Gromnir

when we get a chance to play again this weekend, we will be on our way to damonta. oddly enough, we had a moment o' clarity regarding ralphy immediate before we got him to level 10: he is a closet sniper. yeah, he don't have any skill levels in sniper rifles, but as he were level six (am recalling that he were level four in the beta) his poor skill choices were fixable... and we were likely to give somebody toaster repair eventually. ralphy gots low ap but good ci combined decent luck. at level 10 we boost his intelligence by one, and at 20 we will give him a 6 in speed. so by level 20, ralphy benefits from 7 ap and 12 ci in addition to potential level 8 or 9 skill in sniper rifles. am likely to boost his coordination at 30 and awareness at 40 for an eventual 8 ap and 13 ci. we ain;t a fan o' animal whisperer or toaster repair. however, we will have ralphy add one level to toaster repair via skill points and one additional level from the skill book we found. am suspecting there is a toaster repair trinket somewhere in the game. ralphy gets more than enough skill points to fill out snipers and one additional skill o' choice such as alarm disarm or mechanical repair... and if you really want animal whisperer, we suspect you can go that route too. ralphy is a surprisingly effective sniper. am not certain why we didn't see that sooner than level 10. HA! Good Fun!

... sadly, am almost certain you ain't joking. there is notable extreme attractive english women, but if the water has had an affect on your women folk, it has resulted in... well, perhaps you could google Gus Terkelsen quotes on the matter. the guy is a schmuck, but his website is successful precisely 'cause there is something in the english woman's water. HA! Good Fun! Your compulsion to look for argument, in a comment loaded with obvious levity, does you little credit. don't channel vol. we noted that we thought you were serious. if you recognize the chuckle value o' your observation, then so much the better. HA! Good Fun!

you don't understand the old skool appeal of random 1007? had less time this weekend than we hoped, but we managed to get our crew through the ag center. made a change from Predator theme to Apocalypse Now: william b. kilgore, walter e. kurtz, benjamin l. willard, and roach. is largely the same skills spread as our Predator group, but we did need to make some minor changes. for example, while we made kilgore our leader, there ain't no way we were gonna give him kiss arse. HA! Good Fun!

... sadly, am almost certain you ain't joking. there is notable extreme attractive english women, but if the water has had an affect on your women folk, it has resulted in... well, perhaps you could google Gus Terkelsen quotes on the matter. the guy is a schmuck, but his website is successful precisely 'cause there is something in the english woman's water. HA! Good Fun!

am gonna finally give wasteland 2 another try. the recent patch(es) appear to have addressed a few o' our concerns and problems. our game time has been extreme limited these past few weeks, so we couldn't have played regardless. am gonna be optimistic and try and get a marathon session in this weekend. our four rangers will be inspired by Predator characters: dutch, dillon, billy and hawkins. am expecting that we will acquire rose asap, and pizepi is a likely addition. ralphy, with his 7 ap and int o' 3 sets our teeth on edge 'cause we know we can make him useful (moderately so) by level 30, but waiting 26 levels before he becomes anything other than a toaster repairman strikes us as a sisyphean ordeal. billy (ap 9, ci 12) should be bladed and ar, but blades lag behind brawling and blunt. for now, billy has assault rifles for a weapon, with perception and demolitions... am suspecting we will likely add minimal blades skill. hawkins (ap 7, ci 13) will be our sniper and smart arse, with lockpick and safe cracking as well. maybe add mechanical repair or weapon smithing as he has an intelligence of 10. dutch (ap 9, ci 12) is a shirtless brawler, with outdoorsman, hardass and brute force to be replacing angelas' skills. dillon (ap 9, ci 10) gets leadership and kiss arse, but since we loathe smgs, we give him shotguns. we foresee adding a bit o' blunt to dillon. rose (ap 8, ci 10) will be getting medic and assault rifle skills in addition to her starting compliment, and by level 20 we will have increased her speed by 2 which should address her few flaws. party charisma o' our starting four rangers = 16, so we shouldn't have problems recruiting pizepi. am gonna see how quick we can get her in our party. dunno. there is a few skills we don't have worked into the mix... 'less we take raplhy. *groan* HA! Good Fun!

dunno, we got characters on both harbinger and jedi covenant, and as long as we is dedicated to taking every fp pop, no matter how convenient the timing would seem to be for advancing our story line, we typical stay geared. 'course we also have a ridiculous number o' 55s and we can always craft the occasional mod, barrel or hilt. hell, am pretty sure you can buy mods and gear relative cheap in the lower levels if you have one or two 55s with even a decent amount of creds saved. the only pve server we don't have characters is shadowlands. if you ever want help on harbinger or covenant, let us know. HA! Good Fun!

Which means levels 10-15. I *think* you may find it hard if you are on the wrong server at the wrong time of day or if every man and his hamster is busy levelling alts, in which case they don't bother with flashpoints at the moment. Heck, even the L55 HM"s has noticeable longer queue times after the 12x xp event started. Lots of people playing class stories and nothing else, leveling up as many alts as fast as possible. is so many inexplicable variables with why/when flashpoints is gonna be available. the first fps don't even have a tank + heals requirement, so lowbie black talon and esseles don't run into that problem-- we has had bt and esseles pop with all dps. we have waited literal hours for a *groan* colicoid war game fp. then, when we finally get a pop, we will be able to run five in a row... five soul-numbing and gut wrenching runs o' colicoid that result in at least one or two predictable complete fails. colicoid and red reaper is our least favorite fp as it is soooo easy to get Death By Stupidity/Willful Ignorance with those two. mando raiders and the final battle o' hammer station are also frequent frustration magnets. one time having to wait 1.5 hours for esseles? is no biggie, 'cause you are leveling so fast early that chances are you is ready to do hammer station by the time you finish courscant... and you can solo the h2 heroic on courscant for a moddable chestpiece and you likely can buy a moddable weapon with comms... which is what you is likely wanting from esseles anyway. HA! Good Fun!

Why Kanye West? nietzsche's "god is dead" is frequent misunderstood. nevertheless am finding it more than a little amusing that 21st century mankind resurrected God in kanye west. if kanye west didn't already exist, we would nevertheless create one. HA! Good Fun!

empedocles... or perhaps kanye west HA! Good Fun!

I've been leveling different characters to see their stories... the one big thing that's annoying is the lack of gear to back up your leveling spree, so you can find yourself dying a LOT more as you level up because your pistols/lightsabers/blasters/whatever are from level 15 when you're level 33 am going to do the broken record thing and repeat our self: do flashpoints. even with the massive bonus xp for story-line, keep doing fps when they become available. as we noted earlier, one o' the best reasons to level via fps is that you will always have level appropriate gear. *shrug* or don't. nevertheless, there is an obvious solution to your problem. HA! Good Fun!

ps mc can always make self feel better about depictions o' catholicism by indulging in japanese media... and we don't mean the obvious anime liberties that include overly endowed, pre-teen battle nuns either. nagasaki actual has a goodly sized catholic population, so it always surprises us when we see such nonsense as sons carrying on the family tradition o' joining the priesthood. HA! Good Fun!

work has kept us away for a bit, so am only seeing these posts after some necrosis. apologies. nevertheless, am going to note dubious characterization. much like cant and others with experience following game developments, we has become jaded about release dates, so we took "2014" with a grain o' salt. and yeah, when gamescom and bb builds were released we made a few comments regarding how skeptical we were 'bout a 2014 release. obsidian silence on release date would not have surprised us one bit. the thing is, obsidian weren't silent. after the gamescom build and bb build were released, we were still heating that PoE would release in 2014. if you had made this kinda post after gamescom or after first bb build, or following the first patch, am expecting you would have had far fewer folks on the purchaser side "hooting and hollering that the sky is falling." *shrug* we has noted many times that we is happy 'bout the delay, 'cause the builds we has seen and played appeared to need a good amount of work. the thing is, you guys brought some o' the fan panic on yourselves when we kept being told, without equivocation, that 2014 were gonna be the release. am knowing you couldn't unilateral change the release date on your own, but am thinking you likewise gotta acknowledge that hearing that 2014 would be the release date AFTER we saw some o' your builds is not the same thing as obsidian silence while doing due diligence. HA! Good Fun!

ignorance. geography and advances in warfare had as much to do with euro city planning as anything. notions o' ancient ecological awareness or consciousness is hokum... and long, largely indefensible walls/fortifications has always been of suspect value (e.g. great wall of china, maginot line.) similarly, the checkerboard or wheel and spoke layout o' streets you see in more modern planned european cities were largely due to the advent o' the cannon and firearms in general. conversely, the hanging gardens o' tenochtitlan (http://www.history.com/videos/aztec-ingenuity#aztec-ingenuity) were the result o' incredible ingenuity and necessity rather than whimsical notions o' a pre-columbian aesthetic. the mexico valley suffered from poor soil quality, frequent frosts and irregular rainfall. chinampas were a solution to these geographical/environmental limitations. you like green? great, but toss the ecological nonsense as that is projecting modern values onto ancient examples that got nothing to do with your aesthetic. HA! Good Fun!

revised advice: get feedback from as many catholics as possible. ask 100 different catholics about such clearly proscribed activities as birth control, stem cell research or even abortion, and am expecting you will get considerable variety o' feedback. hypothetical: a teen-aged catholic girl is raped and becomes pregnant. am not gonna even start with all the possible legal and moral issues and sub-issues that might be spawned by the aforementioned scenario, but those persons expecting uniformity o' response from catholics on all such questions and permutations would be finding themselves surprised. HA! Good Fun!

am a practicing catholic, but am doubtful we can help if you are genuine interested in church hierarchy. ask a priest is good advice as we know only the basic priest<bishop<archbishop<cardinal<pope stuff. heck, we played golf with a monsignor 'least once a month for three years and we only got a fuzzy notion 'bout the specifics o' his title. am suspecting that your question is far more complex (or far more simple) than you suspect. ask a member o' a vietnamese catholic church down in lousiana questions 'bout catholiscism may result in far different feedback than you get from a mexican catholic in el paso, texas, or a a polish catholic in chicago. throw in the middle and upper middle-class catholic, but-only-on-sunday catholics who lives everywhere in the US, and am guessing you get a whole different set o' responses. european catholics we has met is frequent having much different perspectives than is North American or South American catholics. you need also be aware that there is more than a few religious orders as well, and they got different views o' catholicism. jesuits, dominicans and fraciscans, etc. see things different... so too does the various orders o' nuns. and don't even get us started on all the various lay positions and titles that is possible in the catholic church. 'course, it is possible that none o' the aforementioned is relevant to your needs. aside/example: am knowing that our monsignor friend irritated our sister because he drove a rather nice lexus and played golf regularly. we explained to her that monsignor o'conner had not taken a vow o' poverty. our sister went to a catholic high school and were a regular church attendee, but it nevertheless caught her off guard that a priest could have a nice car and an expensive set of golf clubs. ask a priest, but keep in mind that if you ask a priest in london about catholicism and then you set your story in mexico city, you may end up with readers who is just as dismissive o' your portrayal o' catholicism as you woulda gotten had you simply based your catholics 'pon multiple viewings o' the exorcist. HA! Good Fun! ps an exorcist is actual a lay position within the church... doesn't require a priest and is no specific sacrament attached.

not only were the whole moon landing faked, but the US space program were filled with ex-nazi scientists who escaped justice for war crimes by cooperating with the US military-industrial complex. furthermore, many dogs and chimps were killed in an attempt to ensure that space travel were safe enough for human astronauts. what about the chimps? not only that, but armstrong were a combat pilot in korea with the US navy, so armstrong's first steps on the moon were greased with the blood o' north korean and chinese dead. ... am knowing that the absence o' an emoticon might throw some o' you folks off, but one hopes that the sardonic quality o' the above were not missed. HA! Good Fun!

diamond is a hack? okie dokie. in any event, the guy we would mention first as a kinda poster boy for the notion that white disease gutted many native populations in the western hemisphere is a guy by the name of Henry F. Dobyns. am not a huge fan o' his, but he typical don't get described as a quack. is some considerable evidence that more than a few native american populations were destroyed entirely by european disease. when the british explorer, George Vancouver arrived in the puget sound in the late 1700s (am too lazy to look up the exact date) he observed that small pox had arrived before him. few survivors o' the horrific disease remained, and many o' those were rendered blind. Dobyns were the first guy that were suggesting a major increase in the native pre-columbian population o' north america from initial estimates, and he were also making specific guesstimates about the toll o' european disease on such populations. conversely, some o' the estimates o' native populations would appear to be based on... well, we don' t know what they is based 'pon. sure, the aztec capital were larger than paris, and far cleaner too, but there is few new world sites such Tenochtitlan that is making it easy for scholars to get a good estimate o' a population. the thing is, digging up north american sites has never resulted in the kind o' evidence one would need to back-up many of Dobyn's claims 'bout population numbers. there is considerable evidence that europeans attempted to use primitive biological weaponry 'gainst native populations. o' sure, the effectiveness o' such attempts were largely negligible, but the practice itself were hardly insular. however, perhaps ironically, the most effective means o' spreading disease amongst indigenous populations were entirely accidental-- pigs. the post columbus explorers invariably brought pigs with them, and some o' those pigs escaped before being eaten by our intrepid disease carrying explorers. sure, jerks such as de Soto lost much o' their crew to fevers and disease, but their pigs got loose into the native environment and thrived... and spread far more disease than did the explorers themselves. whatever intentional schemes were utilized to spread contagion, the accidental and natural means o' spreading far out weighed the intentional. and keep in mind that the colonials were dropping like flies from disease as well. https://www.armyheritage.org/education-and-programs/educational-resources/education-materials-index/50-information/soldier-stories/282-smallpox bah. all o' this is silly. the vikings discovery o' north america did not change the world. like it or not, columbus landing in the west indies were a pivotal event in human history. us native americans were happily killing each other before europeans got to the New World. whatever unspeakable atrocities the europeans unleashed were largely a continuation o' the atrocities we were indulging in before y'all discovered the western hemisphere. columbus changed the world. he deserves credit for that, whether we like how the world changed is a different question altogether. hey, some scholars is cheesed 'bout how many people throughout history has been killed in the name o' christianity, but am betting most such folks still give their kids christmas presents. columbus day? so what? as an aside, we got little animosity for euro explorers. as we noted earlier, native americans were hardly living in a peaceful utopia before 1492. slavery, war, and genocide were committed in the western hemisphere Before columbus arrived, so in our mind, we has always thought it were hypocritical to blame euros for visiting such evils 'pon us. nope, our anger is limited to specific treaty violations committed by the US... but that is a whole 'nother topic. HA! Good Fun!

Myself, mutonizer, Hiro II, swordofthesith, MoonWolf, morhilane, illathid and Fiebras think otherwise (among others). We know that Rogues are supposed to be a DPS class, but they are doing far, far too much at the moment. Especially considering that pretty much all creatures were nerfed in the latest patch. *chuckle* somebody is easily distracted. "Classes in PE have worse balance than a party of optimally made AD&D 2E characters at the moment." does the current classes need balancing? sure. actual, we mentioned more than once that the PoE classes need balancing. you telling us that you and others think rogue needs balancing is amusing, but not near as relevant as you think. we noted that removing a few weapons would significant diminish complaints about some classes being op, so you acting as if your observation is a rejection or retort is, well, not. *shrug* your initial point were ridiculous. am not sure why you are holding on so tenaciously to this. HA! Good Fun!

a point we see getting missed is that rogue and ranger is 'posed to be the heavy-hitters. furthermore, 'cause perhaps we didn't mention in the thread, developers is attempting to balance usefulness rather than power. extremes in power does diminish usefulness o' competing talents, weapons, classes, etc., but goal is not to make all PoE features balance on a spreadsheet. if our barbarian were doing more damage than our ranger and were a better tank, then we would have a balance problem. if our mage could effective wade into combat and be effective untouchable while doing the best single-target and aoe damage in the game, then we would have ad&d 2e... and we would have busted balance. at the moment, we feel that the paladin is weak, but folks seem to disagree with us. we also do not like that the cleric's buffing and healing role is essential... should be more than a single heal class. even so, compared to ad&d, we don't have any obvious chump classes, and the claims o' OP classes rely much on particular weapons and they is ignoring the class roles. HA! Good Fun!

actually, take away the arbalest, and a few other weapons, and you would see many o' the OP complaints from the recent build disappear. the ranger and rogue is s'posed to be doing the most damage, but the extreme examples is coming with a very limited number o' weapons. the crit numbers tend to shock and awe, but when we look at total damage output in our party, rogue and wizard seem to be having the biggest numbers... though again, am suspecting that the way the ui tracks damage, ranger animal companion is not included with ranger numbers. a ranger with a bear has ridiculous offense output that is not crit dependent. HA! Good Fun!

kinda proving our point(s). you played in a munchkiny ad&d group, so is unlikely you saw from a dm perspective just how bad ad&d 2e balance were, and your rogue example illustrates our concerns about PoE weapons and dt. is not that the classes is broken so much as is the dt and weapons. HA! Good Fun!

okie dokie. as we said, am having a hard time taking you serious, particularly as you now throw dark suns into the mix with all of its wacky balance issues. a "party of optimally made AD&D 2E characters" was a serious headache for a dm, especially if one or two players were not fully optimized. trying to keep the game equally fun for all 2e players were a chore given such balance concerns. in point o' fact, if every player were equal munchkiny, it were actual much easier to dm such a campaign. because o' the enormous gap between powerful and powerless and useful and useless, d&d 2e were at its worst for a dm when optimized and non-optimized mixed in one party... and there is nothing in our ridiculous high number o' hours o' total gameplay o' PoE that would make us think that it iseven remotely close to having 2e ad&d balance issues. there is indeed some serious balance issues related to dt and particular weapons, but those ain't specific class related. btw, for total weapon damage output, rogue and ranger is still tops for us. again, for the rogue or fighter, their damage is far too heavily tied to their weapon choice, but rogues get bonus damage that the fighter doesn't get. compare a rogue with a bow to a fighter with a heavy-damage weapon would be unfair, yes? also, for whatever reason, folks always forget to add animal companion damage to ranger total damage output. we made a firearms ranger who were getting consistent damage in the 40s... and his freaking bear is Still hitting for +50. HA! Good Fun!

closer to 8 hours as it were a weekend... but we did note earlier that we hadn't been exhaustive in our exploration o' balance. played ranger, cipher and barbarian in addition to the bb staples. 'course, we have considerable hours played with the previous builds o' PoE and nothing has jumped out at us that would even make us remote consider an optimized 2e AD&D party to be more balanced. we do note you said you played in the 90s, but you don't say how much? 20 minutes? *shrug* playing is also different than dming. a decent dm in a pnp setting can balance gameplay even if the rules ain't particular balanced. Gromnir frequent had to make adjustments to keep vanilla bards and thieves happy once combat began in a 2e session. perhaps your limited experience as a player of 2e, sans all the rules that could optimize, gives you a less clear picture o' ad&d than those folks with more experience... much as you believe our 8 hours o' gameplay is insufficient. *insert emoticon of your choice here* HA! Good Fun!

... I get the vaguest impression that you're not all that familiar with 2E beyond the IE games. Would that be accurate? that would be our guess. then again, sensuki is kinda schizophrenic with emoticon usage, so perhaps this time he ain't serious. *shrug* we loaded the new build up last night and this am. sure, is not enough time to discover all balance issues in PoE, but compared to a "party of optimally made AD&D 2E characters" there is such a vast gulf in balance concerns that we have a hard time being other than complete dismissive o' sensuki on this matter. HA! Good Fun!

... am suspecting that anybody who had to dm 2e and deal with 2e kits is having a similar reaction. is amazing just how many priests o' mystra and red knight sudden show up in 2e campaigns contemporaneous with splat books, and the proliferation o' bladesingers were amusing. hell, the base 2e stuff were not only woeful unbalanced, but leveling complete changed the balance dynamic for classes. 2e ad&d included such wonderful nonsense as psionic wild talents and pretty much everything in skills and powers, but even the core phb classes were balance broken from the start. PoE does have some notable fails for class balance, but using 2e d&d to contrast? yeah, am not certain if you is serious. sadly, am guessing that you are. HA! Good Fun!