Gromnir

did you play the human noble origin? that would partial explain your feelings. much o' the human noble origin dialogue were so over-the-top it were almost camp. the thing is, the dialogue weren't necessary horrible as written, but with full vo and puppet-acting from somewhat awkward digital characters, the heartfelt moments came off as laughable. whoever wrote the human noble origin don't have much experience with drama... as 'posed to short story, novel and even game writing. write for actors who is gonna have to speak your written lines is a different skill set than writing short story dialogue. da writing is pretty good in parts and you does build up a tolerance to the way the digital actors don't seem to compliment the voice actor efforts... and some o' the vo is pretty darn good. ... oddly enough, while Gromnir likes the game, am not sure we would identify one o' the jnpcs as a favorite of ours. loghain (not the dog, whom we also named loghain) had potential, but didn't live up to the promise. the gift/influence min-game actually kinda diminished the appeal o' the characters and their stories as we always felt as if we were gaming our party mates. sten and morrigain offer signifficant development avenues for a sequel, but there were too much unresolved for us to genuine likes how they were presented in da:origins. the ubg (ultimate bad guy) were no more developed than the lizard queen from nwn. why? the sauron kinda thing only works if the villain is genuine remote. we see and fight the ubg, and yet the confrontation is an emotional let down. "that's it?" is a very good game, but the game has flaws... lots of flaws. big flaws. wacky mechanics, poor balance and some questionable story choices keeps da from being a spectacular game, but it is still a very good game... often in spite of itself. HA! Good Fun!

by andraste's saggy bosom you is a nutter. weren't 'posed to be "best," but a genuine observation. other than somebody who is willful obtuse we cannot imagine anybody that would contradict themselves so frequent... or suggest that bg2 infravision spell were anything other than the suck. btw, 'cause somebody asked we will list some of the spells we think us craptacular... am sure we can come up with more if we reflect, but Gromnir gotta get his turkey ready for tomorrow. -regeneration

am really beginning to believe that you are brain damaged. "You sound like the people who said a bunch of spells in BG2 were useless. They aren't. Just ebcause YOU don't find them useful (cause you didn't figure them out), doesn't mean they were useless." Gromnir identifies that there is many sucky spells. virumor points out a few such spells is prerequisites for other better spells, but that not make 'em any less sucky. and now you seems to admit that there is some lame spells in da, in spite of the previous "they aren't" observation. and yeah, there were a bunch o' sucky spells in bg2. why you think most sorcerer builds for bg2 looks the same? nobody in their right mind adds detect illusion or infravision to their limited sorcerer bg2 spell list... 'cept vol? you like pie. whatever. "i agree with a lot of what gromnir is saying here, but i should add that the respec mod takes a lot of the awful guesswork out of the equation. " respec is not part of the game. is a mod. as Gromnir has noted before, the respec mod alters game difficulty far more than does the difficulty slider. some o' the game developer choices for jnpc character skills and talents is absolute mind boggling, but that is how developers supposed balanced, so for the moment that is how we will play... though our level o' tolerance decreases when we see multiple jnpcs with with 4 tiers of freaking combat tactics skill. HA! Good Fun!

"One thing that frustrated me to no end with NWN1 was all the useless acid-traps which did 10-20-something hps. As a fighter I just walsed thru them and paid no attention. Now if the OC had a few original and completely lethal traps, playing a rogue might have been interesting. Or if a locked treasure-chamber was accessible only to an experienced thief." with a party of two and utilizing the D&D rules, such a thing were impossible. having genuine lethal traps when your 2-man party might be absent a thief would be resulting in more than a little player frustration. and use Conan the Destroyer as example is probably not your best approach. *shrug* like it or not, da is a combat heavy game. Most crpgs is combat focused. even thiefy skills is actual related to combat potential. why does you care what is in that locked and trapped chest? find gold or 10075. the gold and 10075 is used to improve your equipment... which makes you better in combat. in a pnp rpg you can play a gimped character and it can be fun... 'cause pnp role-play has very little in common with single-player crpg role-play. is no genuine cooperative and impromptu storytelling with a single-player crpg. very few crpgs is anything other than glorified tactical combat games... with some rpg elements thrown into the mix. da, in particular, is a combat intensive game. unlike the pnp role-play game in which playing the gimp can be fun, and dm/gm can tailor so as to keep fun, a combat crpg is somewhat less entertaining if it appears that like one class choice is clearly most efficacious in combat. alan observed that the game testers and bio folks believed that the most powerful da parties were three mages and a tank/meat shield. sorry, but that is bad design. can you make a game where every class is equal fun even if there is a disparity in combat power? sure you can... but with a combat heavy game like da... the crazy-stoopid aspect of da is that while mages is clear having the most potential power, they is also the most easy to gimp in character creation and advancement. there is some sucky da spells, regardless of what vol believes, and if you make some seemingly rational but wrong choices, your mage may be less than fun to play. is a fun game... but the biowarians developed a somewhat peculiar system with some serious balance issues. no doubt they can fix before da2... though am not sure they will. HA! Good Fun!

dunno, but with our particular chosen ending it would be tough to meaningful expand on the origin. were kinda dead-end, if you know what we mean. HA! Good Fun!

am beginning to see reasons why bio kept the da rules hidden. coherency & rationality o' bioware's rules is on par with fallout 3 combat mechanics: fun enough to play, but best left unseen. *groan* HA! Good Fun!

... huh? so a rogue taking coercion is wasted? mother puss bucket... &%$# HA! Good Fun!

we were thinking that it seemed odd that a high strength character would get the most dialogue options... 'cause with four levels o' coercion we got persuades and intimidates. we were hopeful that by raising cunning we would get some other kinda option... but seems to just be persuade and intimidate, and our 18 cunning warrior didn't seem to get less than our 11th level rogue with 28 cunning. am gonna continue pushing cunning for other reasons, but we were hopeful for more dialogue payoffs. am always wary 'bout using dialogue to avoid battles as bio (and other developers) seems to like to penalize players for doing so: reward less 1007 and less exp too. however, am pretty sure there were actual a couple dialogue detours that netted us additional exp, so that ain't so bad. HA! Good Fun!

am going through as a rogue. am curious to see if cunning makes serious differences in dialogues (not much so far) and am also so disappointed with available rogues that making our own seems like ideal solution. that being said, for people who respec'd their jnpcs, we can see why mage would be the obvious choice on a second playthrough. HA! Good Fun!

the problem with such a solution is that it makes game easier. hardcore folks is the ones who most often complain 'bout ease of game... so you make purchasable stuff that leads to even further reduced difficulty. is maybe not the ideal solution to the problem, no? developers is faced with problem of making money disappear, without significant altering game balance. is not as easy as it would appear to be at first blush. even so, ultra expensive (relative speaking) backpack space is an odd choice. am finding it hard to believe that it were bio's best solution, or even a solution. HA! Good Fun!

if inventory management added to gameplay we would concede that there were a point. if, as were suggested by bio bosses at some point, there were technical limitations on inventory, we could also understand. however, with extra backpack space being purchasable the technical limitations argument goes out the window, and am not seeing a gameplay function neither. to avoid the sheer tedium of retracing steps through cleared maps and 1007ing corpses and chests, you can purchase extra backpack space? wow. great feature. heck, at least most games tie inventory to an ability score. ... dragon age ain't as open-ended as some (many) games, but is still difficult to balance the money aspect. there gotta be enough money for people who does the critical path to feels like they is adequate rewarded, but those folks who does all the side-quests inevitably end up with a surplus o' funds. is a dilemma. bioware solution: expensive backpack space? the critical path players who runs through game probable don't need or care 'bout backpack space. on the other hand, the hardcore players will squeeze every copper out o' the game, and 1007 every chest... even if those chests got nothing worth noting in 'em. the folks who Need backpack space is thus the people most likely able to afford backpack space. is hardly a clever solution to the gold surplus problem some games suffer from. is not even a genuine solution, save near start of game when gold surplus is rarely an issue in Most games. am not sure whose idea it were, but the bioware inventory solution (buy 10 slots o' inventory for 5 or 7 gold) is, whether you is bothered by it or not, a hamfisted solution that lacks... style. is maybe not a insanely stoopid as the combat tactics SKILL (of which wynne had all four tiers when we met her in tower), but it is a very clumsy solution. and vol is not wrong 100% o' the time... it just seems that way at times. HA! Good Fun!

... tell us again how wonderful the mako stuff were in ME and how magic in a Game is necessary unbalanced. is always some new silliness right 'round the corner when vol posts. bah. vol likes pie. is easier that way. HA! Good Fun!

I think that an idea where continued focus in a particular school of magic improves the potency of all spells in that school of magic would have been an interesting way of doing things. I was under the impression that heavy investment in each of the 4 major groupings (elemental, spirit, entropy, and whatever) would decrease the mana costs of the spells contained therein. But that's less significant than an increase in potency would have been-- you can always address cost issues with lyrium potions. most of the mana/stamina cost features o' the game seem poorly conceived. no doubt mass rejuvenate does... something, but for a tier 4 spell it were laughable. am understanding why there is virtual no stamina regenerating options in the game. death blow + potions o' greater stamina would be ridiculous, no? our 2-h fighter were doing base damage in excess o' 60 midway through game. if he could use mighty blow with wild abandon the game would become somewhat busted. even so, as a player, the lure o' mana/stamina regeneration replenishment magic were high and we eagerly jumped at such options... only to find out that such spells and features were... impotent. lack o' rules transparency made character building feels like we were a contestant on Let's Make a Deal. Monty Hall would laugh his arse off to see how often we stoopid chose the mystery option behind curtain #2. Monty: Now Gromnir, you have seen how well fireball works in this game, and you can add it to Wynne's spell list after three levels of investment. Or... Gromnir: "Or" what Monty? Monty: "Or" you can choose mass rejuvenate right now. Mass rejuvenate may be fantastic spell, or it may be like 1/3 of the spells available in dragon age: a complete loser. So, what will you choose? Gromnir: You can't tell me anything more about mass rejuvenate before I make my choice? Monty: What more do you need to know? The name says it all, or perhaps it doesn't. That's what makes choosing so exciting, right? Gromnir: (sigh) I'll take what's behind curtain #2. the curtain rises revealing a small can of play-doh with a ribbon on it. *$%# HA! Good Fun!

"I agree that, overall, they are. But, if one thinks about it, it pretty much has to be that way with any system with magic." bs. Gromnir mentioned this on the biowarian board a Long time ago. the problem is that magic ain't treated by most game developers same way they treat other aspects o' combat. you build an archer and the archer ain't gonna be great in melee. the 2h da fighter is not an optimal tank and sucks at ranged, but is good at dealing big damage in melee. the dual-wielding rogue, especially early on, is gonna get slammed by any critter with big armour/damage resistance... 'cause no matter how many times you hit, dr gets taken off the top, and early level rogues just not gut the stats to do big damage... and they sure ain't tanks. etc. the thing is, most developers has a brain seizure when they consider magic. they split schools o' magic based on elements like ice and fire, or traditional moor**** or vance stuff. has geek appeal, but it is a retarded way to build a rational system o' Combat magic. magic would be just as special if it were rational. for a da warrior to be successful, he gotta focus on a particular "school"... try to be good at dw and archery and 2h and you is epic fail. mages, on the other hand, can pick and choose from the smorgasbord o' da spells and be great at... every aspect o' combat. can does big single hit damage likes a 2h fighter. can does ranged and better area effect than any archer. can does a better job of disabling opponents than any rogue build. for chrissakes, make 'em pick one thing to be good at. other alternative is to vast reduce the number o' spells. is far easier to balance with fewer spells. regardless, make magic rational wouldn't make magic any less kewl... but it would make different, and da weren't going for different. am fully understanding why da didn't go for different. got traditional class breakdown and the familiar elves/dwarves/humans/ orcs (darkspawn) races and all the other trappings o' familiar fantasy setting. da tried to do slight and meaningful variations on tradition, but they weren't gonna get very far away from what players expect. is perfect understandable to do so, 'cause is risky to do original when you know that people likes familiar... and familiar not have to mean cliche neither. tradition is a fine thing... save for when tradition sucks. traditional magic, with a huge potential catalog o' spells that allows mages to replicate and exceed most of the Combat abilities o' any other class, is a self-defeating approach... and it ain't necessary. 'cause something is expected not make it necessary. also, as already noted, if da enemies reacted to mages rationally, people would be far less inclined to think that they were overpowered. if every time you entered combat with intelligent foes they all focused their efforts on your mage, combat would not be much fun at lower levels. sure, once you gets sleep and area effect spells and misdirection and death hex and other spells, then you can stroll through any combat... but how many folks would quit in frustration before reaching such point? for spider, we finished less than 1000 xp from level 23, and we missed some stuff... am not sure how many traps we simply set-off. at least a handful of quests too. we used the french chick as a bard. her willpower sucked 'cause we tried to get her dex and cunning up to useful levels. her disorient worked on chumps who rare needed to be disoriented... were usually fail on boss and elites. am honest not sure o' the impact o' the first bard song thingie. didn't seem all that noteworthy though. lack of transparency regarding rules makes difficult to judge. virumor thinks the french tart is the cat's meow, so maybe he gots a better notion regarding bard songs. our party were far better without her than with her... and we had given her all 4 bard talents. HA! Good Fun!

btw, did anybody else name their dog, Loghain? HA! Good Fun!

there is a period of time during which we used crushing prison frequent. sadly, at some indefinable point most o' the non-fodder baddies began resisting it... or simply shrugged it off. we saw the spirit damage numbers leaping too fast to be seen, and we could see the aura affecting critters, but the critter were not disabled and the damage done seemed almost negligible. is strange, but force field actual gave us more pay-off late than did crushing prison. crushing prison, by late in game, were a way to keeps one or two o' those pesky scattershot archers immobilized. Gromnir played on hard, so maybe that made the difference. as for targeting mages, it were, as noted above, almost never a priority of enemies. yeah, when direct damaged by a mage an individual enemy might attack the caster, but there were no concerted tactic to remove the mage, and the mage were able to roam 'bout the battlefield to set-up cone of cold and other such spells. cone o' cold spell were our number 1 spell. am trying to conceive of its effectiveness if mages were genuinely targeted by baddies. perhaps that explains yours and di's experience with long incantations. Gromnir Always cast earthquake before blizzard and then set up a kinda nasty killing zone... bad guys never genuine made it to our party save for maybe the occasional ogre alpha or some such, but we never used blizzard save for at very start o' a combat encounter, and then only at extreme range. were just too damn likely to result in friendly fire damage.... send in shale with taunt, force field our jnpc, then spam with area effects. morrigan with every cold damage boosting item we had would blizzard mobs to death... when we finally added tempest for morrigan and inferno for wynne, we had serious mob destroyer potential... and even if we ended up killing shale 'bout 25 or thirty times 'fore end of game, wynne's cleansing aura were removing evidence of injuries after individual combat encounters... so no serious lasting harm harm were done. shale's sacrifice were always appreciated. again, am not claiming that mages were invisible on the battlefield... mages would get attacked, but the mage could determine where and when she would be attacked, and were almost always a single enemy that would initiate an attack in response to direct damage. there were no enemy tactic (save for in one specific encounter) we could see to remove mages from our party... not like we saw even in bg2. mages could move about the battlefield unmolested... only ever got targeted in response to a direct attack. HA! Good Fun!

yes, Gromnir enjoys pie as well. am not sure what variety is our favorite... kinda depends on our mood. btw, is not even just initial... did you even play this game. mage can blast folks with spells all day long and if some armoured chap is closer chances are the armoured guy gets attacked 'stead of the mage. is not our fault if you use wrong... plug away at grimlocks with lightning bolts from 2" away or some such. again, cause some folks is kinda slow, mages ain't invulnerable and it ain't like they won't never get attacked, but they gets to move 'round in the midst o' combat "relative unmolested." considering the fact that enemy mages is almost near universal our primary target in combat, it is passing strange that opponents not similarly realize the deadly impact o' magery. bah... stick to pie. HA! Good Fun!

... are you impaired? then what, pray-tell, is the "o rly" in response to? "I like pie." from now on it ain't just "no" and "nope" but pretty much all your posts is gonna simply be Gromnir translated as, "I like pie." is almost surreal... Really. HA! Good Fun!

really. alan actually confirmed that enemies do indeed prioritize based on armor strength. yeah, if morrigan does damage to a critter she is adjacent to, that critter will maybe attack her... is not some kinda mage-invulterability... never suggested that mages never get attacked. nevertheless, when a boss, tough critter, or even a grunt initial chooses a target they almost never focus on mages. as already stated, this target prioritization were confirmed. so yeah, really. HA! Good Fun!

It's not even necessary. A mage has so many defenses at his/her disposal that complete hordes can easily be subdued without taking any damage at all. A mage losing to some fighter with an oversized sword or axe, is just insulting. Only a Templar should be able to destroy a mage, with the Holy Smite ability. the game mechanics, as much as the rules, makes mages powerful. very few da enemies seek out mages as a primary target. mages can sit in the midst 'o combat and lob spells relative unmolested. am honest not sure if we would place heavy armour on our mage even if we could do so, 'cause ordinary da enemies prioritize foes based on armour strength. is no reason to make our low health mage a target by adding armour. is maybe only a handful o' enemies we can recall that made our mages their primary target... off the top o' our head, we can only think o' one such situation in the entire game. there is some pretty tough da foes that seem to resist with high frequency... and if such foes active targeted mages... am not saying that mages ain't relative overpowered... 'cause they are. am simple observing that the game mechanics exacerbate the imbalance. handicapping enemy ai were probable deemed necessary at low levels, but such coddling becomes unnecessary at level 12 and beyond. game is fun, but rules and mechanics is poorly balanced and odd. HA! Good Fun!

Why do I even bother. I don't know, because all you have shown is that Volo was right. He said people were going through with a solo rogue, not that they had already done so. vol's observation becomes somewhat pointless if is mere a recognition that people is trying to solo, no? if he is trying to imply that mages ain't so tough cause people is soloing with rogues, then fact fact nobody has actual done so undercuts, yes? 'course, as already noted, the ability to solo with a given class does not somehow rob mages with blood mage and arcane warrior specializations o' their relative power. vol's observation is empty on multiple levels. 2 additional points... 1) am pretty sure you cannot solo, even if you wish to. our recollection is that a number o' critical path missions had 1 party mate forced on you. so, is not genuine solo... though am willing to concede that such is a mere technicality. 2) solo don't prove much o' anything in any event for a rogue to solo successfully, he/she is gonna have to sneak past combats, set up traps, and exploit ai to lure out manageable numbers of foes. lord only knows why somebody would wish to play the game that way, but it surely don't show the powha o' the rogue... so much as the lack o' sanity o' some players. is a bit like those nerdlings that memorize star wars minutiae and then brag 'bout their hobbyist superiority on some backwater message board... what a colossal waste o' time. tattoo "loser" on your forehead and get it over with. HA! Good Fun!

maybe you will have better luck with that than did Gromnir. seemed like a wasted spell. got about as much use out of it as we did regeneration. on our first playthrough, we gave our 2-h warrior willpower = constitution... and we probably shoulda' gone higher on the willpower. you can always potion-up for health, but is no potion for stamina. "Anyhow, I now don't need Imoen Chick or Zorro Elf so I can hire two good warriors and a mage and do the game properly this time, and yes I am sorcerer.gif re-speccing all the NPCs to suit my style." re-spec has equal impact on game as does moving difficulty slider... the original difficulty slider. HA! Good Fun!

1) you complete missed the point again, 'cause kids, developmentally disabled, and dumb animals need extreme repetition to learn: the ability to solo in any game with a particular class does not somehow reduce the relative power o' other remaining classes. ability to solo as a da rogue does not somehow weaken da mages... just as capacity to kill da dragons with iron weapons does not somehow reduce efficacy of enchanted & named weapons. and 2) bg2 were very hard for folks unfamiliar with d&d rules am imagining that mage combats, in particular, musta been particularly troubling for folks unfamiliar with d&d mechanics. well guess what? bio, for some ridiculous reason, hid the da rules and mechanics from player view. all of us, save for some folks that maybe spent 24/7 on the bio boards pre-release, is playing da much as d&d neophytes were playing bg2: ignorant. Gromnir finished da and we still not know how armour penetration works specific. counter-intuitive starting builds for jnpcs, combined with hidden rules makes the game far more difficult than it otherwise would be. second time through da is gonna be much easier than second time through bg2... 'cause is not so much meta knowledge that gives an edge the second time 'round, but rather through +60 hours o' trial and error, Gromnir now has at least a basic working knowledge o' what works and don't work in da. huzzah. *snort* the difficulty o' da were largely contrived... is a function o' seemingly intentional obfuscation o' game mechanics coupled with inexplicably busted jnpc mage and rogue builds. am recognizing that da weren't near as difficult as we thought as we replay. HA! Good Fun!

Di, whilst in the city the little 'Change Party' icon should glow gold at the top of the GUI, you can just access the 'Cast 'O NPCs' screen automatically. It doesn't work in other areas, you need to access camp. That's my problem, I only have access to the market district, and my little icon is black. When you say the city, do you mean further inside the city, like in the castle areas? I can't go there yet, only to the Pearl and back allies. oddly enough, the only portion of the city we can recall being able to change our party on-the-fly, were the alienage... and that didn't become available til... later. as enoch identifies, going to camp is a viable option, if far less convenient. HA! Good Fun!

bad logic. fact that a game can be completed sans mages has 0 relevance regarding the relative power o' mages. where did you go to school? really, is as if the part o' kanada you is from has internet connections but no schools. is that even possible? and yeah, am seeing how people could solo with a rogue for much o' game... use traps and lure critters out one or two at a time. would be mind numbing tedious, but we could see it working... but again, that gots little to do with the relative power o' mages. is people that solo bg2 with bards for chrissakes... doesn't somehow make ranger/cleric or kensai/mage less powerful. sheesh HA! Good Fun!