gkathellar

Ah, yes, the old, "you disagree with me? How childish," fallacy. Classic. Absolutely true. The beneficiaries of a society's discrimination do often believe that they are being treated equally to others, and many see even simple shifts in favor of a fair society as a direct blow to what is fairly theirs. This isn't surprising or even especially indicative of bad character, as accepting that one has been the passive beneficiary of ingrained social advantages undermines pride in one's own achievements. This is why simply requesting accurate demographic representation in media typically becomes a minefield - a kind of groupthink attitude of "they're taking away what's ours," sets in among those who feel the inclusion of others excludes them. When Yale allowed its first female students, for instance, the college actually had to expand its class size from 1,000 to 1,300 in order to quell outrage. Many donors, alumni and commentators felt that if women were put in the spots that had been previously been allotted to men and men only, this would somehow constitute a theft of opportunity; they reasoned that having women's colleges was surely enough, and that ending gender segregation in education would surely be harmful to young men everywhere. Roughly the same rationale prevailed in the United States among the many pro-segregation whites who saw themselves as opponents of racism in the 1950s and 60s. "Separate but equal" was not just an excuse, but rather something many Americans believed deeply in - their concern was not with the separation, but lack of equality. This ignored, of course, that asking black Americans to build a second society underlying "white America" was inherently unequal and deeply racist. In reality, accommodating for the differences of others is a simple moral obligation. But for those who have been accommodated for their entire lives, the concept seems to unduly burden them. They feel their opportunities have been taken from them. It's a dangerous thought in part because those opportunities were stolen in the first place, and in part because life is not a zero sum game. Social integration leads to economic empowerment, which creates demand on the part of newly minted consumers, which in turn creates economic opportunity. This is not some kind of abstract thesis - there is a wealth of evidence that open societies see overall economic benefits. I'll give a personal anecdote, as well - following the legalization of gay marriage in the United States, I observed a rainbow-colored MasterCard float at the NYC pride parade, proudly implying that MasterCard should be the credit card of gay people everywhere. Was that cheap, empty, and commercially driven? Absolutely, and that's the point: even our capitalist masters understand that more participants in our shared culture means more customers to sell to. Opening up society creates exchange and enrichment, both metaphorical and quite literal. It is a shame that so many of those already empowered by a system that favors them don't see the benefits of sharing the sun, but it's the reality of human psychology, and something we must struggle tirelessly against. I find that in practice, "political correctness" usually just means "correctness." Slurs, degrading language, and misused terms serve to misinform and occlude as much as to insult and isolate. That's the right of the individual, I suppose, but one should expect to be called out in exercising that right. The evolution of a "pc lingo," such as it were, is the effort to be clear and precise in our language - for academic purposes, as often as not. In this case, what this boils down to is that when you insist on calling a transgender woman "he," you aren't just being an ****, but also factually incorrect. Human beings are polymorphously perverse and always have been - the Ancient Greeks believed in four genders, and a third gender has existed in parts of the Indian subcontinent for centuries. I raise this to remind you that being genderqueer is not a fad. Transgendered people have been part of human history, and will continue to be. Recognizing that in our language is a simple matter of accuracy and authenticity. I'm curious, did Muhammad Ali need to "grow up" and go to Vietnam? "Call a spade a spade," eh? You know, the funny thing about that phrase is that spade is actually an archaic slur for a black person. But I agree, you should call things what they are. You should also be prepared to acknowledge that things are more complex than you had thought, and that language evolves over time to express that complexity. No, but addressing people with pronouns and descriptors they feel comfortable with can contribute, however slightly, to a broader, less alienating world - at a cost of no significant effort. If your only reason not to do so is that expanding your vocabulary slightly is too much work, then ... well. There's nothing I can say in the face of that degree of intellectual laziness.

I think Obsidian made an interesting hiring decision when they decided to put REX KRAMER, DANGER SEEKER on the payroll.

To develop on this point, it's intuitive specficially because neither stat has anything to do with a caster's "role," while all of the other stats do. In some ways, this kind of stat-dumping is just the implicit cost of any system that allows for negative attributes. Unless the penalties are truly prohibitive, people looking to minmax will always dump stats they deem unimportant to their characters; conversely, if the penalties are truly prohibitive, they will never do so. Penalties don't actually promote build diversity, because in the end they are either too small to matter or too large to be overlooked. The only way to make Constitution and Resolve interesting to casters is to do exactly that: make them interesting to casters. The essence of minmaxing is a player's desire to ignore stats that they deem useless to what they want to accomplish. Penalties only to establish "acceptable minimums," and don't accomplish their goal of being an impediment to minmaxing so much as they slightly adjust the numbers involved. When you tie stats to the kinds of benefits that players want, on the other hand, actual decision-making results. Of course, because PoE imposes penalties for low stats equal to its bonuses for high stats, that only raises the specter of the minimum once again. The game simply relies too much on penalties as a disincentive for low attributes, which creates a wholly different psychology of play as opposed to a system where everything comes from the baseline up. tl;dr PoE's attribute system will always result in minmaxing because of the way it's organized. I don't really see why melee classes shouldn't benefit significantly from Intellect, aside from matching to stereotypical "class = personality" roles. Might isn't muscle power. It's spirit power, which is the source of muscle power in PoE. Eh, it was never really the case, not even on PotD. Why? Shouldn't such a party simply present unique challenges in play, in the same way that a party with extreme stats would?

The changes you recommend would not eliminate or even reduce min-maxing, only change the specifics of it. Why is that desirable?

Wait, it does? Are you positive? I tested it now with almost every direct damage spell it's not working, the only case where it works is with Kalakoth's because of weapon(spell) and of course it works only for the main target and it does not apply on the aoe. So I think we can officially call this myth busted or a really really cheap trolling attempt from that guy unless he cares to give us further detail on which are these exact spells supposedly being affected by a pure weapons talent. As for blast stacking with blights and procing off from every target withing blight's aoe I second that, yes it does proc multiple times, it's ok midgame and it's almost useless lategame as Teioh pointed out. Much obliged. That seemed unlikely.

... no, I dispute that. There's a powerful ring of wizardry and a suit of ankheg plate in hidden caches in early game areas. A player could easily hit the gnoll fortress while still at level 1, which yielded Gauntlets of Dexterity and the Charisma manual. It'd also be pretty routine to fight Greywolf or Bassilus at level 2 or so, and both drop +2 weapons with an elemental damage bonus. The examples go on; while BG1's magic items were sometimes easy to miss, there were a lot of them, and they were available from extremely low levels onward.

Wait, it does? Are you positive?

You only really need Intellect or Resolve to cover the huge majority of conversations, with Perception providing some options on the side. That means just about any offtank with Perception and Resolve, or any DPS character with Perception and Intellect, should be able to handle basically all conversations.

Not really, not for me anyway. I've played games with it. In one game, where I had an option, I've chosen only weapons which couldn't break even though they were inferior (not sure how that works). True dat. The big case study in durability is probably Fire Emblem. As a mechanic, it works really well in the games where you have a limited set of missions and the whole game is really an exercise in fight-to-fight resource management. In the games where you have more freedom to explore and grind and do sidequests, it becomes a real encumbrance and impediment to fun.

No, you can actually use both style talents at once. Shield style is obligatory for any shield user, of course, and one-handed weapon style helps any shield user who actually intends to deal damage by lowering their graze rate a fair bit. It's a nice combo for a reasonable 2-talent cost. However, you can't benefit from one-handed style while using a shield that has Bash, since the shield attack counts as using a second weapon.

Therein lies the gripe.

Yeah, Bash is pretty bad. It needs a fix. And then it should be removed as an enchantment and made into a talent.

Well hey, they might actually get there if they can move another 90k in the next 13 hours. Final push, folks! Tell your friends!

Alright, lemme see if I've misunderstood your proposal. Here's what you've said: Here's how I read that: "When a caster reaches level 9, he loses the ability to cast four 1st-level spells per rest, and gains the ability to cast a smaller number (let's say two, for the sake of argument) of spells per-encounter." Have I misunderstood this?

No, it doesn't make sense because you're proposing a system where casters have the ability to do a thing at level 8, and suddenly lose the ability to do that thing at level 9.

@AndreaColombo, Infinitron, others - My issue isn't that an extra spell per major fight is necessarily a huge deal. My issue is that doing so increases the theoretical power maximum that casters can hit even farther, something which there is no reason to do and plenty of reasons not to do (the ability to drop a 5th slicken in major fights among them). There is a sizeable group of people who think the per-encounter spell should be nerfed, and there are reasons to cater to those people (personally, I don't think they're overpowered or underpowered, so much as they are part of a separate discussion). The solution Josh presented even borders on making sense - for instance, I could totally see a more gradual transition into per-Encounter spells, maybe going from 4/rest to 3/rest+1/encounter at level 9, and then 2/rest+2/encounter at 11, or something like that. But why would anyone think that the solution is to give casters more things? Do casters really need bigger novas?

Yeah, ranged fighters are functional. They have no particular tricks up their sleeves, but they're functional. Personally, I prefer rogue for fire-and-forget builds, since sneak attack and all.

Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying. Assuming that Josh was communicating clearly, what this means is that casters' level 1 spells will go from 4/encounter at level 9 to 4/rest + 1/encounter at level 9. Which means, in practice, that in the most important fights - the boss fights that you rest up and get prepped for - casters are going to be stronger. i.e. they won't be able to nova more often come 9th level any more, but their nova will get bigger instead.

I believe it replaces the nova rather than adds to it. About that: Emphasis mine. What you're saying would be more reasonable, yes, but it's not what Josh said.

I don't understand your question. Are you talking about the number of casts for one spell-level or the number of spells you have access to for any given level? I mean will the number of spells per level per rest go up for the lower level spells or will they be limited to the maximum of four plus talents per level still. i.e. will it go from 4/rest at level 8 to 3/rest + 1/encounter at level 9, or 4/rest + 1/encounter? I read it as the latter.

Let me straighten this out. Currently, casters could nova with their low-level spells several times per rest. Now, casters will instead have additional castings of their low-level spells to throw on top of their existing nova, making it even bigger than it was before. Wizards will also get to fit an extra low-level spell in their grimoire, presumably because they couldn't already do absolutely everything at a time. So ... they're addressing something which many people don't even see as a problem by aggravating a larger and more systemic issue. *jazz hands*

But still she will be worse than any normal rogue That's about the size of it. When you have to use valuable Durgan Steel that you could be using on a better character to make the Devil competent for a rogue at a role that rogues in general don't excel at, you've got a bit of a problem. At least she's a decent candidate for the Deep Wounds/Retaliation combo. That's something. Dude shes a good front liner that hits super hard and isn't your run of the mill weakling rogue. I toss her reinforcing Exhortation and her deflection is 115 + and she beats the crap out of mobs with her 100 accuracy. I only Play Trial of Iron PoTD and use her this way and she mashes. Her + a Wizard debuffing and deathblows turned the Alpine Dragon into PASTE with Bittercut it wasn't even close 50 + damage hits on a high DR mob LOL People cry constantly on this forum about none optimal characters and its like dude use the character with its strength and its damn good. Can YOU MAKE A BETTER OPTIMIZED ROGUE...YES but WHO CARES. Great, more power to you. But my point isn't that you can't use her well, because you can. My point is that she's extremely typecast into one of the less effective rogue niches, and isn't even decked out to be especially good in said niche. There doesn't seem to be any particular reason for this. You've seen me on the Characters board, Torm - I'm always quick to speak for balanced builds and the fact that you don't need to optimize heavily for PotD. I'm not saying she should be the most minmaxed NPC ever. I'm saying she shouldn't be walking around with a bunch of nerfs that you have to invest in mitigating, especially without any clear reason. *slow clap*

Hey, man, don't undersell modern RPGs. I have my gripes with them too, but when you get to, "What do I do with the Geth in Mass Effect?" the correct answer is to turn off the TV, get a sandwich, spend the next twelve hours agonizing over the ethics of free will in war.

She has fewer ability points than characters should have and her armor isn't as good as plate armor (it has 4 points lower DR, meaning that it is only as good as breast plate that give -40% to speed) and it does not have special enchantments that you can find from armors that make most builds just objectively better. Her racial ability is ok, but her racial negatives hurt hear ability be rogue much more than her racial ability benefits her, which mean if you do the math that she is objectively weaker than normal rogue build in same role would be. Of course such don't really matter in this game that much, but that also don't change the fact that she is mechanically worse than normal rogues. She also can't really excel at any mechanical niche for rogues which is actually good. She can do the Riposte/Retaliation + Deep Wounds thing, but that's really the only area where her armor isn't a strict nerf, and while that's an okayish build, it's not actually strong by any means.

My feeling is that the intent is that a 2Handed weapon should be equal in both power and cost to a 1H weapon + shield or two 1H weapons. This raises some questions when it comes to single 1Handed fighters, but it does make a kind of sense in general. I'm not fond of it, but ... eh.