Gromnir

having followed nwn and nwn2, am recognizing that any time a new bug pops up sudden like months/years after release, the first advice given to be fixing the problem is to dump all mods and reload game. as such, Gromnir is extreme cautious regarding mods. HA! Good Fun!

the one thing we will concede 'bout the dex rogue is that it is the most straightforward rogue build: HA! Good Fun!

the thing we like most 'bout shale is flexibility. gots ranged attacks and crowd control stuns and we not gotta run back to the developmental disabled dwarf to get enchanting done for shale... simply swap out/in appropriate crystals. am recalling that our strategy for for clearing out most o' the mage tower were shale centric: we would have party hold position while shale would be sent into rooms alone to do its quake routine and then taunt. even on nightmare most enemies would be stunned and severe damaged in the wake o' the quake. the rest o' our party would then move in and heal shale and clean up the pesky mostly-dead abominations, possessed templars or mages. rinse and repeat for 20 rooms. later in game shale could serious add to the overlapping area effect spells we employed to wipe out mobs. morrigan's blizzard were nice but then we would supplement with a rock barrage from shale and wynne's mostly useless earthquake. in such similar situations, al woulda been standing around with a crossbow. never got much use out of the stone aura line (had intended to use in conjunction with forcefield) but that plan never seemed to work when we needed/wanted. shale combines some of the best attributes of a tank and a mage... and it is having amusing banters. aristes, no need to thank us re: dlc. bio/ea really didn't make dlc easy for folks. am glad you finally managed to get it working. HA! Good Fun!

well, vol don't sympathize that you not have access to shale... 'course according to vol, Gromnir thinks that rogues is "useless," and pre-patch mages is balanced. he has many other wacky notions. as between stone prisoner and soldier's peak, we prefer stone prisoner dlc. shale is one o' our favorite jnpcs. the golem gots some good party banter and it's quest is a bit more developed than many o' the other jnpcs. sten's sword is a glorified fed-ex run. the french chick's quest involves an "ambush" and then a confrontation with another snotty french woman. wynne? meet up with a dirty elf in the woods and have a group-hug? on the other hand, shale's quest, while nothing extravagant, does have its own unique dungeon location... and am recalling that you is planning on playing a cunning or dex rogue your second time through, no? is a nice dagger available when you complete shale's quest... +5 to cunning and interrupts spell casting. http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/58/index/81613 there is some manual install instructions for the various dlc. if it don't work, then you lose nothing... won't hurt your game. am honest not sure what copies of da shale is 'posed to be available with. it were original gonna be shipped with all copies, but then got cut... or something along those lines. is possible that maybe you should have shale and not even know it. HA! Good Fun!

shale is dlc. do not assume everybody has dlc. am recalling that aristes didn't know of oghren and shale jnpcs deep into game. is likely he not have stone prisoner. repeat: "It doesn't matter hwo easy/hard the game, those characters got those set ups for a reason even if YOu dislike them." yeah, and the reason is to makes you feel likes you need morrigan and al... 'cause wynne, your other mage option, is a half-arsed heal-bot and al is the only sword and board 'til you hit landsmeet. heck, if you don't have stone prisoner dlc, al is your only traditional jnpc tank option. end repeat look at vol's example o' not needing al and morrigan. he is playing a mage, and he has dlc shale. without even realizing it he proves our point. typical. HA! Good Fun!

we has not used respec. without respec, playing on hard difficulty with wynne as your sole mage is not impossible. we did it that way... twice. lack o' transparency o' rules made first time much more difficult, but Gromnir prefers the challenge. we not use respec 'cause playing on nightmare with a respec party would no doubt be easier than playing on normal with an unaltered party. while some borderline insane folks has argued that da has no balance problems, clearly the popularity o' respec suggests that there is superior talents and skills and builds. wynne? wynne as your sole mage makes the game much more difficult... 'less you respec. HA! Good Fun!

am recalling that you played as a mage. as Gromnir noted above, if your pc were sword & board or mage, then either morrigan or al would be far less essential, but try to imagine if wynne were your only mage and if you continued with her heal-bot development. if you don't want morrigan, then your other option is wynne. and Gromnir thinks it is creepy-weird that wynne is "old" given the fact that her body is... not. only her voice and attitude is middle-aged, 'cause the face has a few lines and the body is belonging to a comic book super heroine. HA! Good Fun!

no doubt that is the imaginary "Grom" you speak of, 'cause as you know, we has said the opposite many times. when we actually post links to where vol claimed there were no da balance problems he simply ignores. "It doesn't matter hwo easy/hard the game, those characters got those set ups for a reason even if YOu dislike them." yeah, and the reason is to makes you feel likes you need morrigan and al... 'cause wynne, your other mage option, is a half-arsed heal-bot and al is the only sword and board 'til you hit landsmeet. heck, if you don't have stone prisoner dlc, al is your only traditional jnpc tank option. the "reason" for the characters being designed so strange is to make al and morrigan more necessary. sten's character and personality doesn't change 'cause he has a shield during combats and lord knows that wynne didn't get any different dialogues 'cause we bought three arcane talent boosting books just to get her some offensive firepower. explain the important character development value of having 4 tiers of combat tactics skill for wynne. if the rules weren't wacky unbalanced, then respec wouldn't make much difference... but vol has tried to have both ways in past. anybody surprised? *shrug* 'least vol,is making incremental progress... admitting the efficacy o' cold spells and the relative uselessness o' other spells. HA! Good Fun!

vol is being self-contradictory... again. if spells and talents is not woeful unbalanced, then there should be no problem with re-spec right? is not as if you is Adding talents or ability points. *chuckle* HA! Good Fun!

HA! Good Fun!

somebody posted the dialogue formula. a high enough cunning score makes ranks in coercion unnecessary to succeed at persuasion checks. likewise, a high enough strength makes coercion unnecessary to succeed at intimidation checks. also, has been noted, there is invariably both a intimidate and a persuasion option when the dialogue route becomes available. ... is a very strange rule system. HA! Good Fun!

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doesn't change anything. the biowarians created the lore AND the gameplay. sure, is perfectly valid to consider gameplay before or above lore, but is no reason for the two to be in opposition. bio created. if there is a conflict, then it is an unnecessary oversight on the part o' the biowarians. that being said, we not see a conflict, but given how vague bioware was regarding their darkspawn and gods n' such, we didn't expect conflicts. is subsequent games where there will be problems. as soon as bio attempts to take the bogeyman out of the closet or from underneath the bed, Then they is gonna needs be very careful to make sure they hasn't created internal conflicts... or they can do as gorth suggests and simply wing it, embracing practicality and abandoning the geeks and nerdlings who actually bothered to read their thedas lore. HA! Good Fun!

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you really ain't familiar with how religions work, are you? HA! Good Fun!

Had a weird editing error in that last post. Bolded portion fixed. if Gromnir had not known that wynne were available at tower previous to playing game, we never woulda' gone there first... and the genuine reason we went to tower is 'cause we thought she were a healer (traditional d&d foursome). we didn't learn til much later that most o' wynne's healing talents were less than useful. our ignorance rand deep, and so we chose additional heal-focused spells as she leveled... figuring that the Next heal spell had to be a good one, right? *groan* thank goodness there were three o' those mage talent books for sale in game... were able to partial ameliorate our early mistakes. HA! Good Fun! ps as has been pointed out by Gromnir and others many times afore, a silicon-based puddle of goo from quilax-5 is probable gonna be human. if the audience is expected to understand the motivations o' the puddle, then it has gotta be human. orcs and sauron and other bogeymen monsters not need motivations and character. they exist to be scary. they exist so that heroes may beat them and show us what qualities we, as a society, consider important. why does monsters hide in closets and under the bed? reasons not matter if their only value is to be scary. grendel is the savage darkness lurking beyond the hall doors. in the old english, orc=evil spirit... bogeyman. dwarves and elves and puddles o' goo from quilax-5 is all gonna be human, regardless of shapes and histories. if author wants human audiences to Understand, then they got no choice but to make their creations... human. pps a grendel kinda monster is, in our estimation, a dead end for a game developer. as it not have motivations and character, your best approach is to describe as little as possible. your nightmare is different than Gromnir's, no? is no way to describe each person's personal fear, so is best to leave vague. describe grendel. describe lotr sauron. you cannot, because those antagonists were purposeful never described. can't really do that in a visual game... especially one that lasts +50 hours.

Tolkiens orcs are just another kind of elves. Took the loving hand of Melkor to "adjust" them, but hey, sometimes you have to make do with the tools available a couple years ago, when the first genuine screenshots o' da were getting released, there were criticisms that da looked just like lotr. Gromnir didn't see it. we pointed out that pretty much any fantasy game with elves and dwarves can be compared to tolkien... if peoples try hard enough to make connections. additionally, Gromnir were avoiding spoilers. nevertheless, we then gets info that the darkspawn is perverted elves 'n such and Gromnir cried foul... we pointed out that bio were unnecessary sucking off of tolkien teat if they gotta make their orcs altered elves 'n such. ... take it for what it is worth... believe what you will, but gaider actual responded to Gromnir's criticism. gaider claimed ignorance. apparently he, nor anybody else who wrote the da story, actually knew the tolkien lore 'regarding the genesis o' orcs. Gromnir criticism that orks=darkspawn and that tolkien orcs were twisted and perverted elves were news to the biowarians... first they had heard of such a thing. really. *shrug* is hard to believe that nobody at bio knew, but we suspect that many genuine didn't. tolkien is a tedious read for the most part, and we wouldn't force his "prose" on anybody... save as some kinda cruel punishment that probably violates the Geneva Convention and the Eighth Amendment. hobbit, farmer giles, and the short stories... those is readable, but the other stuff is soul-numbing save for the serious geeks and nerdlings. it is Possible that the biowarians were ignorant, but it is amusing to us regardless. in trying to distance selves from tolkien, they unwitting did exact as tolkien? tickles our sense o' whimsy. and aristes is correct 'bout the da warriors. a well-built 2h warrior in da is a serious glass canon... though again, it does fit into easily into the damage-dealer half o' the dealer v. sponge split identified by enoch... it just ain't belonging where one would initially expect. HA! Good Fun! ps for what it is worth, Gromnir believed gaider when he claimed ignorance... otherwise he woulda' been able to construct a far better excuse for his copying o' tolkien. am thinking he were honest surprised to find out that they had replicated tolkien's efforts.

"They should have been extremely insular, maybe like an organised criminal group, demanded outrageous blood sacrifice for their support and dabbled in all sorts of forbidden stuff." am thinking there is no "should have" with a new and original universe. possibilities is limitless. Gromnir can thinks of dozens o' ways we woulda'/coulda' done. the thing is, we get how bio ended up with their elves. the women gamers who like elves so much probable wouldn't share MC's appreciation for a mafioso elves approach... and they probable wouldn't like most o' Gromnir's suggestions. bio didn't manage to evoke any genuine pathos with their alienages and dahlish stuff, but am betting that such were a goal. instead of have tuvok lead dahlish you coulda' used tony soprano? sure. sounds fun, but am doubting that Di would wanna play as carmela. "I'm looking forward to my rogue run. I usually don't go in for warriors, but it seems to me that they have enough of a talent spread to be interesting. We shall see." it really is terrible that the biowarians limited rogue skills and talents to rogues... and gave you two poorly built rogue jnpcs. archery is swell... during last 1/3 of game, so the french chick not pull her weight for much of game. also, to make her genuine effective as an archer it makes sense to focus on dex as 'posed to cunning... slows her development as a chest-opener and trap disarmer. as for zevran, he is an adequate combatant, but he is not initially having any o' the rogue skills or talents that would make him anything other than an adequate light-armed & armoured melee fighter. there is some very good melee fighters in game, and the mages is workable (though it takes a few levels to get wynne genuine useful). on the other hand, the rogues is teh suck, so for a pc it actually makes sense to play a rogue. poor game design leads to counter-intuitive reason for playing rogue. go figure. HA! Good Fun!

HA! Good Fun!

1 post. now chris, does you really needs to create an alt just to do a little internet guerrilla ego boosting? is kinda gauche, no? HA! we kid, but if you encouraged your significant other (am leaving gender neutral as we not know his preferences in such matters) to do your dirty work is it not just as bad? HA! Good Fun!

it is your imagination. zevran is an elf... barely. as an aside, if you is trying to romance both morrigan and the french girl you might want to stockpile some gifts. HA! Good Fun!

we recently started a new game on nightmare. am having a hard time recognizing a difference 'tween hard and nightmare. as for how to get dlc you may not necessarily have earned/paid for... apparently so many folks has had problems getting the dlc that at the bio social site there is directions for manual installs of all the dlc. http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/58/index/81613 HA! Good Fun!

"That freebie DLC dagger is destabilizingly powerful if you pump your Dex to unlock it at level 4. (It requires 26.)" didn't you say that such stuff is for wusses? HA! Good Fun!

so... who said pick pocket were a big score for human noble origin and ostegar? *snort* vivid imagination. "nothing to steal" is common for most soldiers at ostegar, and those targets who does have 1007 typical produce a few bits, a deep mushroom or an elfroot. we did get a belt that boosts con by 1 point, and some ice arrows. what a waste of a skill point. HA! Good Fun!

well, that is kinda the point, no? the dahlish were once proud people and fought battles with the humans. the elves lost. they lost the battle. they lost the war. they lost their land, and they eventual lost their culture. am recalling that fort edmonton were destroyed by indigenous peoples in the early 1800s. our understanding is that relations between the indigenous peoples and those of euro descent has improved only slightly since that time. no doubt the biowarians is not having to look very far for source material. HA! Good Fun! ps please don't take Gromnir's comments as some kinda approval o' the bioware approach. regardless of where the biowarians drew inspiration, Gromnir dislikes traditional elves on principle, and bio's da approach didn't make us feel any additional appreciation for the tree-humpers. sarel Did strike a chord with us (in a bad way) as he were extreme familiar, but am not a big fan o' how the biowarians chose to depict their elves. even so, we can see how a bunch o' kanadians in edmonton, trying to pander to elf-lovers & be different from tolkien at same time, could end up with da elves.