Agiel

Bringing back warm and fuzzy memories of Jane's Longbow 2 and Enemy Engaged.

As Cackle is a Move action with proper positioning it's relatively trivial to keep active Hexes going while tossing in a Scorching Ray/Hellfire Ray within the same round (also note that Hexes cast prior to combat can have time added with Cackle, so for good measure I add a couple of Cackles on top of the initial cast of Protective Luck before a fight). I play with RTwP on so I have Ember's Cackle on autocast and I've learned to accept that I'm pressing the spacebar about about every 3 seconds on average to micromanage things.

Also note that Protective Luck is absolutely baller and with Cackle it can be extended for effectively the entirety of a fight so it's definitely worth investing into the Witch class for as long as you pick those up. Once you start running into enemies with 15 attacks a round Natural 20s become statistically significant and can potentially doom even the most metagame-y Scaled Fist or Instinctual Warrior decoys. With Protective Luck you reduce the probability of Natural 20s to 1/400 on top of its normal benefit of substantially reducing the number of hits scored against your decoys if their AC is still within the range of a roll of 2-19.

It is now clear to me that when Ember cheerfully informed us that "Our suffering has only begun!" she was all too aware of how aneurysm-inducing the Enigma puzzles were going to be. Seriously, may there be a pox on the house of the developer who thought that what the agonisingly tedious puzzles needed was a terrible interface that makes trying to follow online guides a trial in frustration in and of itself.

The presence of "Kaessi" does make "the Room" encounter in the House at the Edge of Time far less akin to trying to destroy a fire ant hill with your bare hands while covered in honey. @GromnirA real damn shame. <<Reign of Winter>> and <<Iron Gods>> were so highly regarded by myself and much of the Pathfinder player base due to introducing the idea that there's a much wider universe beyond Golarion that's decidedly far more grounded, and their interaction with the fantasy-based civilisation of Golarion was a great breath of fresh air in contrast to your typical Tolkien-esque affair of other settings.

From what I've heard on the Discord about the only AP that's not under consideration is <<Reign of Winter>> since Owlcat may run afoul of laws in Russia regarding "unpatriotic sentiments".

As soon as I'm done with this fort blocking the path I'm on my way into the Heart of Mystery, but about now my patience has already been tested by all the crappy Myst puzzles up to this point and from what I've read the worst is still yet to come. Even trying to replicate the solutions from guides online is a chore since even on my 1440p monitor it takes a bit of squinting to make out the correct tiles. These kinds of puzzles have always been my least favourite parts of cRPGs and it's maddening that Owlcat has decided to quadruple down on this aspect from Kingmaker (Is it any wonder that the second most popular guide for Kingmaker on the Steam Community Hub is <<Statue puzzle solution during prologue>>?). Unfortunate, really, since there really are flashes of brilliant encounter design to be found in their games once you get past the uneven difficulty curves. In WotR the "Sword of Valor" ambush was a highlight, and in Kingmaker I can honestly say Vordakai's Tomb is up there with the best dungeons of Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale with varied and challenging encounters that are eminently beatable with the right tools even with a mediocrely-built party.

As my PC is a Knife Master Rogue and on my deepest playthrough Woljif has (presumably) taken a temporary leave of absence just as he was about to be able to cast 3rd level spells Nenio has been my sole source of Fireballs and Haste so she's been my party slot tax whether I liked it or not, though it helps that she's been extraordinarily useful slinging Phantasmal Killers around. I presume some of you have instead opted to hire a mercenary Arcane caster from Hilor in her stead.

"Now if there's one thing you can be sure of, it's that nothing is more powerful than a young boy's wish. Except an Apache helicopter. An Apache helicopter has machine guns AND missiles. It is an unbelievably impressive complement of weaponry, an absolute death machine." -Patrick Stewart

Well as PJ O'Rourke put it: "Biden is wrong about everything, but wrong within normal parameters."

Well obviously she's wearing something that obscures her alignment because she moonlights reading books to little leukemia patients.

I recall how in the Icewind Dale games the pre-made parties available at the start had the specific requirement that they were ones a developer or tester was able to beat the game with. I'm curious as to whether or not testers for WotR were able to beat not just the game but also all the optional encounters with the pre-made MC and companion auto-levelling builds on the Core difficulty (even if it does take getting the right equipment, spell selection, and maybe a spot of the RNGoddess being off her period).

If you ever need a reason to go back to New Vegas: Because let's face it, the only proper way to play that game is Cowboy Crit build with revolvers and the Medicine Stick.

I suppose if you've enjoyed the STALKER games or were able to see Fallout: New Vegas to the end near launch (or many BIS and early Obsidian games, for that matter) you develop a tolerance for bugs and instability.

The Prop 187 and Pito Wilson effect in overdrive, in essence.

"Snake Plissken" would also have been acceptable.

His immortal words: “I’m pretty sure, I’m not a doctor, but I’m pretty sure if you die, the cancer dies at the same time. That’s not a loss. That’s a draw.”

The NPCs don't have the Tab key.

As is typical of any Pathfinder playthrough, Grease is your friend. So are pit spells for CCing some troublesome casters.

Obligatory:

The Latest GOP Schism: How to Handle Afghan Evacuees It seems to me that the GOP in its commitment to entertaining the basest impulses of its dwindling constituency is potentially missing a big opportunity with Afghan refugees. Consider in 1975 the Democrats having swept into the majority of Congress denied then President Ford's request to provide additional funding and air support for South Vietnam in order to stem the renewed NVA offensive (Operation Linebacker I and the Battle of An Loc demonstrated how this would likely have been sufficient to halting the Northern advance). As a result many refugees from the former RVN have blamed the Democrats for the fall of South Vietnam and much like their counterparts from Cuba still retain strong anti-communist convictions, with many becoming ardent Republicans (RVN flags were reported to have been flown during the Jan 6th Capitol attack). In addition like their Cuban counterparts Vietnamese-Americans also have phenomenally higher rates of small business entrepreneurship as compared to most other demographics in the US. Fall of Kabul, refugee plight provoke painful memories for Vietnamese 'boat people'

Planning on a Bard multi-classing into Duelist for a Trickster playthrough and role-playing as Cegorach the Laughing God:

Alternatives presented by the US would have sufficed when there was appropriate investment put into the project. The big kicker is that it was a hell of a lot cheaper for the ISI to pay angry, listless young men with few prospects at home in Pakistan (of which there are plenty) to wreck infrastructure, plant IEDs, and intimidate folks in places where ISAF and ANA forces weren't. Then there's the idea the ISI and generals have of the existence of a functional nationalist state with a reasonably trained and equipped army at its back being nothing short of a threat* to the survival of the Pakistani state. A firm belief in such tends to focus the mind. *Mind you, I heavily disagree with the ISI's outlook.

They probably haven't seen the superior Charlton Heston movie <<The Omega Man>> that was the direct forebear of <<I Am Legend>> in which the protagonist survives the viral apocalypse because he developed and administered the _vaccine_ to himself. "Beauty, eh?"

If I didn't know better, you couldn't help but insert another Raising Arizona reference, which by the way is now free (with ads) on Youtube and is one of the Coen Brothers' most under-recognised flicks.