Gromnir

well, am thinking you can still make use of keen defense (tier 3) and the initial dex boost. 'course, what is your other options, 'eh? the ranger critters ain't half bad. HA! Good Fun!

makes cunning even less necessary... or more, depending on how you look at it. the lack o' transparency is a real hoot, no? so, 18 cunning gets 3 ranks in stealth (if you like stealth) and to get 4th tier o' lockpicks you need a cunning score o' 22. HA! Good Fun!

^ As I posted earlier in this thread, having a good rogue with high Stealth skill (3+) and decent Cunning makes crowd control very different from the vanilla 'Tank & Mage' melee / fireball inferno route. honest, am thinking that alan managed to sell folks on the high cunning rogue 'round these parts before folks actual played. no doubt the high cunning rogue is still effective, but the numbers (at least the ones that is viewable) is still seeming in favor o' the high str rogue. more base damage and you don't need lethality line to achieve. better attack rating regardless if you is flanking or not. am not sure what is minimum cunning to open all chests, but even if you not go past 18 a handful o' missed chests is unlikely to be more than a minor irritant. am aware that cunning gives additional armour penetration and critical chance, but we recently began using tier 4 duelist and it became pretty damned obvious that criticals ain't near as important for a rogue as we surmised. if you use coup de grace or you is backstabbing, you is effective doing criticals anyway. the numbers leaping up on screen is no different/better for Gromnir when he uses the tier 4 duelist auto-crit, then when we is attacking from flank or attacking a stunned/immobilized opponent... and is appears that criticals and backstabs is identical... no stacking. also, am not bloody worried 'bout minor improvements to armour penetration if our backstabbing rogue ends up with a modified str in the 50s. can still get stealth 3 with 18 cunning. as counter-intuitive as it first seems, am not sure if there is a reason to go past 18 cunning for a rogue... dual wield or archer. strength for dual wield and dex for archer... and less need to spread attribute points. your dw rogue is gonna get to at least 25-27 base str anyway just so you can use the best 1-h swords in game, right? dunno, am thinking that low 20s cunning is all you need to open all chests and disarm traps, so if that if you need such to be appropriate rogueish, then so be it... otherwise, am not seeing a reason to go past 18 cunning for any rogue build. HA! Good Fun!

The Twisted Rune alone has more fiersome and varied mage opponents than all of DA. agreed. and vol, just as you keep fraudulently claiming that we concluded that rogues is useless and weak, we also never said that the denerim thugs were the toughest battles in the game. we did note that the denerim thugs is disproportionate tough for a bunch o' back alley reprobates, but those battles were not anywhere near the toughest in the game. in any event, we stand by our assertion that 500 of the denerim thugs we encountered as a level 18 or level 20 character would make short work of the blight. Gromnir's gimped 4-man party and a handful of henchmen cut through the heart of the horde without much resistance. if less than dozen thugs could make Gromnir sweat, 500 would makes kibble out of a mere blight.... just as Gromnir eviscerates vol. "I didn't even know you could get up to 100% spell resistance." requires very specific and costly equipment. multiple +10 gold grandmaster dewomer runes. a pendant that cost +85 gold. armour that will run you in the neighborhood o' +25 gold. etc. only a templar can wear the special armour, so that further limits the potential usefulness o' the 100% sr build. *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

with 100% sr 1 character can ignore mages... not your party... and your 100% sr character is also necessarily more vulnerable to physical attacks than he/she would be if she were more intelligently arming and armouring self. enemy mages is dangerous and dumb. if enemies target your mages the same way you try to eradicate their mages, da would be a very different game. am not sure why this isn't getting through? and for you to invoke logic is just crazy-wacky. and bg2 mage battles were much more complex than da mage battles... but that is to be expected given the vast catalog of spells available in bg2 as opposed to da. if da were to suffer from the same unrestrained spell list bloat as does d&d, then am suspecting that da battles would be tougher... particularly if da enemy ai were improved. HA! Good Fun!

nope. HA! Good Fun!

the mage tower? HA! mage tower is purposeful set up so that it not matter how your character is built. you could have worst equipment and most lame build ever, and mage tower is beatable and fun precisely 'cause none o' that matters... and most o' the demons is doing elemental or physical damage. and again, to be 100% magic resistance you reduce your efficacy considerable against physical foes. 3 mr runes and otherwise average armour... and an extreme expensive amulet... all to get mr? why? is stoopid. use same cash to buy lifegiver ring and paralyzing runes that make you tough v. Everything rather than just mages... buy better armour too. cost v. benefit? is a concept you never heard of? 'course, if enemies used magic as smart as does players, then yeah, 100% magic resistance would be great, but as has been noted Many times, enemies is dumb. they not make use of their magics effective. as it now stands in da, is only one battle with a solo super powerful mage/revenant, and that is a side-quest. every other battle it makes far more sense to turn up the hurt and kill'em faster. "Might as well just allow people to have 100% resiatnce to phsyical damage and call it a day. LMAO" actually, such a thing Would break the game... is one reason why peoples claim that arcane warrior is broken. you ain't been following? is far more physical attacks coming your way than magical... and to get 100% magical resistance you sacrifice your ability to dish out and soak up physical damage. HA! Good Fun!

"No logic can defend something so immoral, broken, and cheesy." funny. maybe you should actually try using logic or reason for a change... might then make apparent that your conclusions is fallacious. Gromnir is using reason, but all you gots is conclusions and claims o' cheese... which is to be expected from R00FLES. HA! Good Fun!

"Both Alistair and Morrigan are petulant, selfish little children." am in full agreement. we liked that bio confronted us with hard choices, but the scenarios they presented in da to achieve the Hard Choice were a bit... dubious. mass effect did better with the simple choose A or B. though am gonna note that based on the way we built our party for +60 hours o' gaming, it were far more difficult for Gromnir to maintain our resolve and kick some folks to the curb... even though we saw it coming in one case. HA! Good Fun!

typical vol nonsense. is not simple. so what if you becomes invulnerable to mages if doing so makes you more vulnerable to, and less effective against, physical-focused adversaries. is a trade-off, and the trade-off is not worth it save in one battle. the number 100% not mean anything in and of itself. btw, thanks to Di's prompting we went ahead and played the mage origin. in fact, to be fair, we has now played all the origins. am not sure if we would claim that the mage origin presented us with moral ambiguity. sure, having already played through the game once we had meta-knowledge regarding some important mage origin characters. nevertheless, depending on your pov, you could make a mage origin choice secure in knowledge that you were doing the right thing... were no true no-win. nevertheless, we did like that the choice were hard, if not gray... not that it genuine mattered in the end. actually, of all the origins we would say we enjoyed the mage one the most. is sad that the resources allocated to the dahlish portion were so obvious inferior to those of the other origins. as the dahlish art not gets recycled in game it were understandably poor compared to other origins. nevertheless, we actually thinks it were pretty solid. 'course, having now played through human noble entire and dwarf noble +80% (including orzamar) am gonna reiterate that we is moderate disappointed that bio's puffery regarding the impact o' the origins weren't more accurate. not surprised is Gromnir, but am a little disappointed. HA! Good Fun! ps w/o considering pickpocket skills, am thinking you gets the most ph47 1007 doing mage origin... probable followed by (edit) the city elf. two very nice items is included in city elf haul.

having played with the patch, am not too bothered by the changes so far. as noted earlier, crushing prison is not nearly as useful on hard difficulty as some would suggest... it can takes out a single archer and Maybe disable a hurlock or gorlock emissary... maybe. am sorry for folks playing on normal, but Gromnir hasn't been impacted overmuch. force field typically lasts too long for Gromnir anyways... or too short. against everything but Super Bosses we get bored waiting for force field to expire. against the mega dragons it only lasted a couple of seconds. am betting those dragon battles is gonna require some new tactics. cone of cold is indeed shorter... which is a good thing. it were the single best spell in the game for us... which is just plain wrong. is no way that a third tier spell should be bestest. 'course, those revenant battles is gonna become Much tougher now. honestly, Gromnir didn't notice much difference with blizzard, but Gromnir usual combines with wynne earthquake and shale rock barrage, so critters is being disabled regardless of being frozen. still, those scattershot archers is gonna become even more annoying now that blizzard is less efficacious. other than the fact that the durations for some o' these spells were already crazy short with some boss creatures, we gots no real complaint. cone of cold were indeed our ace-in-the-hole with the Godzilla dragons and am kinda looking forward to the new challenge a nerfed coc dragon age presents when confronting the titular enemies. as for the possibility of 100% spell resist... so what? is only 1 or 2 significant battles in which spell resist of such magnitude would be worth the costs. dragons and revenants beat you to a pulp with physical attacks. forgo better armour and runes to get spell resist against a dragon or revenant? not a chance. come to think of it, is actual only 1 genuine battle in which we would ever consider jag's 100% spell resist approach... and spending the ridiculous amount of gold it would take to achieve is just not worth it. HA! Good Fun!

am embarrassed to say that the biowarians did a good job with sarel the storyteller. ... Gromnir has met sarel a dozen times in the past. typically is a bright but unemployable relative o' ours whose thinly veiled sarcasm regarding our enculturation has managed to bring Gromnir to the edge of violence on more than one occasion. these sarel clones is quite willing to concede that the wasi'chu is not to blame for every misfortune that has befallen the People... but after listening to these guys complain for hours on end at the local tribal hall, feed store or corner bar, it is difficult to identify a problem that did not originate from the river o' wasi'chu venom that We has been drowning in for more than 150 years. *groan* bio did a pretty good job of making the dalish both sympathetic and annoying at the same time. HA! Good Fun!

to be fair, Gromnir cannot think of a way for the ai to handle cone of cold. we position morrigan, pause, and then shift the area of effect for CoC to within a micrometer to get the most impact. is simply not a spell we is ever gonna have in the combat tactics menu. we also got tired of shale dismantling our own party because it hurled rocks on Gromnir, or because the ai didn't recognize that such hurled rocks could be obstructed doing damage somewhat closer than intended. area effect spells never show up on Gromnir's combat tactics menu, but we don't mind the micromanagement. the best crpg ai is stoopid, because it almost always views players as individuals rather than as a group. can have aoe spells only cast at X distance from caster and that still don't take into account that fellow party members may be in the Kill Zone... or such casting may create a Kill Zone where you not want one to be. called "plays" that would combine behaviors for multiple party members would be ideal, but developers never seem to embrace such an approach. HA! Good Fun!

please give examples o' imaginative gameplay. am reminded o' folks who prefer modern art, 'cause is imaginative and interesting. personally, Gromnir is more concerned 'bout execution than we is by New. chess sucks because is sooooo unimaginative.... should have to play naked, suspended 'bove a pool o' sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads. HA! Good Fun!

"So, I guess the question is, for you hardcore tactical types, is there any better way to take care of my mage AoE problem? Micromanaging two people with AoE would drive me crazy." vol response: ROOFLES! that is a riDkulous complaint. if you don't wont to mikroManage, then you should go back to playing BG2 because you want a super eZ game, and you obviously aren't using the combat tactics right, so it isn't bioware's fvault. And MASS PaRALYSIS kills everything instantly, so you have no reason to complain. ROOFLES. Next time you should do redcliffe first because it is so easy, and you don't need potions but the SPOILERS and SPoilers are hard. Kone of cold is a joke but all the other spells are GR8t. and 70 backpack slots is two much room. *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

LOL! Redcliffe is a saturday night pub fight in comparison to the rest of the game! in terms of actual duration, redcliffe is probable the longest single battle... which is what makes it so taxing for wrong built & low-level parties that is unaware they need a large stock o' potions. in every other portion o' the game you may inch towards daylight... fight & rest, fight & rest. heck, those lyrium veins that show up in various places significantly ameliorate the player's need for potions as the mage types may re-charge on-the-fly and then heal party or smote foes. no such option is available in redcliffe. also, aristes did dahlish first, if we recall correct... and then the mage tower. HA! Good Fun!

btw... we used the patch. durations for cone o' cold is indeed shorter. however, we did get a lootable corpse with no 1007... and it will no doubt disappoint enoch to learn that, we found a couple lesser grounding salves/potions/balms... whatever. was in the cadash taig where we got the crud potions and the l007less corpse, so maybe is a limited problem... not that such is genuine problems in any event. HA! Good Fun!

wade has no sense of time. simply enter another building in denerim after leaving wade's... then return. your armour will be finished. oddly enough, the 20 sovereigns doesn't seem to improve the improved drakeskin armour, but it will improve the dragon armour if you choose to have wade make a suit of dragon scale armour. wade won't charge you for the dragon scale, but if you paid 20 to get "perfect" drakeskin THEN you gets improved dragon scale. go figure. HA! Good Fun!

the nwn:oc ending was... horrible. you fight some mage, whose name nobody recalls, and then you confront the scary lizard queen from some kinda 1950s b-movie sci-fi thriller. lizards have awakened from their eons long slumber intent on conquering the world. we know it is true because that is what we is told. is no genuine character development o' the main villains, and aribeth, who coulda' been important, essentially becomes a footnote. it were just kinda a mess. never finished hotu... too much drow. too much epic. too much... and yet, ironically too little and too late for Gromnir. we were simply exhausted by bio's nwn attempts by the time they released hotu. btw, the denerim thugs were tougher than any equal number o' darkspawn we ever faced. mas paralysis maybe works better on the easy difficulty vol maybe played... or the patched version that adjusts normal to something easier. dunno. scattershot archers makes the pre-casting of mass paralysis problematic, and on hard you gets lots of enemies making their resistance checks. sleep is a better crowd controller, coupled with cone o' cold and judicious use o' force field on the archers. HA! Good Fun!

there weren't nothing epic 'bout the da battles post landsmeet. however, there is a couple o' conversations post landsmeet that is significant. Gromnir tends to lump that altogether with the whole landsmeet portion o' game, but to be fair you does have 'bout 10 minutes o' fodder battles post landsmeet and before your big Resolution dialogues with party mates. the problem is they all occur in a relative small window before your final assault ... and the final assault is tedious and anti-climactic... the final battle itself is probable bio's second worst designed... next to kotor that is. da is indeed better than bg2 in many ways... but the final da battles were nothing more than tedious and repetitive exp grinds. the story development stopped hours before you reach the end o' the last battle, and the last battle itself doesn't result in any intriguing or compelling additions to story. you learn nothing new. on subsequent playthroughs Gromnir is gonna be forcing himself to endure a couple dull hours o' rinse & repeat battles just to get to the epilogues, which we already concede is nice... when not bugged. fact that the last couple hours o' da is dull and bloated not make da a bad game, but that not make last hours less bloated or more compelling neither. am betting more than a few people here were surprised that the da conclusion were so obvious and mundane. "that's it?" HA! Good Fun!

sadly, as a finisher da is not bioware's best game. the last hour of the game... drags, and the final battle made us say, "that's it?" the epilogues (when not bugged) is nice enough. not a great finisher, but very solid all the way through. HA! Good Fun! Grom, what would you say is Bio's best finisher? mdk2 otherwise, am gonna probable say that mass effect were at or near the top o' bio's catalog... am not a huge fan o' the game, but the end were appropriate and fitting. am always averse to resurrecting bad guys, but at 'least the robo-saren were different than version 1.0... weren't like crappy star forge and the jawless freak we killed a half-dozen times. bg (a game we do not like one bit) actually had a satisfying ending, and in bg2 the going to hell (as it were) to finish off irenicus weren't bad as it weren't simply a big battle but there were additional story development as well... though we still thinks that the biowarians handled irenicus wrong. tob had a nice end battle and the epilogues were satisfactory. as an expansion it were good, but is hard to compare to full games. da has nice epilogues, but there is pretty much zero story development after the landsmeet... were just repetitive fodder battles leading up to a confrontation with a taciturn UBG. that's it? enoch "Alley thugs in Denerim have to be on that list, no?" am wondering 'bout that. as we has mentioned before, Gromnir wonders why fereldan needed gray wardens... or even an army. collect a few hundred thugs from denerim and you could quell the blight in an afternoon... have time left over to maybe throw a nice barbecue afterward. HA! Good Fun!

sadly, as a finisher da is not bioware's best game. the last hour of the game... drags, and the final battle made us say, "that's it?" the epilogues (when not bugged) is nice enough. not a great finisher, but very solid all the way through. HA! Good Fun!

If it nerfs my Shimmering Shield, I don't want it! if you don't want it, then you probably should have it. is a game, so people wanna be powerful so they can beat the game. unfortunately, bad balance robs the player of challenge and ultimately makes game something less than the developers intended. on an unrelated side note, Gromnir wants to visit Kal Sharok for da2... maybe find out that the denziens o' the other remaining dwarven enclave were forced to make some hard/terrible choices to survive the last blight. HA! Good Fun!

the auto-save didn't do us any good either as we returned to the arl o' redcliffe's estate and listened to all the post battle conversations before we decided to replay the ser cat confrontation. Gromnir is a compulsive game saver. after some o' the unpleasant early game surprises we endured playing on hard (not even nightmare) we got to the point where we has a save for every level-up (in case we realize after the fact that some bio talents is worthless only after the fact) and am saving after/before every major battle... keep a queue o' five. pretty much allows us to return to any noteworthy point during the last 1.5 hours o' gameplay. HA! Good Fun!

aristes, your pc is the only one who will benefit from the aspect of the mage tower you reference. no return trips possible. enoch, Gromnir had a save immediate before ser cat, so were easy to reload. nevertheless, loghain's uppity tramp needed a smack-down. so as a mater o' principle we decided to see if she could be defeated. took us a couple attempts before we learned that a half dozen scattershot archers and an amazon all pumped up on estrogen and hero worship were a killer combo... but we eventual made like the italian army and beat a hasty retreat... and in so doing wasted her in the hallway. however, is much more rewarding to not fight. HA! Good Fun!