Gromnir

in bg, a fighter could get to level 7. that is a thac0 improvement o' +6 for the entire +80 hour game. an 18/91 str, which were kinda a target for most obsessive rollers. gave a +2 to thac0. +2 is damned signifficant, particularly if bg had been like tabletop where magic were rare... but it wasn't. between gaunlets o' weapon expertise and inevitable +2 weapon acquisition, and cost-nothing potions o' heroism... *shrug* magic stuff made the stat bonuses far less important than they coulda' been. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/70906-about-rolling-stats-like-the-old-ie-games/?p=1581587 am clearly not arguing against bg magic loot impact. however, a +2 change to thac0 and a +5 to damage were still significant as you could only reach level 7. HA! Good Fun! edit: most o' our post got destroyed by gremlins. weird.

"It's less than 9/10 of the top traded countries had, without sanctions." ... you can't be this obtuse. you is comparing sanctions ALONE, to the devaluation suffered by other nations. to make a valid comparison, you need add the impact o' sanctions to all those other nations-- add the lowball "Putin's estimate (of) 12.5-15% devaluation" to all the other nations and ask if impact were severe or significant or painful. is not as if russia woulda' been better off than your other non-specific examples o' other nations. even before sanctions and oil drop the ruble were falling. at best russia could hope for similar devaluation as those 9/10 countries... without sanctions and a backwards arse economy particular vulnerable to oil drop. you is forgetting your math- you forgot how to add. and just for fun instead of 9/10 nonsense: and again, has shown multiple times that you is the hypocrite with the context stripping. gonna get censored for spam if we keep posting same links and quotes. however, you simple pretending such posts don't exist or retreating to "yellow journalism" or whatever is yet another example that, " your inane response, "complete ignores actual problems o' the crisis, but nice try." your attempt to distract with irrelevancies after you make ridiculous assertions is amusing but predictable and tediously repetitive. we wish there were a way to add the chastisement you selective lifted from your quote o' Gromnir and add it to all responses to zor. sadly, the board software doesn't allow such." HA! Good Fun! ps the somali shilling actual did better than the dollar, but apparent ain't considered noteworty enough for the chart... and the amount it eclipsed dollar by were .14% or somesuch.

ranger can't get grandmastery... and why wouldn't you put all proficiency slots in bows for khalid? archery were overpowered, which led to nerfing by bis and bioware in iwd and bg2 respective, and khalid's stats, such as they were, lent themselves to ranged weapons. am believing you is correct that with level cap, khalid could only get 4 stars, which still gave him bonuses superior to minsc, but only by leveling. is likely the one situation where post level 1 decisions could overcome the advantages and importance o' initial attribute spreads + gear. HA! Good Fun!

the save bonus for wisdom was indeed included in the manual for every single ie game except iwd2, but it weren't actual in the game. however, you are correct that most o' the other attributes could significantly improve the paladin. int and wis could be dump stats, but you couldn't actually dump wisdom regardless o' the fact that it were complete useless to the bg paladin. HA! Good Fun!

khalid, with 5 stars in Longbows, were a better damage dealer than minsc... just saying. but he were not better than minsc at the beginning. you somehow stumbled into the one scenario in which leveling beyond first level could be significant. silly bg grandmastery gave +3 thac0, +5 damage and 5 attacks every 2 rounds... which is why bioware and black isle nerfed grandmastery. HA! Good Fun!

the one attribute that woulda/shoulda affected saves, at least in a limited way, were wisdom. "maj. def. adj." there were no actual maj. def. adj. in the ie games. no save bonus for con, wisdom, dex as with d&d 3e. and bg paladins got no divine grace saving throw bonus modified by charisma but rather a flat +2 on all saves. HA! Good Fun!

ironically, it doesn't. it is startling how many people that played the old ie games considered use of a character editor to be cheating, but multi-hour re-rolls to be part of the game, and fun as well. Di were an old ie fan that were around all the boards until five or six years ago. she were intelligent and liked bio romances (she were actual a professional romance novelist) and we liked Di very much. however, we never could understand her re-roll fascination. we pointed out that a character editor would get same results much faster. the observation/suggestion bothered her as she were certain we were being patronizing. we had same discussion many times over many years and it were hardly limited to Di and Gromnir. many/most o' the re-roll folks from the old boards would re-roll even if an editor were available. we don't understand it, but that were the reality. HA! Good Fun!

the kinda guy that uses a label maker device to make a label for his label maker... says "label maker"? HA! Good Fun!

agree complete. in the ie games, gear quickly supplanted attributes as the prime determining factor in deciding relative powha at identical levels. 'course the abundance o' optional side quests meant that leveling itself were extreme important and hardly a constant. HA! Good Fun!

I can't express how weird and unintuitive that is. it's a gameplay advantage rather than a reality based advantage. make damage for daggers (no short swords) and hatchets equal. okie dokie, now come up with a reason other than aesthetics to chose a hatchet over a dagger. *shrug* there were bound to be a few weapon qualities that felt a bit wrong. yeah, we agree the hatchet thing is a bit odd, but we can understand the difficulty obsidian were facing trying to make weapons balanced & unique. HA! Good Fun!

for old d&d, there were no meaningful class decisions after rolling up your character. there were no skills. you couldn't add attribute points at level 4. there were no feats or perks or whatever. other than spell book selection for mages, thief skills (which every player pretty much used identical) and weapon proficients (there were no grandmastery nonsense in d&d and ad&d 1e) level 1 choices were pretty much the beginning and end o' character development choices... and dual-classing or original bards were 'bout as likely as Gromnir sneezing out a 4 carat diamond. other than the role-playing o' the player, attributes and gear were all there were to distinguish one cleric from another. it took a Long time to level. gear were much more rare. *shrug* attributes were much more important in old tabletop. HA! Good Fun!

I ate 'em. Anyhow, now that I've had some sleep, I think I can marshal my thoughts better. My point about poverty, and this goes along the lines of what Gorth was saying, is that being stuck in the wheel well of the bus of life doesn't require any particular skin color. Grom had bad experiences at the hands of white folks. His example show that he took those experiences and transformed them into something good because of some of the breaks he had in life. Awesome! However, I would much rather celebrate his success at rising above hatred, even if sometimes he still falls into those ways, than defend folks for hating. I can understand some folks hating people of any particular group. A woman who was gang raped at a bar shouldn't assume all men are rapists, but she probably has a hard time not feeling animosity towards men. I can sympathize with her. It still ain't good. Even if I don't judge her, which I don't, my point would still remain that her feelings towards men aren't good for her. It's still something that detracts from her life. ...And, if she used her feelings as a way to excuse self destructive behavior, then the men who raped her would be causing her even greater harm after the fact than they did during the first assault. As for me, I think I've discussed enough of my childhood except for one thing that may or may not be humorous. (If it's not, bite me!) My biological father was half Mexican by heritage. My grandmother was born and raised in Mexico. It doesn't come up all the time, but when it's come out that I'm part Mexican, I've had people call me a 'wannabe' and all manner of ignorant crap. Hell, I've had Mexican descent relatives tell me I'm not *really* Mexican. Now, anyone who's met a significant number of actual Mexicans, knows that you get a pretty broad range of skin colors, hair colors, and eye colors. Yeah, by the it got to my generation, we looked a hell of a lot more white bread than good ol' Nana. Never really bothered me. Just kind of weird. am not defending hatred, but pretend that it doesn't exist or isn't warranted strike us as equal wrong. it would be nice if we could all be saints (maybe not actually) but the reality is that if you suffer because of ___________ or is disenfranchised, ridiculed and functional segregated, chances are the you is gonna dislike the person, organization or class that you see as responsible for your suffering. https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/58301-the-humanitarian-mission-in-lybia/page-3?do=findComment&comment=1132855 we got all kinds o' reasons to dislike white folks and the US and that guy who vandalized our family truck back in 76 by smashing windows, slashing tires and spray painting racial slurs on it while we were in the grocery store in town. even so, from reading a few o' our posts, it is kinda obvious that we ain't acting like a victim, and we ain't blaming white folks. when the white-cops-are-killing-unarmed-minorities threads pop up, Gromnir typical defends the cops (or at least we point out that whatever injustice occured, it ain't the result o' malice by The Powers That Be.) when nutter conspiracy theorists make claims that the military industrial complex manipulates the system to keep women and minorities on the bottom rungs o' the ladder o' society, we is at the forefront heaping scorn on 'em. we has actual litigated on behalf o' nazis and white power groups in spite o' the fact that such folks make our skin crawl. am even willing to say that we hate nazis without feeling the need to apologize, but that didn't stand in our way o' advocating for them and their First Amendment rights. people who suffer at the hands o' ___________ will very likely come to hate their tormentors. am not saying that is good, but some good can come from it. on the other hand, act as if Gromnir and other minorities who has suffered real and genuine bigotry should just, you know, let go o' our anger likes we is jedi or somesuch is pure fantasy. there is gonna be anger and hate. accept it and try to make something from it. accept that perhaps there is cause for anger and try and fix the problems. but tell folks they shouldn't feel hate for the systemic obstacles that still makes life a whole lot tougher for them is, we believe, asking too much o' most folks. we tell our younger family members not to make excuses. we tell 'em that being angry is ok, but being a victim is unforgivable. we tell 'em not to respond to bigotry with bigotry and that the best way to get back at those who did you wrong is to prove how wrong they were about you. as a minority or woman you want a complete level playing field? it ain't gonna happen. is no way to turn back the clock so that black, indian, chinese or whatever americans received the same advantages as white americans when attempting to get home loans +70 years ago and more. for generations, their families has had advantages and passed on advantages to future generations. is still old (and not so old) white men (the guys who most often run business) who thinks latinos or asians can't handle certain managerial tasks as well as whites. is clearly more than a few folks who still thinks women is less suited to be successful in the business world. #@$% 'em. it ain't gonna be complete fair for your generation or the next, but guess what, the major hurdles to your success were removed in the 60s and 70s. b!tching and moaning is just gonna prove to the bigots that they were right when they claimed you couldn't hack it. so #@$% 'em. be angry and prove 'em wrong. maybe in two generations, or three or four, the playing field will genuine be level, but if folks accept their victim status without overcoming the remaining obstacles with their own will (and anger), then 100 years from now we will still be facing the same problems. tell us the anger isn't justified? *snort* doesn't matter. tell or ask somebody not to be angry is pointless. what you say don't matter. is just air. what you feel don't matter, cause feelings is even lighter than air. it's what you do that counts. HA! Good Fun!

am not sure that is fair. depends on the system and depends on the gm/dm and it depends on many other factors. for instance, with original d&d as well as ad&d, leveling occurred extreme slow; it took literal years o' regular gameplay for us to get our first level 9 character in ad&d, and am pretty certain we never managed to get past level 7 with a white box d&d character. also, magic gear from bg and the ie games woulda' been derided as monty haul by any old-timey pnp gamer. the presence o' relative over-powered gear in the ie games resulted in the diminished importance of bonuses and penalties from attributes. also, while some ie gamers may find it hard to believe, but there were, particularly in the 80s, dozens if not hundreds o' pnp game systems, some o' which may not have even had traditional abilities. regardless, in old d&d pnp, original ability scores could be extreme important for many years o' gameplay. the ie games didn't actual reflect any o' our pnp d&d campaigns... which is likely a good thing as we doubt such stuff woulda' sold very well. HA! Good Fun! ps Gromnir is adamant opposed to rolling stats.

dunno. we think it is ok to hate white folks for past generational transgressions. white folks seemed to dislike and pity us for no other reason than real or imagined past generational conflicts. is not just the oglala that taught us to hate white folks when we were a kid. the white folks that we saw insulting our grandmother when she shopped in town taught us to hate. the white kids at the public elementary school we briefly attended taught us to hate as well. am not proud o' it, but particularly as a little kid, we disliked white folks enough to say we hated 'em. hate is a very powerful motivator if it can be channeled positive. Gromnir might not be where we is today if we didn't have hate o' white folk when we were young. every time somebody tried to tell us that we needed help o' affirmative action or implied that we had an excuse for poor test scores because our "disadvantaged upbringing," we wanted to hit'em. not joking. we don't hate white folks individually, but am gonna admit we still got lingering animosity for whites that we need push down as unfair and irrational. we saw and experienced too much as a kid. but here is the thing, what about the angry folks, much like Gromnir, who had a couple more bad breaks and a few less advantages? our advantages were few, but they were pivotal. we grew up without adequate heat, adequate food and adequate health care, but we had many books and a grandfather who had a degree from an ivy league school (dartmouth still counts as ivy, yes?) who aggressively encouraged us to get educated, though not necessarily school education. we also were lucky enough to be be a natural athlete and earn scholarships at multiple quality schools. our parents ended up making money, but at the time we went away to University, we woulda' had difficulty paying for Cal or our other top choices such as Penn. we had earned academic scholarships, but at the schools we wanted to attend, there would be a shortfall. so what happens to angry Gromnir who had a career ending injury during our sophomore year in high school? one bad break, literal. is not the first time we has considered how our life mighta' changed. HA! Good Fun!

we expect improvements, but Evidence about development time may not help you the way you think it does. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66757-backer-beta-going-live-at-300-pm-pdt/ the obsidian folks had more than a few months to fix the ranger already. clearly the developers thought they had improved the ranger with 435 and all the other beta releases. 2 months during which the obsidians is obviously busy doing other things and no backer feedback regarding their fixes? there might be some cause for folks to be less optimistic than you. HA! Good Fun!

yup. is doubtful the paladin's excellent deflection potential makes up for the lack o' class-specific tank abilities the other the other genuine tank classes will eventually have access to, but at least early in the game, the paladin can be a decent tank if it is built specific for that role. HA! Good Fun!

"Nope. I used the term 'not severe' " ... have us just repeating "In any case, and since you insist: 25-30% is still 'not severe'." but it is significant, which were our claim. we used words such as painful and significant, but you wanna quibble over significant v. severe, as is your typical distraction technique. " your inane response, "complete ignores actual problems o' the crisis, but nice try." your attempt to distract with irrelevancies after you make ridiculous assertions is amusing but predictable and tediously repetitive. we wish there were a way to add the chastisement you selective lifted from your quote o' Gromnir and add it to all responses to zor. sadly, the board software doesn't allow such." funny. the sanctions made the situation severe. duh. your maths decrease the impact of oil. *chuckle* how could you not notice? by your own maths, the impact o' western sanctions doubled the devaluation countries with healthy economies Not complete dependent on oil felt... 'cause sanctions is an additional devaluation and not a replacement. oil is now, responsible for 20-26% o' the fall-off o' the ruble and you see western sanctions as not having had a severe or significant impact? hell, you even used norway as a comparison in your now infamous graph. norway sees drop from 100 to 80.04 and russia drops from 100 to 45.07? your maths and graphs is funny. you were feebly attempting to refute Gromnir's claims o' significance. you were ineptly contradicting links o' experts that said russia were in the midst of a economic crisis with the following: "“Yes, I hear that Russia is down to their last 376 billion! "“Always a good laugh, seeing US press (and especially Uncle Rupes' Yellow Journalists) talking their enemies down, you'd think dealing with the 18 trillion dollar (and currently increasing at more than Russia's entire external debt annually) log in their own eye would garner rather more attention.”" and your links show that those reserves, which were over $524 billion in october of 2013, will only last 18 months... in spite o' the yellow journalism nonsense. is it really a laughing matter? heck, bloomberg, the folks who gave us your wonderful graph, tell us that the actual "usable" reserves is much smaller... but am doubting you wanna go there, yes? HA! Good Fun!

poe tanks are fighters, monks and barbarians. however, you can make a decent tank outta a hatchet wielding sword and shield paladin. HA! Good Fun!

on the positive side, when your poe dogmeat "dies" in combat, it ain't permanent. you don't need reload every time your animal companion gets turned into kibble by beetles, or elder bears, or spiders, or skaen cultist, or... whatever. HA! Good Fun!

You may have a point if they're the only gimped class, but release is upon us at the end of the month. There's not much time left to get it right before the physical goods start showing up in mailboxes 'round the world. Gromnir observations about the ranger: "in the early bb releases, we had an extreme useful ranger that were based on an interrupt concept, but as our current ranger's summoned bear is no longer a meat-shield but rather a twisted s&m pain transfer device, our dedicated interrupter no longer has appeal." from feb 2, 2015. "personally, we tend to agree with mr.monocle at this point. dump 'em (rangers). complete opposite o' hermit, we see fixing ranger either by making 'em a ranged weapon damage dealing class without the unnecessary ranger trappings, or cutting 'em out o' the game complete. in our estimation, animal companions and stealth and outdoor affinity is not gonna make rangers better. get rid o' the ranger crap from the crappy ranger, or get rid o' the ranger. "'course it is too late for our suggestion, so at best we is gonna get half-measures that make rangers less horrible." march 8, 2015. rangers is not very good. rangers were Vastly underrated in early betas as people were, for whatever reason, not counting animal companion damage when calculating ranger damage output. the bear had superior accuracy, were durable, and did dependable damage in the 40-60 range. our ranger could be doing almost negligible ranged damage, but when combined with the bear's damage output, he/she woulda' been doing more damage than the bb rogue... by a considerable amount. at the moment... the problems with the ranger are rather large. if the obsidian developers find good balance for the ranger, we expect it to come a few months from now rather than by march 26. that is ok with us. have one class that is bad for a couple months is far better than the old ie games with multiple craptacular classes that needed dual or multi-classing to make playable. a couple months to get the 11th class genuine playable? we can wait. 'course we still think it would be better to scrap the ranger nonsense and redesign as an archer. we suspect it would be easier to balance a ranged weapon heavy-hitter w/o an animal as 'posed to the current ranger... though we would regret the loss o' a potential cassowary animal companion for expansion or sequel rangers. HA! Good Fun!

rogue rogue is obvious good choice to get you more damage production while also having a character that might be able to have enough skill levels in stealth & mechanics. you got 1-2 potential tanks, and 2-3 potential support characters in a priest/druid and chanter... and a non-tanky paladin. you are a little light on damage production, though no doubt you can make up for the shortfall by careful tailoring each party member with talents n' such. even so, a dependable heavy-hitter would be a nice addition to your group: rogue or weezard... 'cause rangers sux at the moment and you got a cipher. as we noted already, the rogue's inherent skill bonuses would allow you to add a stealthy character who could disarm traps, which may or may not be possible with your group... depending on starting skills, background, and the level they join your group. however, with a similar group, Gromnir is gonna choose a second priest. one priest for healing, 'cause the healing priest is still essential in our beta experience, and one priest to be... different. having played obsidian/bis games more than once, we know that we will be able to successful overcome combat with even an indifferent combat pc. however, we also know that if we build character wrong, we could miss more than a few quests and dialogue options. 'course we won't know what constitutes "wrong" until we play, but based on past games from the same developer, we believe that for role-play reasons, we will want a character with high perception, high resolve, high intelligence and high lore. sadly, we can't always have what we want, so we may needs play with attributes a bit. regardless, for us, we is gonna play a hearth orlan priest o' either eothas or berath... likely dual-wielding flails or maces. HA! Good Fun! ps, keep in mind that barbarians and monks is s'posed filling a tank role. and you got 1-2 already.

if amentep became a mod once more, then we might consider it an impending sign o' the apocalypse. if oby became a mod, we would assume we were having some kinda e. coli induced fever dream. however, with poe about to be released, we kinda expected one or two more mods. choosing old mods (can use "old" however you wish) makes more sense than new mods. HA! Good Fun!

one wonders if you would be able to do so if were teaching in oakland... or if you were speaking at a pta meeting. HA! Good Fun! I get a surprising amount of Asian slurs in my area, although in 7th grade it is still pretty innocent. For many years the students referred to the three different levels of math at our school as white math (low) Chinese math (regular) and Indian math (advanced). It was hard not to chuckle a bit at the fact that the white kids were our low performers. statistically, is our understanding that the single highest performing demographic for math and science in US public schools is african immigrants. *shrug* am not able to think o' a situation in which we would want or need to use a racial slur, but am always struck by how careful public figures must be. clearly in a round-table discussion on pbs there should be no need to self-censor and say "the n-word" when describing events in ferguson or nyc, and yet... use racial slurs is bad. am not sure why anybody would complain that they don't get to free use racial slurs. even so, the way public figures (and many other folks) needs fall over themselves avoiding particular words is... silly. HA! Good Fun!

one wonders if you would be able to do so if were teaching in oakland... or if you were speaking at a pta meeting. HA! Good Fun!

agreed, but am thinking the most common complaint being voiced is not how the etymology has changed over time or that words have power, but rather why hurlshot has to literally say, "the n-word." is silly precisely 'cause if hurl's mother or father had been black, expectations and punishments for use o' the situationally offensive word in question would be very different than for a white-as-driven-snow hurlshot. does it not come off as ridiculous when you see congressmen and pundits talking about "the n-word."? go to any cafeteria at any university with a sizable % o' black students and you is gonna hear "the n-word" used frequent and in its complete form. gonna find the same if you watch bet for more than 5 minutes. is numerous explanations. we get that the historically disenfranchised would wanna diminish the power of certain insults. is other explanations but whatever is causes and reasons and explanations, hurl having to say, "the n-word" is just... silly. is childish pretend. HA! Good Fun!