwarfs fit this appearance. At least one classy dwarf please, one that fits with the muttonchops look you can get at least. EDIT: Thinking about it, dwarves ARE highly underrepresented in the game portraits. This is a foul crime that cannot be unanswered and has actually contributed to me not playing many dwarves, since whenever I tried to I couldn't find one that I liked out of the handful we gots! SECOND EDIT: Voted for all classes as I didn't actually have an opinion on them tbh but the poll wouldn't let me answer the race question without putting at least one tick in the second section as well, so put a tick in all of them to not put any extra weight to any of them. Not that one vote ever mattered of course, though a "I don't have an opinion" option to get round that might've been good.

No.... gods no! Please tell me this was intended as humour, that I have failed to read the sarcasm intended. The wasn't enough? With something like that, you can never ever have enough smilies to show you're joking! My heart attack has stopped now, thank you!

Sorry went to bed heh. I was considering making Eder a dual-wielder for my next playthrough funnily enough, I usually have him sabre-shield and like with my current playthrough two-handed (currently equipped with the Redeemer). Guessing people don't take the Defender ability when they go dual-wield? I usually go two-handed for Pallegina but I do wonder if shield would be better for her as she seems rather fragile at times. I find it amusing that Aloth and Sagani both seem to be used the same way by most people. :D

Depends entirely on how you define “god.” Exactly! Does a god need to be on the level of the Abrahamic god, all-knowing all-seeing creator of the world? Or can they be on the level of Greek gods like Zeus, pervy horn-dogs that go around creating more gods by shacking up with mortals? In some real-world myths, even mortals become gods, so why are the Eora gods not gods because of the method of their origins?

It's like, what the **** man? All three (Lemmy, Bowie, and now Rickman) died within a month all at 69 from cancer (or had Lemmy already turned 70 by then?).

There is an important thing to consider when discussing the gods: even if they were created, how does that stop them from being gods? They may lie about their origin story, but they also still have "phenomenal cosmic powers!"

No.... gods no! Please tell me this was intended as humour, that I have failed to read the sarcasm intended.

I've gotten quite curious about how differently people use and build the companion characters. For instance, I usually use Durance as a back row caster and rifleman but I see some people have been using him on the front lines with shield and weapon, along with Hiravias (who I usually use as a second row-man). This got me thinking how differently people build them even when they are using them the same way, and how they gear them out, and because I'm a nosey git I want to know! So! How do you build the companions and what gear do you stick on them? Do you bind the Redeemer to Eder or to Pallegina? Do you get Hiravias thrown face first at your enemies like a flying hairball of claws and spite or do you keep him prancing around at the back? Are you a riposte-builder for Devil of Caroc or do you use her for spare parts? My curiousity slavers to know!

Playing it last night I have to say Eder is my favourite.

Possibly you are erasing the memories from the very soul? While each person usually only remembers their current lives Awakenings show that the memories are still there in their soul waiting to be triggered by the right stimuli. I'm guess you erased the memories in the soul, essentially reformatting the hard drive of his soul, so they are no longer there to be triggered by Woedica. I can't access the Wiki at the moment, but I think there is a belief that the gods don't actually supply the spells themselves, that it is the belief of the priest in their god that actually gives them the power. Magran doesn't even recognise Durance as Durance, she doesn't seem to acknowledge his existence, yet he keeps on being able to cast magic. He may think it comes from Magran but that isn't necessarily the case, it is the belief in the principles of their god and their belief that they are adhering to those principles that power the disciple. And while I wrote that I managed to access the wiki: http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Priest Reputations affect their Holy Radiance because it is their faith in their god that powers it, so if they haven't been sticking to the teachings then the doubt in their minds over their own actions interferes with their power.

Ah, but she's not really an assassin, more just a cold-blooded killer that stabs everything in the way. She burns down houses with everyone in them rather than trying to do silent precise kills.

The gods have control over their followers' reincarnation, at least to the level that if you do well they will ensure you reincarnate well, whereas those who don't follow a god enter a 'lottery of souls' and are pretty much left to chance. Ergo, Woedica probably ensures that Thaos reincarnates into a form that is reasonably close to his preferred form. Either that, or he uses magic of some sort to change his form to that which he is most comfortable with. http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Soul

This isn't today, but over the weekend I ran a tabletop game for friends, it had been on hiatus over Christmas so had been a while since the last session. Went well, I got to cyberise one of the players against their will when they foolishly went to the crazy Cybernetics expert they were ferrying on their ship. They are only implants not limb replacements so they can get them removed and be normal again if they want if they can find a doctor that they can trust not to just add more cybernetics to them. The irony that the only other doctor around at the moment is the one who got cyberised amuses me. What have I done actually today? Well, aside from arriving at the place of my employment where I am writing this, I have been farting again. Damn bowels.

You remind me of the babe.

I have to say that in fundamental gameplay terms then yes, ME2 was better over ME1. If ME1 had been structured more like Deus Ex, providing alternate methods to accomplish your goals depending on the skills you had taken, then the gameplay mechanics it used would have worked, but regardless of your build all encounters in ME1 boiled down to Space Marining it. There were no stealth paths, there was a single case of high technical skill allowing you to kill some aliens in an airlock and that's it, everything else was a case of shooting stuff with your guns, most of which you couldn't use because you didn't have the skills available to use them for most classes yet you still lugged them around for no reason, or using either biotic or tech skills to kill people, the difference between them being pretty much aesthetics and which units they were best used on, while having a cover mechanic that pretty much came across as an afterthought and wasn't of any point once you levelled up enough. Honestly, the game felt rushed and unfinished, especially with a lot of the locations. This isn't to say it was rubbish: I vastly prefer the visuals of the armours in ME1 (I have a thing for the tubes in the back of the helmets) over the Space Footballer/Standard Space Marine look of the later games, now that we have the trilogy to look at I can say that ME1 had the better and more coherent plotline of all three of them, though that doesn't say much as the writing was atrocious and full of plot holes in all three (ME2 could have been better, if ME3 hadn't pretty much made it redundant). I'm also one of those sick bastards who loved the Mako, it's main problem was that it wasn't developed enough and needed adding to it, not stripping from the game. Essentially, ME1 needed to either utilise it's system more like Deus Ex or be more like ME2 if it was gonna do the space marine thing.

Or the greatest man ever, Brian Blessed!

My beard won't let you down!