gkathellar

Oh, hey, this is old. That said, you can put this one squarely on Messier-31. Necromancy is one of my banned schools.

The thing is, for all my gripes about Dragon Age Origins, this is something it absolutely did right. There were no mechanical penalties for the mental stresses of being a Grey Warden, but the game did an excellent job of communicating the point simply by reminding you of it at relatively consistent intervals, and letting you actually see some of those stresses in action. Oh, the Watcher is having traumatic nightmares? Well, that's nice, but since I never get to see any, just knowing doesn't do much for me. I've entered walked into Ondra's Gift, a district that had its entire population drowned? Maybe the Watcher should be inundated by countless visions of suffering the first time they visit. Many of the phantom/shade fights could also have been replaced by dialogue and storytelling. There are lots of little things like that. But instead, the Watcher thing lingers somewhere between "strictly advantageous" and "afterthought" from the time you leave Caed Nua to the time you visit Tier Nowneth. It's not the lack of mechanical incentives that bothers me, it's the lack of any serious in-game reference. I always read Hamlet as the question is rather if it is more noble to endure than to fight / more wise to adapt than to resist. And concluding that a measure of both, is probably the way to go. While there's certainly many valid interpretations, from a literal perspective the famous soliloquy in question centers largely around suicide. "To be or not to be?" reads pretty literally in the language of its time as "is existence preferable to nonexistence?"

Yeah ... part of the reason the madness thing was so confusing was that Maerwald's circumstances were entirely unique, and his insanity seemed to stem from them directly. The game doesn't really give any sense of how or why. Is it your unique history with Thaos? Is it your Watcherness? Nobody knows, and companion conversations give you plenty of chances to deny any belief that you're going to be affected. Then suddenly, you get to Twin Elms, and the delemgan sues sisters tell you you're going to go mad at any moment. It's just ... what?

The thing is, dwarves aren't real. There's nothing to be "misunderstood." Just because Tolkein did them one way doesn't make that the right way, only his way. His ideas have been borrowed, sure; every writer borrows ideas and makes those ideas their own. Tolkein was no exception to this. His dwarves bear at best a superficial resemblance to the dvergar of Norse myth, and are by his own admission really meant as a fantastic counterpart to the Jews in his fundamentally Catholic setting. Certainly they serve as the source material for others, but when the source material is itself an adaptation, can it have preeminence? Mythological accounts are too unclear and contradictory to turn to. Characteristics attributed to dwarves vary wildly with period and province (as myths tend to). In some cases dvergar are a unique class of being, and in others the name is synonymous with the swartalfr - dark elves. Dwarves are a ridiculous amalgam of vaguely related or entirely unrelated mythological, historical, and cultural images. They are an idea that the fantasy genre has built for itself, on itself, out of itself, through the contributions of countless individuals. What an author chooses to take from that knot of an idea can only be right or wrong for that author - the beauty of fiction is that it can be whatever the hell the author wants it to be. There is no Platonic form of dwarfiness to misunderstand, only a set of ideas to reinvent as one sees fit.

A huge amount of replay value. Just to be clear: I'd love to have more randomized elements in general, not just loot. I want quests with varying elements, even if they were just some NPCs that change location in each playthrough. I'd certainly like to have more randomization in combat encounters, so that I don't always know that there's a lurker lurking behind that one particular tree. All that would make exploration much more meaningful and worthwhile in subsequent playthroughs, but even just procedural loot would be a huge step in the right direction. Okay, that's fair. Certainly people use the Item Randomizer mods for BG2 and Tutu for much the same reason. My own experience with said mod was iffy (I found that items ended up in hugely inappropriate locations), but I can at least understand the sentiment. Personally, I get a certain amount of replay value out of predictability. In BG2, I would think to myself, "oh, I should bring a paladin for Carsomyr," and I would eagerly look forward to reaching a level where I could brawl with Firkraag and seize the legendary sword. In PoE, I have the same sort of calculus about a weapon like Tidefall, or Tall Grass. I could name other examples in PoE and other games - loot is something I look forward to having and using in linear RPG. Counterintuitive as it sounds, I think some of the frustration from people like me may actually result from how little is randomized. In most respects, PoE is very hand-crafted. Areas are plotted out, quests are organized, and gear is placed with a clear guiding intent. That makes the small number of random or pseudo-random gear placements stick out like sore thumbs, and it can make particular playthrough goals (as Oralaina so deftly put it above) kind of senselessly arbitrary. On the other hand? If gear, quests and other things were generally randomized, as you would have it, I dunno if that'd bother me at all. I've played and enjoyed a lot of procedurally generated games. It may be the seemingly random addition of very small amounts of procedural content to an otherwise predictable game that's actually annoying. Eh. Food for thought.

ITP: You damn hippies with your drugs and your velocipedes and your Mozart. Why, when I was your age, we had to rub two rocks together in the snow to make fire! Uphill! Both ways! And we liked it!

This is what Aloth says and I take it to be cannon. It makes sense if you think about it, if each species evolved independently members of different species wouldn't be able to produce offspring. Even with closely related species like donkeys and horses can only produce one generation of offspring because the children are sterile. Well, some mule mares actually are fertile, and breed true with a horse or donkey sire. It's exceptionally rare, but it happens. Not that this is in any way relevant. Presumably elves and humans have greater chromosomal incompatibilities than donkeys and horses, since elves live hundreds of years.

They touch on it in Aloth's backstory - distribution of power in Aedyr along species lines is actually pretty complex, and generally designed to work around the very different length of human and elven lifetimes. IIRC, the ruling class has a human core, with an elven advisory caste that is bound to the rulers via symbolic marriage. You also get some exposure to Glanfathan species issues (being an elven/orlan society) in Twin Elms, where one of the big war leaders (an elf) makes it apparent that he's prejudiced against orlans of the Fisher Crane tribe. Even if they were ever going to do romances, I feel I should point out that she's married. With five kids.

Wait wait wait wait wait That's ... look, I have words about that, but they'd get caught in the language filter. Lots of four-letter words. But on a certain level, it's gratifying, because this is exactly the kind of stupidity that I knew was going to happen when they started talking about immunities.

Well, Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff is. But in general? No. Implements are clearly meant to substitute in that respect, but there's not even much reason to use an implement with a caster unless you're really fond of Blast, since bows, guns, and arbalests are pretty generally superior.

You know, folks, maybe different people are allowed to enjoy games in different ways and for different reasons. Maybe we should avoid calling each other names and pejoratives on the sole basis that we like different aspects of the same thing. I like to optimize, personally, because I enjoy understanding the mechanics of a system and using that understanding to achieve particular ends. That's satisfying for me, and I find the involvement of the RNG in treasure acquisition frustrating as a result. EDIT: Given that, I'm curious why anyone speaks for RNG loot. I understand being impartial either way, but what does it add to the game?

The big problem with this, in practice, is that PoE uses pre-rendered, layered 2D backgrounds. That's not really compatible with the kind of D:OS-esque environmental manipulation that you're describing. It's unfortunate, but it is what it is. FTFY. PoE promised to be one of those games, alas. I really like the Cipher system - it attaches a flow and a rhythm to combat. But PoE has a legacy attachment to its phaux-Vancian system.

As lameover says, yes. Patches are always backwards compatible. It's a priority for the devs.

Edelmyr is my OTP.

13 was the level of my party. I realize now that wasn't clear, but then again there's no way I could start on level 6 of the dungeon either. We have all dodged a bullet here.

I think men on average absolutely are, whether they realize it or not. Personally, I find heels repulsive because I know what they do: it's nauseating to think about a shoe that can warp a person's legs and spine so dramatically with protracted use. I also find them almost painfully stupid on action-adventure characters, because they would be impossible to fight in. Hell, even running shoes do weird things to your legs. If you actually want shoes to fight in, some nice low-end sneakers or cheap basketball shoes are good (if you're going high-end, you may as well go in for martial arts shoes or combat boots), ideally thin-soled and with as little difference in elevation between the ball and the heel of the foot as possible. Heels are the opposite of that. Come **** Me. It's a turn of phrase for tall stilettos.

inb4 someone claims dual-classes were builds No they weren't.

This was never the case. Upgrading a 10/12 Exceptional weapon to Superb worked even in 1.0 The only change I noticed in enchanting is replacement. Earlier you could add lets say +2 INT (if that +2 INT wasn't there by default) to a piece of armor and later replace it with lets +2 CON. You can't replace your own enchantments anymore. No idea when this changed, but this is the only change I've noticed. The changes both of you are mentioning definitely came prior to 2.0, but KDubya is right that there were several earlier 1.x versions that didn't allow for upgrading.

Larian Studios is actually asking that? As much as I liked Divinity Original Sin, their depiction of female armour undermined it, couldn't find a single piece of armour for female characters that wasn't some form of boobplate or bikini mail, so I'm surprised they have to ask. Not that the build for male characters was any better, my male mage looked like he was steroids... Personally, I could overlook the breastplates. It was the six-inch stiletto heels that drove me crazy.

In the past, Lash had a really weird relationship with DR - applying a percentage of DR, and not actually checking for damage type or some such. I honestly don't know whether that's changed, but it might be worth looking into.

Bug. Odd one, too. But hey, at least it doesn't cause some kind of infinite recursive self-damage loop. That would be kinda awesome if he was a Monk... Except for how he would die instantaneously. But aside from that, sure.

I think this is the problem though: people don't WANT the property! Stuff gets knocked down? Why should they care if they chose not to take it over? They didn't accept ownership. They are not being lazy but you are right in that they don't care what happens to it, that's what people are saying. If you are rebuilding it then fine, that's what I do too (even though the Stronghold needs serious work since it's not fleshed out enough), but it's the people who are not interested in rebuilding it that have an issue: they are unable to avoid paying out for it because they get charged for a ruin being attacked... I think it's fair that if someone ditches it then they don't have to pay for it's upkeep, they are choosing not to get invested in or benefit from that part of the game. Yeah, pretty much. I'd like a deeper stronghold that's more integral to the story, but if the idea is that we don't have one because some players dislike strongholds and gated content, then why are those players forced to take care of the place? It's a "nobody wins" solution.

IIRC, unless they've changed the way it's calculated since I last checked, it only stacks up to 35%, due to the way grazes are calculated. The RNG conjures a number from 1-100, adds accuracy, and subtracts the relevant defense. If the result is between 16-50, you get a graze. 51-100 is a hit. Graze-to-hit actually just adjusts the ranges, so a flail hits from 21-100 and grazes from 16-20. Adding another 30 points won't do much, because from 15 down it's a miss, not a graze. Unless I'm totally off base with this, which I might be. But I seem to recall it working that way.

You need 15 to get through WM. Rogues start with +2. Background of +1. Resting bonus of +2. 10 points. 15. I'm not trying to make any kind of point about this, but I'm pretty sure I've got basic arithmetic down. Level 11. Oh, yeah. That's ... that's a thing. Oops.

+3 to accuracy and all defenses per level after 1st.