ShadowPaladin V1.0

Best of luck unless your a smuggler or you take Mission along to disarm all the mines. Of course other classes can buy them, but then thats money that cant be spent on other things. For smugglers they are like free items. Yep well after that beating you got on volumetric emcumberance it dosnt suprise me you would want to keep your head down. You asked why there are sub bosses and I gave you a logical answer. Common sense dictates that if you live in a dangerous world you have two choices. Fight or run away. Look at the SW characters. Leia is a diplomat, but she can still handle a blaster when the situation calls for it. Solo is a smuggler but he still packs a heavy blaster for when his pursuasion skills fail. What does this tell you ? It should tell you that even if you choose a non combat career you still need to know how to take care of yourself. Lets say your a powergamed talkie character who cant fight their way out of a paper bag. You walk into the raider base and you fail your roll, and your attacked at a severe disadvantage. Of course you reload. Now if you actually knew how to fight you might just be able to win even though your first choice approach has failed. Which is not only more rewarding its not totally cheap which is what using reload to allow a character to survive is. If anyone can actually talk their way through FO without reloading I would be very impressed. So you have a path which is totally dependant on the fact you can cheat. Woohoo great design that.

So ? Who says you have to have them in every situation. A smuggler is much more likely to be able to aquire a stockpile of mines because of all those extra skill points. Those mines are great for leveling the playing field. The point to them is they are the sub bosses and as such they are stronger than the rank and file and have access to better equipment. Unless you run the whole army yourself then you need to deligate. If you build a character that cant handle themselves on purpose then you have no one to blame but yourself. How likely do you think it is that you can talk your way through every encounter without abusing the reload feature ? Personally I cant think of anything more cheap and underhanded than having to rely on that for success.

No more unbalancing than someone who dosnt have any sneak or pick lock skills having to hack their way through blast doors and announce their presence to all and sundry. The Smuggler has advantages outside of combat when they have no choice but to fight thats the price they pay for being a Smuggler. Its not like you cant use your skills to lay mines or disable droids or a multitude of other things. Your basically asking for all the advantages with none of the disadvantages no matter how you try to spin it.

That was the best part of EPII, which really isnt saying much. Did you think Yoda carried the lightsaber just for show ?

Still you are a self confessed fanboy I just read that MS bought WOTC wonder if its true because that could throw all sorts of interesting spanners in the works.

Depends on which definition of realistic you are using. For modern combat most hand weapon encounters take place around 15 feet appart. If there is no cover its not like you have any option. Because with fewer Jedi and the destruction of the Sith it would then be a purely blackmarket/bounty hunter item. Star Wars is a pretty static universe as far as technology goes. 4000 thousand years before EP1 they are using blasters. At the end of EP VI , still using blasters. 4000 years before EP 1 they have FTL travel and they still have it with very little change 4000 years later. Why would you outfit an entire army in cortosis when there are only a handful of Jedi(even less after EPII). The droid army was taken down by destroying its control centre. Not by hacking it appart on the battlefield. At the time of the StormTroopers the only active Jedi was on their side anyway. It's hardly a lame excuse its simply a demontration of how weapons technology follows the needs of the times. Me a bioware fanboy LOL. Your mistaking me for Voloun I think. Just because the implementation of cortosis dosnt fit with your personal little Jedi fantasy dosnt make it wrong or badly done.

NWN and KOTOR work like that too. Probably on 5 or 6 second turns like in the IE games. KOTOR is 4000 years before the films and Jedi are relatively common. Hence you have large numbers of weapons with cortosis weave in them. After the purge when there are hardly any Jedi left and they are rather concerned with staying out of sight you no longer need it.

I kind of felt like that at the end of KOTOR. Didnt have anything that could disable the tanks so it turned into beat on Malek till he runs off and repeat until he ran out tanks. Not that satisfying and nothing like the grand Jedi clashes of SW , or even the JK seires. That happened to me when I was doing minimum seasons on CC. Should have known when it took nearly 2 hours to kill the meteor parasite. But I agree if you have followed the main plot you should at least have a chance of killing the end boss no matter what your chosen build. Quite a few people had trouble with Malak. If you have drain life then its not even a contest because you just drain the pods before he gets the chance. But when its a one on one fight I think you have to pay much more attention to how the end battle is structured and allow for various builds.

I'm not sure about that one.. One of the things I enjoy most about the JRPG's are those three stage end boss battles. I get more of a feeling of accomplishment than from any of the BG's IWD's or pretty much anything non Japanese for that matter. The one in Skies of Arcadia is phenomenal. As is the one against your namesake in FFVI .Of course they do tend to be more stand up fights than the staged battle at the end of KOTOR where Malak is artificially enhanced by those annoying pods. People find fun in different things. I think you really have to stretch the credibility of most game worlds to enable a game to be finished without conflict. Playing a coward basically entails reloading whenever you fail your speech roll and is really cheap anyway.

It's too artificial for my tastes. It makes the assumption that the NPC's are there to do what you want them to do , rather than as complete individuals which exist in that world. My phillosophy is that all paths should be the best path at some point in the game but likewise there should always be points where your chosen path is a liability too. I dont mind talking either. As long as the NPC gets something out of it which makes it a worthwhile option for them. Rather than the PC just arriving making whatever speech roll they need and the NPC bowing to their every whim for no other reason.

Same with the dragon in IWD II. If you send enough disintergrates at it one of them usually gets through :D I never once looked at the combat readout when playing KOTOR I went purely on the on screen feedback. I think the NPCs should take the same sort of approach as a player would. Once you have a confirmed failure you normally switch tactics and try something else although when it comes to partial immunities thats not always the case. An NPC should do the same. I dont like the idea of the NPC having godlike knowledge over what your party has equipped and automatically exploiting that advantage. I do recall playing an FF game where the boss used scan and then on the second round tore into the characters weakness with a vengeance. But since I had the same tools it was fine. The boss wasnt cheating so much as being clever. Wouldnt flurry depend on what sort of weapon you had equipped for the extra attack? I can see how powerblast would be very effective for blasters at +10 but thats less than minimum damage for some lightsabers.

Never found a use for it. It's the one that addes +5 to damage isnt it ? There was another one which had a chance of stun which worked rather well for my smuggler except on certain things. Nothing wrong with that. Malak shouldnt know what the player has equiped in advance. As long as the AI dosnt simply settle into a pattern of fail - fail - fail -repeat. Then having it make mistakes is quite a realistic thing to do. Its like when you play FF. You know that most bosses are immune to the heavy hitter stuff like demi and death but there are still one or two who are not, so its always worth a try. Its always worth a chuckle when a 33,333 level 25 boss goes down to level 5 death I agree dosnt fit the setting in the slightest. You need a very "grey" world to make chatting your way through to the end a viable option.

Well replace pacifist with coward and its correct. However that was never going to be an option in KOTOR because your primary foe hates your guts and wants you dead. And his "army" is comprised of zealots and robots which really dont care about anything outside of their programming.

Most things are :D However the point of being a pacifist is to avoid taking lives and encourage others to do likewise through non violent means.Not simply avoiding combat and or taking life directly. So while you can make a character who seeks to avoid combat it cant be a pacifist in either of the FO games or most other games. So renaming it the "coward build" is closer to the truth.

Yes but KOTOR was more than managable anyway so they would have just been fluff in KOTOR. Like most of the options in TOEE were because the AI was too stupid to either use or counter them..

(C'mon, LT. Deep breaths. *Deep breaths*) I did not ask you if you could RP it, Volo. Now, since you can build that pacifist char, can you play it fully (i.e, avoiding combat)? You have your definitions crossed. Thats not a pacifist thats a coward.

So adding those extra active feats in would make KOTOR as involved as NWN ? Although except on a few occasions those were skills I used purely for something to do rather than because they were required. Not a huge fan of adding things just because they look "pretty". Actually I'd go one further and say because the AC's in KOTOR are so low and the BaB's are so high there is very little point in ever not using flurry or the blaster equivelent.

When no one can agree on a definition its a good idea to fall back on the dictionary one. 1. belief in the peaceful resolution of conflicts: a belief that violence, war, and the taking of lives are unacceptable ways of resolving disputes Which generally rules out being a pacifist in FO 1&2. Even if you are not pulling the trigger and or sticking the knife in you are taking lives by your actions. Dont think you would find the EQ defintion of tank in a dictionary

Well what are the reasons it's more simple ?

It's only different if you add in the party dynamic. Otherwise its very similiar. Especially to IWD II with its active feats. Curious that. What did you like about IE combat ? (my guess would be the party dynamic). Not sure what you mean by silly. If it worked for lightsabers it must by default work for other melee. Unless your of the opinion that a lightsaber should be able to cut through other weapons. Star Wars is generally lacking in weapons of interest anyway. Perhaps they should borrow some from the JK series to add a bit more variety.

At which point you have full control over the NPC's actions. Not a difficult thing to comprehend really is it ? Oops looks like that one went over your head too.Perhaps Voloun will get it as it was addressed at him. If you remove the magic and the magic items from D&D there isnt a great deal left. Most of the tactics of D&D comes from the proper use of magic and magic items in CRPGs. While it may be playable its no longer very interesting. Because if you lose the magic then you lose all the magic creatures and everything related to it. Perhaps thats why Fantasy is more popular. There is just more you can do with it. Bioware did what they set out to do. Whether its something you like or not , really not a concern. Nice try but its hardly a combat example is it. In D&D having a variety of weapons is second nature. If you dont then your going to pay for it at some point. Like when your bowmen come up against a group of skeletons. Its really easy I was there on the Xbox boards when they were first telling everyone how wonderful the various combat animations were and how they linked together to create cinematic combat the likes of which hadnt been seen before. Search the forums you might even find the early posts, it never was that active. Oh unless you have some problem with paragraphs quit the selective quoting its a pain to edit.

KOTORs is preferable just for the fact you can actually control the NPC's. B) It's important to seperate the D&D'ness from the actual combat system though. D&D is more varied because you have a much more diverse enemy line up with very different abilities. Which in turn requires you to adapt more. This becomes apparent in the various magic items you can aquire to fulfil specific tasks. Magic in D&D has a huge impact on how combat plays out. While force powers sort of simulate magic, its not in the same fashion. Likewise you really dont see people in SW carrying around different weapons for different situations. A blaster is a blaster all that changes is the damage it can do. There is nothing particulary "interesting" about one like with D&D weapons. Likewise , even a lightsaber customised to the n'th still dosnt have the same intrigue as finding a holy avenger or putting together a hammer of T bolts from parts. From the start the goal was to make cinematic combat which gave the feeling of playing in your very own SW movie. I'd say they met their goal there. I'm sure they could add some more active feats without altering that fundamental very much.

When I finally find an RPG with difficult combat I will let you know Well it depends if those improvements lead them disliking the combat or not. KOTORs combat flowed beautifuly and had a very cinematic feel to it.

But he is correct. Most people were happy enough with KOTORs combat not to feel the need to complain. Those who are complaining are for the most part those who didnt like the IE/NWN combat either, which really wouldnt suprise anyone as they follow the same basic model.

Why do you think they legged it from the Droid destroyers in EP I. As for the droids I tossed them around with force wave or something along that line. Not a problem.