Gromnir

we will observe that our perfect party o' five would likely use all six slots, and there would be no room for neve campbell who made an art form outta mouth-breathing long before kristen stewart got her first starring role. that being said, am far more concerned with the companions than with power, but if we can't get a satisfactory stealthy trap disarming guy using obsidian's joinable npcs, we may needs make one o' our own. as of this moment, our main is likely to be a dual flail wielding hearth orlan priest o' eothas. if we need a stealthy trap guy too, chances are we go with a poleaxe wielding hearth orlan rogue. gizmo and stripe? HA! Good Fun!

as an individual with near crippling dyslexia, am suspecting that Gromnir writes rouge and rogue interchangeable without even realizing it, and 99% o' the time our reading o' the word will depend on context rather than spelling. HA! Good Fun!

better yet, read the Bible. not only is it chock-full o' anti-heroes, but knowledge o' the Bible makes you more likely to recognize oblique literary references and allusion that is so often tied to Bible chapter an/or verse. regardless o' your opinion o' religion, any fan o' western literature should have the Bible at the top o' their reading list. OR we might recognize that the kinda stuff the genesis poster used as examples o' what he were hoping to read more o' would likely preclude the prose edda, beowulf and gilgamesh. HA! Good Fun!

the impact of heavy armour on chanter's chants and invocations is negligible. chants work much as do paladin auras and is unaffected by armour recovery time, yes? invocations are used infrequent. therefore, armour concerns for chanters is almost identical for chanters as they is for paladins. paladins have better health than chanters, but deflection and accuracy for paladins and chanters is identical. am admitting we haven't played a chanter in a few months, but unless something has changed dramatically... *shrug* chanter is one o' the few classes we can imagine that could benefit from sword & shield style, unlike virtual every priest build we might consider. if you is less concerned with chanter doing melee damage, give him a hatchet and go sword and shield route. personally, we would likely use a morningstar or some other 2h weapon if we went the heavy armour route. regardless, a heavy armoured chanter is gonna suffer fewer deleterious effects related to armour than any other caster. HA! Good Fun!

rouge/rogue is way behind to/too/two, their/they're/there, your/you're, accept/except, than/then and its/it's. HA! Good Fun!

we would prefer if the AAA guys would adopt such a model. the romances invariably feel tacked on because they is tangential and optional. so, why pretend? tack 'em on as day 1 dlc. sure, folks would initially express RAGE over having to pay for an otherwise essential (*snort*) feature, but on the positive end o' the spectrum, folks could finally get the romances they genuine wished to explore. vote with dollars. spend $40 extra so you can romance all the possible companions offered by bioware or __________ via dlc? sounds like a fantastic idea. HA! Good Fun!

I agree 100% with this, but I also disagree 100% with this response of therefore excluding them altogether. I'm not advocating taking a leaf from Inquisition's book and the politics of their developers. What I am saying is that throwing out romances from an Infinity inspired RPG is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Bioware only came to that political stance after years of being hammered. So...romance makers take warning. You better pander to a large set of people. am thinking the lesson is that bioware pandered to a small set o' folks that were very loud and persistent. and it didn't hurt that many biowarians were already sympathetic to The Cause. the folks asking for romances started out small. the folks that wanted alternative romances were an even smaller subset. we recall silvermoon's Ladies of Neverwinter site. most o' the romance discussion by gaider and romance fans were happening off-site from bioware a considerable time after the release of bg2... years after bg2 release. even now, regardless o' how ubiquitous is promancer threads at bioware, the total number o' posters involved in such threads compared to the number o' actual bioware game purchasers is negligible. the thing is, the promancers is a disenfranchised group nearly everywhere save for bioware. the promancers, starved for love, found it at bioware. *shrug* in any event, the thing that prevents the tangential and optional companion romances from being anything more than pap for the slobbering promancers and the gibbering sjw crowd is the thing that makes 'em acceptable to Gromnir: they are tangential and optional. try and think o' a decent story with romance wherein the romance were complete tangential and coulda' been optional. ask a rpg writer to create a good romance arc. fine. now tell him/her that he must complete the entire arc with a half-dozen dialogue encounters and the entire romance must be optional and tangential to the main plot. ... @#$%. @#$% U. bioware has the resources to spend on romances, so we don't begrudge the promancers their digital titillation. as we is not compelled to endure the romances, we is finding little argument to oppose their inclusion save for 2 points: 1) the existence on romances decrease the likelihood that we will see critical path love. am not particular caring if the writers o' a crpg develop thematic love that would engage jane austin or chris avellone, but the presence o' the romances, we suspect, diminishes the likelihood we see an exploration o' such fodder in the main plot o' crpgs. for anybody who does engage and explore the romances, a critical path love theme would/should seem redundant. no more ravel 'cause instead you were able to consummate a love triangle with fall-from-grace and annah... or given the current trend we see at bio, the likely triangle would include fall-from-grace and dak'kon. we lose ravel love 'cause folks wanna sex-up a succubus? & 2) the resources spent on creating romance dialogues coulda' been spent on other, and necessarily more meaningful, dialogue encounters. tangential and optional romances is, by their very nature, unnecessary. that is axiomatic, yes? critical path dialogues, on the other hand... *shrug* even so, where developers have resources enough to appease the vocal minority without punishing Gromnir save by our awareness o' lost opportunities for core game development, we is accepting o' the presence o' romances. HOWEVER, obsidian has stated many times that they didn't have the resources to do romances well. end of story. but hey, Gromnir is about constructive solutions. "no" to romance is constructive enough, but somebody suggested dlc romance, yes? HA! that would actual be fun to see. torment had a recent funding campaign to expand the Bloom... or was it the gullet? do the same for romances. we don't want romance to be a stretch goal, but a separate dlc goal? fine. assuming there is obsidian writers with the time for such piffle, have a complete separate funding goal for tacked-on romance dlc. only the promancers need contribute to the funding o' such dlc. everybody wins that way, yes? HA! Good Fun!

some people is giving you their favorites w/o considering your actual query. bad forum junkies. bad. is not necessarily a Gromnir favorite, but given your list we expect that you would enjoy the caine books by matthew stover. https://www.sfsite.com/01b/hero49.htm david gemmell were noteworthy for writing anti-hero protagonists, but you is rare gonna see that protagonist for more than a single book. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/618177.Legend old skool lankhmar books by fritz leiber would be worth considering if you wanna impress nerd friends with your knowledge o' the masters o' the genre. is sci-fi instead o' fantasy, but we would consider the stainless steel rat books by harry harrison. http://www.goodreads.com/series/94586-stainless-steel-rat-chronological-order got a smart rogue protagonist but if you don't like dark humor, the stainless steel rat will fail. ... am hesitant to mention steven brust... oh well. before any o' the books on your list were popular, brust were writing first-person narratives with a smart assassin protagonist who gots a personal code if not an admirable sense o' morality. his vlad series is long, but each volume is relative short. http://www.goodreads.com/series/40334-vlad-taltos am not a fan, but the books is having a certain harmony with the books from your list. check the reviews and some o' brust's free on-line short stories for a painless introduction. HA! Good Fun! ps aluminum had already mentioned glen cook, but we will second his recommendation.

well, am not complete sure we understand what you are saying about using spells needlessly, but there are poe spellcasters that do not require vancian rest-to-recall spells. ciphers are a prime example. however, ciphers has poor deflection and accuracy on par with priests and unlike priests, ciphers' do not have a favored weapon ability to boost accuracy. ciphers is a poor choice to put in heavy armour and melee. oddly enough, chanters is likely the one "caster" that would most close achieve what you is saying you is looking for in a character that can wear heavy armour and dish out some hurt while also having spellcasting powhaz that ain't vancian. chanters get some bonuses to endurance and have higher deflection, so even w/o heavy armour they is a bit more durable. am not 100% sure what you are looking for, but am admitting some confusion given your comments regarding chanters as they do seem to most closely fit your desires if not your expectations. HA! Good Fun!

our experience with the priest and chanter is reversed from yours. build up invocations can be painfully slow... you almost wish combat would last longer just so that your genuine benefits from invocations and layering o' chants would have had a chance to manifest. the casting time for priest spells is much quicker, with heals being some of the quickest casts in the game. a fraction o' a second difference in casting times is far more meaningful when applied to a short cast time than a long one. chanters also have better deflection and accuracy than priests. yeah, you can makes a priest o' skaen that will dual-wield stilettos, but regardless o' the combat build, chances are that heavy armour won't be particularly efficacious. *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

don't think of classes in d&d terms. the poe priest can be played a few different ways, but making a heavily armoured priest actual makes less sense than a heavily armoured wizard. wizards got a few powerful defensive spells that when coupled with armour allows the spellcaster to wade into the front-lines clad in plate. such defensive spells is largely absent from the priest catalog. the priest does have some powerful damage causing offensive spells, but they is having far smaller aoe for such spells than the other casters, so generating aggro appears to be less o' a concern for priests. also, for obvious reasons, there is a rather keen motivation for wishing your primary healer (if your priest is your primary heals) to be able to cast and cast quick, particularly in hard mode wherein the combat is typical frenetic. most casters can be built to benefit from heavy armour, although doing so may not be the most efficacious use of the character's abilities. however, we have yet to see a particular useful priest-in-plate character... which is kinda ironic seeing as how cadegund were the first poe priest character the obsidian developer's revealed. http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Cadegund HA! Good Fun!

I dont think the argument is pure semantics. In some games you had to give up combat ability for trap/lock/stealth utility in one or a few classes. Now you can choose from all classes, not compromise combat ability and still have that utility. fair observation, but very different from the genesis poster's observation. you is still gonna need a sneaky trap disarmer in poe, and most likely that character is gonna be a character who gots inherent bonuses to stealth and mechanics. so, how much has actual changed regarding the need for a character with traditional rogue abilities? now, on the positive side, rogues is no longer sacrificing combat efficacy for trap disarming. the ie vanilla thief was a handicap once combat started. sure, you could fix a thief by making it a multi or dual-class, but thief = crap in combat. if the genesis poster had observed that it were a boon that the rogue/thiefy character were actual combat viable in poe we woulda' agreed w/o reservation. it were jack-arse stoopid that old ad&d vanilla thieves were so inept once combat began. even 3 and 3.5 d&d were only a limited improvement as absent prestige class requirements, it rare made sense to take more than a few levels of rogue for your rogue character. 'course that ain't what the genesis poster were talking 'bout. HA! Good Fun!

even so, am admitting more than a little curiosity about adding one o' these to the 3rd zumwalt destroyer. destructive power and range aside, the fact that the ammo is non-explosive makes it so the chance o' a magazine explosion is, well, zero? HA! Good Fun!

well, given how the musashi and much o' the japanese fleet went down, perhaps the next logical step woulda' been a space-faring version o' this would be a better choice instead o' a japanese battleship with antiquated fire-control and a woefully insufficient anti-aircraft suite. HA! Good Fun!

the suggestion that some kinda islamaic extremist group is responsible for the murder is difficult to believe... 'cause islamic terrorists/extremists is notorious for maintaining a low-profile with the media and avoiding publicity whenever possible? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31691727 list at the end of the article should raise eyebrows. HA! Good Fun!

as an aside, our stated dislike o' crpg romance is specific tied to the companion romances that became common after the release of bg2. optional and tangential side-quest/mini-game romances is what we find to be... puerile. on the other hand, we thought ravel's love for tno, romantic or otherwise, were essential for our appreciation o' ps:t. the single most moving dialogue encounter we can recall from any crpg we has played is the one we had with the mebbeth incarnation o' ravel 'pon our return to sigil after plane hopping. is not what promancers consider romance, but before the release o' bg2 we woulda' argued that the ravel's love for the ps:t protagonist were likely our favorite crpg romance, though perhaps there is a my little pony crpg we has yet to play that would dislodge ravel for our favored spot. the optional and tangential side-quest /mini-game romances has reshaped the nature o' the debate, perhaps for the worse. one wonders if the existence o' the companion romances actual decreases or inhibits the possibility o' a more mature kinda exploration and expressions o' love in crpgs. even developers reference game romance in terms more familiar to the promancer than what we woulda' seen back in 1999 or 2000. has the romance question irrevocably changed the nature o' the games? we hope that is not the case. HA! Good Fun! ps am gonna once again observe that questions o' companion romances in poe is about as moot as moot can be... just in case folks hadn't noticed.

1) "Wow... there are a lot of angry pricks on this forum, that's for sure. Particularly those that think passive aggression and silly insults are a substitute for a constructive discussion." am suspecting you didn't notice the overt hypocrisy. 2) suggestion: if you don't know what passive-aggressive means, don't use it. 3) you may not have agreed with Gromnir observations, but we were being constructive until you abandoned reasoned discourse. *shrug* 4) we disagree. more important, the poe developers disagree... they disagree now and they disagreed months and years ago when constructive debate o' romance mighta' been useful rather than +20 days removed from release. HA! Good Fun!

you disagree that romances short o' a masterpiece should be absent? with whom are you disagreeing? Gromnir made no such suggestion. we has not seen anybody else make such an argument. the observation that it is our opinion that bioware AND obsidian romances is rushed and immature were precisely our point. you used empty "immersion" language as if immersion had some kinda meaning beyond the four-corners of your post. it doesn't. we explained how romances break Gromnir's immersion, precisely 'cause immersion is subjective and personal. *zoom* right over your head. as for Gromnir being royalty... well, we is a US citizen, and our Constitution precludes titles and royalty. 'course we is technical a dual citizen o' a "domestic dependent nation" and the USA, so it is actual a more complicated question than one might s'pose. if it makes you feel better, you are free to refer to Gromnir as "your lordship," though we will not require such obeisance. HA! Good Fun!

1) obsidian never called poe a "spiritual successor" to the ie games... whatever the hell that means. 2) immersion is meaningless w/o explanation am not certain which were the first game blogger or so-called journalist who used the "spiritual successor" nonsense, but we wish that the shambling corpse would do us all a favor and give up the ghost. fill its mouth with salt. chop off its head. stab it through the heart with a wooden stake while a legion o' exorcists recite our fathers and hail marys until their throats blister. whatever... whatever it takes to finally put that unfortunate undead thing to rest is gonna get our support. as for the immersion... well, immersion is extreme personal. for instance. we find all past obsidian or biowarian romances to be rushed and immature. this should not be a surprise as the romances, since bg2, has been relegated to a kinda optional and tangential mini-game status-- the romances do not and cannot fundamental affect the main story. therefore, you got a relative small number o' complete tangential romance encounters to create a romance story arc. is no wonder that to Gromnir all such romances feel rushed and half-baked. to us, immersion (HA!) suffers if we explore the romances. the romances is kept relative meaningless to the critical path story, which inevitably results in a disconnect for Gromnir. how can something so significant be tangential? also, the brevity o' the romance arcs inevitably makes such fodder feel immature as we is expected to embrace the notion that the person we just met, and perhaps fought in a life and death struggle as part o' our intro, has become our mostest significant other 'cause we had six dialogue encounters that included an awkward reveal o' whatever emotional baggage our prospective paramour has been carrying around for the past decades or centuries. such romances is childish and silly to us... and if you insist on using the hated immersion language, then romances invariably break such immersion. is ironic, but as long a romances is optional and tangential, we do not mind their presence in a game because we have the choice to avoid them. being tangential is the insurmountable obstacle we see for such romances, so yeah, we get the conflict. that being said, according to the obsidian developers, romances require considerable effort and if the developers choose to use that effort to enhance the portions o' the game we is actually gonna explore, we call that a win for Gromnir. regardless, more than a well-written crpg romance, we want an end to the spiritual successor language, and appeals to immersion without explanation/illustration. HA! Good Fun!

the raison d'être o' all storytellers is to get folks to care and to feel. engage the audience is their job-- it is their only job. yes, the obstacles for the crpg writer is different than those faced by the novelist or poet, but am gonna needs otherwise disagree with you. if the poe writers can't get us to care or feel deep about their characters, then they has already failed, regardless o' inclusion or exclusion o' romances. HA! Good Fun! I disagree, especially for a dungeon crawl game. The story is there to keep people engaged in killing more stuff, not for cares and feels. I'll go watch My Little Pony if I want that. [seriously, that isn't a dig, if I want warm fuzzies, I go watch MLP.] And given obsidian's track record (of published games), trying to write characters that are even vaguely interesting is a challenge for them, let alone one (or more) worth caring about. PoE will be successful if stabbing fools in the face and taking their stuff is fun, and if the story keeps players engaged enough to keep doing that. Getting people to care about their characters only matters if there is an urgent need for bad fanfics or new wanking material. Either way, I'd be obliged if anyone who wants that keeps it to themselves. no doubt obsidian writers such as chris avellone is overjoyed to hear that their efforts is little more than filler to make combats more palatable and that their evocative storytelling lags behind my little pony. unfortunate for you, we thinks you got things reversed. clearly obsidian/black isle has made considerable efforts to create memorable and compelling characters; am not even gonna bother highlighting characters from the obsidian catalog as there is no point in arguing something so obvious. furthermore, am recalling that depth o' character were mentioned more than once in the poe kickstarter pitch. is possible you backed the wrong game. regardless, we think that you is necessarily gonna be disappointed if you is expecting that the writers o' poe would retroactive "keeps it to themselves" insofar as developing characters worthy of significant emotional response. make audience care and feel is the goal, not an obstacle. HA! Good Fun! ps we see you ain't a backer.... which is good. poe is unlikely to be your cup o' tea, though you may be able to suppress your gag reflex enough find some enjoyment in the combats.

the raison d'être o' all storytellers is to get folks to care and to feel. engage the audience is their job-- it is their only job. yes, the obstacles for the crpg writer is different than those faced by the novelist or poet, but am gonna needs otherwise disagree with you. if the poe writers can't get us to care or feel deep about their characters, then they has already failed, regardless o' inclusion or exclusion o' romances. HA! Good Fun!

congratulations... or condolences? from your post, am not certain which is the more appropriate response. regardless, we hope you enjoy/endure another 19 years of soul-killing compromise and/or implacable resistance. HA! Good Fun!

we loathe bioware romances (give it a sec, we is going someplace with this) and we thinks that the biowarians pandering to the lgbt community to give'em equal treatment with the romances is a ridiculous waste of resources that could be better spent on, well, anything else. even so, we got no animosity for the the lgbt community with one exception: we will never forgive gay men who has attempted to hijack sunday brunch. when did brunch become a meal for gay men? yes, we like show tunes and we is a single man in our 40s, but nothing seems to incorrectly set off the gaydar of every lgbt we know as does a suggestion to go out to brunch. we should need not have to offer an "alternative" explanation for why we like brunch. we do not enjoy sitting around with a bottomless mimosa, gossiping about __________ 's hair or ____________ 's makeup. heck, without input from a gay friend, we can't tell the difference 'tween a suit from dolce & gabanna or the men's wearhouse. even so, we like brunch. you promancers want us to budge on romance in games? fine. give us back our brunch. thus ends the nonsense rant o' the day for Gromnir. HA! Good Fun!

Um they said there would be no romances in 2012. If you have been following this game why is this just becoming an issue now, three years later? We have already had this discussion many many time. But I am keeping an open mind about it. I have no idea what 'no romances' really means and how exactly it will work. And BG had no romance-able NPCs. Like I have said to everybody who has decided no romances means everything is going to be terrible, wait a bit and see what people say about it and give it a chance. And having just a few hetero choices would be a huge finger to the LGBT community and it would be far better to just have none rather than have Obsidian be known as the homophobic developer. ... is too many ways we can make tasteless jokes about the LGBT community and whether or not they would be offended or appreciative of a "huge finger." am gonna back away... slowly. HA! Good Fun! ps 'cause somebody made reference to chrisA notions regarding romance options, we will include one o' the more detailed responses we has seen him give recently on the subject in a print interview. question: You've stated in the past that you don't like romances in games—at least to the extent that they've been done in games thus far. Were you to implement a romance subplot in Project Eternity, what would it involve? response: Not a big fan of romances. I did four in Alpha Protocol because Chris Parker, our project director, demanded it because he thinks romance apparently is easy, or MAYBE it’s because he wanted to be an **** and give me tons of them to do because I LOVE them so much (although to be honest, I think he felt it was more in keeping with the spy genre to have so many romances, even if I did ask to downscope them). At least I got to do the “hatemance” version of most of them, which makes it a little more palatable. Also, the only reason the romance bits in Mask of the Betrayer worked was because George Ziets helped me with them since he was able to describe what love is to me and explain how it works (I almost asked for a PowerPoint presentation). It seems like a messy, complicated process, not unlike a waterbirth. Don’t even get me started on the kissing aspects, which is revolting because people EAT with their mouths. Bleh. So if I were to implement a romance subplot in Eternity - I wouldn’t. I’d examine interpersonal relationships from another angle and I wouldn’t confine it to love and romance. Maybe I’d explore it after a “loving” relationship crashed and burned, and one or both was killed in the aftermath enough for them to see if it had really been worth it spending the last few years of their physical existence chained to each other in a dance of human misery and/or a plateau of soul-killing compromise. Or maybe I’d explore a veteran’s love affair with his craft of murder and allowing souls to be freed to travel beyond their bleeding shell, or a Cipher’s obsession with plucking the emotions of deep-rooted souls to try and see what makes people attracted to each other beyond their baser instincts and discovers love... specifically, his love of manipulating others. You could build an entire dungeon and quest where he devotes himself to replicating facsimiles of love, reducer a Higher Love to a baser thing and using NPCs he encounters as puppets for his experimentations, turning something supposedly beautiful into something filthy, mechanical, but surrounded by blank-eyed soul-twisted drones echoing all the hollow Disney-like platitudes and fairy tale existence where everyone lives happily ever after.

perhaps you are trying to play poe with your left-brain? try covering your right eye while playing poe. HA! Good Fun!