rjshae

That game last night was a disaster. *ugh* Losing Richard Sherman for the season is a killer. Players just don't have enough time to recuperate, so they are more susceptible to injury. I think the league should match up the Thursday night game with the week-long break. The teams get a week off, then they play on Thursday instead of Sunday, followed by another long break. It becomes a plus rather than a minus.

The trade-off would be a slower speed -- wands are fast weapons; quarterstaffs are slow. Presumably that means you can get off more shots with a wand in a given span of time.

Perhaps they could implement arcane staves for multi-classed wizards with a melee class, such as fighter or barbarian? It would be roughly comparable to using a pistol as a club for close in work.

HERO/Champions had an excellent solution to the problem: give different costs for the different attributes based upon their relative value to the player. It looks like Obsidian chose the alternative route of balancing the attribute benefits instead. I don't it's necessarily a bad approach; it just makes the interpretation of the attributes more of a challenge. They act more like abstract tunables than physical characteristics. I can live with it because the game isn't trying to be a universal character construction set, but is fitting the attributes into a specific setting that operates by its own rules.

I consider sidebar interactions like that to be part of the immersive exploration of the setting, so to me it adds to the experience. Not everything has to be directly related to the main story, and those little bits of lore help fill out the feel of the place. That being said, lengthy exposition tend to be a drag on the game's pacing, so I think they should be edited down. Let me explain with more elaborate hypothetical example to give you a better feeling about what I mean You want to solve certain puzzle in the game to discover new location, so you know from some source that king might know the answer. You step into nearest Tavern and ask bartender if he knows where can you find the king. Bartender answers with a question. Did you see that blacksmith in front of the market which is few meters away from the church that is located near barber shop ? Well there lives a smith who was born outside of this village, he once crafted a powerful weapon that helped our current king slay the dragon. This weapon was made of special crystal, which can be only obtained from the mine guarded by the powerful golems. To kill golems you will need sacred water, from the well near the central market in elf village, but to enter the village you first need to undergo special ritual <you keep reading and you keep reading> After half an hour you know the whole story of this empire, and you ask again. But can you tell me where is the king ? The bartender answers. The king ? Ah king.. well I don't know that. Yup, well to me that's an element of a role-playing game. Your hypothetical character is behaving more like a real life character, not a quest marker. He's filled out some of the world lore and helped with the immersion. Sure, maybe his wits are addled a bit from dipping into the sauce too much, but that's part of his persona.

I consider sidebar interactions like that to be part of the immersive exploration of the setting, so to me it adds to the experience. Not everything has to be directly related to the main story, and those little bits of lore help fill out the feel of the place. That being said, lengthy exposition tend to be a drag on the game's pacing, so I think they should be edited down.

Yes, that should be an option for your ship-based travel: have the crew sing you a sea shantie. The longer you sail, the more ribald grow the shanties. To tone it down, you'll need to let the crew visit a brothel.

What I don't like having to do is consult the web in order to locate a character mentioned in a journal entry that I'd already met once... somewhere, a few weeks ago in RL time. At least give me a mouse-over hint.

That's a good point. For economic reasons they would likely need to group them into synergies where the player benefits from specific combinations of classes. For example, a monk talent could allow the character to be more resistant to interrupts while spell casting, but a cost of longer recovery from the interrupted spell cast. A Wizard with a melee class could increase their duration with summoned weapons. A Ranger could cast self spells onto his companion, or touch spells through his companion. &c.

Obviously, and I suspect Josh would likely agree with you. But role-playing games are refereed based on numerical data, so getting them right is important, if not vital, for producing a "good" system.

Pillars of Eternity: Tactics Engage in battle with large formations, monsters, and special characters. Massed cannonades, phalanxes, shield walls, equip and train troops, dragons, engines of war, devastating soul rituals, armies of raised undead...

Rather than healing food and such, how about some enchanted soul spices that give you bonuses while rest? Just pick a particular spice to be your resting recuperative of choice, and that's the bonus you get. Some Inns can supply a house spice, a healing root, or some other unique balm with reputed benefits. But they only work while you rest up in the comfort of the locale.

Australia ****atoos chew billion-dollar broadband http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-41857761 Bet they wish the birds would get stuffed...

Yuge?

Chanter soulbound trinket...

Or... you know, sacrifice them? Also, on seemingly unrelated noted: can we give our crew members nicknames? I'd like to have a cook named "Machine"./jk Or a steward named Baldrick?

A Druid/Ranger combo might be interesting. Toss a few damaging area elemental spells while your animal companion engages the foe, then go all beast mode and join him in the attack.

Do Orlans nest in burrows?

Which it shouldn't, not really. I mean if you turn into rock, you should be getting a pretty hefty DR bonus while it lasts. It should require a mining pick to even make a decent dint. This is from the National Park Service: The quartz within the petrified wood is hard and brittle, fracturing easily when subjected to stress. When they talk about Petrify in the game I am sure you turn into a wood type substance which makes you brittle and easy to break. Rocks are strong against compression, but weak against tension and shearing forces. The petrified figure should at least have a DR bonus versus crush and a smaller bonus versus slash. Damage is doubled, which covers the brittleness.

Do they have to stop afterward to remove the blood-sucking leeches?