Marceror

That would be pretty awesome... IF it were possible to CLUA stuff into Wasteland 2! /nerdy snort Hey Cantousent, 1998 called. It wants its game engine back!

Finally giving EUIV a try. Not sure how I waited this long to try it.

Honestly, this sort of build is one I've been working with since my second run-through of the beta, and it wasn't a meta-gaming build at all. I actually didn't understand all of the potential pros and cons at that time. I don't think CHA even granted an XP bonus in that early release. My reasons for choosing the build were more roleplaying oriented, since I liked the idea of having a team member who wasn't much of a combatant, but could contribute significantly in other ways. I didn't want 7 combat clones in my party. I'm also rather OCD about wanting to complete as much of the game as possible, and that means having lots of smart characters and lots of skills. I don't like missing speech checks, or an opportunity to fix someone's broken well with mechanical repair, even if the pay off is negligible. For my part at least, my intent was never to insinuate that this sort of build is superior, essential or even necessary. I'm sure you will do just fine with a more balanced build. You would do just fine with a team of fully combat optimized 18+ CI guys (more than fine, in fact). So from that perspective I don't understand why there is a "debate" at all about this. At the end of the day, play the game in the way that you enjoy. If the "Charismatic Genius" build sounds enjoyable. Play it and have a good time. If it sounds like an anathema, avoid it at all costs. Whatever you do, just make sure you're having fun doing it. That's what these games are meant for, after all.

Err, than clearly I'm not going to be interested in their new game. I've pretty much been done with Blizzard for a while anyway.

Welcome to being the first person on my ignore list Gromnir. I made a few comments based on my experience with the game a while back (which is around 400 hours). People can take them or leave them. You're the only person who doesn't seem to get that. You share your subjective opinions like you have found some objective truth about how people should enjoy the game, and in the midst of that make incorrect claims and incoherent points. I will be quite pleased never to see another post from you again.

If it's not a single player, party-based tactical RPG I have no interest. I can't really tell what type of game it is from glancing at those videos, but guessing it's some multi-player focused sort of nonsense.

Over the course of my games I have seen PLENTY of critical failures, for which mechanical repair could be used to potentially correct. No gaming of the system required. Still, this is not the same thing as saying mechanical repair is a great source of xp, compared to several of the other non-combat skills. I've said several times that some are better than others for generating xp, which Gromnir conveniently seems to overlook. But, MR is a *potential* source of non-combat xp, and the intent of my original post was to list all of those without prejudice, though I accidentally left weaponsmithing off the list. EDIT: Passing thought... but your best opportunity to get xp from mechanical repair is with Jaime the Robot. I managed to keep him alive well into CA, and got a lot of mileage of MR during that time. Also, for me part of the fun is figuring out how to build my team so that every single non-combat skill is represented in my team. And I have done so in all of my run-throughs (4 during the beta (2 on Supreme Jerk), and 2 during the full release (1 on Supreme Jerk). If combat was really difficult, I might rethink this, but since it isn't, optimizing for a stronger combat team actually makes the game less enjoyable, as combat becomes so trivially easy.

/Sigh. I never said that mechanical repair was a great skill for generating xp.... You know what? Screw it. It's not worth my time to reply.

Says the guy who is making incohesive points and sharing incorrect information about the game. I'll join you in wrapping this up with a "whatever".

I think that's what he's saying. That's not correct. In fact, mechanical repair potentially gives that lockpicker another chance to get some xp, since critical failure otherwise ends the xp opportunity for the lockpicker (unless you're save scumming, of course).

in retrospect, giving all the good skills to the high charisma leader is arse backwards as it is gimping everybody but the leader. the benefit of the charisma boost is largely negligible, so giving all your best xp generating skills to one ranger is effective gimping all those other rangers. oh, sure, mathematically you get most benefit from the charisma boost by dropping the skills into one character, but to do so is ultimately self defeating as you is going to be giving leveling advantages to likely your least effective combat ranger and you will not be seeing any real advantages from doing so until At Least 1/2 into the game. So let's say you went balls to the wall with this character and gave them 10 INT and 8 CHA. Skills might be lockpicking, demolitions, sniper rifle, leadership and kiss ass (with less INT I would expect less skills assigned to that character). we contemplated such a character, for about five minutes. heck, we were trying to get hp jr. to recognize the mistake you is making and he never did. he wanted to compare his leader to his "best character" while seeming to forget that his leader were necessarily his worst character. so you wanna show us we ain't gimping party? *chuckle* ok, le'ts go balls to the walls and end up with a character that gots 10 int and 8 cha. what kinda ap and ci does that character get? so, to build a character that will indeed start getting a few extra levels than the rest of the party by mid point of the game, you gotta turn that ranger into relative dead weight in combat.... which is fine. is a quasi-rpg, so if you wanna make a single character with terrible combat contributions, that is okie dokie. the thing is, as enoch notes, you ain't genuine enhancing your remaining ranger's combat efficacy by turning your charisma monkey into your party gimp. again, the insular mathematical advantage is to make such a skill & charisma monkey, but that mathematical advantage only exists outside actual gameplay. as soon as combat starts, and combat is a very large % o' the potential gameplay, the mathematical advantage evaporates. you can , of course, make a more combat efficacious charisma monkey, but doing so necessitates reducing intelligence or charisma, which largely nullifies the advantages o' such a character. furthermore, as you should be able to see from our screenie and feedback on this issue, skill choice is far more important than even two or three points o' charisma. Well, since I easily beat the game on supreme jerk, I can safely say that your assertion that I'm making "a mistake" is unfounded. I have no problem admitting that a 10 INT 8 CHA character is almost certainly going to be your weakest combat character, but who cares? You can have up to 7 characters, and combat is *totally* doable with some non-combatants on the team. And I never claimed that I would be "enhancing my remaining ranger's combat efficacy" by having a less combat oriented character on the team, so I'm not sure what you're on about with that point. Trying to steer your response back on track, your point that I previously responded to was that by giving non-combat skills to my CHA character I would end up gimping "the party" and "gimping everyone BUT the leader". So why are you now trying to back that up by explaining that I will be gimping the high CHA character, pointing out low CI and such? In relation to the party, what relevance does that one character's CI or AP have? "The party" will still have plenty of non-combat skills they can spread around so the more combat oriented characters have additional sources of xp, which is what I pointed out. I neglected to mention weaponsmithing, so thanks for including that in the list. Sorry, but you're really off point here. Clearly some skills are richer in xp opportunities than others, but as I stated previously, you can adjust who gets what as you see fit. As for mechanical repair you are incorrect about xp being transferred from one character to the other. This skill actually creates an additional xp opportunity each time. The sequence is 1) critical failure (no xp), 2) mechanical repair (xp on success), 3) retry original skill check (xp on success).

No it's not. Morover the latest poll results show that that kill XP proponents are nothing but a vocal minority. Is that what the latest poll results tell us? Really? Out of 262 voters, 139, which is 53% of the total population voted FOR combat xp. How do you figure that's a vocal minority?

in retrospect, giving all the good skills to the high charisma leader is arse backwards as it is gimping everybody but the leader. the benefit of the charisma boost is largely negligible, so giving all your best xp generating skills to one ranger is effective gimping all those other rangers. oh, sure, mathematically you get most benefit from the charisma boost by dropping the skills into one character, but to do so is ultimately self defeating as you is going to be giving leveling advantages to likely your least effective combat ranger and you will not be seeing any real advantages from doing so until At Least 1/2 into the game. I think "gimping" is going too far, since there are so many non-combat skills to go around. Other characters will still have the opportunity to gain plenty of non-combat xp as well. At most your high CHA char is going to have 2, maybe three of these skills, as they still need a weapon skill and leadership, and possibly one of the ass skills. So let's say you went balls to the wall with this character and gave them 10 INT and 8 CHA. Skills might be lockpicking, demolitions, sniper rifle, leadership and kiss ass (with less INT I would expect less skills assigned to that character). That still leaves you with safecracking, outdoorsman, surgeon, field medic, mechanical repair (can be used quite a bit to correct a lot of critical failures), and brute force, alarm disarm to provide non-combat xp to your other characters. Most of those offer lots of xp opportunities. But sure, if you'd rather your top combat guy have demolitions instead, adjust to your liking. I'm just saying that if you're going to invest in CHA, putting in those higher xp yielding non-combat skills, vs. say all 3 ass skills which typically offer party xp anyway, makes the investment pay off better. And furthermore, there are ways to make that character fairly combat effective by boosting their CI over the course of the game. Bumping awareness and reserving CI boosting trinkets for this character can really help to get them into the fights more.

On the topic of having high CHA characters, well, first, there's more to it than just giving a character high charisma. You want them to have high charisma AND plenty of non-combat skills that grant xp (e.g. demolitions and lockpicking) A 10 CHA character who is doing several of the key non-combat skills compared to a 1 CHA character who isn't can easily end the game with a good 6 level divide between them. Is this alone worth the CHA, investment? I guess that's open to interpretation, but when you add into that the huge radius of leadership influence, it looks a lot better. I realize that the bonus isn't huge, but when you're giving that bonus to SIX other characters, it makes a difference. It makes head shots a lot safer, and/or firing at a foe behind cover a fair amount easier. I think I'm probably more inclined to stick with around 8 CHA for my leader going forward though.

My experience is that the reduction to rogue chance does not require proximity. The bonus to hit does. It's been that way since beta, and to the best of my understanding still works that way now.

Oh no, and then it is even the weakest Fallout game. Well, if you rule out Fo3 that is. I purchased FO1, FO2 and FOT as a "set" on Steam, but Tactics seems to best replicate that squad-based feel that WL2 has, which is what I was looking for. So far I'm enjoying it, but after completing a mission I pretty much have to stop playing and do something else for a while. Each one feels a little bit like delivering a baby (okay, not that I'd actually know, being male and all). It's rewarding, but I have to work up to the next one. I'll likely try the other titles at some point in the future.

Fallout Tactics. My first Fallout game ever. Enjoying it very much. Playing on hard difficulty.

I think Indira is looking for a PoE game that is a lot like DAI, DS3, NWN2/SoZ, WL2, all the IE games (did I miss any) all at the same time!

Thanks for the post Brandon, and the updates on things to come. This is exactly the sort of post/info that I think a lot of folks have really been missing. Much appreciated.

That's a bad one. That one hasn't happened to me before in my play throughs, happily.

I think the idea of health and endurance are okay as they are now. How about they just stop filling up the character portrait with red, and choose some other more appropriate color. Maybe switch the red and green that are present currently. Keep it simple. Switching the locations as you suggest below could work too, but I'm not sure that you need to swap the names. Just make it so that when a green bar on the left hits zero during combat, that character is knocked out (still called endurance). When the character's portrait fills with red, that character is dead (no more health).

Well you help make the point right there! If it doesn't add much to leveling, then dont put it in the game. Keep it simple! Exploring is great, and I will be all over the maps to see artwork, find quests, and hidden items. Throwing miniscule xp my way for walking down path #2 feels like preschool. Disagree that this helps make the point. All he saying is that the additional xp won't unbalance the game. That's not an argument for removing it. Gaining xp is a positive experience in a game like this, but you want the amounts to be in balance. So what we're seeing here seems to be all good.

So in other words, you love it when a plan comes together?

WL2 combat is great, and I think combat in TToN will be greatly improved due to being turn based.

Not to be a broken record, but they will achieve the goal.