AlanC9

Sure, I'd recommend it, if I was enjoying the game. But it's a fair point. I'm going to give my copy of KotOR to someone. I'd do that with ToEE if I could find someone who actually wants the thing. I'm not sure how big a problem this is. Most folks who really want to play a game won't wait for someone to finish and hand it over. The ones who would wait are much less likely to have ever purchased the game in the first place. It's kind of like music downloading - you don't lose anyone you actually had lined up as a customer. This goes out the window if the game is really short. I thought KotOR flirted with being too short. But I got about 100 hours of playing time out of it, which is good enough for me. Thanks for the D20 clarification.

Even if their bestseller turns out to be NWN? Bio's sales projections seem to make that probable (though the BG games will still be more profitable, given NWN's development history). Of course, that's based on Bio staff chatter - I don't have the numbers to back it up. And adding choices in RPGs can be bad design -- if you cut something out that people value more. Sure, all things being equal, more choice is good. But all things are never equal.

That's assuming the developer cares about replayability. It's not obvious why they should. They can't charge any more money for the game, and it just means you have less time to play other games. By tighter adherence to D20 rules, you mean the nerfed blasters, right? I agree. Though since KotOR made you go Jedi, favoring Jedi wasn't such a bad thing.

Wow. I sure hope the Obsidian devs aren't taking this thread seriously.The idea that KotOR 2 should be like Fallout just strikes me as ludicrous on its face. The two games have utterly different constituencies. I could never figure out how a pure diplo approach to FO made any sense. OK, it's smart to avoid combat whenever possible, especially given the system used. But given the situation presented in the game, not preparing yourself for combat strikes me as irrational, even perverse. Incidentally, isn't the Vault 15 fighting unavoidable except by metagaming? Sure, there's no chip there. But your character shouldn't know that. Of course, Ian can handle that place by himself, so there's no need for the PC to get his hands dirty.

Wait a minute. Malak isn't "cheating" - he isn't immune to anything a PC couldn't be immune to, is he? He has mind immunity, but there are a boatload of mind iummunity items in the game. And he casts Force Immunity on himself, but he's supposed to do that, no? If anything, a player can one-up him on immunity by getting the belt that negates Force Lightning. I notice a recurring problem with Bio endbosses, though. Strategies that carry you through the whole game have a chance of failing outright in the last battle. Nothing wrong with making players think, but it's no fun when you find out your build's no good in the endgame. @ ShadowPaladin: Power Attack's usually better if you're using Master Speed - that's +10 damage on three attacks (four for dual-wielders). Of course, a really good weapon or high strength might put Flurry on top again.

I've heard of people beating the HotU endboss that way. Apparently he's not immune to death attacks, so Finger of Death has a 5% chance of killing him. Yeah, it's OK for Malak to have a crit fail on you, once. But he really should be checking his damage rolls. Power Attack goes up to +10 at master level. Someone crunched the numbers and the combat feats are pretty well balanced. Flurry's the least damaging by a small margin, but makes up for that by having the smallest downside. Nice work by WotC

me too. it was a cliche, and not a good one either. if you were really a former sith lord, why the hell didn't more people take one look at you and run away screaming? at the very least, there should have been a hell of a lot more blanching and folks unwilling to look you in the eye (however you communicate that in a CRPG). i mean if hitler had his mind wiped, you don't think he would be able to join the British army as a private without anyone commenting? "bloody hell Higgins, you're the spitting image of that Furher chap who disappeared mysteriously last month! and what's with the german accent?" oh right, 'cause Revan wore a mask, right? laaaaaaaaame. the plot twist in KoTOR was stupid, stupid, stupid. That didn't bug me so much -- I don't see Jedi as really going in for Meet the Press appearances or whatever the SW equivalent would be. I couldn't pick Tommy Franks out of a police lineup today, and I doubt I'd do any better with a pre-mask Revan. For that matter, how many folks would recognize Hitler if he ditched the mustache?

But can you "play a build to its fullest" if you can't RP it? Depends on your definition of playing an RPG. I wouldn't know. I'm not interested in builds that require foreknowledge to play. Anyone ever do FO as a pacifist the first time through?

Power Attack's even better in most circumstances. But yeah, there's no reason to ever use a standard attack once you've maxed your feat of choice. Incidentally, Malak uses melee feats, but typically the wrong ones. He like to use the crit feat, but most players are sensible enough to get a crit-immunity item, so all Malak ends up doing is hurting his own AC. As for that whole "pacifist" thing, what's the point? Does anybody seriously think that kind of play's got any chance of making it into KotOR 2? Better skill use is a reasonable request, but no combat at all? No chance.

Was KotOR's combat truly a weakness for most of its fans? I get the impression from the BioBoards that most folks liked the combat, though many consider the game too easy. And somehow, suggesting that you should model the sequel to a game that was a commercial success on a game that was a commercial failure strikes me as a less-than-persuasive argument. Even though you're right, and it would be a better game. Just out of curiosity, where did you quit KotOR?

The really blatant clue has got to be Vrook's "What if we train him and Revan comes back" line. When I got to that on my second play, I was acutely embarassed that I missed the clue before.

I'm surprised that Carth always gets so much grief. One of the ironies of the game is that he's actually right to complain, and right to be paranoid. Especially if you go DS. I'm pretty much with leombruno on most points. Juhani's the rare example of an NPC with too much dialog. Get over it, girl.

Gonna have to be kind of creative with your definition of "win", I suspect. By the end of Ep 3, most of the Jedi will be dead with the rest in hiding, and the Republic will be overthrown.

I wonder if increasing technical sophistication doesn't have something to do with that. Imagine doing Brittania at the KotOR level of detail

Clarify how the PnP system's better, please. There wasn't anything in the films that suggested using the Force costs VPs, for instance. Not a bad system, really. Kinda reminds me of TORG. But you can accomplish more or less the same thing with low-VP opponents, assuming they have enough AB to hit the PCs True, but I don't see how it matters. Unless the game really favors using skills to the point where all players will want to have them or bring T3 (or his equivalent) along - and I don't think you're proposing to make computer use mandatory - the result is still the same. Players who want to use the skill will take high levels of it. Players who don't, won't.

Not to mention capitalization. It takes a lot of man hours to do an original game. That equals a lot of money. There just aren't as many venture capitalists throwing big checks around anymore.

The point, my dear Drakron, is that you've got to show that more people will like a rule change than will dislike it. Otherwise you haven't gained anything by making the change. For instance, while some people were asking for one-shot-one-kill, I'm not at all convinced that the game would have played better that way. Everyone always likes those rules right until they happen to their own characters. Really, it's a burden-of-proof question. The easiest thing to do is leave the rules utterly unchanged. You want something changed, you're going to have to make a case that it's worth the effort. Saying that "original intent" should be the priority isn't going to interest a sequel developer. You're kidding yourself if you think it will. I agree that the skill should have been more useful. But even if it had been, I don't think it would have changed people's approach to the skill. Anyway, I don't have any disagreement with changing the spike rules, since I don't think the change will make any difference in gameplay at all. So let's move on to more fruitful areas of disagreement.

And since we're now discussing KotOR 2, are there any ruleset changes that would produce a better game which will not alienate a substantial portion of the existing fanbase? I'm not especially bothered by the Bio changes in the first place, since I don't think the SW D20 rules are particularly great. The unlimited spikes = success thing is dumb, but in practice it makes no difference. Players who don't take high levels in Computer skill don't use the skill, even though they theoretically could. People just don't like wasting money. Since player psychology effectively constrains use of the skill, the bad rule is inconsequential. Anyone have any important rule changes that would go over well?

Can we avoid Morrowind spoilers in the thread, folks? If not, I'll have to recuse myself. I only got it running for the first time last week.

Forgot about the scars - good point there So in PST you're not scarred, you have to be male, and you can play as a nonhuman in the trivial sense of having the AD&D stat modifications and special rules, though not in the more important sense of coming from a demi-human culture. (What does a character who grew up in Candlekeep know about being a dwarf? OK, he's short, but beyond that?) The scars wouldn't have any significance to me in terms of the character. They are not the character. They are something that happened to the character. Same thing for the amnesia. It doesn't change or define anything about the character; you could still be anyone. You have been anyone. To describe TNO as a predefined character simply makes no sense to me. The game defines what he looks like, and some of what he's done. It doesn't define who he is. Similarly, I thought the restrictive part in KotOR was the start, and not the amnesia plot. Being willing to join the Republic fleet says something about my character. Having been the Dark Lord Revan in a previous life doesn't say anything at all about him.

Exactly what do you mean by "character freedom" ? It occurs to me that I really don't understand what you're trying to say - unless you're talking about the games' plots and I didn't think that was the subject of the thread. The personality of the character is under your control in both games, as are the less important aspects such as class and stats. BG has slightly more control in the latter regard, since you can choose sex and the gameplay aspects of race (as opposed to being from a particular race's culture, which you can't choose), and you don't have to take any fighter levels. Both games have a predefined background. TNO's protean background is somewhat freer here; his history means that any personality is possible for an incarnation, whereas a few character types don't really make any sense coming from Candlekeep. I don't see how this adds up to greater freedom in BG. As for the "inconsistency" in the PST memory loss wearing off, that is addressed in the game.

But does knowing TNO's background -- or not knowing it -- actually tell us anything important about this incarnation? TNO has been just about everything over the course of his lives. You can play the current incarnation as being influenced by whatever you think should be at the top of his subconscious. That's just as much freedom to define the character as you have with the Vault Dweller or the Bhallspawn

ShadowPaladin, there's something I'm not following. You seem to be saying that PST had less freedom than BG for character development. I just don't see it, except that you can play a female in BG. Both TNO and the Bhaalspawn have a predefined background. While in BG you choose race, it's trivial since your character was raised by (mostly?) humans regardless. You choose class in both games, though at a later point in PST. And personality is entirely in the hands of the player in both games. So where's the significant difference?

I thought I should actually post on-topic as long as I'm reading the thread. I had two big problems with KotOR, though overall I consider the game to be a huge success. First, the game is too easy. I'm not a big fan of difficult games; my ideal difficulty level is one where I can get through the game without a single reload as long as I make no mistakes. But in KotOR I don't even have to worry about making mistakes, since it's so easy to recover. Mostly the problem is with the healing rules. As long as you keep a good stock of healing kits - and Jolee makes them for free - you can't lose a fight unless you simply aren't paying attention. I'm OK with the (non)death system; letting characters die would wreak havoc with a character-based game, unless you simply made folks reload whenever someone dropped. I should note that the game is only easy for some builds. Like most Bioware games, an offensive melee fighter can blast though KotOR without a challenge. Is this their house style, or do they think that's the equivalent of a difficulty slider? Well, at least the endboss isn't quite as unbalanced as HotU's. My second problem is with the evil options. The big evil path is OK, but the everyday evil choices are not very tempting. You're a greedy bully, but it's all so petty. Most of the options are simply beneath a Sith Lord.

From that description I get the impression that people die a lot in SW D20, especially at the lower levels. It sounds even worse than D&D in that regard, since I think they don't have an incapacitation until -10 rule in SW. Is this actually the case, or have I missed something?