CottonWolf

I can kind of see the logic of Eothas not getting protection spells. He seems very much a "purify through searing light" type of God. Here's the text from his major book in PoE: And the sun shall break through the darkness, the new dawn arriving with the rebirth of the day Rejoice all ye who dwelleth in the shadow, who are broken and beaten. The winter soon comes to an end. Spring shall rise, bringing light and life to the world. Radiant light, radiant life, and thy soul shall find warmth in his arms. All creatures bask in his glory. The rays of his countenance bathe the world, bringing an end to the night, ushering in the day. Kneel before him and wonder at his benevolence, feel the warmth of his radiant presence. If thou art broken, he shall make thee whole. If thou art in darkness, he shall bring thee to the light. If thou art sinful, thou shalt be reborn. If thou art cold, his warmth shall bolster thee. How canst I, so lowly and worn, speak words of proper adulation? Thine eyes, whose gaze sees the sin in me yet still shows love. Thine hands, whose grip pulls me out of darkness. Thine ears, listening to my every prayer. Thine heart, bright as the dawn, giving me warmth when I am raw. Eothas, light of spring, sun of the world, thou givest me life and purpose. If thine heart be black, if thine intention be impure, thy life is forfeit. For he hath seen, he can see, he will see. Nothing is hidden from his glory. His light touches every corner of the world. Nothing is hidden from his sight. If thou doest thy work in the dark, if thou wouldst keep thine actions hidden, thou shalt be burned in the sun of the new dawn. Day comes soon, prepare for the dawn. Nothing is hidden from his reach. It's all healing and fire and fury. Nothing about protection of the innocents or so on. It makes him sound very much a God of action, and protection seems pretty passive.

The weird thing about conjurer specialists losing access to illusion is that, if they focus on summoned weapons, a lot of the spells that made melee wizards viable were spells like Mirrored Image and so on. A lot of it will depend on which spells fall into each school. That said, I agree that wizard summons are good.

I'm definitely going to generate a save (in the PoE generator, don't have time for another full playthrough) where you tell every god you'll help them then give all the souls to Woedica. Such a villain move.

Yeah, I've been arguing that they should add an "atheist" priest in the sequel since I saw the end of Pillars. It just seems like such a no-brainer.

The other edge case I thought of was a multiclassed monk who was terrible with their fists. It's less of mechanical issue than the ranger one, but punching is the monk thing. Not getting full fist progression would probably have meant that a 50/50 multiclass monk would be forced to use melee weapons at 20.

So yeah, probably just for testing. I things I noticed: Full list of skills at the end of the creation. Familiars are in! (Sort of.) Shadowflame and Crushing Doom on the wizard spell list. I'm glad they made the cut again.

I heard Wildrhymer's second LP was dropping soon. Hype.

Yeah, the monastry is up there with Raedric's hold for the best area in Pillars. Mainly because there are so many ways to play it. I am pretty sure you will have to. All assets are new so you will have to recreate you character. You will be able to change class for sure (after all misterious stuff happens and you are back at square 1). During the stream Josh said that they are not sure if they will allow you to change your race/background (probably not) but if they do, there will be a story reason for it. It would be quite easy to justify changing your race/sex. Just have your soul fly off into another body. Given that memories are stored in the soul, changing background would be more tricky. Any your class is just your job. Outside of cipher, which actually requires a specific ability (but if you're body switching they can handwave that away anyway), they seem like things anyone could do with the right training.

I assume you'll be able to recruit them then just stick them in a position on your crew if you want to. Assuming that that's how the crew works.

Yep. The only right answer is the Disappointer. And it had better still be terrible.

Storm Folk's probably just the racial name. The other humans are Meadow, Ocean and Savannah Folk (or at least their common names are. anyway). E: Storm Folk's just going to be not-East Asian. Calling it now. Personally I'm Rekke>Ydwin>>>>Bonteru>Radora. Bonteru and Radora just don't sound particularly interesting, and they're not going to get any development, 'cos they're not companions. But hey, I just won't use them. No skin off my back.

Yeah, the Ethik Nôl's are definitely corrupt. They're not necessarily wrong when viewed through the lens of the existence of souls. Galawain's ending is basically exactly what the Ethik Nôl do. The issue is clearly consent. If I lived in that universe and people consented to being sacrificed in the with the full knowledge that it would work, I don't think I'd have an issue with it.

As far as I remember enslaving souls was the only thing animancers in the game ever did, that really worked. There was an unsuccessful soul-psychoanalyst and lots of attemptes to "heal" Waidwens Legacy by, guess what, fiddling around with souls. Wasn't one of the doctors trying to use animal souls? Sounds healthy. Even the Engwithians just managed to channel souls from here to there. The Engwithians managed to get good enough at animancy to create gods from nothing, whole cloth transformation of souls. They clearly knew considerably more about it than the people of "modern day" Eora. I agree with you that whether or not that's a good thing is open to interpretation. The issue with animancers in Pillars is that they came in two stripes; good but incompetent, or highly morally-questionable and competent. You never see an animancer who's trying to do something ethical succeed. Persumably those people must exist, but they're never given any screen time. Even Pallegina, your most pro-animancy companion, seems to only like animancy because of the potential for profit. She doesn't have any kind of vision of a better world for people through animancy.

*Some* animancers, that is. And that's really the problem. Animancy is the game's stand-in for science, and this could be used as much for trapping souls in constructs as it could for helping fractured souls to find their 'twin'. The issue here falls down to individual practices of animancy and not animancy in general, and I do think that is made pretty clear throughout the game's length. Again, though, the alternative presented is really just superstition, and from the present day rationalist perspective, science will trump it every time. I don't recall how the hollowborn crisis was interpreted by the animancers, but it appears that Waiden's Legacy was the price to be paid for the practice of trapping souls. It isn't a superstitious belief when direct evidence of the consequence of animancy becomes available via the player's agency. I would expect that information to spread throughout the culture like a meme, transmitted in part by some of the party members, and eventually shaping everybody's interpretation of animancy. That either explicitly happens or doesn't depending on how you play things out at the Animancy trial at the end of act 2. If you're convincing enough and positive about animancy, everyone thinks it was the Leaden Key attempting to malign animancer's good names, and vice versa if you're negative about it.

Those tooltips are decidedly not kosher. It's a tricky one. I think everyone agrees they messed it up in Pillars. But outright declaring the only real technological marvels in the setting de facto evil is probably not a good solution either. I mean, the animancers are already on the side of the people hellbent on exploiting the locals for their resources. Making them then do terrible things with the adra's verging on making the animancers cacklingly evil.

Huh, the question on Josh's Tumblr suggested he was narrative lead for Pillars. Obviously the questioner was mistaken. Yeah. Josh's narrative lead for Deadfire. He wasn't for Pillars.

I don't think being an animancer would allow her to communicate with the captured soul, that's really the domain of Watchers. I meant she'd be able to just put it into vessel that could talk, like Galvino. I doubt she could speak to it directly. But given the mix up over Watcher/cipher powers by the writers in Pillars, I'm still not entirely sure what each is meant to be able to do.

My headcanon is now that the talking weapon is Ydwin's mother.

1. Who knows what she'd do? She's a character concept rather than a character at the moment. There's not even any point speculating. Hell, she could go all Shard-bearer/Hiravias and eat their souls for all we know. 2. I don't know that the cipher aspect is relevant, but she's an animancer, so yes. 3. Well, we know adra's involved. Beyond that, neither the Devil of Caroc nor Galvino give many clues. And you never actually get to read the Theories of Pangram.

Oh, the Bonteru, the dwarfen herbalist sidekick's a rogue too. A proponderence of rogues.

The one thing that I really want them to do is voice the narration for the voiced sections. Get the person who does the start and end of act readings to do it. It's really jarring to have someone speak, then have unread narration, then have them speak another line.

I think that's the nub of the issue. Anything that ages at a different rate throws up awkward implications, deserved or not.

On the topic of terrible romances in fiction, I present to you NWN2; where an elf watches you from birth, stalks you throughout your life, is in love with you and you can get together with them. That might be the worst offender I can think of off the top of my head in the "Elves are creepy" genre. Nope, but the whole series was terrible, so who cares. That was Voyager, wasn't it? Yep, Voyager. By then I felt Star Trek had ceased to be relevant anyway, they seemed stuck with outdated notions of sci-fi while actively crushing anything new that tried to come out. Kinda destroyed everything it had built up and left us with a dearth of space adventure on TV for quite some time, though I could just be being all melodramatic about it. Was that before or after Deep Space 9? I maintain that DS9 is the only good Star Trek.

She's a scientist, isn't she? Pillars doesn't strike me as the type of world where you'd get teenage scientists. Based on the art, I'd guess the elf equivalent of mid-to-late 20s, so younger than most of the companions in the first game (except Hiravias? (I had him around that age too) and potentially the main character), but certaintly not a teen. E: Actually looking at the art again, it's not impossible she'd be elf-early 30s. Kind of like how Aloth is elf-early or mid 30's? He's 62 (67 in Deadfire), but has the appearance of being in his early or mid 30's. Yeah, any Elf/non-elf romance in fiction is horrifyingly creepy because implicit in it is the unspoken age difference, which in some settings can be literally millenia. So basically, I'm saying that Aloth and Ydwin are only allowed to be paired with each other, otherwise its too weird. E: Don't Orlan have the opposite thing in Pillars where they all die at like 30? Or am I getting my fantasy universes muddled up?

She's a scientist, isn't she? Pillars doesn't strike me as the type of world where you'd get teenage scientists. Based on the art, I'd guess the elf equivalent of mid-to-late 20s, so younger than most of the companions in the first game (except Hiravias? (I had him around that age too) and potentially the main character), but certaintly not a teen. E: Actually looking at the art again, it's not impossible she'd be elf-early 30s.