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Naw, Shale was available as day 1 DLC for every version. Collectors edition had other minor benefits like a certain ring and whatnot. It was to discourage buying used copies.
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Jan 6, 2014 12:19
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peak debt posted:Only the CE came with Shale, the regular edition didn't have her. Yeah, DAO authentication system was pretty bad. And when they merged the Bioware accounts with EA's tons of people had issues too. At least Obsidian can do the no-DRM route as all games should be.
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Jan 6, 2014 12:28
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That is such a subjective description of the DA Party. If you asked me to name the characters from that game Oghren and Shale would be high on the list and Alistair and Leilana at the bottom. I found the latter wooden and boring and could really tell you nothing about Leilana at all. There is nothing inherent about that ranking.
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Jan 6, 2014 12:48
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I'll also point out that a lot of characters that 'should' have been really interesting and liked never really catch on. G0-T0 from KoTOR II for instance. He has a great backstory, and a fairly neat personality as well as being a major part of the plot. However, he was the third droid in your party and most people's initial impression was that he was just a shittier/not as funny version of HK-47. G0-T0 definitely feels like he had way more effort put into him and his backstory than most of the cast, is a mandatory character, and he's the big driving force behind the events on the biggest/most complete planet up to the point where he actually kidnaps your character and forces your companions to launch a rescue mission. In comparison, HK-47 is almost completely incidental, all of his unique stuff was cut out of the plot, and he can be easily ignored all game. Yet he caught on. Blaming writers because people latch onto certain characters seems kind of dumb. There can be all sorts of reasons that various characters are liked and remembered by the playerbase at large, and it almost never comes down to how much good material is actually written in a character's story. Zore fucked around with this message at 13:20 on Jan 6, 2014 |
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Jan 6, 2014 13:18
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Zore posted:In comparison, HK-47 is almost completely incidental, all of his unique stuff was cut out of the plot, and he can be easily ignored all game. Yet he caught on.
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Jan 6, 2014 13:46
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Leliana was somewhat interesting because of her transformation from french spy to reborn christian but you only found out about that if you kept her in the party which was kind of her weakness. It's a bit like Atton Rand who actually had a great backstory but nobody ever found out about it because they ditched him before the story developed.
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Jan 6, 2014 14:30
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Problem with Leliana was that she had a lovely build. Once you re-rolled her as a full archer she was okay.
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Jan 6, 2014 14:35
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Shale wasn't cut because of her characterization, she was cut because BioWare had trouble implementing her model. She would get stuck in doorways and in geometry and stuff.
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Jan 6, 2014 15:53
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One of her dialogues even says that she was originally much bigger like a regular golem, but her owner chiselled her down in size so she could fit inside his house.
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Jan 6, 2014 16:32
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I get wanting the Baldur's Gate to have more lore that addresses the economics and anthropology of the setting, and I think that would be a great improvement for Project Eternity to implement. I played the first Baldur's Gate when I was 7 and 8 years old, didn't really think about that stuff, and when replaying Baldur's Gate: Extended Edition now, I definitely feel like seeing more of the stuff that shows the political structures of the world and how everything fits together. If Project Eternity has a political map that changes over time based on your decisions, I'd be even more excited for it. That said, I find claiming that Planescape:Torment is more realistic than Baldur's Gate on the economics or food production front absolutely hilarious. Sigil has two markets that sell food and no explanation of where it comes from. Do people import food through portals to Iowa and The Shire? Are there green areas in the city? Are the chocolate and fresh fruit that are for sale more luxury items while most citizens subsist on rats? I have no idea. Having read several relevant setting books for D&D, I still have no idea. My guess is that Torment is sometimes better received than Baldur's Gate because it goes whole-hog with "gently caress your pseudomedieval reality, this is high fantasy!" which I applaud as the only appropriate way to handle settings with such hilarious levels of magic. Even if there were farms in the vast expanses of Baldur's Gate, there's not much of an explanation as to how land ownership or farming rights would even work, or an explanation as to who is protecting the claims of farmers to their 200 acres. The political map in the 3rd edition Forgotten Realms campaign setting treats the Sword Coast minus Waterdeep as a single political entity, but that isn't even the case. How would farmers even hold land against all the greedy and powerful beings out there without being part of a nation-state or being allocated their land through a system of subinfeudation? An internally consistent (I hate the use of the word 'realistic' in discussions of fantasy settings) Baldur's Gate, or any Forgotten Realms game, would be full of things like Draconic extortion rackets and Druids being paid off to keep the weather just right. This would be awesome, but I agree with the previous poster that Eberron does it better. In Project Eternity, I think making magic weird, rare, and special, and still being investigated will do a lot to make it easier for the world to be internally consistent and echo real-world historical events and political structures.
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Jan 6, 2014 16:40
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MiltonSlavemasta posted:That said, I find claiming that Planescape:Torment is more realistic than Baldur's Gate on the economics or food production front absolutely hilarious. Sigil has two markets that sell food and no explanation of where it comes from. Do people import food through portals to Iowa and The Shire? Are there green areas in the city? Are the chocolate and fresh fruit that are for sale more luxury items while most citizens subsist on rats? I have no idea. Having read several relevant setting books for D&D, I still have no idea. It's a game set exclusively in bits and pieces of a big city. It doesn't address this because it never needs to come up. quote:Q: Is there such a thing as planar commerce, and how does currency work?
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Jan 6, 2014 16:54
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MiltonSlavemasta posted:Do people import food through portals to Iowa and The Shire?
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Jan 6, 2014 17:16
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MiltonSlavemasta posted:That said, I find claiming that Planescape:Torment is more realistic than Baldur's Gate on the economics or food production front absolutely hilarious. I don't recall anyone claiming Sigil was realistic. Just that it did a much better job of representing a relatively tiny area as being part of an enormous sprawling city than Baldur's Gate did.
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Jan 6, 2014 17:16
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MiltonSlavemasta posted:That said, I find claiming that Planescape:Torment is more realistic than Baldur's Gate on the economics or food production front absolutely hilarious. Sigil has two markets that sell food and no explanation of where it comes from. Do people import food through portals to Iowa and The Shire? Are there green areas in the city? Are the chocolate and fresh fruit that are for sale more luxury items while most citizens subsist on rats? I have no idea. Having read several relevant setting books for D&D, I still have no idea.
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Jan 6, 2014 17:20
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MiltonSlavemasta posted:
Not having what feels like thousands of magic users running around doing the most mundane poo poo you can imagine tend to do that, yeah. BG2 also improved a lot on the big city feel, I especially liked the tiny random-encounter screens you could bump into when someone got a drop on you in some alley or the like. You can get a lot out of like 10-20 "unique" screens with different encounter set-ups like that.
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Jan 6, 2014 17:24
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Pimpmust posted:BG2 also improved a lot on the big city feel, I especially liked the tiny random-encounter screens you could bump into when someone got a drop on you in some alley or the like. You can get a lot out of like 10-20 "unique" screens with different encounter set-ups like that. Indeed. Baldur's Gate itself felt quite 'empty' sometimes, while Amn might have been a bit too packed at once, but really felt lively.
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Jan 6, 2014 17:41
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I'd blame technology but then we I think of modern games and some still have the same problem, worse even. Amn at least felt like the size of a city while playing it. Any of the walled cities in Skyrim didn't feel like a city at all. It wasn't big or dense enough and probably had the same amount of NPCs around as Baldur's Gate did. At least Assassin's Creed got it right.
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Jan 6, 2014 17:45
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I've always felt that if magic is rendered mundane in your campaign, then perhaps every class should have some spellcasting ability, regardless of how much. Like for Forgotten Realms, it doesn't really feel right that fighters do not even have cantrips or rogues not being able to cast invisibility, yet most mages are presented as being able to throw meteor swarms all day, even the lower ranked ones.
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Jan 6, 2014 17:47
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Mordaedil posted:I've always felt that if magic is rendered mundane in your campaign, then perhaps every class should have some spellcasting ability, regardless of how much. But there are magical objects that people can use if they aren't trained as magic wielders. That's like saying everyone should know how to program computers since computers are an integral part of our civilization, instead of, you know, just being able to use them.
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Jan 6, 2014 17:51
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Drifter posted:But there are magical objects that people can use if they aren't trained as magic wielders. That's like saying everyone should know how to program computers since computers are an integral part of our civilization, instead of, you know, just being able to use them. Having anyone be able to use a scroll, say, or a wand without needing to make a Dear God How Does This Thing Work (Use Magic Device) roll was something I would like to see. If you can follow the directions scribbled on the scroll you can spit out whatever is on it.
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Jan 6, 2014 18:08
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citybeatnik posted:The hard counter to that is that while I might not know how to use a computer or internet program, I can grab something off the internet to do the work for me. That's not a hard counter to what I said that's literally what I said.
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Jan 6, 2014 18:14
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Drifter posted:That's not a hard counter to what I said that's literally what I said. My familiarity with the bog-standard D&D rules is that unless you have ranks in Poke The Magical Thing (scroll, wand) you cannot do said poking while you can use the Wonderous Item as you see fit.
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Jan 6, 2014 18:24
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Which is a bit of a balance thing. If you are able to wrestle a hill giant you probably shouldn't also be able to use a 300g Haste scroll.
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Jan 6, 2014 18:36
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Mordaedil posted:I've always felt that if magic is rendered mundane in your campaign, then perhaps every class should have some spellcasting ability, regardless of how much. As far as I remember all of the classes in PoE do have spellcasting abilities, basically, because magic is using your soul to accomplish certain things.
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Jan 6, 2014 18:47
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SoggyBobcat posted:Shale wasn't cut because of her characterization, she was cut because BioWare had trouble implementing her model. She would get stuck in doorways and in geometry and stuff.
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Jan 6, 2014 20:57
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peak debt posted:Which is a bit of a balance thing. If you are able to wrestle a hill giant you probably shouldn't also be able to use a 300g Haste scroll. Isn't there a (possibly apocryphal) story about someone's fighter in the original Greyhawk setting being played by a guy that was so good at it that people went "nope, fighters don't need no buffs"?
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Jan 6, 2014 22:57
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peak debt posted:Which is a bit of a balance thing. If you are able to wrestle a hill giant you probably shouldn't also be able to use a 300g Haste scroll. But what if the people who can use the 300g haste scroll can also wrestle Hill Giants if they use a different cheap scroll. And can also kill it or render it irrelevant about a dozen other ways with very standard, basic abilities. It is weird how people always seen to chime in about how guys who can, at best, hit things pretty hard shouldn't get access to nice things. Meanwhile they whistle while the druid who can transform into a bear with better stats for 23 hours a day, and a ton of spells they can also use gets to pick up cheap scrolls and wands to do whatever. Or wizards who can break just about every rule and law of physics should get more special options when they can already fly, break action econmy, transform themselves into beefier Hull Giants, paralyze it or teleport it away. Aragorn used magic, and having super cool magic stuff to back you up has been a hallmark of every myth ever, from Sun Wukong's cloud and infinite staff to Achilles magic abilities and equipment. Zore fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Jan 6, 2014 |
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Jan 6, 2014 23:22
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The problem I had with DA:O characters was how Bioware handled their agency, on paper it's cool that they all have their own agendas but the implementation was horrible. If you want to do something good for the world it generally means personal sacrifice whereas if I want to sleep with them I just give them a heap of trinkets.Zore posted:
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Jan 7, 2014 07:29
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Drifter posted:But there are magical objects that people can use if they aren't trained as magic wielders. That's like saying everyone should know how to program computers since computers are an integral part of our civilization, instead of, you know, just being able to use them. In Pathfinder, rogues are able to learn very basic spells by just picking a rogue special ability or spending a feat, if I recall correctly.  I dunno, I just feel that if your setting features so much magic, learning basic magic at the very least would help you out. Even if it is something as silly as doing sneak attacks with ray of frost. (that never gets old)
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Jan 7, 2014 08:41
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Mordaedil posted:In Pathfinder, rogues are able to learn very basic spells by just picking a rogue special ability or spending a feat, if I recall correctly. It's great that Pathfinder does what it does, I guess. You using it as an example of your desires doesn't much create any evidence for your argument. How's a normal adventurer going to learn their skills? Are there vocational schools that teach them what they'll need to know to survive? Then maybe there's a class for cantrips. Are they just random farmers or citizens who get caught up in a rough and tumble world? Where would a poor farmer or random shopkeep ever find the time or opportunity to learn magic? If your larger world supports everyone learning magic, fine, but it's not a thing you should just be all, well air and dirt exists so I guess everyone should be an elementalist because they use it all the time. Drifter fucked around with this message at 08:56 on Jan 7, 2014 |
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Jan 7, 2014 08:52
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Woden posted:if I want to sleep with them I just give them a heap of trinkets. Hey... all those bad traits sound like my  dream NPC!
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Jan 7, 2014 09:39
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Drifter posted:I'm confused at what you're wanting to accomplish with that? If you want realism in the fantasy world, well it's more realistic that most people don't have the time or energy or are living in a culture that imposes this type of learning to develop those abilities. You'll note that there are some cultures in fantasy worlds where people do learn magic because it's part of their cultural heritage. So it's not like it's a thing that can't exist. Uh maybe fantasy is inherently unrealistic and nods to reality should only be included as and when they compliment the setting and plot?? Just a thought e: seriously though, insisting on approaching magic as a deterministic form of hyper mathematics is a problem in itself, it works for some settings fine, but as mentioned above most classical depictions of magic portray it as somewhat miraculous and transcendent of peoples level of book-learnin', what's wrong with that? Even PoE, despite its nods to D&D mechanics and its somewhat quantifiable world has magic come from inside people and usable (in different ways) by anyone with enough gumption. No Dignity fucked around with this message at 11:02 on Jan 7, 2014 |
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Jan 7, 2014 10:50
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Drifter posted:I'm confused at what you're wanting to accomplish with that? If you want realism in the fantasy world, well it's more realistic that most people don't have the time or energy or are living in a culture that imposes this type of learning to develop those abilities. You'll note that there are some cultures in fantasy worlds where people do learn magic because it's part of their cultural heritage. So it's not like it's a thing that can't exist. Sorry, my tangent here doesn't really have anything to do with PoE much at all. I just think the presentation of magic in Forgotten Realms doesn't make a case for it being a rarity. If you could bypass basic necessities by undertaking a programming lesson in real life, then yes, I think most everyone would attend a class or seek out the secrets to learning how to purify water, creating water out of thin air or even make basic food every day. I mean, these are like cantrips, you don't even have to be particularly bright to pull it off and even having one or two people in your village able to cast this would increase the quality of life exponentionally. Which would be how it'd make sense in Forgotten Realms, since it is a setting where magic is presented as nearly mundane. Mind you, I'm not talking in general terms here, I am aiming this argument of criticism specifically at Forgotten Realms and how it decided to represent its campaign, which doesn't compute very well for me aside from wanting to maintain it as a D&D setting as much as possible with minimal regard for how it'd reflect upon society at large, especially with how willing a lot of the mages in that setting seem to be willing to teach others (of the good guys anyway) But that is just me. I am currently reading Elminster in Hell and I kinda feel like kicking someone because the way that book is written is so loving painful to read. It's like #1stWorldProblems in the Forgotten Realms setting.
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Jan 7, 2014 11:02
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Mordaedil posted:Sorry, my tangent here doesn't really have anything to do with PoE much at all. I just think the presentation of magic in Forgotten Realms doesn't make a case for it being a rarity. If you could bypass basic necessities by undertaking a programming lesson in real life, then yes, I think most everyone would attend a class or seek out the secrets to learning how to purify water, creating water out of thin air or even make basic food every day. I mean, these are like cantrips, you don't even have to be particularly bright to pull it off and even having one or two people in your village able to cast this would increase the quality of life exponentionally. Which would be how it'd make sense in Forgotten Realms, since it is a setting where magic is presented as nearly mundane. Theres no stories about agriculture because (almost) no one would read them. Even in novel-form the closest thing to that kind of nerd story I remember was a couple of Fiests books where he spent a while discussing trade/underwriting/markets and another one where he went through legionaire/mercenary soldier training. (Both extremely simplified of course.) I assume the Elminster novel is Greenwoods? Why do that to yourself?  Great world-building nerd. Terrible novel writer.
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Jan 7, 2014 12:02
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A Steampunk Gent posted:Uh maybe fantasy is inherently unrealistic and nods to reality should only be included as and when they compliment the setting and plot?? Just a thought Once you start going down that rabbit hole trying to explain that stuff mechanically the whole world you've tried to build just starts to unravel. Shadowrun suffered from this when they started explaining how Cyberware and the like worked in later 2nd ED supplementals, and then went full retard in 3RD. Shadowrun got so ridiculous that being a runner was dumb and you were better off starting your own mini corp all because they hamfistedly added too much background and then rules to things that were incredibly exploitable and not needed in the first place. The way magic works in DnD can be hand waved away well enough either for farmers being needed or magic supporting 100k+ cities with a decent enough DM I think. I haven't read all the splat books but the general trend in 2ED were to give flavour to areas and allow DM enough freedom to say things like diamond dust is rare here so no easy raise dead even though there's hundreds of high level clerics.
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Jan 7, 2014 12:07
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FRINGE posted:If youre going for the "internal consistancy" angle, then it still works alright. Not all people can use magic, and not all people will be endowed as priests by gods. Some will (and All players get the chance of course!), so theres enough magic around for basic village maintenance, but not enough for FREE FOOD FOREVER! The world is full of people that get by without being one of the special (high Int/ high Wis/ trained in magic/ gifted by gods) people. (Just like almost no one in the setting can literally crush skulls with their hands, but the infamous barbarian from the Drow novels could.) Players just dont play farmers. (Although I am one of those people that likes starting prologue/pre-adventure story when the PCs are still young dirtfarmer types. I like creating the groundwork for "back home" references.) It'd be different if it was all birthright such as a sorcerers magic. As for the agriculture thing, one story I've read recently that handled that subject with an intense amount of interest was Vinland Saga, which has roughly 50 chapters about a viking veteran becoming a slave and working for freedom by plowing lands cultivating crops. Of course, it helps by having plenty of politics and viking era stories to draw from. The secret to writing about agriculture is to have a character the readers care about undergoing it and learning by themselves. FRINGE posted:I assume the Elminster novel is Greenwoods? Why do that to yourself? This book seems to be his take on Mystra's death and the whole Time of Troubles ordeal, but ever scene I've read conscerning the Sisters of whatever all they do is trigger the Bechdel test because all they talk about is Elminster and giggle. But then again, I have no idea how widely spread that was at the time of writing.
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Jan 7, 2014 12:32
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Zore posted:Aragorn used magic, and having super cool magic stuff to back you up has been a hallmark of every myth ever, from Sun Wukong's cloud and infinite staff to Achilles magic abilities and equipment. When does Aragorn use magic? He uses magic items, which everyone else does too, but I can't remember him ever casting anything remotely like a spell. He's a Ranger with good gear - and if you compare him to a DnD Ranger he's a whole lot less magic, since DnD Rangers eventually got to be pocket Druids.
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Jan 7, 2014 17:30
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He literally lays "hands of the King" on Éowyn and Faramir.
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Jan 7, 2014 17:48
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JanPospisil posted:He literally lays "hands of the King" on Éowyn and Faramir. That's more of a royal bloodline sort of thing rather than any overt use of magic.
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Jan 7, 2014 17:56
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DatonKallandor posted:When does Aragorn use magic? He uses magic items, which everyone else does too, but I can't remember him ever casting anything remotely like a spell. He's a Ranger with good gear - and if you compare him to a DnD Ranger he's a whole lot less magic, since DnD Rangers eventually got to be pocket Druids. There isn't really magic in middle earth anyhow. Wizards are angelic beings, not magic users. Elves do things that appear magical, but it's closer to a sufficiently advanced technology, because they are exceptionally good craftsmen and artists. SoggyBobcat posted:That's more of a royal bloodline sort of thing rather than any overt use of magic. It's also an Elf/Numenorean thing, since he's Elrond's great great great &c. nephew. He has some kind of implicit mandate from the Valar (earthbound gods, more or less). User fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Jan 7, 2014 |
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