PrimeJunta

I usually just march Edér forward and switch on that talent that gives two more engagements. On most maps the resulting cluster is enough to stop anyone from getting past. In open areas or with teleporting/burrowing enemies things get a bit more complicated though.

@Luckmann should just use a Scandinavia and the World avatar like sensible people. Too bad Scania isn't anywhere near as cool as Finland. :smug: [ http://satwcomic.com/raising-children ]

That's your problem right there. You're just too damn good at it. Have you tried drinking a six-pack of beer first, or maybe hitting the bong? You clearly need to handicap yourself somehow.

That "reacting to something that happens" thing. I don't agree about that crtiticism at all actually. Maybe I'm just not that good at it, but I find myself having to react to things at least as much in P:E as in any of the IE games. For example -- A squishy got engaged. I need to break engagement really fast somehow. This is entirely situational and the solution depends on what and who I have available. I got flanked. A teleporting enemy teleported somewhere it's causing me a headache. A fungus charmed one of my dudes. The IE games had much nastier special attacks. The "game over" ones were not much fun IMO but I do think P:E's need some buffs; as it is it's usually better just to wait them out than actively do anything about them. That, too, would be easy to address by adjusting the numbers.

wat?

He's also the single fan who has contributed most to the P:E beta so lay off. Criticize his arguments, not his person. He's earned that much.

AoE spell techniques: Technique 1: Start out with your caster up front. Open with a cone-shaped spell directed at the enemy. They'll start running at you, and the spell will hit them in the face. Then pull back and close the gap with melee fighters. Works great as an opening, especially with druids and wizards. Technique 2: Start out with your melee duded in front, caster(s) behind and to the side. Engage. Then flank with your caster(s), targeting carefully that you'll burn the enemy but not the friendlies. Or you could just use the circular AoE spells like Chill Fog -- wait until everyone's engaged, then drop the spell where it's useful for maximum effect. Also, don't forget debuffs -- many of the harder enemies will barely get a scratch from the direct damage spells unless debuffed first.

@Sensuki It's worth noting that the strategy you like to brag about (exploit AI targeting) doesn't work in all the IE games as the AI is different. In particular BG2 with ToB and all the EE's, which have much "stickier" targeting than classic IWD or BG2:SoA. Same as when you deflect criticism of pathfinding in the IE games by saying "Oh, just adjust the configuration to 40,000 whatsits per whatsit." IMO your systemic criticisms are not always entirely fair as they at least to an extent rely on niceties like this. Beating the illithids "fairly" for example -- I assume you're referring to your favorite AI targeting abuse dance -- requires a different technique depending on which BG2 variant you're playing (standard, with ToB, EE, which mods you have installed, possibly other things). I also find it borderline cheesy, as you're not actually beating the game based on its systems, but based on the specific way a particular facet of the system has been implemented (AI targeting). So IMO characterizing that as "beating them fairly" is ... well, not quite right. So if you're calling us as "not liking RTwP" or "not liking the IE games" because, say, we didn't like the illithids or the beholders (and I still don't), I could accuse you of exactly the same thing because you don't want to play IWD in an engine that doesn't let you do your AI targeting abuse dance. Not liking a specific feature or specific fight or specific enemy or specific tactic does not equate to not liking the system.

**** that's rough. :sadface:

We're not talking about "freedom of player choice" here though. We're talking about easy exploits. The freedom to use an exploit that drastically changes the difficulty is a pretty shabby kind of freedom IMO. I've played the BG's both with and without rest-spamming, and it's vastly more enjoyable without rest-spamming. I'm kind of mad at the rest mechanic actually because since rest-spamming is so obvious it took me a long time to move beyond it and find a more enjoyable way to play. If resting hadn't been so broken to start with, I wouldn't have made that long and unenjoyable detour.

and all those IE games he likes were based on the DnD ruleset... duh. still seeing serious fail in his argument. it's time to move forwards, not backwards. AD&D didn't have AOO's. Those were introduced in D&D3. (I also am in the pro-engagement-attack camp BTW. But do let's keep our facts straight, shall we?)

There are many types of brigandine but it's generally much heavier than light armor (gambeson, padded or similar). There's a lot of steel in it. Inside view:

One thing I'd like them to change with P:E has nothing to do with the mechanics and everything to do with monster stats: give some of them much stronger resistances to some things. As it is, blind/prone/paralyze + dd works against everything, and the effect of the debuff amounts to more or less the same thing (you get hit less, they get hit more). With varied (near) immunities on monsters we'd have to vary our tactics a good deal more. Individual and in-combat stealth would also help by opening up a new set of tactical possibilities. And there are a bunch of other relatively minor adjustments that could also add a good deal of variety. -- I just started a BG1 game again to get a better feel for how it compares to P:E by the way. And I really don't think BG1 is anything much to shout about; I've been doing select-all + auto-attack and facerolling pretty much everything, except some of the fights against casters where I drop a Web, Horror, Hold Person, Command, or some other spell in first. The really interesting combat only comes in BG2, and while P:E is way more fun than BG1, it's clear that it's not close to BG2 level. @Sensuki I wish you'd stop saying that P:E's combat is "RTwP for people who don't like RTwP." You taught me to love RTwP (and I'm really digging BG2 now), but I still like P:E's combat also (and believe that its mechanics have enormous potential for fun which could be tapped simply by adjusting the numbers).

I'm actually getting curious about DA2. Never played it, as I didn't particularly care for DA:O and heard it was even worse...

And as has been also patiently explained, that time sink constitutes a disincentive for resting, and also a not-so-subtle way to direct you to go look for easier stuff to do until you level and gear up enough to handle whatever it is that got you to run out of camping supplies to start with. Which is the intent. I would not want hard, mechanical limits or costs to resting, and I thought the BG1/2 rest mechanic was completely broken: the possible random monsters that may show up were both tedious (i.e., same problem that you claim the limited supplies/trudging back mechanic has) and easily circumvented by savegame abuse. The resting mechanic is just fine.

Okay, absolutely the last thing I'm posting on limerick-gate, in prose or in verse. I'm glad Obsidian publicly declared where they stand on this here social justice issue. Score one for the good guys. However I don't know if I should laugh or cry about the utter triviality of the affair that prompted them to do it. And I feel a little bad for Firedorn. Whatever his failings, he does not deserve to be in the eye of a cat-5 Internet poopstorm.

I gave him 15 seconds and switched it off. Getting yelled at for no good reason isn't my thing.

Not an engine limitation. More of a design decision made early in the process (implementing stealth as a game state, like combat).

Good that Obsidian have made clear where they stand on this here social justice thing. I guess that leaves the SIJW's to draw their own conclusions.

Every fanatic is a fanatic for a reason.

That's not the underlying design problem. That's a symptom of the underlying design problem.

Sure. And all I'm saying it is that addressing it by tacking on a pre-buffing macro is kludgy.

I'm not a big fan of remakes. I'd rather the effort was spent on making something more original.

It's a solution, for sure, but still a kludge. It's a tacked-on feature which adds complexity without addressing the underlying design problem. That's what a kludge means.

I think this is a poor argument. If one's only dislike for pre-buffing is "pre-buffing is tedious and time-consuming" then pre-buffing convenience functions are possible and address this dislike. Thus, the argument "pre-buffing is tedious and time-consuming" is removed from the discussion. Progress is made. If you believe pre-buffing is a problem for other reasons, then you simply use those arguments instead. But you don't try to use the "pre-buffing is tedious and time-consuming" argument to help you, because it has been demonstrated that there is no need for this. I would like pre-buffing to be re-introduced in P:E. I would not like long-duration buffs to be re-introduced in P:E. Long-duration buffs should be replaced by item enchantments or passive/modal abilities/talents. They do the same thing without introducing the tedium in the first place, so you don't need the automation you're proposing. Adding a macro to get around a clunky mechanic is kludgy. Better not have the clunky mechanic in the first place, especially as less clunky ones are easily available.