DCParry

I think octopus or octopuses are acceptable plurals. Never say octopi. You are bad person if you say octopi. You are a slightly less terrible, but still quite bad, person if you say syllabi. Or you can say octopodes, which would be the be plural if we were sticking to original terminations (from Greek in this case) like those who use the generic -i think they are (-i is the second declension nominative plural in Latin). EDIT - Just watched the video, which is good, although she mispronounces octopodes.

BAH! Don't listen to these philistines! While brevity may have once been the soul of wit, the modern tendency towards "splurts" of expressions is disheartening and an anathema to productive discussion. Do not change yourself Lephys! Honestly, if people can't understand you, it is not that you aren't making you a good faith effort. The most likely barriers are laziness or wilful ignorance, since I am working on the premise that no one here is actually mentally deficient.

I think my favorite over the top evil moment was in SoU after you get the woman's kidnapped child from the Thayvian wizard. It summed up everything that was wrong with delineating actions along the D&D alignment spectrum. When you returned to the woman, your choices (if I remember, this was many many years ago) were: 1) Here is your child, I need no reward but the deed itself 2) Fork over the cash for the kid woman 3) KICK THE BABY I mean, really. I kill a wizard, drag a baby in my backpack (still alive) across the frozen hills, just to kick it in front of its mother. As an aside, I think there is a bit of worrying for not real reason here. NWN2 and MoB were the only two games where I ad a satisfyingly role playing experience as an "evil" character (my LE tiefling warlock is still one of my favorites). MoB obviously being the better experience but the general plot, structure and opportunities in even NWN2 make me feel like I won't have much to worry about in this case.

I think Calsica was wearing her bacon pants.

Orlan? I just met 'im!

I wouldn't worry about getting your head out of shape. I'm sure the dev's aren't in over their heads with this. Maybe he is having a hard time ignoring since it is difficult to bury .... his you know what in the sand.

Waste of resources? I dunno, seems like they're... heading in the right direction, to me. 6_u Maybe, but it will be hard to cap this achievement.

There should be a cave somewhere, a very smelly cave, with a team of very exhausted orlan, under the pay of the various governing bodies, who have tirelessly worked to collect the corpses in order to avoid a general health crises across the realms. Also, I have decided that the plural of orlan is orlan. EDIT - It seems that there is an inconsistency in the formation of the plural, we need a CLARIFICATION! Equal grammar attention for the non-human!

You sound like me in front of my freshmen writing class!

Shrug, maybe you other thought the process? I have done multiple nightmare throughs and I found the tactics were more than sufficient for the most part (with the unlock extra slots mod). The single target spells with effects that resulted in combos on my mages were great tactic programmes, as well as things like knockdowns on mobs attacking mage/healer/rogue characters. Now, of course you wouldn't set a ton of AOE spells and let the AI decide to slaughter your own party. With all the legitimate issues that one might bring up about the DA series, this seems a bit weird.

There has been some discussion in the various video threads on Backgrounds, including references to weapons and why one is going to choose a certain background and such, but I thought it would be fun to have a topic on this OUTSTANDING aspect of the character creation process. For reference: http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Culture_and_background (N.B. I don't know if there are multiple wikis or not or if there is any competition, and if there is I have no vested interest one way or another, this is just the first that came up with a google search of PoE Wiki). A couple question I want to ask to start out with - 1) Are these ALL the background choices? Are there going to be some more with different racial/subracial choices? I saw a number were locked to culture selection. 1a) If they are inclusive already, is there a chance of adding any more? I doubt there would be time with additional dialogue and such, but it can't hurt asking. I would particularly like a soldier background, which I think is distinct enough from mercenary, unless there are dialogue options to make mercenary seem more like an ex-soldier then a sell-sword. 2) This is a question in honour of Sylvius the Mad, but do we HAVE to choose a background? Is there a mysterious wanderer background for us to choose if none fit our roleplay preference? Is this included in a drifter (although this sounds like a fantasy hobo to me; a stabbing kind of hobo of course).

And I think people who use the term "social justice warrior" as an insult are vapid idiots.

So is brigandine armor apparently. Which annoyed me no end they didn't buy it and get out of those rags. I know, but we have to take into account he was a barbarian. Maybe we were lucky he had as many clothes as he did. And a slave no less, he should have gone all Spartacus on us. Josh - I am Spartacus! Tony Curtis - No, I AM Spartacus! Calisca - No, I am Spa - *BAMPH - Wolf knockdown*

Since it seems like there is a more FO style barter system for the merchants (i.e. merchants have finite currency, but value on items can be traded for other items) I don't see this as a huge problem. There is also the a level of diminishing returns on attempting to balance loot/currency economy because in the end players are going to break it if they want. If someone feels the need to drag every.single. dagger they find around with them, more power to them. Let them be ones that break the economy as opposed to the economy be balanced around and forcing me to skin every enemy down to their last follicles in order to afford camping supplies.

LUTE? Did someone say LUTE?! Me thinks no lutes is oppression of the emerging Orlan chanter demographic.

Speaking of visceral and beautiful, I want to be able to play the game by slapping at the keyboard with a freshly caught halibut.

Toggle seems to be the word of the day. Toggle toggle toggle toggle toggle. Just please, make the targeting less wonky than D:OS's.

4th ed did help to customise characters with INT and CHA for melee characters and are useful for different builds now. eg. Swordmage (INT), Rogue (CHA), .. And there are a lot of builds now that use CHA as one of your two primary stats. Yep, currently playing one on Realms of Trinity NWN2 server: perfect two weapon fighting + epic divine might + level 9 divine spellcasting -paladin(5)\favored soul(5)\mystic knight(10)\ hospitaller(10) - charisma, dexterity and strength are main attributes, charisma are primary attribute for FS spellcasting, paladin abilities and solid EDM melee damage, I wish I could take a bard levels - to have its "snowflake wardance" that adds charisma bonus to attack. Also gonna try to build melee wizard\swashbuckler\swiftblade which will have its melee prowess coming from the high intelligent. Correct me if I'm wrong, but NWN2 is not even 4th edition... I am truly sorry, but that just sounds utterly, freaking, terrible. But why? The character is pretty powerfull both melee and spellcasting wise, nice saving throws and overal defense, 10 attacks a round with dual holy avenger scimitars. And it's a Yuan-ti Pureblood, so very high magic resistance, blind fight and some other goodies. Echoing a couple other responses, to me, and this is just my personal opinion, that is not a character, but a tool. A tool specifically designed to slaughter your enemies in a video games, which is cool, but not my cup of tea.

4th ed did help to customise characters with INT and CHA for melee characters and are useful for different builds now. eg. Swordmage (INT), Rogue (CHA), .. And there are a lot of builds now that use CHA as one of your two primary stats. Yep, currently playing one on Realms of Trinity NWN2 server: perfect two weapon fighting + epic divine might + level 9 divine spellcasting -paladin(5)\favored soul(5)\mystic knight(10)\ hospitaller(10) - charisma, dexterity and strength are main attributes, charisma are primary attribute for FS spellcasting, paladin abilities and solid EDM melee damage, I wish I could take a bard levels - to have its "snowflake wardance" that adds charisma bonus to attack. Also gonna try to build melee wizard\swashbuckler\swiftblade which will have its melee prowess coming from the high intelligent. Correct me if I'm wrong, but NWN2 is not even 4th edition... I am truly sorry, but that just sounds utterly, freaking, terrible.

Well, maybe not a fighter, but perhaps... a barbarian? http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=SG&v=mZHoHaAYHq8&hl=en-GB EDIT - Double posting is only for smexiest of kobolds.

Using AD&D as a paragon of flexibility is ironically entertaining to me as an old person. I know the 3.5 and on changed the landscape so to speak, but still I get a kick out of this.

BORING?! Even pseudo kobolds are more exciting than most gangley, shouty, stabbey heroes!

I see what you are saying, but there is the intellectual, philosophical knowledge that your soul is immortal, and perhaps there is even widespread empirical knowledge to the effect (although I am not sure this would be the most likely case as knowledge dissemination may not be as wide spread as even our Renaissance analogue, as it appears we have no printing press yet), and then there is the physical, visceral knowledge of your impending demise. I am sure there is a PoE Plato of some sort who nattered on about caves and such, but there is the possibility that if all we know are shadows, and we have only heard about the other things, we are going to cling to those shadows with every bit of crazy delusional self destructive strength we can.

Fascinating stuff as always, but every bit opens up more questions! There can be a lot of factors that complicate the matter that will make the presence of souls quite interesting. There is always the distinction between our absolute knowledge as players (souls are actual things, and these things have effect/can be effected) and in-game knowledge (which will be divided along cultural [do we have nations yet? would seem a bit early for that], socio-economic, or religious lines). Like Josh said, druids know animals have souls (or soul like analogues), but does the swineherd know this? I assume that the world isn't populated by a gaggle of Pythagoreans who have never known the joy of meat or beans. Incidentally, are beans one of the plants that have souls? Please say yes; they are, after all, the magical fruit. Of course, if a group can dismiss the souls of animals, then it is not a huge rationalization to claim that certain groups actually have no souls either, justifying horrific violence and oppression. All sorts of fun possibilities!

Sigh, I was actually forced to like one of Gromnir's posts. Now I must shower. Although I doubt there is actually much, maybe antagonism is the wrong word, but derision among Obsidian for Bioware's output. I am sure they take a more academic/critical view of the differences (as opposed to our fan responses). Also, many of the people from both sides are acquaintances and appreciate each other's games quite a bit.