gkathellar

QFT. When someone asks you, "Would you like me to steal your car, or burn down your house?" the answer isn't one of the two, it's, "No."

I'm gkathellar and I approve this message.

I dunno where they are, but: according to this the game has six of these low score options, plus a few more for skills.

FWIW, I do think the game feels better than it did two patches ago, and PoE1 build 3.0.7 is likewise a way better game than it was in build 1.0.1. So I do think there's a general trend towards improvement. But yes, I can totally understand the feeling, and it may be worth coming back to the game once all of the major DLC is out.

I just want to throw in my hat to agree with the OP. Even if this isn't a bug, it is An Issue.

I don't see why not. There are different types of covert operatives - Pallegina, for instance, is effectively a diplomatic security/special forces attache. Your godlike spy is never going to be invisible, but that doesn't mean people will know what they're up to or who they're working for.

FWIW, video games are the only place that I've felt FR wasn't bland. I think that's for a number of reasons. FR is actually huge and impossibly detailed, if not consistent, and so when you focus on small-scale, local concerns while allowing glimpses of the wider world, it does kind of work. And once you get away from the Sword Coast (and to a lesser extent, the Spine of the World), the whole setting does get a lot more interesting, and cRPGs have had a surprisingly good track record on doing so. But yeah, especially with 5E promoting FR as the "official setting" and seeming to have forgotten that places other than the Sword Coast exist, we would almost certainly get a whole bunch more of that.

I'm not convinced they actually do, but certainly that's the conventional wisdom.

Depends on Pallegina's classes. There's a great build for her as a Paladin/Chanter wielding Endless Paths.

I'd just like to see more detail on some of the head models, for nature godlike especially. A lot of the godlike heads are weirdly blocky and bulky.

Bit odd that Fassina can be a druid, tho. >_> Ghost Heart might work for Serafen, thinking about it. It's the same reason why Serafen isn't Cipher with every potential combination despite being a psychic, the devs wanted to make sure there was a single class option for every class with all the companions. I would have preferred Mindstalker to pure Barbarian for him but that just didn't happen. I agree, barbarian doesn't really work with his whole dual pistol image. I guess berserker actually makes for a decent ranged attacker, basically giving up Carnage and focusing on inspirations, but otherwise ... Maybe if I get better at this whole modding thing I'll do something with him. As it is, changing subclasses appears to be pretty easy, but larger adjustments to available classes seems a bit more complicated.

So I took a minute to create two hired adventurers and check. Unfortunately, they're only equal at PLs 1 and 3. By PL 9, a fighter with Monastic Unarmed Training is the equal of a monk at ... PL 6. (For reference: strikes start at +5% damage, +2 acc, +1 pen, and each upgrade seems to add +15% damage, +4 acc, +1 pen. Monks upgrade at PL 2, 4, 6, and 8. Monastic Unarmed Training upgrades at PL 3, 6, and 9. The patterns may or may not continue - I didn't test that.)

Much obliged!

Another dumb question: when creating a new ability, how does one go about assigning an ID for it? Is there any sort of methodology for such?

Penetrating strike costs 1, gets +20% bonus damage, and has an easier time getting overpenetration. That's ... that's pretty good. Stunning Blow "competes" with Swift Strikes about as much as any self-buff competes with Full Attacks - that is to say, you use them both and you wish you had more. The only class that labors to keep up in this regard is Barbarian, whose lowest level full attack actually does cost 2. But, you know ... Carnage.

Ciphers really need to be blended with a strong physical attacking class. It makes me sad because a priest of magran/cipher get 75 unique interactions, the most in the game for any class by far.

They're a logical pick. They've worked extensively on multiplayer with DM support, and they've been working gradually on their campaign editor technology. In terms of skill set, they bring a lot to the table for what you'd probably want, which is honestly less BG2 and more NWN. Obsidian has, of course, the writing and worldbuilding chops, and those matter more to me, personally. But if I were a business bigwig? Larian would definitely be my first pick. It makes to sell PDFs on Steam, sure. It's a platform like any other, even if it's a poorly-curated mess that sells licenses rather than property. It makes considerably less sense to only sell PDFs on Steam, while failing to put 5e up on DriveThruRPG, or hell, having their own digital storefront (like plenty of mid-sized TTRPG companies, like Pelgrane or Evil Hat). And it makes even less sense to have PDFs of 1e-4e up on DriveThruRPG while failing to put 5e up on it. But what do I know? As someone who disagrees with you, I've been automatically relegated to the category of someone who doesn't know much about these things.

It's a bit odd, because in the context of the first game, it was sort of a twist. "Yeah, it turns out not helping DoC get closure and avenge the murder of her family meant she went crazy and got torn apart by the mob. Better luck next time!" I liked it a lot, personally.

(THATS ACTUALLY JUST A ROGUE )

Wat. Seriously? This is so stupid a choice that I am at a loss for words. Yeah. The funny thing is that they're still selling the first through fourth edition PDFs on DriveThruRPG, just not 5th. Again, my theory is that they're trying to get the brand into good enough shape that they can sell it. I'm not sure who would buy it, though.

I didn't say it's not performing, I said it's not performing relative to Hasbro's other products. Take a moment to think about Hasbro's other IP: Nerf, My Little Pony, Transformers, a ton of classic board games like Monopoly and Axis and Allies, a huge cross-section of kids' brands including Tonka, and the king of all nerd culture franchises, Magic: the Gathering. D&D is a drop in a very, very large bucket. WotC only bought it in the first place because the company president at the time wanted to, personally, and it was generally seen as a poor decision. WotC did an amazing job of turning a dying game into an incredibly healthy and robust one by adding high production values (I have a professional book designer in my family who has called my 3.5 books "beautiful"), a well-curated forum community, digital distribution, and above all the OGL. Certainly it wasn't a giant cash cow, but it was making money consistently and well. Also, you know, NWN and NWN2 and DDO, all of which did pretty well. Even so, 4th edition happened largely as an attempt to centralize the brand, institute a subscription model, and shake off what corporate perceived as the hangers-on of OGL, because while D&D 3.5 was an amazing success with respect to TTRPGs, it was not an amazing success as a Hasbro property. Note that during this period, Hasbro made a real effort to make 4E the "correct" edition of D&D, and stopped marketing just about anything tied to earlier versions. This was them attempting to build the game into something more comparable to MtG. After patience with 4E ran out for reasons too complex for the scope of this post, 5th happened, and there is ample evidence that 5th has been an effort first and foremost to build the brand. This is why a significant portion of the article you linked is them talking about TV spots and streamers and celebrities, while the book quality continues to be trash, WotC still has no official D&D forums, and the number of permanent employees working on D&D is, afaik, still less than 20. Uh ... so BG2 has been out for 18 years and was the followup to an absolutely enormous sleeper hit. That kind of makes comparisons meaningless without placing them on a timeline. In the first three months after release, it moved 200,000 units. In the first two years after release it moved 1.5m. By five years it manged 2m. This is roughly comparable with NWN1, down to the length of time it took to establish the sales. IIRC, the computer gaming market grew in between BG2 and NWN1, so the fact that NWN1 didn't outperform its predecessor could itself be seen as a bad sign. It would be absurd to do so, mind, but absurd in a distinctly, "I have an MBA, of course I know how to business!" sort of way. (The biggest counterpoint is that NWN1's sales only started to drop following the release of Warcraft 3, and really what happens when you compete with Blizzard? You lose, that's what happens.) Incidentally, that actually means that Deadfire has been doing about as well as BG2 and NWN1 so far! Now compare the more recent D&D games: Daggerdale, Neverwinter, and Sword Coast Legends. None of these have performed well, and so it's easy (if stupid), to conclude that D&D video games simply don't sell these days. Truisms like that are easy to overcome in a genre, these days, due to crowdfunding. They are considerably harder to overcome with respects to IP, and that's why we're getting Bloodstained, and not another proper Castlevania. My first point here is not that a modern D&D isometric couldn't be successful (although personally I think 5e is the worst edition of D&D in terms of making adaptations to the digital format), it's that Hasbro has no reason to think it would be. My second point is that Hasbro is simply not committed to developing anything about D&D other than its brand visibility. Remember, this is the company that is so afraid of their product looking easy to pirate that they initially refused to distribute PDFs of their games (which, incidentally, meant piracy was the only was to get PDFs, almost certainly costing them sales), and after years of complaints only finally concluded that they would distribute their gamebooks over Steam. Steam. To some degree. The two are connected, in practice - the Pen & Paper version is doing well, but the nature of its success combined with the general failures of non-retro-D&D games over the last decade means that no one has a particular incentive to produce NWN3.

To add copper oxide? Boeroer already gave the real reason, but here's my headcanon: the baseline currency of Eora is copper, and we do know for a fact that the Engwithans made heavy use of copper and bronze in their soul machines, the implication being that copper's relationship to souls is a lot like its relationship to electricity. One could speculate that upgrading involves, among other things, literally incorporating alloys of that copper into the finished product.

Aw, man, it's Laura Bailey? See this is why I try not to learn these things: now I'm going to mentally add "-senpai!" to the end of everything Xoti says. ... actually, why am I complaining about that?

OOOOH IS IT? Time to check. There's also the globe in Durgan's Battery memorial room, but upon closer inspection, it was textured with a colored version of a stereographic projection of Antarctica. :/ CONFIRMED: EORA IS ANTARCTICA CALL OF DUTY / PILLARS OF ETERNITY CROSSOVER GAME 2019

Does Nalpazca ever actually need more wounds, though?