fgalkin

You don't need the favor of the gods to survive the trip if you use the passage that Thaos used (and sealed afterwards), and which you dig out and leave by after you defeat him. And yeah, 1 person in 2 millenia is still a better chance than hoping for an Awakening that will keep the secret alive

As opposed to sitting in a soul prison for an eternity? Yeah, she'll probably have a higher success ratio sitting in soul prison keeping the secret alive. She told at least 6 people (the Watcher and the party). Someone else might come, a few centuries from then, which is more than she could expect, had she been reborn.

Think of it like this: You firmly believe in a cause. You devote all of your life to it, fight for it with all your might. Even at your final hour, when your bones are being shattered at the wheel, you'd stay true to your ideals and spit in the face of those who would dampen them, rather than end your pain with but a single moment of hypocrisy. And then somebody just barges right into your prison and is like "hey, did it occur to you that if you do this one thing that completely opposes everything you ever believed in and fought for your entire life, you can be sort of free?" ...yeah. That's Iovara's perspective the way I see it. Also, she begs you not to do it. Doing it anyway seems evil enough to me. That's all understandable, but still stupid. She could've had another chance to fight by going through the wheel if she Awakened later. But being against it she just looked like she admitted defeat, like she just wanted to stay a powerless sore in the eye of the gods. It's a shame there is no option like that to convince her to continue the fight, to promise to find and Awaken her later. What makes you think that she would remember the truth about the gods after her Awakening? The Watcher doesn't But isn't the Watcher's case of 'awakening' kind of special? From what i understood, when people awaken they literally have another completely separate personality and not just random visions like the Watcher. What makes you think that? That only happens if the other personality is stronger than the present one. Maneha's Awakening didn't give her a new personality, for example, just bad memories. Also, what makes you think that she will Awaken? How are you going to find her soul again? Unlike Sagani, the Watcher does not have a magic figurine that lights up when her soul is near.

You know you can turn off the AI for a specific character, while leaving the other party members under AI control, right? It's what I ended up doing with my cipher that kept casting Whispers of Treason on Vessels

Seriously? When was the last time you played BG2? It....hasn't aged well.

Think of it like this: You firmly believe in a cause. You devote all of your life to it, fight for it with all your might. Even at your final hour, when your bones are being shattered at the wheel, you'd stay true to your ideals and spit in the face of those who would dampen them, rather than end your pain with but a single moment of hypocrisy. And then somebody just barges right into your prison and is like "hey, did it occur to you that if you do this one thing that completely opposes everything you ever believed in and fought for your entire life, you can be sort of free?" ...yeah. That's Iovara's perspective the way I see it. Also, she begs you not to do it. Doing it anyway seems evil enough to me. That's all understandable, but still stupid. She could've had another chance to fight by going through the wheel if she Awakened later. But being against it she just looked like she admitted defeat, like she just wanted to stay a powerless sore in the eye of the gods. It's a shame there is no option like that to convince her to continue the fight, to promise to find and Awaken her later. What makes you think that she would remember the truth about the gods after her Awakening? The Watcher doesn't

I'm a big fan of the personal quest of one of the party members in Shadowrun: Hong Kong where you have to infiltrate a hacker convention. The meta jokes are hilarious. For that matter, there is Dragonfall, which has a ton of great quests, from the Aztechnology Run, to Glory's personal quest, to the final base.

Ondra is watching you.

You do realize that the Huana are based on real human cultures, right? Trying to fit them into your chosen noble savage mold is not only pointless, it's downright offensive.

On the third level of the Engwithan Waystation

In this thread, I'm going to list all the graphics glitches I find. I tried doing individual threads, but there are too many, so perhaps one thread would be better. Feel free to post your own. In this one, as you can see, the Mercenary Priest is casting Consecrated Ground, while the Mercenary Fighter is preparing Into the Fray. However, the little icon showing the current action shows that the fighter is also casting Consecrated Ground

So...this happened in Poko Kohara after the fight with the animats.

There are 25 votes for PotD. Are you saying that it's unlikely that of those 7000 people, 25 are on this forum?

Just did my first one, and I thought it was fun. But then, I used to play some of those super-niche wargames that were basically exactly that, but with historically accurate WW1 and WW2 warships and better simulated damage, so my tastes might be different from the average PoE backer.

And the Oscar for Performative Allyship goes to.... Seriously, they aren't even cannibals. Cannibalism requires eating the same species, which they're clearly not. Also, the villagers are starving, so I don't think it's the "zomg cannibal savages!" thing you seem to think it is. And finally, I don't think portraying both sides as flawed is colonialist apologism. I mean, both sides WERE flawed. The Huana seem to be based on Hawaian or Polynesian societies, slavery and caste system and all.

I don't know if this has been reported already, but the mouse-over description of "report to" is identical to that of "fire the cannons"

Also, shouldn't it be possible to get rid of the lazy guy by taking him away on your ship and then making him part of the crew, or selling him to slavers or whatever?

Isn't picking Galawain essentially destroying all those souls, then feeding them to existing ones?

The thing about the gods is that godhood implies a sort of social construct- the gods either created the world or perform some vital function in it, and as a result, they get power and authority over mortals. They get to define morality, because without them, there would be no morality. Thus, for example, while a follower of Eothas might see the actions of Skaenite cultists as evil, they are, ultimately, seen as legitimate because they are following the will of a god. Likewise, a god has very little obligations to their followers. Consider Galavain's trial for Hiravias, or the High Tide/Low Tide system Ondra has for her followers, condemning them to basically suffer from Alzheimer's before being drowned. What right do they have to treat mortals so? Certainly, they gave their consent, but they did so believing that what was being done to them is not wrong, because only the gods can define what is right and what is wrong. But the gods, in fact, have neither created the world, nor are they adding anything of value to it (since the world functioned quite well on its own before they were created). In fact, they seem to be doing more harm than good, replacing religious wars over imaginary gods with religious wars over real beings, and causing untold atrocities to protect their secret (Ondra crashed a MOON into Eora. A MOON! And, in fact, it was her prerogative, because she is the final arbiter of which knowledge can remain, and which must be forgotten). So they have no moral authority to treat their followers as their playthings. You can't say that Ondra is wrong if Ondra decides what wrong is. But if Ondra is merely a vastly more powerful being, then you can, in fact, hold her responsible for her actions. Can you still follow her in exchange for her help and protection? Sure. But then the terms of the social contract have changed. She has responsibilities to her followers. The power is shared between the god and mortals. This is a HUGE change. I don't know if you're familiar with the Warhammer setting, but if you are, it can help illustrate the point. In that setting, no one who has knowledge of the Chaos gods disputes their existence. Their powers are real and observable. But does that mean that they are owed allegiance simply because they exist and are powerful? No, those who join them, do so in exchange for a boon of some sort. No one goes. "Well, Khorne is real, so I have to worship him." Likewise, many of the followers of Sigmar or the Emperor worship him BECAUSE he protects humanity from its enemies, and because they think that if they don't, their souls are toast (of course, their souls are daemon toast anyway, they just don't know it yet). There is an actual benefit to being their follower. This is what Iovara meant when she said the gods aren't real. If the authority of the gods is fundamentally no different than the authority of any mortal ruler, then they can be treated like a mortal ruler.

Basically, there is no way for the game to present having 2 millenia worth of knowledge about the setting to the player. This is why PoE made the Watcher a foreigner to the Dyrwood- they are supposed to be ignorant of the setting and the player learns about it along with the character. This would not be possible if the character was basically the Nameless One from PS:T with his memories intact.

I'll start with classic, then switch to veteran as soon as I feel comfortable with the new mechanics, same as with PoE1. I'm not a big PotD fan, as I'm more interested in the story and the dialogues than in the combat mechanics, so I usually end up building characters that can do both sub-optimally . Hard is forgiving enough to make, say, a talky cipher viable. PotD isn't without becoming something only a masochist like Zahua can enjoy.

I went there around level 13 on Hard, had a good fight with Baelorin completely unprepared. It was a close thing, but ultimately I lost, so I went, "meh, I'll come back later." Came back around level 15 and it was a breeze.

That wasn't a ruined city that Abydon was protecting. Clearly, not all Engwithans died in the ritual. In fact, we know this, because they invited the Glanfathans to settle down in Twin Elms, and that was after the creation of the gods. Because Ondra is a god, and in the setting, gods are the sources of moral authority. Or, rather, each god's morality is given legitimacy by their divine nature. So, what Ondra did would seem evil to, say, a follower of Eothas, but perfectly legitimate to one of her followers (or a follower of Berath/Rymgard). It's how things like the Bleak Walkers can be a legitimate thing, and not being chased out of every town as a bunch of evil bandits. This is what Iovara had been fighting against, and the implication of her message. If the gods aren't truly gods, but super-powerful soul robots, then they can be held to account for their actions against mortals. They have no inherent right to rule, or even to exist. Consider the fact that you ate the souls of an entire city district, and all you got was a measly +1 Might out of it. The number of Hollowborn souls is greater, but not by that much. Had you absorbed them, your +20 might would turn into +200 might, but it wouldn't be enough to turn you into a god.

Like so:

I think Eder sums up here how the rest of the party feels about Durance: "If I'm dying here, at least it was with my friends. And Durance."