Commitment Tissues

Is it still possible to build a high damage paladin?

So as I understand it if a paladin acts according to their faith as the player character it increases the effectiveness of the faith and conviction talent. But do hired paladins and Pallegina also benefit or suffer from decisions made by the group, increasing the need for the untroubled faith talent?

There were communities which had Baldur's Gate 2 PVP fights using modded games. Apparently it was a lot of fun.

I could be mistaken, I might have it confused with another IE game. The 4th wall breaking thing is definitely IWD1 though.

In IWD1 when you clicked on one of your party members repeatedly they eventually broke the fourth wall and told you to piss off (you need to have them set to 'always talk' in the options menu). They had a surprising amount of character. I have to say I didn't like the female voice sets though. I eventually gave my female party members male voice sets because they became rather annoying.

As I understand it a chanter's phrases have a linger period which may expire before the chanter reactivates the phrase (assuming another long phrase has been used in concurrence). Is it possible to sustain two or more phrases without any expiration of effects through having a high intelligence (which presumably increases linger time)?

So does this mean that a chanter's phrases can become redundant if you activate abilities which overlap? For instance if your deflection buff phrase is active but your fighter activates its personal deflection buff they won't stack but rather one will become useless? And what happens if a barbarian activates a -accuracy +damage buff and a chanter has active a +accuracy phrase, is the resultant accuracy modification for the barbarian the single chanter buff (because it's higher) or the debuff and the buff added together?

I hope horrible horrible things happen to you. Look, child, this game isn't for you. If you just want camp badly written elves performing sexual favours for one another within some trite fantasy universe with sh*te consolised game mechanics then go and play some bioware games. There have been an enormous number of bad 3D rpgs released in recent years, why are you complaining about the ONLY mainstream one which isn't? So much crap has been released in accord with your awful tastes and yet you still seek to rob the rest of us of a good pc rpg. Why am I even bothering to argue with some twelve year old? look at what the internet has reduced me to...

It doesn't function like chain lightning. Yeah, I can honestly say that the classes aren't going to be made boring to play for the sake of balance. Their Focus mechanic wasn't ARPG-inspired at all. It was inspired by the common A/D&D power point resource that a lot of psionics-oriented classes have and the melee flavor of the soulknife class. Okay, I'll try to keep the faith. I suppose nothing will be clear until gameplay footage is released.

This update was surprisingly disappointing. I assumed that the cipher would be a more specialised or nuanced version of an enchanter (even though I was already aware it would be close range based on previous comments). But what we have here seems to be a class with some arpg-like resource building mechanic ("focus") and nukes by another name. You can call it Ectopsychic Echo and write lots of fluff about soul/mind control or what have you but if it functions like chain lighting then all you have at the end of the day is just some boring nuker. Don't tell me 95% of the spells and spell like abilities in this game are just generic damage attacks with some weak added status effects here and there? JE Sawyer can you honestly say that these classes aren't going to be made boring to play for the sake of balance? (in a single player game no less) I used to enjoy using status effects and non damage spells to fight. Figuring out how to kill a seemingly insurmountable enemy with unusual combinations of abilities is one of the funnest aspects to rpg's, and rather peculiar to the genre. Sometimes it was overpowered sometimes underpowered, is that really such an awful thing Sawyer? I really don't want to play another awful modern "rpg" which removes (streamlines) stats and forces you to spam very similar damage spells the entire game.

Stoic Studios seem to have done a great job with The Banner Saga, but their PR appears to be somewhat dysfunctional. A lot of people were upset about the early pvp release (despite Stoic making clear from very early on what would happen) and there were many complaints about it being "pay to win" even though it's just about the least "pay to win" a free to play game could possibly be. Their updates have been infrequent but now they're gearing up for the single player release some reassuringly forthright write ups have been published by the developers. The game mechanics and art design choices have been intelligent and focused thus far, it's these things which speak most about the competence of the developers rather than how many bullshots they can send to hack games journos. I'm not entirely convinced that there will be much in the way of sophisticated game play during the traveling caravan periods but as far as the turn based strategy element is concerned they've shown that they have completely the right approach. I wouldn't be surprised if torment failed to live up to expectations given how long they seem to be procrastinating about quite fundamental game play mechanics (eg. do we even know whether it's going to be turn based or real time with pause?). And some of the early fluff seems as though would be very hard to turn into real game play. How many games promise super reactivity and how many actually deliver? Star citizen appears fairly unfocused and makes lots of promises but have, by far, the largest budget. I have no idea how that will turn out. Faster than light has probably been the best managed, though there have been a few other releases I'm not really familiar with.

Is anybody else of the opinion that the building shown in the OP is too bright? It doesn't look real enough and appears to stick out.

Why can't suboptimal choices just be suboptimal choices? Why do players who make elementary mistakes need to be accommodated? there's a learning curve in every game and starting off making bad decisions is part of the natural progression. If someone chooses to skill two of their characters to craft let them rue their mistake. The item durability mechanic does feel tacked on as mentioned previously. Why does there need to be a money sink? it shouldn't be difficult to create a scarcity of resources in a single player game, no one is bot mining here. I wish more games would just adopt a dwarf fortress or path of exile style economy with bartering and no gold pieces. Having to click the repair/gold-sink button at a camp or blacksmiths every two hours will add nothing worthwhile to the game imo. Edit: I imagine a durability system might possibly work well if it were a lot more severe. Such mechanics could create some more interesting resource management situations If weapons and armour could be destroyed or progressively become less effective as they wore down (and couldn'e be repaired). But I don't see how these half measure mechanics create any interesting situations.

Sigh, I've already seen the rezzed stuff. Hopefully the next update is more substantial. I'm off to cut myself in the bathtub.

I have to say I'm very surprised at the people who actually liked the dragon age/nwn style ui's and disapprove of this fine example of a ui you've shown to us. Modern rpg ui's are horrible; they have no character, are jarring and aren't even particularly functional. Obsidian have absolutely taken the correct approach to ui design. It might be because I grew up with infinity engine games and also because I've been playing dwarf fortress on and off for years but I find the old ui's to be very usable. Engage your brain and you might find that it only takes a few minutes to learn how to navigate them. In my opinion the ugly dragon age style ui's are a symptom of the general thoughtlessness and lack of taste shown in all other aspects of many modern rpgs (the awful gameplay, writing etc). Having said that I'm sure some improvements can and will be made (but nothing that deviates from the goal of having appropriately solid and weighty stones adorning the edge of my screen). Specifically I would prefer more of the turquoise and brown that can be seen between the menu options and for the portraits to seem more a part of the ui, perhaps they should be given the impression of being sunken into the interface. Also, less wood effects more stone, vines and tiles (with emphasis on the tiles).