Luckmann

Frankly, the character you're describing here isn't a joiner, or sure doesn't seem like one. There's a difference between your fully evil psychopath and just being plain ol' greedy, for example. The kind of character you're describing is probably someone even a lot of "evil" PC's wouldn't want around. He sounds like a perpetual loose cannon or a rabid dog that needs to be put down, rather than anyone you'd actually be willing to risk letting into your party. I think that it's entirely possible to create an "evil" NPC that's nowhere near that extreme and still be what most people would see as evil. But you see, we already have that kind of character. We have Durance. He is a completely reprehensible human being. Aloth himself can come across as something less than a shining example of humanity (elfanity, whatever). All your companions have more then the usual level of blood thirstiness (except Eder, and he is just adorable) , so I am not sure what people want in terms of their "evil" companion. Durance is an Ignis. What some people (like me) want want are Edwin/Korgan/Viconia/Vhailor types. This has been expressed repeatedly. No way is Durance an Ignis. Ignis is a socio/psychopath that burns people for fun, and arguably a schizo - although he's got a pretty good argument to his belief that he's on fire, fine. There's a fair argument that Durance isn't good, fine, there's probably a good argument that he's got questionable motives and moral virtues, fine. But he's pretty far from Chaotic-Evil-Ignis-level of crazy. I'd call him a Vhailor, at worst, although with a very different level of sentience and interaction. That being said, I'd kill for another Vhailor. Or another Ignis. Hell, I'd kill for a Morte.

Great character. I want to comment on her personality and beliefs, but then I'd end up ruining the thread. Do eeeeeet. There's no use having a thread just for posting stuff no-one ever talks about or comments on. Then it's just another fanfic thread and I loathe fanfic threads.

I wouldn't see the fact that Priests are also affected as a con - quite the opposite, that just means that it's a fix for both Paladins and Priests, no? Anyway, it was briefly discussed the other day: The OP (and others) are expressing a desire for companions who are a better natural fit for such evil PCs, and/or a cynically disapproving complement to their good PCst. Characters the like of Korgan, Edwin, or Viconia - all perfectly believable characters, with less-than-kindly inclinations. Or, as the kids put it: jerkwads. Well I have a mild spoiler about Pallegina that I think most (sane) persons have missed. ... I am surprised, but not shocked. In her rare moments of characterization, Pallegina comes across as entirely devoted to her country, and little else. Even when we first meet her, it's pretty clear from the way she's ... ... that she is impressively merciless. Brotherhood of Five Suns ... Diplomatic/Aggressive, anyone? <inser obligatory quip about Sawyer's Snowflake and female passive-aggressiveness> ...but yeah, that sounds about right. Favoured Diplomatic/Aggressive, Disfavoured Clever/Honest? And I'm going to stick to that. Favoured Diplomatic/Aggressive, Disfavoured Clever/Honest. Pallegina may not be the best very best representative, but the Frermàs appears to be partly ambassadorial, and partly a blunt object of the ducal congress. And when I say Clever as Disfavoured, I don't mean "smart", I mean Clever as it is used in the game, "annoying smartass". They seem to be goal-oriented and no-nonsense in their duties (or seem supposed to be). Honest, because, well, look at the introductury quest of Pallegina, and have in mind that she's actually supposed to not fit into the Frermàs like a glove. The Vailian Republics seems to be all about the trades and proto-capitalism, and the 'five suns' little more than merchantile barons that have secured political positions (Woo, democracyyyy). She's pretty much sent on a mission to underhandedly rip the Dyrwoodan economy from under their feets in the middle of a ~20-year national crisis. Edit: As a bonus, which I however actually would consider much less important, it wouldn't overlap with any pre-existing orders. Only 1 favours Diplomatic, only 1 favours Aggressive, and not a single current order Disfavours either Honest or Clever.

You say that he was in Chain Mail, and survived fine, and that Plate Armour would've reduced his DPS. Fair enough. And then you say that that reduction would be for nothing, just for a few extra points of DR that he doesn't really need. The issue with the No Armour/Full Armour dichotomy of the system is exactly that. If you did fine with Chain Mail, you would probably have done fine with Clothing, and the trade-off is not worth it. The difference between Chain Mail and Full Plate is not worth it. And the difference between Cloth and Chain Mail is not worth it. Say what? If my two hand fighter did well with DR in the teens he would've done fine with no DR? That has literally no logical basis. He did fine as in he was able to take a beating, get his endurance fairly low and then recover himself or get some healing. With no armor he would've been dropped over and over again. The point is that I found the balance between DPS and DR that felt right. Your notion that cloth would've worked on him because chain mail worked on him makes absolutely no sense. Then it essentially comes down to you failing at tanking; no-one but your tank should be consistently subjected to a meaningful amount of damage, and dead enemies do no damage, which is why DPS is always prioritized heavily over long-term survivability. Enemies do full damage whether they're at 90% or 5% Endurance. Put a good bullet between their eyes and it's over forever, and the best way to do that is to unload on them. What magical means do you use to make entire encounters focus their damage on one character? Because I'm certainly not familiar with any mechanics that support that. https://youtu.be/s_P9PU5FcMQ?t=11s

...Savannah Folk?

Bla bla bla bigoted bla bla bla racist bla bla. My only wish for the story is that I'd be able to turn Durance into a living god.

Well I know my innocent Priestess of Eothas wouldn't mind, but Orlan? Nah. Orlans are savages. He's not self-centered or arrogant. Where'd you get that from? Yes.

I did not play 1.03 a lot at all, and since release, I had only had 3 crashes, which I considered fantastic. But since I started playing 1.04, I've had a massive increase in seemingly random crashes. I wish I could say more on the issue, but I really have no idea what is causing it. I would attach the crash reports and folders, but they contain personal information, so.. no.

You must sit around thinking "How can I say nothing of significance today just to get my post count up?" No, that was pretty much a summary of my thoughts on the issue. I don't really tend to think about post count or it makes me realize how much time I've wasted talking online. Why bother wasting time online if you have nothing of substance to contribute anyway You already have 2 posts and your contribution to the matter is 0. He has a tendency to do that. Most of us just ignore him and carry on.

I think it's funny that you criticize it, yet you mention no less than three distinct ways to deal with them. Three ways out of a small mountain. In PoE? What do you do? You.. tank them, and spank them. Preferably in a doorway.

My understanding is that if you Graze, and you have Graze-to-Hit conversion, it then rolls to see if it's converted to a Hit or not. And the same for Hit-to-Crit. So the answer to the question would be "no", because if your original attack was a Graze, it will not roll to see if it becomes a Crit at all, because the resulting Hit was not the result of an attack roll.

After updating to 1.04, all sounds except Music and UI sounds are turned off, or rather, paused. This includes ambience, stabby-stabby and party banks.

Very helpful in analyzing how the seed works, thanks. I thought that the seed was set for the entire map on the first time you entered it (because this has been my experience in other games). Knowing that you can leave, sleep and come back to change a seed is good.

Out of all the non-unique loot in the game, this is the one item I see consistently brought up to discussion. It really underlines the balance (or rather, the lack thereof) of the Skills. Why doesn't anyone want that nice +2 Survival item?

That makes FOD really bad on Blunderbusses. It generally isn't the best paladin skill... Generally? Uhh.. It's.. generally the best they get, in the reliable damage-boosting department. Your choice is either that or Lay on Hands. Flames of Devotion just shouldn't be a Lash, or Lash functionality should be reworked somehow. It's so much better for slow high-damage weapons than it is for fast low-damage weapons.

Like has been said, Flames of Devotion works as a Lash, and Lashes have some really, really weird functionality.

my impression is that maerwald is supposed to be a terrifying vision of your future, and spur you on to find the lead key so that you can be cured. thats why companions keep saying you look like **** because you're not sleeping, and eder has to wake you up from horrible nightmares. the implication is that you're gonna end up like him. You can say your not going to fall but they make like youre just giving it a stiff upper lip, hiding the trouble your going through if you go to dunryd row and happen to shoot lady webb in the dome this is pretty much spelled out: the game ends and epilogue says "without lady webb's help you can't find the leaden key. soon, as with maerwald, your nightmares enter your waking thoughts and you spend the rest of your days as a crazy hobo in defiance bay" the problem for me is that the turmoil that the pc is supposedly going through isn't convey to the player very well. So i'm having nightmares. ok...what are they?? what about my past lives are freaking me out so much? About the woedica temple i agree with you. I talked to the cultist lady and actually thought i could help them out...turns out you cant even though the whole point of going there was to ask them about my awakening You know what? The note on the nightmares is good. They should've conveyed that better by having interactive nightmares that occur both randomly and at specific places in the game, that all universally result in some form of temporary (random dream) or permanent (specific dream) penalties, primarily to your mental attributes but also to your physical ones (due to shaky hands, a state of constant nausea, or a feeling of fatigue). Some of the dreams could be vaguely prophetic about what's going on, some could deal with companions and their problems or even previous lives (Edér's brother comes to mind) without explicitly explaining it to you at all, and some really could just be completely alien to you and not meant to make sense. A bit like the slider dreams in Baldur's Gate, except interactive, some of them simply ending with a note of how you feel, at least one of them being the realization that you need help. Fast.

... godlikes are already a less desirable race. There's plenty of good helmets in the game, even right from the start. Letting people slap +1 DEX and +1 INT to their hoods won't change that. I'm willing to say that, yeah, it might upset the overall itemization balancing somewhat, and it might necessitate - thank god - a big of an itemization overhaul. But the argument that godlikes will suffer is bogus. It won't change anything for them.

I would go with Spears, definitely. Battleaxes has increased crit damage, yes, but Spears gets that nice bonus to Accuracy, making you crit more. And if you're one-handing, you're all about stacking that Accuracy. The fact that Cladhalíath can be made to stun on crit is just a wonderful bonus, too. But how does that work with Stun ? Like this ? 1. I must pass an Accuracy vs Deflection roll to crit 2. I must pass an Accuracy vs Fortitude roll to stun With Battleaxe, I think it is 1. I must pass an Accuracy vs Deflection roll to crit I can't answer that for sure, but if it works like most other effects, it should: First, you roll to attack, Accuracy against enemy Deflection. Let's assume you score a Critical. At that point, you basically roll a second pseudo-attack, this time against the enemy's Fortitude, and if it succeeds, you Stun. It should be easy to confirm, but I haven't tried anything with Crit-to-Stun myself, yet.

Yeah, I really hate these things. It also feels incredibly inconsistent in regards to some other parts of the game, like the kid you can beat up, or give a knife, no questions asked. Yes, it turns out bad "of course" if you give him a knife (sigh.. how nice it would be if things were more realistic), but that's beside the point. My point being that because of that, these times when 21st-century morality is forced upon you comes across as preachy and jarring. It's actually way worse than in D&D, where the 21st-century morality is expressly an objective part of the setting and if you don't adhere to it, you're a chaotic evil psycho that will go to literal hell. Not much better, but at least it's consistent. i agree, constancy is the key. having the freedom to choose my morality 9 out of ten times makes the one time i can't extremely frustrating and throws me out of the narrative i build around my character. On RPG Codex forums there are many accusations about 21st century mentality in Renaissance/Middle-Age setting. For example having reincarnation themes and Western mentality instead Eastern. But I think that Dragon Age setting made it much worse than Eora of POE. One good setting with reincarnation theme and more Eastern mentality/culture was Bioware forgotten child - Jade Empire. i only played dragon age 1 but the morality of the characters fit the setting pretty well i thought , it's been a long time since i played though gonna have to check jade empire out DA:O did heavily enforce the whole 21st-century morale thing pretty bluntly, and in the later DA games to sheer absurdity, but at least in DA:O it's consistent, and in DA2 it's consistently stupid. It makes it actually feel not half as bad.

Cloaks and Helmets should be enchantable, I think, and honestly, I would not mind boots or gloves, either. You are entirely correct in that that would necessitate a significant reworking of the itemization system, but I would not mind that in the least. The game could really use one, but I would not expect one, not even in an expansion (since it would involve going back and reviewing existing content, which is exactly what I want them to do, but that's.. extremely rare in the industry).

I've never not seen it work. There's no fancy graphics on it or anything, since that would be annoying as hell. It's just a buff to your auto-attack with Implements. And it's super-useful, at least until Level 9, at which point spellcasters go nuts and nothing matters.

I can agree that it doesn't exactly FEEL like the Watcher (i.e. the PC) is going mad. But then again, how does one do that without making the character useless? [...] If you truly feel that you have to make the character useless in order to convey the increasing sense of unhingement (yes, I made that word up), then do so. Punish me. Make me feel the pain. agreed i kept forgetting that i'm supposed to going nuts, which killed one of the main reasons to chase the bad guy in the first placei apparently have the same disease a maerwald where his past lives come back to haunt him and drive him crazy, but i only see one past life and very little of it so theres no urgency to find a cure. in fact i thought being awakened was a good thing The thing is, it's not a disease. Everything at Maerwald, everything about the situation, suggested to me that his circumstance was at the very least somewhat unique. He had been reborn at least three times into closely inter-related personas, of which at least two of them were incredibly close to eachother's horrific personal tragedies. There is, as far as I know, nothing to suggest something similar is happening to the Watcher, especially not around that point. Yes, he sees dead people, yes he sees previous lives, but that's what watchers do, it's their thing. You can even express doubts yourself as to whether this will even befall you at all. Yet you just sorta keep going because... why? Up until Caed Nua, the story had me hooked. By the time I reached the Temple of Woedica, suddenly found myself thinking of the Leaden Key as antagonists to be infiltrated, and I realized that.. no, wait, why am I even doing this? And then I get into the Temple and I'm.. reading the priestess' soul, and.. have to go to three places? But.. that's.. why would I do that? Didn't I come here to investigate my condition, ask them what is going on? And now I'm suddenly reading minds and infiltrating, trying to stop them or something? I feel as if something was cut somewhere and then they took the frayed pieces and stitched it together, because I'm just not pulled in half as much as I should. I feel there's an exposition or "the reveal" missing, or a hook, or something that pushes me a bit onward, or makes me motivated to investigate for the sake of investigating.

Yeah, I really hate these things. It also feels incredibly inconsistent in regards to some other parts of the game, like the kid you can beat up, or give a knife, no questions asked. Yes, it turns out bad "of course" if you give him a knife (sigh.. how nice it would be if things were more realistic), but that's beside the point. My point being that because of that, these times when 21st-century morality is forced upon you comes across as preachy and jarring. It's actually way worse than in D&D, where the 21st-century morality is expressly an objective part of the setting and if you don't adhere to it, you're a chaotic evil psycho that will go to literal hell. Not much better, but at least it's consistent.

I think that the enchanting system is lackluster and that itemization feels hollow, and the way everything is broken up into enchants, whether you can enchant that specific enchant yourself or not, and no matter what the item actually *is*, contributes greatly to that. So I'm not sure I want them to be enchantable. I voted "yes", because at the end of the day, I want to be able to do *something* with them. But related to the issue, what I want more is for helmets and hats to matter, and for it to matter to a sensible degree. For example, at the very least, most helmets should have some kind of minor Deflection or Defense bonus, even if it's just a tiny Hit-to-Graze or Crit-to-Hit ratio. The fact that I can't run around in my white hood the entire game saddens me.