gkathellar

Because she's not a Glanfathan deity. There are altars corresponding to every one of the patron gods of Eir Glanfath, with the other deities picking sides between those.

Ignoring emotions is kind of the definition of being rational. That's not actually how rationality works. Emotions provide people with motivations - rationality is the task of addressing one's emotional motives in a way that is self-consistent with what one knows. Without emotions, there isn't even a reason to be rational, much less to be anything else. A person who finds romances in games to be un/pleasant, and therefore does/n't want them to be present in those games is being rational, regardless of whether or not that's an experience anyone else shares. (This post is brought to you by existentialism - it first arrives on the stage, and then you get to decide what to make of it.) tl;dr Spock wasn't logical, he was just a lazy utilitarian.

You did say that, but you didn't say provide any good reason why that should be the case (the reason you provided was "simulationism," which is not a good reason. No, but what I said was that Carnage is magical. It is, and that's not surprising, considering that in PoE, All Power Is Soul Power. O...kay? Did anyone suggest otherwise? Larger weapons with high penetrating force, such as the Lucerne hammer and warscythe, were one of many responses to the development of heavy plate. Most of these weapons simply attempted to modify older designs for the new era, resulting in a trend of exaggerated characteristics, like the specialization of the sword into the estoc and a general shift in pommel design toward what were effectively maces (if we go by training manuals, some knights even held their swords by the blade like baseball bats, swinging pommel first!). This is because to penetrate steel plate, increased weight is less important than the improved ability to focus weight on a single point. Hammers of the period demonstrate this design goal nicely, as they increasingly resembled ice picks, and sometimes incorporated an actual pick onto the reverse side of the head. Small, fast maces with heavy heads and good shape had similar advantages over their larger brethren in dealing with plate, as the damage they inflicted was concentrated in a smaller area. Even so, many of these penetrating weapons were only effective at particular ranges, or against particular targets. The aforementioned Lucerne hammer, for instance, was very good at caving in helmets from a distance, but wasn't much use by the time an opponent was in sword range. And what use is an estoc when your opponent has pulled you from your horse, put you in a headlock, and decided that the pommel of his sword is your express ticket for the Concussion Train? It's very easy for combatants of similar skill to end up at wrestling distance, and heavy, thick-bladed daggers, designed for piercing and prying apart armor, were useful for inflicting harm at this kind of extremely close range. Of course, as you say, those aren't stilettos. But honestly? Neither are the battlefield-capable "stilettos" in PoE. They're semi-generic six-inch stabbing blades with a name that differentiates them from the game's semi-generic knives - knives that are called "daggers" in spite of being single-edged. And you know? That's fine. PoE cannot accurately simulate reality, nor is it trying to. What it can do is look and sound enough like Renaissance violence that players can relax, suspend their disbelief, and have fun. That's verisimilitude, yo. Also: estocs are not lances. That's like saying that jian are the same thing as katana because they're both swords from Asia. Because it would make using smaller weapons a worse build choice for no mechanically compelling reason? Game balance, dawg.

First. I get that what you mean is "inconsistent with reality," but you should try to be clear about that to start with. There's a difference between that (external consistency) and being consistent with itself and its own material (internal consistency). Second. Look, you can't actually map the intricacies of the martial arts to a game system. In an action game like Mount and Blade you can sort of pretend to, but individualized combat does not break down to simple math. A system like PoE's might be able to simulate hilt infighting. It might be able to simulate the way armor can be built to perform best against firearms or blades or bludgeons but not all of them. It might be able to simulate the way disarmed fighters were trained to attack opponents with their helms. But it would become impossibly complex in so doing, and I could raise an infinite number of other ways it still wouldn't reflect the sophistication of real fighting and the real martial arts. Systems like PoE's are not designed to provide a simulation of reality, but firstly to be fun, and secondly to provide verisimilitude - the feeling of reality derived from an approximation. Frankly, I doubt you'd like an accurate simulation much. Most of what people assume about historical European martial arts is wrong, so efforts at simulationism usually just end up not resembling reality in a slightly different way. And while this doesn't necessarily preclude quibbling about details, if you get too hung up on why a mechanic absolutely has to represent this one thing, you can take a functional system and introduce needless complexity for the sake of ideas that don't make sense in the first place. This is a game where wizards can send a guy flying back by smacking him with a book, monks can become literally combustible on impact, and fighters can shoot a grappling beam. Every character in PoE relies on the power of their soul, barbarians included. You can interpret Carnage as sweeping around, but I always assumed it was the barbarian hitting a guy so viciously that their rage formed into a literal shockwave, ripping at enemies' bodies and souls. Debatable. Some people stand by maces as superior, and I personally advocate estocs. Sabers are solid. Others will argue pikes, or greatswords (just for Tidefall). There's gotta be somebody who stands behind morning stars. (a) IRL, armor penetration is less a function of size and more a function of the type of armor and particular weapon employed. (b) This would be less fun. As per point (a) above, heavy, thick-bladed daggers are one of the most effective tools for armor penetration at extremely close range. Per point (b) above, I don't see why anyone should have to be a rogue to play a knife-swinging lunatic.

It bears noting that in addition to tank and ranged DPS, you can get fairly good mileage out of a mixed DPS chanter using a combination of ranged and melee talents. Kana has given me good results with Armsmaster, Quick Switch, and Weapon Focus: Soldier to use a set of three arbalests followed by Tidefall (a greatsword, for those not in the know). Also: Chanters, like Barbarians, actually rely on Intelligence more than most casters do. With an Intelligence of 19-22 (depending on the levels of the verses), you can get enough linger on individual verses that two of them can be maintained full time.

Since I'd have to be willing to shell out twice the GoG price of BG1 and 2 for Beamdog's crappy additions and horrible UI changes to own BGEE, I can say pretty definitely that I didn't reinstall it. I did, however, play Tutu again back when PoE was first released.

Okay, now this, on the other hand, is untrue. You get plenty of conversation options for very high attributes, but you don't lose any by dumping a stat that you would be getting with an average score. Min-maxing can actually get you more conversation options than you'd have otherwise.

Yeah, I certainly agree that, "don't ever get targeted" is not a viable strategy for melee rogues (or any melee character). If your rogue is in close range, they will come under fire sometimes, and they will need a combination of Deflection, DR and Endurance to survive that. And as you say, none of those require a huge investment - high defensive stats and some magic item investment don't really have much in the way of opportunity costs. The only signiifcant decision revolves around shield use. Of course, all of this ignores that melee rogues suck and ranged DPS is way better

Yeah, you can't rely on Interrupt as your primary gimmick. The whole point is just that it delays the opponent's action by 0.5-1 seconds, so it's less of a deciding factor and more of an unquantifiable situational adjustment.

Guns are not underpowered. Not at all. (nooooooooooo)

Interrupt is a minor priority for rangers and some rogues, and I've seen claims that barbarians get some mileage out of it. But I think that's mostly the byproduct of many pure DPS types running out of useful stats after Might and Dexterity.

Oh snap. It is pretty clearly a human-enabled behavior, but it's pretty remarkable that it was learned so quickly and with such ease. I suppose that's not unlike teaching chimps sign language, or bonobos basic computer use - they may not have the faculties to come up with the idea in the first place, but they can be taught. Dang. That's super interesting.

A small shield would give you some deflection, but not really as much as to justify taking it instead of dual-wielding. Rogue is a DPS class; it is not meant to off-tank. Two-Weapon Fighting, on the other hand, grants you a +20% attack speed that offsets the penalty from Vulnerable Attack quite beautifully. If you get Gauntlets of Accuracy to offset the penalty from Savage Attack too, your enemies will be in for a treat. Ideally your Rogue should not go into the fray and be engaged. They should flank enemies and sneak-attack them while they are busy trying to hit your tanks or off-tanks. Deflection really isn't that important on a well-played Rogue unless you are soloing. Or trying to use Riposte for some reason. (Don't use Riposte).

Might have been interesting. It certainly would have given you a greater attachment to Gilded Vale (oh hello town over which I am lord). And the interplay between (or possibly fusion of?) Maerwald and Raedric could have had a lot of implications for the PC Watcher. Oh well. It is what it is.

It's not even required on PotD (at least not for most classes). Dumping stats can make your life easier, but it's by no means necessary. For reference: my first playthrough was on Hard, with a Wood Elf cipher with a 19/7/19/7/18/8 stat spread, using pregen companions. My current PotD playthrough is with a moonlike monk running a 16/10/10/16/10/16 spread, again using pregen companions. I've had few major difficulties on either. And yes, blunderbuss is absolutely the right call for a ranged cipher (switch to a pistol against enemies with very high DR, though). In terms of Talents, you'll want Weapon Focus:Ruffian, Marksman, either Gunner or Quick Switch (if you go for Quick Switch, Arms Master is also a decent choice), and Penetrating Shot.

That's not entirely accurate. Some options will not appear if CHA is too low, such as Viconia asking to join your party. Others include Shar-Teel only joining a male PC, getting a +1 dagger in Candlekeep with Charisma 18, outwitting the Aboleth in the Underdark with Int 17, and so on and so forth. BG1/2 really isn't the thing to make comparisons to for this, however, as PoE's stat-based dialogue options draw pretty clearly on Planescape: Torment. Given the way stats grew in PS:T, you can't exactly say they were a major source of replay value there, either. PS:T's only real narrative-dividing decision is "do you join the Xaositects?" But honestly, even that's pretty flimsy. Linear, story-based games of this type just don't have a lot of replay value, at least not in the traditional, "see all the content," sense. I think the big reason to replay PoE is the same as the big reason to replay PS:T - you want to read the story again. That's fine by me. Replay value is overrated. Bonobos and chimpanzees have little genetic differentiation, as the result of what was originally a single population divided by the formation of the Congo River a mere 1.5-2 million years ago. On the northern side of the river, where resources are scarce, chimpanzees have developed complex tool use and a society of competing patriarchal clan, in which strict hierarchy resolves intraclan disputes and surprisingly complex warfare resolves interclan disputes. On the lush southern side, bonobos have formed matriarchal clans that resolve virtually all of their conflicts with sex, demonstrating sophisticated social arrangements and communications skills arguably exceeding those of all other great apes. Very few primates can swim, you see, so a river like the Congo might as well be the iron bars of a cage. As to which species is more developed - that probably depends on which side of the river you're standing.

In fairness to Luckmann, that was me. I did that. I may have been remembering incorrectly, or just conflating TVTropes hearsay with reality. Not sure. (Wasn't there some joke during the kickstarter where one stretch goal was, "Sawyer will write romances," and then the next one immediately after that was, "Sawyer won't write romances?" Am I just making that up?) Okay, that's a great quote. Much obliged for plucking it from the interwebs. A little off-topic, but really, nothing disappointed me more than the promised "player house" just becoming part of the stronghold as Brighthollow. I was expecting the player house to be in Defiance Bay or something, as the local residence/mansion/summer home for your up-and-coming lordling (which your Watcher really should be, just by proxy of owning this ancient Aedyran keep and the lands around it). As much as I love OE's people, the whole stronghold could have used more Bioware-style expertise in its design. Caed Nua should, ideally, feel like the player's home - the Ebon Hawk being a fairly good example of that. It just goes to the ways different types of experience and different skill sets play out.

1) You can use both at once. IIRC, the math around Savage Attack works out to it being a good choice nearly 100% of the time. And honestly, rogues are so generally fragile that unless you're specifically going for a tankier build, reckless assault's deflection penalty is pretty meaningless. 2) Shields, followed by Cautious Attack.

I think that's a fairly good characterization of the issue. The Stronghold should have been a sequence of quests or even just a cool staging ground for your adventures, rather than a mostly-uninteresting minigame. "Rational" is a problematic word, because it assumes that all reason is some perfect guidepost by which all people can come to identical conclusions. It isn't. Reason is a tool, a set of methods by which you enhance your aims, not an aim unto itself (except insofar as reason is also a passion). Saying "I want x things, and the situation is y, therefore I should do z," is rational, but "I want x things" is just a statement of fact, and has nothing to do with being rational or irrational. You can't reason your way into a correct set of desires, except insofar as secondary desires are reasonably subordinate to primary desires. Furthermore, using reason to enact those desires obviously requires that you have access to and full understanding of things as they stand. Josh is rational? Sure, whatever. But that doesn't mean that what he wants is right or correct, only that with sufficient correct information, he knows how to go about accomplishing what he wants. Of course, that cuts both ways. Just because Josh doesn't want the same thing as someone doesn't mean he's unreasonable, and some folks could do well to remember that. Unfortunately, being the lead dev on a video game in the present day essentially translates to being a public punching bag. While the rest of the team is busy getting work done, part of the lead dev's job is to take the blame for ... everything. Honestly, going by the level of vitriol that emerges sometimes, you'd think Josh was responsible for apartheid or something. So, yeah, people could afford to cut him some slack instead of piling on. Given the legal ambiguities of Kickstarter commitments, that may or may not be technically true. Certainly it was from a PR perspective, though, so that's neither here nor there.

You already do level up faster in solo play. For every open party slot, there's a +10% XP boost. Solo characters get +50%. ... yes, playing Solo Triple Crown is supposed to be prohibitively difficult. If you're looking for the game to be anything other than prohibitively difficult, don't try Solo Triple Crown. And, for the record, people have completed Solo Triple Crown playthroughs with every class.

It's an extra level of weird insofar as nobody hates romances more than Sawyer.

That's a PC portrait, so it's doubtful we'll see him as an NPC in-game.

Right, so, maps. Let's talk about maps. The thing you have to remember is that PoE, like the IE games before it, does not use tilesets, or anything resembling tilesets. It uses multi-layered 2D images with designated pathfinding. Even if Obsidian gave people software to layer and convert images, they'd still have to create those images themselves. Let's be real. There are no completed total conversions of any IE games, save for those which move complete games from one version of the engine to others. That's because of maps. Without tilesets or similar terrain editors, map-creation is an ungodly hassle. I'm all for the upgrade to Unity 5 for better modding support, but let's not pretend to be riding a camel while sitting on horseback. How would you even *begin* to create custom *campaigns*? Like what? People desperately, desperately want a successor to NWN, and they will ask that any fantasy RPG with a shirt and two shoes be given the tools to be that successor, whether it makes sense or not. (Hint: Dragon Age could've been that successor, if it weren't way too complicated and labor-intensive to do. Shadowrun Returns and its sequels could've been that successor, if theyhad a wider audience and its genre weren't so niche. Divinity: OS could still be that successor, if Larian gets its act together with the editor. Hopefully the Enhanced Edition fixes that.)

I certainly hope not. It'd be really nice to get a female companion who isn't some kind of angsty, magical snowflake with a tragic backstory from an exotic, far-off land, and the barbarian is the last obvious bet for that.

1. Personally, I don't think much of it, but YMMV. IIRC, some people swear by it. 2. It's not measured in hits taken. I believe the affect applies to all damage taken during Unbending's duration (base 15 seconds). 3. Yes, but only after the fact. So if the damage would kill you, it still does that. If you'd survive the damage, Unbending helps you bounce back from it.