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Wingless posted:
Magicka was something similar and a really fun game.
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 09:32 |
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# ? Apr 26, 2024 04:41 |
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FRINGE posted:Training to fight semi-ambidexterously is difficult and extremely time-consuming. So is learning magic but that doesn't stop anyone. At least dual-wielding axes means you can chop down multiple trees at once and look sick as hell while doing it! (p.s. stop your stupid TG persecution complex poo poo, thanks)
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 12:35 |
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In some particularly dense forests, it's rather important to be able to cut equally well with either hand. An amateur who can only slice away branches and vines with his dominant hand can find it takes two or three times as long for him to make the same trip as a skilled woodsman who can slice and dice his way through the thick scrub from two directions at once. My woodsman was a hunter in one such forest. He spent his days setting traps, slicing through the forest with a blade in each hand, and silently lying in wait ready to pounce on a passing deer. As a result he's an ambidextrous, trap setting, back stabbing woodsman. Or a "Rogue", as adventure parties like to name them.
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 12:58 |
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rope kid posted:I have advocated coarser skill advancement, especially in games with a lot of characters, for several games. I think it usually works better and the investment feels more meaningful in a lot of CRPG environments. I love this. I would much rather chunkier, noticeable changes in my character's abilities over a seamless +0.5% power creep every level. If I find a magic sword that is +2% to hit I get annoyed. I really feel like a magic sword should do something more dramatic than give me a two percent variation. Frequent, tiny increases make me feel like nothing is really changing at all. Going from "Can't set enemies on fire" to "Can now set enemies on fire" after five levels is way more interesting than going from "Does 93 fire damage" to "Now does 95 fire damage" every level. quote:My woodsman was a hunter in one such forest. He spent his days setting traps, slicing through the forest with a blade in each hand, and silently lying in wait ready to pounce on a passing deer. As a result he's an ambidextrous, trap setting, back stabbing woodsman. Or a "Rogue", as adventure parties like to name them. I like to keep the word rogue related to its original roots as a personality description. Sneaky, devious, brash, and under-handed - though frequently charming and capable. Wingless fucked around with this message at 14:27 on Feb 4, 2014 |
# ? Feb 4, 2014 14:25 |
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Wingless posted:I love this. I would much rather chunkier, noticeable changes in my character's abilities over a seamless +0.5% power creep every level. If I find a magic sword that is +2% to hit I get annoyed. I really feel like a magic sword should do something more dramatic than give me a two percent variation. Frequent, tiny increases make me feel like nothing is really changing at all. I used to be rather dismayed with D&D's progression this way. Finding a +1 or +2 sword just seemed like a tiny increment and it took until several years later for me to realize every +1 was essentially a 5% increment, which would be a rather huge deal when it comes to something like a +5 weapon. It falls apart with hit points however, since it still adds one or two points to the amount of damage dealt and eventually your going to outscore the damage your actual weapon deals. When you have such high ability scores that you can get 10 points from strength, 4 from feats, 5 and more from magical enchantments in weapon and more bonuses from magical sources, that piddly 1-8 damage a longsword deals as its standard seem so insignificant it kinda becomes a question of "why did I bother with this weapon over any other?" Damage types become more important, and there are some weapons that can hit several types at once(at your option in some cases), so you suddenly start to go for these and then it just gets really weird and stupid. So, I hope we do keep some of that, but obviously I hope choice of weapon becomes scaling rather than something that ends up making no difference.
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 14:44 |
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Mordaedil posted:I used to be rather dismayed with D&D's progression this way. Finding a +1 or +2 sword just seemed like a tiny increment and it took until several years later for me to realize every +1 was essentially a 5% increment, which would be a rather huge deal when it comes to something like a +5 weapon. The + weapon score wasn't really there for the damage bonus, but to determine what they could damage. Demons require at least +2 or +3 (I forget which) and a lot of lesser golems are immune to normal weapons and need +1 weapons that signify they are magic in some way.
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 14:53 |
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Demiurge4 posted:The + weapon score wasn't really there for the damage bonus, but to determine what they could damage. Demons require at least +2 or +3 (I forget which) and a lot of lesser golems are immune to normal weapons and need +1 weapons that signify they are magic in some way. While this is true, I must admit I never really liked it. When I first played BG last year, I was doing fine when suddenly I came face to face with a pack of dogs. "Oh, they're just dogs," I thought. No, they were vampire wolves, which meant 3/4s of my party couldn't even do damage and the rest were swiftly paralyzed. I don't mind overwhelming encounters, but not even having the opportunity to fight back because of a number on my equipment feels arbitrary and unfun. I'm glad there's no sign of that in PoE.
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 15:19 |
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Wingless posted:Going from "Can't set enemies on fire" to "Can now set enemies on fire" after five levels is way more interesting than going from "Does 93 fire damage" to "Now does 95 fire damage" every level. AXE COP posted:At least dual-wielding axes means you can chop down multiple trees at once and look sick as hell while doing it! FRINGE posted:If you are running a narrative game (as opposed to a video-game on paper) there needs to be some kind of story-sense or there is no story. If you are running something more like a communal novel then there is a different type of believability/consensus that matters.
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 15:21 |
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idonotlikepeas posted:Plenty of games have used systems like that. Arcanum, for instance, where having a persuasion of 5 was pretty hefty. I remember a fairly impassioned essay on this topic from one of the developers of Ultima 9, of all things. It's interesting that the Arcanum devs completely overhauled the system in that game mid-development from something that vaguely resembled Fallout 2 (you'd get 5 character points when you levelled up, basic stats and skills had sliding point costs depending on how many points you already had in that stat/skill, spells cost multiple points, etc) to what Arcanum's system is now (you get five character points at the game start, one point per normal level up, an extra point if the level is a multiple of five, and everything from increasing a stat by one to increasing a skill by one costs one point. Internally, skill points are a 0-20 scale, and each external 'rank' you buy translates to 4 internal points, etc). Here are details of the transition cobbled from some interviews: "The Terra Arcanum FAQ posted:Q6) Why did you change the leveling system, and how does the new system work?
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 15:23 |
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Berk Berkly posted:As a GM I've had to deal with players wanting to have a heavy full plate wearer specialize in sneaking and acrobatic tricks. And backstab with fireballs. And some point you have to think about the logical coherence of what the character claims to be and what they try to do and how they try to do it. Not all character concepts are equally viable or even logically coherent. What practical reason would a Woodsman ever have for dual wielding for instance? I know its to grognardy point to make but sometimes for the sake of gameplay sacrifices must be made. Anyway, that's what it comes down to for me. If - in 2014 - the ranger class for your spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate is a World of Warcraft Hunter ripoff then that's really sad and lazy.
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 15:53 |
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On the other hand, the WoW Hunter owns and is very fun to play
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 15:56 |
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rope kid posted:When you highlight an ability or spell icon in PoE, you get a brief text description of what it does + the numbers to go with it. You have no idea how freaking excited this makes me. rope kid posted:I have advocated coarser skill advancement, especially in games with a lot of characters, for several games. I think it usually works better and the investment feels more meaningful in a lot of CRPG environments. This too. I know it isn't an ~~~~~~~ official patch ~~~~~ but I love the jsawyer mod for New Vegas, simply because everything feels so much more cohesive in the Ultimate Edition of that game. Hoping PoE has similar rewarding progression.
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 16:08 |
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frajaq posted:On the other hand, the WoW Hunter owns and is very fun to play Don't get me wrong, I also like the Hunter and I've wasted a lot of my life on WoW. But there are no raids requiring precision tuning in Pillars of Eternity -- As long as we're talking single player RPGs, I'll always take the messy flexibility of 2nd ed. Dungeons & Dragons over an overly prescriptive WoW clone. I certainly hope PoE won't require me to build a party of archetypes with every niche covered. My BG2 party was far from optimal but it still muddled through and I enjoyed it all the more for having the characters in my party that I wanted, and not the ones that I needed. unlimited shrimp fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Feb 4, 2014 |
# ? Feb 4, 2014 16:12 |
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bathroom sounds posted:Anyway, that's what it comes down to for me. If - in 2014 - the ranger class for your spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate is a World of Warcraft Hunter ripoff then that's really sad and lazy. I'm pretty certain DnD 3.0 was released years before World of Warcraft. In it, rangers had access to an animal companion and ranged combat was one of their favoured fighting styles. Baldur's Gate rangers were also pretty good at shooting bows. Anyway, I'm sure someone will release a mod for Pillars of Eternity where the rogue's favoured skills are changed to "survival" and "being drizzt", has its name changed to "ranger", and changes the ranger class's name to "hunter lol". That should satisfy you.
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 16:16 |
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Let's not get into which High Heroic Fantasy class is more 'realistic' than the other, please.
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 16:17 |
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pun pundit posted:I'm pretty certain DnD 3.0 was released years before World of Warcraft. In it, rangers had access to an animal companion and ranged combat was one of their favoured fighting styles. Baldur's Gate rangers were also pretty good at shooting bows.
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 16:18 |
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FRINGE posted:If you are running a narrative game (as opposed to a video-game on paper) there needs to be some kind of story-sense or there is no story. You do recall that we're discussing a video game, right? The entire point of this genre and game is escapism - if a concept is feasible in the design space, evocative, and doesn't break balance of play, then it should be allowed. If everyone's having fun I don't give a poo poo about realism. Two-weapon fighting, magic, and psychic powers aren't effective ways to fight in the real world but this isn't the real world and they are fun as hell in games.
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 16:23 |
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A true spiritual successor to a melee-oriented IE/2nd Ed. ranger would be a sub-par fighter. And yes, 3E/3.5 rangers both gain animal companions as a standard part of the class at 4th level. In any case, most of the PoE ranger's abilities could also easily be modified to be used with melee weapons, which is what we're likely to do. Some of their abilities will likely stay ranged-only because they only make sense that way (like some of the fighter's only make sense as melee-only).
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 16:23 |
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bathroom sounds posted:the messy flexibility of 2nd ed. Dungeons & Dragons
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 16:28 |
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rope kid posted:A true spiritual successor to a melee-oriented IE/2nd Ed. ranger would be a sub-par fighter. There's nothing sub-par about Minsc, you take that back! (Also he had an animal companion) bathroom sounds, going on the NPCs they have revealed, one of which is a rogue who is not a sneaky thief but rather a soldier, I don't think your class will shoehorn you into a specific personality or subplot, I think it's most likely that the reputation system or skills will do that if anything does. Rope kid, maybe you can comfirm/deny?
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 16:40 |
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rope kid posted:I've been playing A/D&D for 28 years, 2nd Ed. for 11 of those, and this is the first time I've seen someone describe 2nd Ed. as flexible. However, I did play a hell of a lot of 3E and I never relied on an animal companion as an integral part of the ranger. Certainly not in the vein of WoW where the companion tanked while I plunked away from range -- 3E animal companions could be that, but they could also be utility animals that would extend your senses or whatever similar to a familiar. Mostly I just hate the concept of using an animal to do your fighting for you, and I don't see why abusing your pet bear is intrinsic to being a ranger, so
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 16:40 |
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pun pundit posted:I don't think your class will shoehorn you into a specific personality or subplot, I think it's most likely that the reputation system or skills will do that if anything does. Rope kid, maybe you can comfirm/deny?
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 16:52 |
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bathroom sounds posted:Mostly I just hate the concept of using an animal to do your fighting for you, and I don't see why abusing your pet bear is intrinsic to being a ranger, so
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 16:59 |
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Do rangers get their ranged bonuses when they're using weapons with long reach (ie. long spears and such) or just with actual ranged weapons? Are there reach weapons in the game anyway?
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 17:10 |
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Currently only with actual ranged weapons. The pike does have reach and is currently the only melee weapon with reach.
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 17:17 |
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May I ask why? If you included the pike as well, it seems to me that all the traditional hunting weapons would be included in the ranger's arsenal. At a glance, it doesn't seem like it would be much of a balance problem or anything, and would keep the class flavor intact. Are pikes penalized in melee range vs regular melee weapons, except by having suboptimal stats in exchange for extra range? bathroom sounds posted:Is dual wielding (or fighting melee) somehow less practical than taming a wild beast to tank for you while you shoot around it with a bow? Is the WoW Hunter archetype somehow more authentically "ranger" than the D&D Ranger class? Woodsman/expert dual-wielder (weapon style probably mostly associated with dueling) is a rather confused archetype in comparison to a hunter with a bow and a pet. verybad fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Feb 4, 2014 |
# ? Feb 4, 2014 17:33 |
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Do melee characters automatically stay at the maximum reach of their weapon? I assume reach is for calculating range for PBAoE spells and abilities and using a higher reach helps you avoid some of the damage?
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 17:38 |
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bathroom sounds posted:Archery and animal companions were available to rangers in 3.0 but they were far from class defining or obligatory, as opposed to a Hunter clone which absolutely needs those things to survive. Animal Companion was mandatory and your choices of fighting style were Ranged (something specific to the ranger) or Be-Drizzt (which is even more derivative and boring than WoW Hunter). Note that WoW Hunter is a ridiculous oversimplification and the shared health pool is nothing like that. Oh and it turns out Ranged+Pet is an awesome class - as evidence you can take the fact it's used a lot, including in 4E (the best Edition) DnD. Edit: Also the whole dual wield Drizzt thing isn't even because he's a Ranger. He was dual-wield because he was a Drow - they subsequently changed Ranger to be capable of Dual-wielding because of Drizzt.
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 17:49 |
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verybad posted:May I ask why? If you included the pike as well, it seems to me that all the traditional hunting weapons would be included in the ranger's arsenal.
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 17:57 |
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Random question dealing with the ranger - are they fluffed as having trained their animal companion, or does their Soul-Stuff that everyone else throw around forge a bond with a particular fuzzy animal?
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 18:01 |
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coffeetable posted:Pikes were about 15 feet long. Traditional hunting weapon? According to wikipedia, pikes were anything from 10-25' long. Here's a hunting spear, courtesy of wikipedia: Seems quite long.
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 18:17 |
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citybeatnik posted:Random question dealing with the ranger - are they fluffed as having trained their animal companion, or does their Soul-Stuff that everyone else throw around forge a bond with a particular fuzzy animal? Considering that you share damage with your animal companion, a soul bond makes the most amount of sense as to why that is in a game world context.
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 18:19 |
Wait, what's the difference between a pike and a halberd? I always thought pikes were like normal spear-length, like 8' ish
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 18:20 |
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verybad posted:May I ask why? If you included the pike as well, it seems to me that all the traditional hunting weapons would be included in the ranger's arsenal. At a glance, it doesn't seem like it would be much of a balance problem or anything, and would keep the class flavor intact. Throwing in my two cents as an Alaskan from a subsistence hunting family(hunting/gathering for food but yes we did have a grocery store in our village) I found a lot of hunters get good at doing stuff with both hands in case the other one gets injured, so developing a bit of ambi-dexterity is definitely a good thing. However I don't know of anyone who uses two knives in a fight, two machettes to clear out brush yeah, but fighting bears it's always been two handed stuff if it's available. One guy managed to take out two with a wood axe and no injuries to himself. As for animal companions, one sixty year old lady was walking her two dogs and got attacked by a bear, she did have a spear with her and managed to shove her coat down the bear's throat with it choking it to death, one of her dogs did die from its injuries later on. That happened over forty years ago, now in the 1930's there was a doctor who shot a massive bear while hunting and it turned out to be a sow with a cub. He raised that bear cub into a massive grizzly and used it to carry supplies up through the mountains and in rough terrain. He'd also ride it to get his picture taken but I don't think he ever rode it any real distance. So what I'm saying is that a lot of the ranger arch types are somewhat based in reality, but this is a FANTASY game so let's not sweat the stuff. tldr: Some random Alaskan thinks rangers are ok. edit: A MIRACLE posted:Wait, what's the difference between a pike and a halberd? I always thought pikes were like normal spear-length, like 8' ish Pike is an extra long reinforced spear for unhorsing calvary, halberd is the same thing but with an axe attached on the end and used in mass battle formations against infantry as well. Halberd square battles were slow and gruesome as poo poo as people would get slowly impaled as the masses of halberders crowded into each other. Mr.Pibbleton fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Feb 4, 2014 |
# ? Feb 4, 2014 18:24 |
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A MIRACLE posted:Wait, what's the difference between a pike and a halberd? I always thought pikes were like normal spear-length, like 8' ish A spear is a like a sword on a stick. A halberd is a like an axe on a stick. A pike is like a sword on a really long stick.
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 18:27 |
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Halberds are about 6' long and have spike on the end, an axehead and a hook. That said, 'polearms with weird heads' is a big confusing mess of weird nomenclature you do not want to wander into.Mr.Pibbleton posted:tldr: Some random Alaskan thinks rangers are ok. I don't know anyone who doesn't use two hands in a fight. Except maybe people who have only one hand, but I don't know anyone like that so hey.
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 18:27 |
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verybad posted:Halberds are about 6' long and have spike on the end, an axehead and a hook. That said, 'polearms with weird heads' is a big confusing mess of weird nomenclature you do not want to wander into. I never said anything about two hands, just two weapons at the same time. Grabbing someone and hitting them with something is a time honored tradition of all peoples everywhere.
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 18:29 |
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Mr.Pibbleton posted:I never said anything about two hands, just two weapons at the same time. Grabbing someone and hitting them with something is a time honored tradition of all peoples everywhere. Pray tell, do these alaskan rangers dual wield pistols or do they prefer large caliber rifles, for fighting bears? Actually, re-reading your post (over and over again), I'm not actually sure what you're even saying about using two weapons at the same time.
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 18:37 |
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Pretty sure he said that while Alaskan rangers are often (at least partially) ambidextrous, he doesn't know of any actual instances of dual-wielding.
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 18:40 |
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# ? Apr 26, 2024 04:41 |
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DatonKallandor posted:A spear is a like a sword on a stick. A halberd is a like an axe on a stick. A pike is like a sword on a really long stick. Correction: a pike is a spear on a stick. Meta-stickweaponry!
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# ? Feb 4, 2014 18:41 |