Hiro Protagonist II

Seari wins the thread.

Lephys always misses the point. If only you could take your own advice. Oh, so we need to test plot holes in the dialogue and story from level 1? LOL.

I did a mistake with that fight in Santa Monica. I forgot to change out Brother Thomas' secondary weapon (SMG) for an energy weapon. A 4AP 2 Burst energy weapon that would have made him do around 200 damage all up. When he hits level 30, I'll assign a skill that'll give him an extra AP making it 11. And then change his secondary weapon to a 5AP Energy weapon. I'd have to say my party with Rose, Pizepi and Brother Thomas is pretty awesome.

I'm having the opposite effect with my Leader and his levelling. When I picked up Pizepi (level 16), I was level 11. Now at level 28/29, we've caught up to her but my Leader is now ahead of every body else including Pizepi and Brother Thomas. He hit level 30 on that encounter in Santa Monica and everyone else is at the end of level 28 or mostly on level 29 including Pizepi. My leader has broken away from the pack. I wasn't really taking much notice of it until you mentioned it. It's only a small gain but now I've noticed it. Also, I kept my Charisma for the other characters pretty low. I'm at work and from memory, Magnum has like a 1 and TC with a 2. I only upped my Charisma on one character and gave him the Leadership skill. Kept everyone else quite low.

Oh, I thought a lot of people who backed PoE also played the IE games. We're talking experienced gamers here. Or has the years of consoles, quest markers, interactive movies and QTE's made gamers forget how to work this stuff out. I forgot, Obsidian should have started this at level 1 for all these people because it's all too hard to start at level 5 and work out all these abilities. Looks like some gamers these days need to have their hand held. Shame on Obsidian for not starting us at level 1. Tsk tsk Obsidian.

Okay I decided to do Santa Monica again, but this time I had Brother Thomas with me. And I kept Higgins out of the fight with him staying with his two dogs Zeus and Apollo and the +1 INT Rat. No people in the town were killed. None of my party went down. Total slaughter. LOL. My party is around level 28. A couple on level 29. Also, I have screen shots with Rose with her 10 points in AR with a burst headshot and this is why headshots are unreliable. it might look good on paper, but in game it's another story. Yep, I'm really enjoying Energy Weapons.

It depends on the dialogue and I see it for all of the 5 main skills. For instance with Lore. You invest all your points in items and not one point in Beasts and yet you pass all the dialogue checks with both items and beasts. Does not make sense. It's all the skills. It doesn't work when you have 5 skills in dialogue but possibly double or triple the subset skills out of dialogue but are still counted under those 5 main skills. And you're going to have gamers gaming the system such as the lore example I just gave.

I meant another skill under Mechanics. I've now changed it to traps. See my two posts again.

It doesn't get around the fact that a check in dialogue is covering all those subset of skills even if you don't have any of them. Such as the case with the Master Locksmith who has no trap points but when a dialogue option comes up with Traps, the Master Locksmith can pass it without any points in traps at all. This is were the system can be abused. You choose points like lockpicking but are also passing all the trap dialogue checks because the dialogue is assigned to Mechanics. You're passing things you have no points in. EDIT: I meant another skill under Mechanics. I've now changed it to traps.

I was having the same idea Shevek but I was calling it an 'umbrella' where a whole subset of skills would fall under. It'd have to be shown in a way where it shows the subset of skills under each of the five that you can choose from. That might gel with people at character creation or level up. But I think it may come across as confusing when you might have 20 skills falling under 5 with a different name in dialogue. It seems like doubling up to me. I choose one point but the game assigns two. Also, you can have a master locksmith with no points in traps getting assigned Mechanic points in dialogue and when a dialogue choice comes up with traps, your master locksmith who has no trap skills passes easily. No, I've tried and every time I come up with something, I find faults in it.

With the Canyon/Temple of Titan areas. There's an option to: Also, there's a Backer skill called Southwestern Folklore. You can get 4 books from a vendor at the start at Ranger Citadel and they give you an automatic 10 for each character who uses them. Really enjoying the history that pops up. Already knew about things like the Watts towers in Rodia and was amused when the history came up in the log to the right of the screen.

^ That's good to hear. Also, I'm surprised so many people are taking out Pizepi, considering at least one person here thinks you're gimping your team if you do.

I usually don't max skills unless I have no trinket or book for those characters. My mechanical repair/toaster/weaponsmith character has a toolkit which gives +2 to all those skills and no minuses. Yes there is a trinket that gives +2 to toaster repair. Perfect that I gave that character all those skills. That character also has demolitions and I've already picked up the book early in the game and used it to get his 10th point. Also, that +3 demolitions trinket has minuses so I prefer not to use those types of trinkets unless it has no effect on my character. eg. +2 Kangaroo Paw (-1 animal whisperer) that I've given to Rose who now has 10 in outdoorsman and the minus doesn't affect her. In fact, Rose has so many points that I've now started her on Brute Force. One character who has the locksmith/safecracking skills picked up the safecracking book in LA (it's early in the game). I used that for his 10th point. He has 9 points in locksmith and I'm waiting to pick up that book. The trinket that gives both safecracking and locksmithing severely gimps your character's strength with a -3. There are some Animal Whisper quests in LA. Right from the start, there's a quest in Rodia that needs it and the skill check isn't high. But there is another one in Los Alamitos which has a very high check. Even with a 5, there's only a 27% chance.

Except I played and completed the first BG game. I knew all of the characters you started with in BG2. That, and we know that PoE doesn't start at level 8. I admit that I'm glad we won't be spoiled on the story and whatnot. BUT, at the same time, it's a bit difficult to test "the game" when you're just thrown into the middle. So, *shrug*. There's good and bad to both approaches. A lot of people played BG2 first and not BG1 and they were able to play the game. As I said, you can create level 1 party members from the inn and level them up. Not difficult at all.

Yes I know rogue chance is affected by leadership and not charisma. When you have a party member go too far from your leader, the leadership icon disappears on top of their portrait. Charisma is like a default AoE for that character which gets larger the more points you put in it. I only put enough in one character to get Pizepi. I keep my leader who is one of my four best assault rifle characters in range of PIzepi and Rose and they never go rogue. As long as I see that leadership flag above their portrait, I know I'm all good. But as Enoch says, there's mixed reports. So saying it's gimping your party is not correct. I've said before, I usually have one of my four core character out of battle keeping my pets safe and use him as a medic. That's how gimped my party is. Also, I'd rather play the game than trying to prove something like this. Even if I showed youtube videos, would you accept it? Or would people questioning everything about all the conditions and variables. No thanks. I'm not here to write a thesis with the mechanics. If people are saying it gimps your party and it has no effect, they need to prove it and do the testing. As I said, I can only go off my gameplay. Also, I note Enoch's post with him going to Santa Monica. Not bad for energy weapons. But some would have us believe Assault Rifles are the best weapons in the game. Hey, if you had assault rifles, that would have been an easy battle with doing head shots! No need for energy weapons.

Yep. And we're experiencing this with trash mobs like beetles let alone all the other enemies in the game.

The rogue chance on my recruits did go down on their character sheets and it was the same in game. At the start, Rose would lose it quite a bit. By the time I got to Canyon of Titan, she didn't go rogue at all and hasn't done so. Pizepi has a higher chance to go rogue which she always did when I picked her up and now she's okay. I can only go off my own gameplay. I really don't see one character in your seven party team with moderate CHA and Leadership as gimping your party. Also, I didn't bother about the small time you had the AK-47s. I had M16s for most of Arizona. You get access to the AK-47s at the end of Arizona and then you can get the AK-97s just after the start of LA. So I went straight to the AK-97s.

If you don't have the skill levels, you will miss out on dialogue options with Sadler. Also, I did say at the start of the Temple, not near the end. The quest can disappear. With the DBM, they didn't have better weapons than me. I had all M16s with the exception of Pizepi who had the Meson Cannon and it was a quick trip to the silo, back to Ranger Citadel and back to the Temple for the GRB. With fast travel and Outdoorsman 4+, you avoid all the random encounters so it's pretty quick.

No, I didn't gimp my team. Funny how you always bring up that tired old argument without any proof. And Cha isn't useless for one team member. If you have one character with a moderate amount of Cha and add Leadership to that person, it keeps every recruit in line. Since getting to Canyon of Titan, I've never had a recruit go rogue. And Pizepi has a higher chance of going rogue more than Rose. It also helps when you have your party spread out because they're still under your control. Now if there is something that's useless in the game, it's Barter. How am I interpreting your words incorrectly? You're jumping to conclusions with my team and how I created them. You stated energy weapons perform worse than AR even against armored targets. No they don't. So it's 0/10 with your posts, your incorrect statements. And you admit you don't have the G41 rifle. LOL. And all you're doing is going off charts with 'average' damage. Oh, and here's Brother Thomas with 3 points in Energy Weapons doing 141 points of damage with the Death Ray Gun. Yep, Energy Weapons suck.

Can't see more skills being added to this game. Wouldn't most if not all of the dialogue have been written by now and all those skill checks in the dialogue? If you change the skills and add new ones, you'd have to change the dialogue as well. I'd think New skill checks would be a nightmare to insert into the dialogue all over the game.

Ah, you missed some toasters. Rail Nomads isn't bugged. Depends on what you do in that area. I did get the kidnapping quest and resolved it. Also, if you killed any DBM, you miss out on a dialogue option with Sadler. There is an extra quest in Temple of Titan if you don't kill any monks. If you kill or let the monk that's following you die before the Temple, that quest disappears as they're not happy with you. Also, you're basing your whole argument on the G41 assault rifle even though you've been through a lot of the game and still don't have it. Wow, just wow. Okay, I still stand by energy weapons not sucking as bad as you're making them out to be. But that's been a lot of your argument. Stating things like, 1. "they perform worse than AR even against armored targets" No, the Gamma Ray Blaster doesn't. 2. "It's much easier to get Ralphy very early and mold him into whatever you want. He has less AP and worse stats but he's no Cha locked so you don't need to gimp your core team in order to get him." You admit Ralphy has worse stats than Pizepi and then say I'm gimping my core team. But then you're missing dialogue options and quest resolutions that I do receive. It sounds like you're gimping your core team with missing things in the game and taking on gimped recruits to mold them into using Assault Rifles. I'll take PIzepi's GRB for most of the game over Ralphy's non-existent G41 that he doesn't have in your game. I've found in my playthrough I didn't need to invest a lot of points in weapons (around 3 or 4 points) in the AZ part of the game and concentrated on non-combat skills. Now that I'm in LA, my non-combat skills are either maxed or nearly maxed (waiting on some skill books to max some of them) and now I'm putting up my combat skills. Pizepi already has 7 in Energy Weapons when you pick her up. I still think Pizepi is like another Angela, high hitpoints and can use one of the best weapons in the game. I think we'll agree to disagree.

That's nice but doesn't answer my questions. That link also says, "We also definitely want a melee character with high strength". So now you're suggesting at least one of my characters should be a melee character with high strength? And the other questions? When do you get this rifle? Did you open up ALL the dialogue options in the entire game from the very start? Even opening dialogue options before you leave Range Citadel, because there is a dialogue option and a free gun you can get at the very start. Did you open every toaster? Did you do the peaceful resolution at Rail Nomads? What about not siding or killing any of the monks or DBM in the Canyon of Titan and start of Temple of Titan but still resolving that quest line with both camps fighting it out with each other? Did you get additional quests and items due to those additional dialogue options?

Actually, I just realised Rose is the only one who has the highest skill in Assault Rifles with 10 now due to the insane amount of skill points she gets. Rose also has 10 in Surgeon, Computer Science and Outdoorsman. All my other characters are around 5 or 6 with Assault Rifles because they've either maxed out or nearly maxed out their other skills. Which also helps to cut down on any reloading as they usually pass first time with their skill checks.

G41 burst headshot does more damage (on average) than GRB burst. And its optimal range (with tactical scope) is longer than GRB max range. GRB is good because you get it early when nothing else can compete with it. But it's also unique and all other EW don't even come close to it. Conclusion: you want one character with EW skill to utilize GRB but beyond that EW suck. What's G41? And when do you get it? I've only recently upgraded from M16's to AK-97s. Did you put most of your points in Assault Rifles and let all your other skills suffer to a degree? Because I've put most of my points in non-combat skills and my characters only have about 5 or 6 points in Assault Rifle. Even on burst they seem to miss wildly. They usually get two, maybe three hits in. And with allocating points in other skills, I've opened up every dialogue option, opened every toaster, every lock, safe, etc. I'd be interested to see your characters stats when you entered L.A. Also, I find it hard to believe Energy Weapons suck when other energy weapons that Pizepi uses does more damage without burst compared to Assault Rifles on burst. If you have to solely rely on headshots with its 200% damage to out damage Energy Weapons, then that tells me Energy Weapons don't suck.

I decided to do a reload and go back to a previous save and finish most of Rodia before tackling Santa Monica. Mainly because: So now I have my full party as well as my pets. I'm going to leave Santa Monica for later and do a couple of areas before tackling that fight. Also, have to go back and click on those shrines I left. Have to say Brother Thomas is like a Second Rose. He's level 27 and I'm only around 25/26. But he has INT [8], Surgeon [8], Field Medic [8], SMG [9], Blunt Weapons [6] and with his machine gun, has a kick ass Mace. I'm going to spend every point in Energy Weapons because that seems to be the way to go. Energy Weapons are great in LA. My mostly assault rifle team can't seem to do the type of damage that Pizepi does.