Yonjuro

I made an all fighter party consisting of two tanks tuned to absorb damage and to engage as many enemies as possible. Two DPS fighters in lighter armor tuned to do as much damage as possible and two mostly backline firearms types (who also engaged in melee as needed). It was a fairly strong group with some scrolls and potions etc. for some of the harder fights to make up for the lack of casters. I tried this mainly to get a better understanding of how to tune builds for different purposes.

I just completed the survey (and I am looking forward to PoE2). In case anyone from Obsidian reads this: The survey was a bit limited on the types of questions it asked, so I will offer an opinion here. The specific items in the box are less important than the quality of the items. For example: Would I like a cloth map? Well, I would rather have a beautifully printed 8 1/2 X 11 (A4 for our European friends) paper map than a badly printed cloth map on whatever kind of cloth was in the PoE1 box. I would pay more for something I would like to own. Either spend the money to do it right, and charge what you need to charge, or don't bother. To put this another way, currently, based on my experience with PoE1, I don't plan to pay for a physical edition of PoE2.

Oh, I see. Yes, I agree with you. Sarevok, in BG1 for example.

I agree that this is difficult to pin down. You could rule out the alien example by including that the powers do not derive from technology but are inherent to the being. That way, another being couldn't just pick up a technology and become a god, though someone might believe that they are. I would also want to rule out the god constructs in PoE by saying that an actual god isn't constructed by lesser beings and so, new gods can't be invented and be actual gods even if they are objectively real and powerful. Regarding belief - how about Santa Claus? He is believed in and loved by millions and clearly has supernatural powers and delivers things to believers that other beings seem incapable of delivering. Is a Christian child who believes in Santa Claus committing blasphemy? Or, to choose an example believed by adults, there is John Frum, the figure of worship in the cargo cults who will bring prosperity to those who believe. It's the real world consequences of these things that make the questions interesting, including: the inquisition depicted in PoE formerly (and in some places currently), death for blasphemy in the real world organizing a whole society around a not actually divine character due to a misunderstanding.

Yes, sorry. SoA means Shadows of Amn, the original BG2 game and ToB means Throne of Bhaal, the expansion. You do have a good reason to kill the two dragons in ToB. I would recommend SoA and, since any version of BG2 probably comes with ToB included, it is probably worth playing through the whole thing at least once. There are a few problems with the story in ToB and it is a mostly linear progression (except for a point where you can choose which order to do two of the major parts and the optional Watcher's Keep dungeon). I found that disappointing after the free form exploration in large parts of BG1 and the large number of choices in SoA but the game play is still interesting.

What if an alien came to Earth, did some tricks and lots of sane people believed he was a god, then he leaves and dies and people continues to believe? I agree. I was trying to tighten up the original definition but, even with the extra condition, the definition isn't good enough.

*Fenixp chuckles*There's a local sect which believes in invisible space ships that dwell on Earth's orbit. The only thing you can really base definition of God on is context. Christians don't believe that Roman or Nordic gods are actually gods, because they sort of can't - so if you belong to a religion, your definition of God or god-like beings is going to be quite clear, to you anyway. If you're an atheist or agnostic, definition of God is going to vary by culture you're thinking/speaking of. Still, the basic definition, as with any word, varies by territory and ethnicity - in other words, "Gods are beings or entities that people believe to be gods" is about as accurate definition as you can get :-P Ok, but does that make that dog a god or not? It is an actual entity that, unlike a lot of entities that people consider to be gods, we could actually observe and that David Berkowitz sincerely believed was a god. That is why the definition based on what people believe seems too loose. When I used the word 'reality,' I meant that it would need to be believed by someone who is not clearly out of touch with reality. Of course, to decide if a claim actually coincides with reality we would need sufficient evidence, a high bar for a religious belief. How's this? A god is a being (or non-being) believed by enough people who don't show signs of mental illness (and also perhaps some who do) to be a god. Hmm, I'm not sure where that puts your local sect and their invisible spaceships....

That seems like too broad of a definition. David Berkowitz (better known as the Son of Sam killer) believed that a dog in his neighborhood was divine and was instructing him to kill people. Isn't that dog a god by your definition? Doesn't the belief need to be based on reality in some way?

Unfortunately based on your post it seems you've interpreted the (fantasy) game through a meta involving your own personal religious POV. Perhaps you'd be better served playing something which more slavishly follows your belief system? Also, there could still be actual gods in this world. What has happened so far is that the Engwithans found no evidence that the gods they were expecting to see were actually there so, rather than looking for the real answer, they constructed some gods in their own image (sacrificing actual people to do so) and went on a terror campaign to keep up the deception. The actual presence or absence of gods (apart from the constructed ones) is unknown but whether this world has gods or not, how is that story an atheist cliche?

When's the last time you played Baldur's Gate? Spoiler alert. Well, in SoA there are 5 dragons and you can speak to 4 of them without turning them hostile. The shadow dragon will always turn hostile but you have the option of sneaking past with the ward stone and you were warned about what would happen if you speak to the shadow dragon. ToB, of course, was a different story due to the (poor) plot. In ToB (plus Watcher's Keep), if I remember correctly, there are 2 that you can speak to without hostilities (the one in watcher's keep and the green dragon) and 2 that you can't (Abazigal and Draconis) but the latter 2 are part of the plot (so, given the poor plot in ToB, that's about the best you hope for?).

I agree. I backed PoE and enjoyed playing it. I completed it once. BG 1 and 2 I have spent more time playing than I would care to admit and I do feel that the whole BG package works better than PoE (so far). The thing is, if you were to ask me what to fix, I couldn't tell you. I think PoE has a better story in a lot of ways - it is certainly more nuanced and deals with complex issues in an interesting way. PoE is also visually beautiful. Do my good feeling for BG come from nostalgia for my childhood - nope, I don't think so. I was about 45 when I played BG for the first time and 50 when PoE was released. An old geezer like myself should like the complexity for the PoE story a lot more, but again, it didn't work as well for me. I'm not sure why, but here a few thoughts about why I liked BG - (spoliers for BG from this point forward): I think I cared more about the party NPCs in BG (especially BG2 but also BG1). Maybe perma death is a good thing in these games. I liked the free form adventuring aspect of BG1. I remember completing the final battle in my first play through and feeling a little bad that I had gotten two of my party members killed (it was Khalid and Dynaheir, so, in hindsight, I guess that wasn't a huge problem, but I digress). Several encounters in BG1 are with groups of assassins hired to kill your character. I guess I took that personally. It makes it more memorable than killing yet another group of whatever kind of monster. In BG2, memorable moments included, Mazzy eulogizing her former companions after killing the shadow lord. Reuniting with Imoen in spellhold (if you liked Imoen as a character and completed BG1 with her in your party, that was a well done scene - it would have been better if the story adapted to how you actually played, otherwise that scene could have been a complete non-sequitur). The conversations with each party member before facing Irenicus on the tree of life - each character reaffirms that they will finish this with you for reasons that make sense for each of them. There are a lot more, but this was just three random examples that came to mind.

Not exactly. You are missing one thing. In US law, a civil suit can only be brought by a plaintiff that has standing to sue. That is, a party who is hurt by something can sue over it. A recent suit against a high school was dismissed because the plaintiff had graduated before the case made it's way to court. The behavior of the school was deemed unlawful by the judge, but the case was dismissed because the plaintiff no longer had standing to sue. In the case of granting unlawful licenses to marry, no one is materially harmed so, no lawsuit. In this case, the plaintiffs had been denied a license they were legally entitled to, so they sued and won. The clerk was found in contempt for not following the judges order to grant the license (or even to not interfere with her subordinates who were willing to do it). I don't like the idea of jailing the clerk, but judges tend to not have a sense of humor about people refusing a to follow a court order, so I'm not really surprised. I don't know if the (federal) judge had authority to remove an elected official (county level - the state legislature would need to do that), so there may not have been a better option for the judge.

Not exactly. I think full voice acting and cutscene movies are annoying. Very annoying. So, I do care about it (and I don't want it). If Obsidian makes a pile of money on this game and invests it in a sequel, I would rather see the money go to things that will help the game (more content; better enemy ai etc.).

Wait... if god exists and trolls don't exist, how can we be sure this guy is a troll? He could also just be an idiot. Or a troll pretending to be an idiot. Or an idiot pretending to be a troll. But if science can not prove if he is a troll or not, doesn't that prove that god exists? And if god exists and thus, trolls don't exist, wouldn't the question if he is a troll be answered, which ultimately provides proof that god can not exist, which again throws up the question again if he is a troll? We are running in circles... Yes, I think that sums it up - that would make him a troll if and only if he is not a troll.

Some basic good philosofy here. Indeed God is Allmighty and any "proof" in a statement that He in any way could ever be wrong is of course false. This is why the scientific theories are replaced all the time. Lies dont stand the test of time. Which is why evolution theory that darwin had holds very little with evolution theory today. And that of today is allready fading and will be replaced by new lies. Who would know how and when the world started: 10 famous scientists who lived for 50 years with the knowledge and intelligence of 10 men, or God who knows all things (past, present and future) ? But the basic evidence shows God : in all of vast space we see there is only life on earth. 1 meter of rainforest has more life than 10 billion x billion miles of stars, planets etc : all humans can by dna be traced to one mother and one father : big bang has despite billions of dollars trying to prove it, stayed nothing more than a fantasy Only those, who in desperate measure want to deny God can come to a conclusion to do so. God is evident in everything. Not to mention the literal hundreds of prophecies who predates Christ by 4000-500 years all happen. If one reads and understands the bible then one knows that would be impossible to all happen at once without God. This is much better than your last post where you explicitly mentioned trolls. 10/10 for this one as a troll post. I actually couldn't tell if you were serious or not just from the text of this post since I have read similar things from people who weren't joking. Careful though, some people will only read this one post and go away thinking you are serious.

Not that I believe the young earth theory, but logically, if an all-powerful god created the universe, then that same all-powerful god created time (it being a function of the universe), which means dating anything accurate is dependent on whether god intervened (ie god could manipulate time), which would - presumably - be impossible to detect without god intervening to say "yeah, I did it". Therefore, the earth could date to 4.5 billion years, and yet also be 6000 years old at the same time, because god intervened. I've never understood people who believe in an all powerful god fear the data of science - it seems to so devalue the ability of god who they claim to be all powerful, really. One of the interesting things to me about PoE's setup is that yes the pantheon we're introduced to are gods created by man, but while the Engwithans - we're told - could find no proof a real god (or gods) existing, it doesn't remove the idea that there's actually other gods out there that the Engwithans could never see. Yes - that is one of the most interesting parts of the PoE world. The Engwithans stopped looking and made something up. The plot twist in the sequel might involve actual gods of the world who aren't happy about the invented ones. just saw this, so apologies for a reply coming so late, but we would hate such a direction for the plot. obsidian managed to get rid o' the traditional fantasy world pantheon by making 'em human constructs. add more gods simple sends us back to proverbial square one, no? if it were Gromnir writing, we would explore the eothas death a bit more. perhaps the gods were created not so much as individuals but as a system and the system is currently broken. unfortunately, real world calamity is resulting from the failed divine system. eventual, the player gets a chance to deal with the eothas problem in a variety o' ways. fix system, effective replacing eothas with a new deity construct. another option would be to fix w/o a new eothas; make so other deities can absorb the increased load. end system, terminating the power o' the gods... which wouldn't necessarily end belief in those gods. etc. *shrug* the thing is, we don't wanna know what obsidian is gonna do. we want for obsidian to do something we do not foresee, but having reached the conclusion and looking back on the entirety o' the story, we only then realize how all the myriad pieces finally fit together and we recognize that the way obsidian did were inspired. in any event, we don't want a turtles all the way down problem by adding additional deities. HA! Good Fun! Yeah, I don't think 'turtles all the way down' is necessarily satisfying either. I think that the interesting part is the 'we didn't find what we wanted so we made something up and stopped looking' angle. There are a lot of directions they could go with this and it will be interesting to see where it ends up. (It might end up with 'we still don't know' which is ok if it's well written).

And they are secretly represented by Wael. But you don't find out until act 3.

Not that I believe the young earth theory, but logically, if an all-powerful god created the universe, then that same all-powerful god created time (it being a function of the universe), which means dating anything accurate is dependent on whether god intervened (ie god could manipulate time), which would - presumably - be impossible to detect without god intervening to say "yeah, I did it". Therefore, the earth could date to 4.5 billion years, and yet also be 6000 years old at the same time, because god intervened. I've never understood people who believe in an all powerful god fear the data of science - it seems to so devalue the ability of god who they claim to be all powerful, really. One of the interesting things to me about PoE's setup is that yes the pantheon we're introduced to are gods created by man, but while the Engwithans - we're told - could find no proof a real god (or gods) existing, it doesn't remove the idea that there's actually other gods out there that the Engwithans could never see. Yes - that is one of the most interesting parts of the PoE world. The Engwithans stopped looking and made something up. The plot twist in the sequel might involve actual gods of the world who aren't happy about the invented ones.

^I've never met a young-Earth creationist, guess we don't have many round where I'm from. Same (And I'm myself and around christians daily) Yes, I agree that YECs are a very small minority (and it's encouraging that you and SW have never come across one). Certainly most of the major sects of Christianity accept the age of the earth and the theory of evolution by natural selection. I think the reason why there are still YECs (and that they are very loud about it) is that they feel that it is central to their beliefs for Adam and Eve to have been literal people. The reason it comes up so often is because YECs are actively attempting to get this old myth taught in U.S. pubic school science classes as a fact (Google for 'Ken Ham Ark Encounter' for one example if you are curious). I promise that if people like you (that is, non-delusional Christians) can convince people like Ken Ham (Christian flavored raving lunatics) to stop trying to undermine science education, people like me will stop bringing it up. We don't really care what you (or the Ken Hams of the world) believe if doesn't screw things up here in reality.

Could be. I'm not sure what you mean here. Fair enough. The point I was trying to make with those examples is that since the PoE gods are powerful, what people in the PoE believe about them doesn't matter that much. As you pointed out, these are real beings that can hurt anyone who doesn't do what they want.

That's what I was getting at with the Stalin example. If everyone learns the truth, so what? They are still stuck with a bunch of powerful beings just as eastern Europe was stuck with Stalin. The power structure hasn't really changed, so I think a new lack of belief doesn't really change anything, but it sounds like you are arguing the opposite. Isn't knowing the truth about the gods in the PoE world mostly irrelevant (w.r.t. maintaining societal order) when they are still powerful beings who can and do act in the world? Or, for another real world example, in times and places where apostasy was/is punishable by death (such as medieval Europe and some parts of the modern day Middle East, Central Asia etc.) there are very few admitted apostates because it's dangerous. The status quo doesn't change very quickly in those circumstances due to the threat of force but actual belief is irrelevant.

tomayto/Tomahto Sure, and no I wouldn't call Stalinist Russia an example of a healthy society (though, I suppose it was orderly). Stalin pretty much killed anyone he viewed as a competitor (including God). My societal health comment was referring to places like Japan, the Scandinavian countries etc. where there are low levels of religiousity in healthy (and orderly) societies. My point here is that becoming less religious doesn't seem to have harmed these societies. It's an interesting question, but as you said, in that world the gods have teeth. Even if the population learns the truth they still have a group of powerful beings to contend with. If we go back to your Stalinist Russia example, suppose a large percentage of the population went from being true believers in the revolution to deciding that Stalin was just a bastard stealing everything (which is probably exactly what happened). Nothing changes until the power structure changes. Going back to the renaissance, I think it's fair to say that the Borgia controlled papacy may not have fully believed the doctrines that they were upholding (or if they did, they had a strange way of showing it) but rather they were wielding power. If belief had suddenly completely fallen away in the general population, the same people would still have had a lot of power to ride out the (week or so) of social unrest. If a farmer who believes in the Flying Spaghetti Monster suddenly loses his belief, he may feel that harvesting his crop of durum wheat and grinding it into semolina flour is less meaningful than it used to be, but he is still going to do it because he needs to earn a living. Society marches on.

It is you who are delusional. 1000 years ago the bible said the earth was sphere. You scientists said it was flat. You were wrong. 500 years ago you said trolls existed. The bible said no. .... Trolls eh? Hmm, if only we had been able to find some evidence.....

If a god were to manifest in the natural world, one could prove that it existed. I agree that one can't disprove the existence of a god but one can disprove specific god claims e.g. the sun is not dragged across the sky behind the chariot of the the sun god. That doesn't prove that there is no sun god, just that the specific claim is false. Ok, ignore the first part of this message then. Why would the world fall into chaos? In our own world, less religious places haven't fallen into chaos; quite the reverse, they tend to score well in measures of societal health. In the PoE world, I would expect people to gnash their teeth for about a week and then get on with living life.

^I've never met a young-Earth creationist, guess we don't have many round where I'm from. Unfortunately YEC is not even the strangest belief somebody has tried to convince me of. (And, more unfortunately, some of these believers feel that their religious delusions should be taught in public school science classes too, but I digress). Certainly. It only becomes a delusion when it leads to provably false beliefs. I don't see how the mass murder and mass torture campaign could be the right thing to do even if the beliefs were true. Since they were false, it seems especially bad. This part doesn't seem like a moral gray area to me. From my point of view, presenting the philosophy of life associated with the deity could be a good thing if it was a good philosophy. Lying about it would be a bad thing. Not lying about it, but not telling the whole truth to a population not ready to hear it would be a gray area.