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Yeah Numeneras cosmology is just an incoherent mess of ideas ala rifts. When drat near anything can happen in your setting, how can you adequately justify any conflict in the narrative? It comea across in the art design too. Every single location has to be wildly different from every other place that nothing seems to fit right. Plus the item I designed for the game never made it in for some reason so bleh.
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Nov 9, 2021 06:06
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Schwarzwald posted:Two of the choices were between unlikable idiots, but there was a third Blatant Correct option that was easy to miss if you weren't looking for it. It was also bugged on release so it would be impossible to pick, if you had happened to examine the wall paintings before getting to the end of the dungeon. It was not a good DLC.
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Nov 9, 2021 06:26
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Playing SoD for the first time. Does it matter whether or not I completed the Beamdog NPCs' (Neera, Monk guy, Dorn) side quests in terms of importing progress? I assume it doesn't matter and they'll do what all the characters do and give me a choice between 'Don't you recognise me?/Who are you?/Aren't you dead?' when I meet them, but I forgot to do their quests in BG1 and don't want to miss out on #content e; ∨∨∨ awesome, ty. Lightningproof fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Nov 14, 2021 |
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Nov 14, 2021 04:04
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Lightningproof posted:Playing SoD for the first time. Does it matter whether or not I completed the Beamdog NPCs' (Neera, Monk guy, Dorn) side quests in terms of importing progress? I assume it doesn't matter and they'll do what all the characters do and give me a choice between 'Don't you recognise me?/Who are you?/Aren't you dead?' when I meet them, but I forgot to do their quests in BG1 and don't want to miss out on #content
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Nov 14, 2021 04:33
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Yeah it doesn't matter. Honestly I thought SoD was a much more natural way to introduce the new npcs to the story than the way they shoved them at you in BG1
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Nov 14, 2021 05:02
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I'm just a couple hours in but so far Disco Elysium feels very much like a successor to Planescape: Torment. it says as much on its Wikipedia entry, so I'm not exactly breaking new critical ground here, but
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Nov 14, 2021 20:30
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Disco Elysium is amazing and for me the best written RPG (possibly game) of all time.
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Nov 15, 2021 09:49
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the worldbuilding is absolutely staggering.
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Nov 15, 2021 13:35
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I wasn’t really wowed by Disco Elysium, but I feel it’s my own fault for playing the game wrong. I’ll definitely give it another shake someday and have a better opinion.
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Nov 15, 2021 15:45
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:I wasn’t really wowed by Disco Elysium, but I feel it’s my own fault for playing the game wrong. I’ll definitely give it another shake someday and have a better opinion. I tried it a little bit and and it just didn't 'grab' me. I really wanted it to, but it just didn't. Same as you - perhaps some other day.
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Nov 15, 2021 16:34
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So here's an odd thing that happened as I was playing BG1. I rolled a half-orc fighter, with three pips in Two handed sword and a strength of 19. I went to the ankheg cave to grind some XP, and while I was in there, I noticed something strange in the combat log. When I started in the cave, I was rolling a +8 to hit. A few ankhegs later, I was rolling with a +10 to hit. By the time I was wrapping everything up, I was rolling a +12 to hit. Is this just some arcane aspect of the AD&D combat system I am unaware of, or was this a bug or something? I don't know why or how my hit bonus kept going up as I was fighting, because it went back down to it's normal amount after I left.
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Nov 15, 2021 17:33
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Playing BG:EE for the first time with SCS and ran into Borda, the dude who tries to sell you the fake potions and scrolls past the Xvart village. SCS is at Tactician difficulty with pre-buffing disabled and he was murdering me every single try. Here's the SCS author on that fight:DavidW posted:Borda is a 9th level mage even in the original game (though he gets far too few spells). SCS treats him as single-class (he's a mage/thief in the original game, but I'm afraid I didn't have the patience to write mage-thief-specific scripts, especially as his original script is a generic mage script). SCS gives him a kit at random (it's conjuror on my current install), and then gives him spells appropriate to his level: 5/4/4/3/2. Exactly which protective spells he gets depends on the random spell allocation: on my current install he gets Shield, Mirror Image, Ghost Armour, Improved Invisibility, Minor Globe of Invulnerability. Plus he's got 100% magic resistance from the vanilla game. I dropped the difficulty down to Basic for that fight and even then felt like I got some lucky rolls with my level 1 & 2 party. SCS is incredible, particularly love how modular the difficulty settings are. Repeatedly watching Borda prioritize killing Neera, then holding Minsc, then going after Imoen with Magic Missile was pretty impressive. When Charname got in a couple of lucky hits, he got held right away too. All that was at Tactician. Never completed BG1 at release, though I did finish BG2 a couple years after release. BG:EE feels fantastic, even better than I remembered. Particularly impressed by how well the open world design, quest choice and encounters hold up after all these years. I missed the cheerful, irreverent tone this game in particular has and BG1NPC sans romances fits right in. PF:K reminded me of BG1's tone, so it's good to see that memory is accurate. 2e feels refreshingly simple after PF and even 3/3.5e from IWD2 - it's nice not to have too many choices. BG1NPC is very, very good. Glad I switched from iPad where I picked up the game on a whim to playing modded on PC. Game drew me in again really quickly on the iPad to where I spent the weekend looking at mods and re-rolling/re-installing till everything was just so. The other mods are Tweaks Anthology and PPE (npc portraits). v1ld fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Nov 15, 2021 |
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Nov 15, 2021 19:24
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Stay away from kivan
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Nov 15, 2021 20:05
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Too late, I went straight for him since I didn't want to do the canon party as I did in the past. But yeah, he's moping around and generally bringing the gloom. Kind of afraid to step out where he can see the stars at night now. That seems to plunge him even deeper into gloom while increasing his volubility. I don't have the heart to be rude to him, so I've been picking the tersest, not-rude response so far.
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Nov 15, 2021 20:14
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When do you start getting more XP quickly? I'm going to dual class Imoen to mage and I'm debating between doing it at level 5 or as low as level 4 mainly to reduce her non-thief downtime. The additional backstab multiplier at level 5 isn't important to me, but the +25 thief points could be. About to head to the Bandit Camp and start Chapter 4 / Cloakwood. From searching it looks like 80 / 80 in Find Traps / Open Locks will handle all but a literal handful of traps and locks. Those can be handled with Potions of Perception (+20 for 6 freaking hours) or Master Thievery (+40 for 3 hours). Which got me thinking I could dual at level 4 where I'm at 75 / 60 and use the potions as needed. Money is rolling in very quickly so it's really only the unique items and Durlag's that will need the potions is the reasoning - is that sound? The difference is 20k more Mage xp before she unlocks Thief again. If that's not too long to make up Cloakwood and later, then might as well go to level 5 Thief with her. SCS / Tweaks Anthology are just brilliant. Going to have to turn on mage pre-buffing pretty soon, the full party is starting to roll over enemies at Tactician. Waiting on Edwin to get to level 5 first, just to have some more options in hand. The game has been a blast so far.
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Nov 17, 2021 01:10
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v1ld posted:When do you start getting more XP quickly? I'm going to dual class Imoen to mage and I'm debating between doing it at level 5 or as low as level 4 mainly to reduce her non-thief downtime. The additional backstab multiplier at level 5 isn't important to me, but the +25 thief points could be. Farming ankhegs is my favorite way to level characters quickly at low levels. Generally speaking, the experience rewards are better once you have progressed enough to reach Baldur's Gate.
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Nov 17, 2021 01:14
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Good to know - I put in that tweak that makes Taerom make multiple Ankheg Plate mails, one at a time. I forgot that vendors don't restock so I can't so conveniently turn gold into potions into thief skills points. It's pretty cool they took this route, by the way. Game does resource constraints pretty well. Looks like waiting till level 5 to get to 80/80 is more prudent than the 75 / 60 I'm at on level 4 right now. Though I'm half tempted to say screw it and just look up what I'm missing out on with unopenable chests and use those limited potions selectively. Money isn't a problem and it's only the unique items I'll actually use I don't want to miss.
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Nov 17, 2021 01:38
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It's hard to give pointers with tweaks on. So many things can be working in so many ways. I usually kickstart my adventure by farming the ankheg lair for a little while. When resting there, you have a high chance of being interrupted by an ankheg, even if you cleared the whole place. So kill it, try to rest again, here comes another, and so on. Occasionally you will successfully rest, which means you got all your command and sleep casts back for more farming. If that never happens, just retreat south to the FAI area where it's 100% safe to rest outside.
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Nov 17, 2021 01:48
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I didn't go too crazy with the tweaks. It's mostly cosmetic and QoL stuff like +50% walk speed if no enemy in sight, tell non-party members to go to inns, etc. Taerom crafting multiple plate mails and the improved npc customization that lets you level them up at join and also levels them up to your xp-equivalent level when you re-enlist them are probably the biggest changes from base. Oh, also disabled people leaving because of reputation because I wanted to use some of the evil NPCs for a change. Thanks for the farming tips. v1ld fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Nov 17, 2021 |
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Nov 17, 2021 02:04
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Is bashing basilisks faux pas to talk about. Or do we assume they are all already bashed.
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Nov 17, 2021 02:22
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I haven't even looked at a basilisk yet.
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Nov 17, 2021 02:23
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v1ld posted:I haven't even looked at a basilisk yet. and good thing
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Nov 17, 2021 02:35
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It’s fine as long as they don’t look at you
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Nov 17, 2021 02:42
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v1ld posted:When do you start getting more XP quickly? I'm going to dual class Imoen to mage and I'm debating between doing it at level 5 or as low as level 4 mainly to reduce her non-thief downtime. The additional backstab multiplier at level 5 isn't important to me, but the +25 thief points could be. The XP gain is pretty consistent and insane if you are hitting all the side-quests even before you get to BG. The city itself also has a ton of XP stuff you can do before getting into the major story stuff as well. The difference between playing the game "blind" and grinding Ankhegs and following a walk-through was nuts. When going for everything I felt like I was at least 2 levels higher then I had been for a lot of the previous play-through. Once you get that thief with 100 find traps/lock-pick then it's all about Durlag's Tower, maybe as early as level 5 if you have a high tolerance for save-scumming. I hit a wall in BG having skipped a lot of encounters and missing a ton of the game ending up in the city trying to brute force a boss fight that just wouldn't work even with all the gimmicks I tried, so I ended up going into the Tower and beating the whole thing.
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Nov 17, 2021 02:55
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One of the things that I think makes BG genuinely amazing is the pacing. I never felt the need to grind or do ankheg farming. ...that being said, I'd do every single side quest. That'd get me to the level cap no worries.
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Nov 17, 2021 09:22
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I liked that you start feeling less spooked after finishing the Nashkel Mines then you have to deal with NIMBUL when you get back
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Nov 17, 2021 09:28
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Jay Rust posted:Stay away from kivan Kivan is just generically sad, other than the drink-spitting hilarious "dance to the music of the leaves!" conversation. The worst of them is Faldorn by far. The nicest thing I can say about her dialog is that the writer had zero ideas.
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Nov 17, 2021 10:14
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Kivan's BG1NPC dialog got mopier and mopier and is too frequent besides. Replaced him with Coran yesterday which also solved my thief problem with Imoen now dualed to Mage. Happy to end those unendingly maudlin conversations though he's such a good party member otherwise. I'm going to focus on clearing out all of the southern wilderness areas and doing side quests before heading further into the Cloakwood, prefer not to grind if unnecessary. Though I may go deep enough in to pick up Yeslick first to replace Branwen who I used before. The Gauntlets of Dexterity are already on Kagain so that's a problem. But Yeslick's 12 Dex is only 1 AC worse than Branwen's 15 Dex so I may just give him a shield +1 and see how he does on the frontline. Not trying for optimal, just chars I haven't used before: Gnome F/I, Imoen M/T, Coran, Edwin, Kagain, Branwen right now. Branwen is doing well with her new Tempus kit, but I used her before so another Cleric would be nice to have. I think a large part of why I didn't finish this game at release is probably related to my lack of understanding of 2e back then. SNS is making me understand and use a lot more of the game a lot more to survive, but I've also played a lot more 2e games since this first IE game. It must be - I'm enjoying myself hugely now so why else would I have dropped it unfinished? E: I do recall getting shredded in the Nashkel mines, trying to sleep and then getting woken up and shredded some more and then trying to repeat that process. Whereas this run was a breeze in the mines all the way through Mulahey, who got held by Branwen after getting interrupted by magic missiles from Edwin and was therefore a pushover (with SNS pre-buffing off). I gave up early in the Cloakwood because I remember picking up Coran but not much after that. It's not just that the game is easier once you understand 2e better, SNS makes it more fun to play by making you use those systems better. E2: I really should turn on SNS pre-buffing. My current crutch for all mages is to interrupt them with magic missiles from Edwin and Imoen/wand. Nimbul/Silke/Mulahey were interrupted before doing major damage. Borda, that mage/thief past the Xvart village on the other hand had 100% magic resistance and generally toyed with me in like 10 straight tries until I gave up and dropped difficulty to Basic. But SNS made him pretty impressive to watch: holds, focus on the more dangerous opponents, invisibility plus 3x damage backstabs, all with PfNM on so gently caress you Imoen/Kivan, you're useless in this fight. I have better gear now and am no longer level 1+2 but it would still be a very difficult fight without interrupts. Borda's pre-SNS repertoire had just 6 spells, the wiki says he would do this sequence every time: Mirror Image Horror Magic Missile x4 SNS makes him a very challenging fight by contrast with a level 9 mage's full slots and spells, too much for my limited gear (and dnd skills). E: Having so much fun with this run, both in playing and planning what I'll do next and with builds, that I feel like Boo. Squee, don't touch me just leave me alone here to have fun. v1ld fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Nov 17, 2021 |
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Nov 17, 2021 14:56
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H13 posted:One of the things that I think makes BG genuinely amazing is the pacing. I never felt the need to grind or do ankheg farming. I've never really grinded things either, but that said I don't typically play dual classes so I can see why those who do that might want to.
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Nov 17, 2021 16:22
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gently caress Yeslick. He's INT is so low he can't read scrolls or use Wands of the Heavens.
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Nov 17, 2021 16:54
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v1ld posted:Kivan Are you using the NPC project mod? The npcs have different writers, some are great and others are... not good. It kinda changes how I build parties to be honest. Get ready to change your entire spell loadout if you're going to activate pre-buffing. I like it, but there's a couple fights that are brutally difficult right up to when you hit BG1's level cap, unless you abuse tricks like running away. It's arguably more difficult than in BG2, because scrolls for some of the most crucial low to mid-level spells aren't available without mods. Breach in particular. Thankfully BG1 is littered with potions, just make sure to pop them after you've been dispelled or locked down a caster. There's a specific ambush, as well as an ogre mage that are both pretty terrifying. Thankfully the larger set-piece fights have a mix of casters and martial classes, so its pretty easy to cause some chaos by throwing out a bunch of save-or-else spells and/or summons.
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Nov 17, 2021 16:57
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I think Shar Teel was by far the worse of the mod but in general, I really enjoyed the NPC project mod
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Nov 17, 2021 17:10
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Zeniel posted:gently caress Yeslick. He's INT is so low he can't read scrolls or use Wands of the Heavens. Imoen and my PC can do that in this party, but yeah he's pretty low int. Imoen is such a versatile character. I gave her the CHA tome and Algernon's cloak, so she's now running with 19 CHA. Props to whoever did that party formation that's a triangle with the face char in the middle of the back line - so convenient. Very clearly designed to help people like 25? years ago me survive their first encounter with the game. Read somewhere that the writers took her offscreen for such a large chunk of BG2 because they put her in at the last minute and generally weren't a fan of having her. Fruits of the sea posted:Are you using the NPC project mod? The npcs have different writers, some are great and others are... not good. It kinda changes how I build parties to be honest. Good summary of bg1npc, including how it made me feel about having Kivan in the party. It's a pity that's due to bad writing which it very much is in his case. Reading the rest of what you write, I think I'll stick with pre-buffing off for now. This is effectively a first run of the game so maybe it's better to turn that on for later runs where the challenge is the whole point. The lack of available counters is part of the problem. Borda has 100% magic resist and casts Protection from Normal Missiles on seeing 2 archers. So Neera, Imoen and Kivan were nullified right from the outset. He holds one of Minsc, Kagain or my PC almost right away and then usually went invisible to backstab another soon after. At that point I'm just rerunning the fight hoping for lucky rolls. That fight did teach me to put melee on the ranged/magic users and I bought/found a bunch of +1 gear to distribute among them. I'm enjoying myself right now and there's still plenty of challenge especially if I don't pay attention to get interrupts off at the right times and stuff. v1ld fucked around with this message at 17:27 on Nov 17, 2021 |
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Nov 17, 2021 17:22
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If any of you folks are familiar with how BG sets up its scripting, would appreciate a pointer. I've been digging through Coran's script (CORAN.BCS) in NI to see how he's scripted to leave. The conditions there are pretty straightforward. However some of the conditions on the Wyvern's death seem to be set outside that script. Then found ARE4501.ARE, which is the wyvern cave itself. That points to a script named ARE4501.BCS which doesn't exist that I can see in NI. Does anyone know where that would be located? It's not in the NI BCS list. Also checked CORWYVRN.CRE which is the special wyvern he has to kill and there's nothing special in its script. Found this incantation from a dev to prevent Coran from leaving which meshes with Coran's script: C:SetGlobal("CoranWyvern","GLOBAL",2); C:SetGlobal("SPRITE_IS_DEADCORWYVRN","GLOBAL",1) But I'd like to understand more on where those quest specific values are being set - the script that tracks the wyvern fight itself specifically. Or a general pointer to how those kind of scripted events are setting values.
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Nov 17, 2021 19:42
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v1ld posted:Read somewhere that the writers took her offscreen for such a large chunk of BG2 because they put her in at the last minute and generally weren't a fan of having her. She was supposed to die in Spellhold, which is why she has so few banters in the last half of the game.
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Nov 17, 2021 19:58
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v1ld posted:The lack of available counters is part of the problem. Borda has 100% magic resist and casts Protection from Normal Missiles on seeing 2 archers. So Neera, Imoen and Kivan were nullified right from the outset. He holds one of Minsc, Kagain or my PC almost right away and then usually went invisible to backstab another soon after. At that point I'm just rerunning the fight hoping for lucky rolls. Yeah, always a good idea to have both melee and ranged in your slots. Non-magical weapons are occasionally fight-winners when high level spell casters cast protection from magical weapons  Stupid counters to mage protections: Trap damage penetrates almost everything. Fire shield damage penetrates a lot of things it shouldn't be able to. Casting a spell counts as "attack" for triggering fire shield if in melee range. Fire shield damage interrupts spell-casting. Polymorph spell lets you turn into an ooze with 100% magic resist. If you aren't playing enhanced edition, some of the weapons and abilities that do poison damage penetrate all magical defenses. I think Bioware forgot to assign them a damage type so they just... damage.
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Nov 17, 2021 20:14
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Dillbag posted:She was supposed to die in Spellhold, which is why she has so few banters in the last half of the game. That would have been better than making her a Bhaalspawn out of nowhere.
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Nov 17, 2021 20:24
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rocketrobot posted:That would have been better than making her a Bhaalspawn out of nowhere. The second draft was that you'd fail to rescue her and she'd turn into the Slayer at Suldanessellar and you'd be forced to kill her. The Bioware team really did not like Imoen, she was the only BG1 character not based on one of the developers' DnD characters and the developers kind of hated that she was so popular with the fanbase.
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Nov 17, 2021 20:27
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Fruits of the sea posted:Stupid counters to mage protections: Those are nifty tricks all, especially that fire shield one. Thanks. I'm waiting for this gnome F/I charname to get to level 5 or better to be able to do more with the mage side of his nature. Right now it's mostly plate mail fighting with the occasional switch to Shield/Mirror Image to be able to cast in a tougher encounter. I like that flexibility but it'll be nice to do more with the mage side in time. SNS's improved ease-of-use AI script is quite nice. Imoen surprised the heck out of me by auto-casting Armor after rest since it lasts for so long. That script hits my sweet spot where I want to micro manage the fight but will forget to cast Armor / Stoneskin and the like.
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Nov 17, 2021 20:30
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v1ld posted:Those are nifty tricks all, especially that fire shield one. Thanks. Should be noted that the fire shield trick only works if the spell is targeting the character in question. It came in handy during a solo fighter-mage run. The ooze is the easiest and funniest strategy.
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Nov 17, 2021 20:38
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