Rosveen

I would be more impressed if I wasn't also playing an MMO with a bajillion Ragnars running around. Overdone...

"Her"? Is there something I don't know about Kana?

Eder was initially a fighter, in the Kickstarter concept stage. Then a rogue, then a fighter again.

Stronghold adventures appear randomly, so you can't assign anyone when you don't have any missions available. Just wait for them. I don't want to say too much about Raedric's Hold as this is a spoiler-free forum, but you can reach Readric killing hardly anyone and the final conversation also has one path allowing you to avoid the battle.

He means obsidian did a terrible job and used us gamers as unwilling beta testers for their broken release. Just look at the German translation topic. It's a disgrace. The Polish version is quite good, actually. Far better than what people reported about the German or French translations.

Can you actually do that? Sacrifice a party member to the blood pool in game? Well, canon is what the writers say it is. If it's a direct sequel, then it will probably be assumed that you recruited all party members and that they survived. God, please no. It utterly destroys the feeling of telling my own story. If you're not going to take my decisions into account, don't pretend like they matter, don't give me ending slides you're going to ignore. BG2's beginning made no sense to me whatsoever because Khalid died long before and I never traveled with Minsc. I hope Obsidian doesn't go this way and imports our decisions from the first game - or if not, then simply doesn't show people with uncertain fate.

The real question is why would the lady settle for Seaking? Even if limited to 1st gen, she has Lapras or Starmie. Much better credentials, would employ over Seaking any day.

Don't send anyone from your main team on adventures in the future. There are more recruitable companions than you can keep in your party, so send those you don't use.

Don't take Field Triage and Wound Binding, they aren't entirely terrible, but with so few talents available on level ups they're a waste of a talent slot. Just rest to regain health, you have enough camping supplies. Taverns also give you bonuses to skills, which is another incentive to use them. Athletics around 3 on all party members helps avoid constant fatigue. The highest Mechanics checks in the game are 12, but you can easily pass them with 11+lockpicks. Or even 10 with an inn bonus.

Ah. It helps to consider them as first person shooters, which by play mechanics, they essentially are. One character instead of a party, first person perspective, you move around with the mouse and aim at things and press a button to fire. Shooters. Then you don't have to consider them the bane of the RPG genre, of which they are not a member. Helps for me, anyway. If they're shooters, they're pretty damn awesome and I wish more shooters were like them. Because normally shooters bore me to tears. TES games don't force first person view, btw.

There's another quest related to Noonfrost, it gives you more options (also the item to put in the hole). But with or without it, you don't have to kill everyone to reach the Glas-whatever guy you need to talk to, you can sneak in and out.

10/10, would read again. What a way to appease romance supporters. Be careful what you wish for, eh?

I'll trade the pet slot for two neck slots.

The Grieving Mother is adamant about protecting children and will leave if she sees you hurting them. There are a few quests when it can happen.

Sacrificial Bloodlines in Twin Elms has 19/20 checks. Constitution should generally represent the ability to endure, remain whole, and stand by your core identity, with respect to mental influence as well as getting stabbed repeatedly in the chest. It's not like there's a shortage of supernormally persuasive people or characters with wacky mind powers in this game to build scenes of that type around. But then, Dexterity and Constitution are both just buckets of fail in this respect. Like you say, it is what it is. So basicially give Constitution the Might treatment? It could work, but in the current system Resolve seems to be responsible for mental defenses. Constitution could be checked in events, but Athletics took its place. Dexterity was used here and there... Most notably in the prologue. But rarely, I think, as far as I could tell with dialogue indicators turned off. I remember quickly grabbing someone's hand once. It could definitely be explored more, possible checks are fairly obvious.

It's not an ambush if you expect it. :D Sorry, I have nothing constructive to add.

The +2 gloves are a random drop, so I don't think they should be considered. If you find them, that's great, but they're not a reliable factor. 2 points can be easily shaved off with lockpicks and resting bonus. Rite of Hidden Wonders adds further 3 points, but it isn't craftable. So you could get away with 7 Mechanics and use the scroll in a pinch.

Of course, only ye olde English and British accents are acceptable in fantasy RPGs. Personally I couldn't care less, I wonder if it's because English is my second language.

Oh, that's right, it's a vision. With the Grieving Mother you actually talk to her, although it isn't very interactive at first and generally a bit weird. But it all comes together eventually. Unlike with Eder though, it's centered on her story, not yours.

Do not make me laugh. You can roleplay all you want, but within the context of the world, it makes no sense to do so. Irrelevant. It's fun and we enjoy it, even if it isn't rewarded in the mechanical sense. I could imagine a story or write it down, or roleplay it in Skyrim - and I wouldn't say one method is inherently inferior to the others. There are many aspects of Skyrim that make me facepalm and long for better development - guilds and UI design come to mind - but the game retains the series core strengths: worldbuilding and moddability. I love the setting enough to come back time after time, and I can replace the underdeveloped perk trees with interesting, complex ones with one quick download from Nexus or if I prefer, hours in the Creation Kit, which is a great fun in and of itself.

I completely agree. I've known lots of gamers and crpg'rs that want the combat to be super easy/relaxed precisely because they want to see every single nook and cranny of the game, but don't want to have to deal with "all that combat" just to do so. Their main interest is not in outwitting or conquering tough combat challenges, but they may still spend 100's of hours doing whatever it is they enjoy. This. The OP seems to define casuals as finish-and-forget kind of players, which is fair because obviously these people aren't heavily invested in the game. However, this definition doesn't work so well in context of difficulty discussions. As you say, there are also story-focused people not interested in combat challenge for one reason or another. I fall into this category, I explore every nook and cranny, but I do so on Normal when the "hardcore" players spend hours complaining that Hard is too easy.And of course there are roleplayers who may end up doing everything in the game, but spread across several playthroughs. But still, the OP's observations are correct even if casual/hardcore distinction isn't exactly on point. Critical path players are worse prepared for the final encounter. I figured this is what difficulty levels are supposed to alleviate, but they have to factor in exactly what the OP said and I guess it isn't always easy to balance. edit: Actually, isn't the final boss level 9 or something?

Grieving Mother has some after sleep interactions. I think Durance had one too quite early in the game? When you learn about his staff. I left him at the stronghold though.

I'm confused. What did NWN kick off aside from its own sequel? And how is Pillars integrating anything when it doesn't use D&D rules?

He has only Rapid Recovery if you recruit him at level 2. Ruffian is actually a free talent, one more than he'd normally get when leveled up manually, so it's better to recruit him at level 3. Unless that changed in last patch and he doesn't get it at all? I don't know.

Good luck finding someone patient enough to read them all.