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That’s why most MMO’s have glamours for your armor.
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# ? Jul 11, 2020 22:22 |
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# ? Apr 23, 2024 21:56 |
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There's always the Morrowind option: Make medium armour hella cool looking and also extremely useless.
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# ? Jul 11, 2020 22:30 |
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Open Marriage Night posted:That’s why most MMO’s have glamours for your armor. Fashion slots are fine for some games, but for more simulationist games like D&D (or The Elder Scrolls, or PoE) I think having your gear be materially depicted on your character is cool and I hope it sticks around as a concept
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# ? Jul 11, 2020 22:51 |
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Make fewer, prettier armors/robes/whatever and allow some upgrade/enchantments choices for each one. A few options such that no armor is "this is only good for one specific build/this is good for everyone/this is always trash" Same goes for weapons
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# ? Jul 12, 2020 00:20 |
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Khanstant posted:In a cRPG where the computer does all the hard work, I like what gives me more options and customization. This is objectively great and having a ton of wacky class options is very much appreciated. The caveat being that as the rules grow in complexity (since you're adding in all this stuff) you wind up with having a lot of traps involved. Unless you're playing with a super uptight DM this all gets smoothed over on the table but adhering strictly to the rules in a videogame makes for a system where before you click New Game you need to do your internet research. That's not to say similar false choices don't exist in 2E or 5E but they both felt a lot more like games where you didn't start playing by spreadsheeting your 1-20 progression. It's obviously a matter of personal preference, but the cons of traps and planning definitely outweigh the pros of more class selection for me. I'm perfectly happy in PoE to play a mage and just level up as I go without worrying about taking X feat from Y class at Z level to make one spell in my arsenal work.
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# ? Jul 12, 2020 03:30 |
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Khanstant posted:Don't know what you mean by cheating on encounters, frankly, my party is unstoppable, but "cheating in encounters" just sounds like basic DM editorial control. I don't remember exactly how it works, but there's some weird thing where separate from the normal difficulty settings, bosses are twice as hard as they should be according to the selected difficulty level.
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# ? Jul 12, 2020 04:30 |
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Chairchucker posted:I don't remember exactly how it works, but there's some weird thing where separate from the normal difficulty settings, bosses are twice as hard as they should be according to the selected difficulty level. It has a separate "difficulty" and a "stat adjustment" setting. The preset difficulties are set up weirdly in that on normal enemies will be set to "weaker", on hard they will be set to "stronger", and there is no preset that just sets them to "no adjustment", so if you want pnp stats on everything you have to do custom.
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# ? Jul 12, 2020 06:41 |
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Worse yet is that medium armor would usually be up your alley if you wanted some mobility if you have a little bit of dexterity, but that isn't how it actually works out. Padded - Max of 9 AC if 26 dexterity Leather - Max of 8 AC if 22 dexterity Studded - Max of 8 AC if 20 dexterity Chain shirt - Max of 8 AC if 18 dexterity Hide - Max of 7 AC if 18 dexterity Scale - Max of 7 AC if 16 dexterity Chainmail - Max of 7 AC if 14 dexterity Breastplate - Max of 8 AC if 16 dexterity Splint - Max of 6 AC if 10 dexterity Banded - Max of 7 AC if 12 dexterity Half plate - Max of 7 AC if 10 dexterity Full plate - Max of 9 AC if 12 dexterity If you have 12 dexterity or less, you're screwed if you don't go for one of the heaviest armors and if you have the normally very good 14 dexterity score, you're almost better off wearing a breastplate still, over that of a chainmail even if it works perfectly for your score. Or even better, use just a chain shirt and get buffed with cat's grace and you'd be better than any medium/heavy armor.
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# ? Jul 12, 2020 14:38 |
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Somewhat important note in those calculations is that Pathfinder did change the medium/heavy armors to make them a more reasonable choice. Specifically, every medium/heavy armor listed got a 1 point base armor boost (so 8/8/8/9 for the mediums, and 7/8/8/10 for the heavies). There is still the movement sacrifice to consider, but you are at least legitimately getting more AC than light now, and at less investment in DEX.
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# ? Jul 12, 2020 16:36 |
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Ankheg Plate is super ugly, true
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# ? Jul 12, 2020 19:15 |
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Yeah, Pathfinder also seems to just make all of their content freely available of are cheaply available in Humblebundles, which has made playing it with people new to the hobby fairly easy.
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# ? Jul 12, 2020 22:19 |
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I really liked Pathfinder Kingmaker until the last chapter, then it became incredibly tedious and unfun for no reason I hope bg3 doesn't do that.
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 01:26 |
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Kingmaker was the most joyless RPG experience I've ever had, so I also hope BG3 doesn't do anything that it did.
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 07:08 |
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Crowetron posted:Kingmaker was the most joyless RPG experience I've ever had, so I also hope BG3 doesn't do anything that it did. I liked it, at least up to, idk half way (as far as I've got). I think they made some important tweaks, so it's a lot less painful to play than at launch
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 07:29 |
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sebmojo posted:I liked it, at least up to, idk half way (as far as I've got). I think they made some important tweaks, so it's a lot less painful to play than at launch Did they hire an actual writer at any point or is every character still just an alignment score with legs?
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 07:33 |
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I did not play Kingmaker at launch and only picked it up about two weeks ago. My reaction has mostly been “this is shockingly well made”. I heard it was a disaster at launch but playing on a custom difficulty tuned to have no modifiers one way or the other on enemies or players it’s been pretty chill? The final area did not seem noticeably harder than anything else. My understanding is at launch the game was mostly tuned for super Pathfinder grogs. Normal difficulty would be even easier since Normal has enemies slightly debuffed relative to what I’m doing. I’m also impressed by the fact that Owlcat went out of their way to implement a bunch of spells and abilities that the NWNs and Baldurs Gates largely shied away from as being too hard. The pit spells and dimension door and the like. Even BG2 used a lovely abstraction of dimension door. Captain Oblivious fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Aug 1, 2020 |
# ? Aug 1, 2020 07:42 |
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Crowetron posted:Did they hire an actual writer at any point or is every character still just an alignment score with legs? It was a video game, the writing was like a sandwich of plain white bread with a slice of American cheese
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 08:53 |
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sebmojo posted:It was a video game, the writing was like a sandwich of plain white bread with a slice of American cheese Fair.
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 09:00 |
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I WANT TO BE A TORTLE
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 14:40 |
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Crowetron posted:Did they hire an actual writer at any point or is every character still just an alignment score with legs? I thought the writing in Pathfinder: Kingmaker was fine? Especially for an ESL quasi-indie Russian studio where it could have gone off the rails in any number of ways. It was nothing special, no cathartic experience that will change your soul forever, but I had no problems with it that I can recall. If I had to pick one major aspect of Kingmaker to complain about, that would definitely not be it.
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 15:57 |
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Phlegmish posted:I thought the writing in Pathfinder: Kingmaker was fine? Especially for an ESL quasi-indie Russian studio where it could have gone off the rails in any number of ways. It was nothing special, no cathartic experience that will change your soul forever, but I had no problems with it that I can recall. If I had to pick one major aspect of Kingmaker to complain about, that would definitely not be it. If eurojank RPG writing doesn't go off the rails then it's bad
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 16:00 |
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Captain Oblivious posted:I did not play Kingmaker at launch and only picked it up about two weeks ago. My reaction has mostly been “this is shockingly well made”. I heard it was a disaster at launch but playing on a custom difficulty tuned to have no modifiers one way or the other on enemies or players it’s been pretty chill? The final area did not seem noticeably harder than anything else. It's been at least a year since I played it, but when I did I definitely did not consider Normal to be a cakewalk throughout the entire game, and I'm a reasonably experienced CRPG player (never tabletopped though). And that was after there had already been several patches that tweaked the difficulty. But by the same token, it's good that they actually have been polishing their game all this time. Doesn't make up for the launch, just like No Man's Sky, but I can respect that. I checked their Steam page just now, and they put out an update only yesterday talking about some kind of beta. Andrast posted:If eurojank RPG writing doesn't go off the rails then it's bad I don't know what eurojank RPG writing is, but if it's like Larian's writing, I unironically prefer that over modern Bioware's amerijank. Except maybe the first D:OS, there it's a toss-up because it seems to have been written by someone who got hold of a thesaurus and then had a bad case of verbal diarrhea Phlegmish fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Aug 1, 2020 |
# ? Aug 1, 2020 16:06 |
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I appreciate kingmaker for just having a straight forward story that ends with you kicking the bad guy's rear end and just plain being allowed to win, no forced bitter sweetness or sacrifice required.
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 16:10 |
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Larian’s writing is trying WAY too hard to be whacky and funny. Kingmaker was perfectly serviceable. No grand theme to the story but it’s a good high fantasy romp where you get to feel adequately heroic. Much like BG2 really. Also surprisingly progressive for a Russian studio I don’t know how they’re not in jail
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 16:16 |
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Captain Oblivious posted:Larian’s writing is trying WAY too hard to be whacky and funny. I feel they did a better job with it in OS2 than their previous games
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 16:22 |
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Captain Oblivious posted:Also surprisingly progressive for a Russian studio I don’t know how they’re not in jail I'll admit I was a little wary of that before I actually played the game, even though it's a stereotype. Good reminder that there are quite a few non-authoritarian young people in big cities like Moscow and Saint Petersburg, who are basically held hostage by the rest of the country that can't imagine life without a Strong Leader presiding over them. They probably also realized that regressive writing wouldn't go over too well in the West, which is by far their biggest market when combined.
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 16:24 |
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Avalerion posted:I appreciate kingmaker for just having a straight forward story that ends with you kicking the bad guy's rear end and just plain being allowed to win, no forced bitter sweetness or sacrifice required. I actually liked linzi, though
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 17:43 |
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I totally forgot about that,since at that point I just wanted the game to be over. Linzi's a good illustration of my point, though. You could easily make that sort of character really annoying, but she's fine for the most part. Just a slight exaggeration of a person who could actually exist in real life.
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 18:13 |
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Linzi bummed me out because I really like the concept of one of the party members being a bard and having all the loading screens and flavor text be stuff they are writing and I'm always a sucker for the one upbeat, cheerful character in my band of wandering weirdos. But she was just so boring. Everyone was so boring. There was one interesting bit of inter-character conflict with the ranger. His family was murdered by trolls, and we inevitably run into some trolls doing their thing in some caves. There's a troll with a gaggle of kids and ranger dude flies into a range and tries to kill all of them. I get the option to talk him down and I was like "Okay, cool. There's emotional stakes here. This guy has a conflict going on and this could spin-out in a bunch of interesting ways based on what I do." So, I told him maybe it's not cool to butcher children, regardless of race. He tells me to gently caress off and does it anyway. Since I defended troll children and trolls are listed as "Evil" in the book, my alignment shifts towards evil. The ranger continues to follow my orders after that with no complaints. There's no fallout from the confrontation, no one cares, some numbers on my character sheet get shuffled around. That was when I gave up.
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 19:00 |
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That’s strange. You can absolutely stop him there. It also does not shift your alignment towards evil, quite the opposite. Maybe they changed it? But it was 100% a neutral good or chaotic good option for me.
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 19:16 |
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But also since trolls are always evil they come back later and you kill them anyway so the whole thing came off as pretty pointless. It's a good thing dnd proper is stepping away from the "evil races" crap, it's def one of the weakest parts of the whole cosmology.
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 19:26 |
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Captain Oblivious posted:That’s strange. You can absolutely stop him there. It also does not shift your alignment towards evil, quite the opposite. Its been a while, so its also possible I just didn't pick the most convincing option or something. Thinking about it, maybe I just hate alignment systems more than I realized.
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 20:07 |
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Andrast posted:I feel they did a better job with it in OS2 than their previous games Once you get past the bright colors and silly-voiced talking animals, DOS2 is kind of depressing and horrible at all times tbh. Also, Jubilost is the best Pathfinder: Kingmaker character by far.
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 20:24 |
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The talking animals are awesome and even their quests can be awfully depressing.Avalerion posted:It's a good thing dnd proper is stepping away from the "evil races" crap, it's def one of the weakest parts of the whole cosmology. As of June 2020. About time. itry fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Aug 1, 2020 |
# ? Aug 1, 2020 20:33 |
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Phlegmish posted:I'll admit I was a little wary of that before I actually played the game, even though it's a stereotype. Good reminder that there are quite a few non-authoritarian young people in big cities like Moscow and Saint Petersburg, who are basically held hostage by the rest of the country that can't imagine life without a Strong Leader presiding over them. They probably also realized that regressive writing wouldn't go over too well in the West, which is by far their biggest market when combined. As we all know, most of Russia is inhabited by subhuman troglodytes that crave Strong Daddy. It comes from their tatar blood you see
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 20:53 |
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Fuligin posted:As we all know, most of Russia is inhabited by subhuman troglodytes that crave Strong Daddy. It comes from their tatar blood you see No, I disagree. It's not genetic.
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 20:55 |
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Divinity: Original Sin 2 is similar to Baldur's Gate 2 in a lot of respects, in that it's full of GRIMDARK moments, but they're often sandwiched in between moments full of silly lolcheese humor and overall they feel incredibly overdone. I think the improvements from the original in terms of storytelling have more to do with the pacing of the story and the companions having bigger roles and all being likable and decently fleshed out within their design limitations (which were huge), rather than tone, and it's kinda weird to see Larian reacting to the criticism of their writing with "yes, less humor", but well, while I doubt the writing is gonna be a strength of BG3, I also doubt it's gonna be a huge weakness. The story is probably gonna be a fun fantasy romp with a similar "will you be tempted into evil in exchange for great power or will you stick to your moral compass" thrust as the original BG trilogy, and that's enough for me.
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 21:06 |
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In this case "greater power" seems to be the power to not turn into a horrible squid man
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 22:17 |
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Avalerion posted:It's a good thing dnd proper is stepping away from the "evil races" crap, it's def one of the weakest parts of the whole cosmology. I don't know how I feel about evil cultures either, but it's much better.
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 22:46 |
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# ? Apr 23, 2024 21:56 |
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ikanreed posted:I don't know how I feel about evil cultures either, but it's much better. evil cultures exist in the real world though, look at the english, or any of their cultural descendants
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 23:13 |