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This is starting to bleed into real life, I passed a "Shadowdale Road" on the way into work this morning. I tried to slow down to get a picture but it was not happening.
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Apr 3, 2016 17:22
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I just started a Siege of Dragonspear game as a bard and I've noticed several dialogue trees in which CHARNAME offers to sing some sort of song. Is that a general option or is it unique to bards? It's a pretty cool little touch if it's the latter.
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Apr 3, 2016 17:28
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Comstar posted:That's all said by everyone in a high pitched Gnomes voice. And that Hill Giant is the guy next to the sunken house south of Berghost. Who is not a hill giant. He IS mad though, but, err...what? Insurrectionist posted:Also, while Corwin is great and goblin-lady is okay, the other two companions are pretty annoying. But I won't hold that against it since the originals had Tiax and Garrick and Xan and Jan and... Apart from that,  .Except for that part about the goblin NPC, the game kinda didn't spawn her for me, as I found out yesterday.  Woolie Wool posted:I'm really getting fed up with Icewind Dale. It throws ludicrous numbers of enemies at me and refuses to hand out any good CC spells. I can't keep enemies contained by my tanks, they just spill around into my backline and there's nothing I can do, and the enemies in the Severed Hand cheat by appearing out of nowhere. And of course they're ghosts so they're immune to confusion.
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Apr 3, 2016 17:40
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deadking posted:I just started a Siege of Dragonspear game as a bard and I've noticed several dialogue trees in which CHARNAME offers to sing some sort of song. Is that a general option or is it unique to bards? It's a pretty cool little touch if it's the latter. I started a game and randomly chose a blade bard too. Noticing a lot of Bard specific interactions. And a lot more (well, more than BG1 and 2) party member specific interactions. The shaman companion has a lot of specific interactions with spirits go figure.
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Apr 3, 2016 17:46
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Wizard Styles posted:
That's quite the weird bug. I haven't run into any yet myself, but having no mods to break poo poo helps. That said I had some custom scripts that were borked before the update and are still borked now, they all show up as random lines of dialogue in the custom script menus. Doesn't actually seem to matter since the regular scripts work fine and the 2.0 patch added some nice general options that do me fine though.
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Apr 3, 2016 18:47
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Wow. I popped my head into the Beamdog forums to see if I could get some up to date info on mod compatibility and instead I find a bunch of grousing about a minor, minor npc who happens to be transgendered. Why are dnd nerds consistently the worst. 
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Apr 3, 2016 18:56
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Wizard Styles posted:IWD likes throwing armies of enemies at you, but you get a lot of good summon and buff spells in this game, so you can bring your own army.
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Apr 3, 2016 19:31
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It's been 15 years or however long it's been since IWD released, but I remember casting Web and Entangle a LOT. Those and the druid spell Spike Growth (? something like that) could take down a lot of things before they can even get to you. Also I think I still get irrationally angry thinking about Bombardier Beetles.
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Apr 3, 2016 19:47
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Woolie Wool posted:I'll try again later. I just defeated Demogorgon in BG2 and had an easier time of it than many ordinary encounters in IWD. Yeah, IWD is pretty great.
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Apr 3, 2016 19:50
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Just started replaying my BG:EE save after hearing about the upgrades, and I am annoyed my killing of Drizzt did *not* merit an achievement 
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Apr 3, 2016 20:15
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Hahaha there's literally a line where Minsc says "its actually about ethics in heroic adventuring" I'm dying, I'm dead.
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Apr 3, 2016 20:33
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Woolie Wool posted:I'll try again later. I just defeated Demogorgon in BG2 and had an easier time of it than many ordinary encounters in IWD. Get your thief's "lay traps" skill at least over 50, the you can lay 6-7 traps in one area at a time. When you walk into a hard area, keep reloading, resting, trap laying, saving, reloading, etc, then trigger the encounter again. It's tedious but can make some fights way less frustrating.
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Apr 3, 2016 20:33
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Pwnstar posted:Hahaha there's literally a line where Minsc says "its actually about ethics in heroic adventuring" I'm dying, I'm dead. I just got to a part where Minsc gives a pep talk to a goblin, and I think I got a little dust in my eye.
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Apr 3, 2016 20:34
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Pwnstar posted:Hahaha there's literally a line where Minsc says "its actually about ethics in heroic adventuring" I'm dying, I'm dead. I really need to pick this up. I didn't know Amber Scott was one of the writers, she wrote one of my favourite Pathfinder adventures with a rad lesbian trans couple in it. JustJeff88 posted:If there is, I would like to know as well. If I can throw in a suggestion, Ed Greenwood wrote a novel called "Spellfire" that was quite good. Elminster is of course the benevolent father figure self-insert who the ladies adore (this is the novel where he first ends up romantically involved with the Simbul), but there is a lot of adventure with genuinely good characterisation and real human motivations. This was the first book in an eventual trilogy where, sadly, the second book was not nearly as good and the third was outright horrible. I started a Forgotten Realms thread in Trad Games once, but there just wasn't quite enough interest to keep it going. And yes, Spellfire is good, but Ed has gone on record about the issues he had writing it and how it's not a great introduction to the Realms for those reasons. He saw the Knights of Myth Drannor trilogy as a way to write a proper introduction to the Realms, and I think he nailed it.
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Apr 3, 2016 21:12
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Woolie Wool posted:I'll try again later. I just defeated Demogorgon in BG2 and had an easier time of it than many ordinary encounters in IWD. You get web and entangle and grease at the least, you can control a lot of dudes with those spells and then drop fireballs or whatever.
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Apr 3, 2016 21:19
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Arivia posted:I really need to pick this up. I didn't know Amber Scott was one of the writers, she wrote one of my favourite Pathfinder adventures with a rad lesbian trans couple in it. Are there any good DND novels about spellcasters? I tried reading the new(ish) drow series and it was just garbage. Literally entire chapters of combat scenarios tediously describing each swing of the sword or lobbing of fireballs.
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Apr 3, 2016 21:22
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Washout posted:Are there any good DND novels about spellcasters? I tried reading the new(ish) drow series and it was just garbage. Literally entire chapters of combat scenarios tediously describing each swing of the sword or lobbing of fireballs. In the Forgotten Realms, anything to do with Elminster is an obvious go to. (The main criticism about El is that there's too MUCH magic in his books.) I'd start with the Knights of Myth Drannor trilogy, there's plenty of spellcasters' perspectives in there. If you want to specifically read about Elminster, start with the short story "Elminster at the Magefair" which is in Realms of Magic or whichever Best of the Realms collection is dedicated to Ed Greenwood. (I can't remember if it's volume 1 or 2) You want to read this first because it's a good story that shows off how magic works in the Realms and the kinds of stories that are told about it. After that, just start reading Elminster novels, starting with Elminster: the Making of a Mage and then continue on from there. Most of the books in that series flow into each other, although Elminster's Daughter largely follows from the Cormyr trilogy as well.
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Apr 3, 2016 21:37
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Are there any non-meta plot FR novels? Like, just some folks go into a cave in the woods, stuff happens, lessons learned, type of books? I think that is why I liked the Azure Bond books so much, they were more.....down to earth? That's not he wright words but something like that. I am of the mind that AD&D was best around levels 5-12 and I want some bedtime reading on that vein.
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Apr 3, 2016 21:41
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bongwizzard posted:Are there any non-meta plot FR novels? Like, just some folks go into a cave in the woods, stuff happens, lessons learned, type of books? I think that is why I liked the Azure Bond books so much, they were more.....down to earth? That's not he wright words but something like that. I am of the mind that AD&D was best around levels 5-12 and I want some bedtime reading on that vein. There are a lot of one off smaller stories. I'd suggest looking up The City of Ravens by Richard Baker. I'd also actually suggest avoiding any and all books by Ed Greenwood even though he created the setting as he's one of their worst novelists. I much prefer Paul Kemp or Richard Baker. Kemp's Erevis Cale books become epic in scope but they're quite good and have everything from roguery to shadow magic to psionics pop up.
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Apr 3, 2016 21:52
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bongwizzard posted:Are there any non-meta plot FR novels? Like, just some folks go into a cave in the woods, stuff happens, lessons learned, type of books? I think that is why I liked the Azure Bond books so much, they were more.....down to earth? That's not he wright words but something like that. I am of the mind that AD&D was best around levels 5-12 and I want some bedtime reading on that vein. Venom in Her Veins seems like that. Main character is a Yuan Ti Pureblood raised thinking she was human then adventure happens.
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Apr 3, 2016 21:54
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bongwizzard posted:Are there any non-meta plot FR novels? Like, just some folks go into a cave in the woods, stuff happens, lessons learned, type of books? I think that is why I liked the Azure Bond books so much, they were more.....down to earth? That's not he wright words but something like that. I am of the mind that AD&D was best around levels 5-12 and I want some bedtime reading on that vein. I love that Azure Bonds came up with a legitimate plot reason for the ridiculous boob armor on the cover of the book.
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Apr 3, 2016 22:42
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I don't remember that part, what was it?
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Apr 3, 2016 22:46
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bongwizzard posted:I don't remember that part, what was it? Towards the end she's going to be sacrificed by the bad guys in some dark ritual, so it makes sense they dressed her in armor with a giant hole in chest that would be easy to plunge a sword through. She never wears it when she's off adventuring. I'm halfway convinced the author added that bit after seeing the cover.
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Apr 3, 2016 22:58
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IMHO it makes more sense to not armor your sacrificial victim at all, but I dropped out of my evil cult when the meetings conflicted with bowling night. And the real point of that armor was to sell books to nerds I suspect, running an evil cult isn't cheap.
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Apr 3, 2016 23:13
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AngryBooch posted:There are a lot of one off smaller stories. I'd suggest looking up The City of Ravens by Richard Baker. I'm curious as to why you think this. Ed's novels have always been pretty great, with tons of fun stuff in them. bongwizzard posted:Are there any non-meta plot FR novels? Like, just some folks go into a cave in the woods, stuff happens, lessons learned, type of books? I think that is why I liked the Azure Bond books so much, they were more.....down to earth? That's not he wright words but something like that. I am of the mind that AD&D was best around levels 5-12 and I want some bedtime reading on that vein. This is the basic idea behind the Knights of Myth Drannor series. They actually tell the story of an adventuring company rising from being teens dreaming about being cooler in their podunk town to becoming actual heroes. The Knights do end up saving Cormyr by the end, but it flows naturally from their career as adventurers so far, instead of just being huge stakes for huge stakes' sake. Ed likes writing those kinds of stories more, but editorial keeps asking him for big plots that threaten all of Faerun and so on. Additionally, the Knights are actually Ed's original gaming group, the "home campaign" of the Realms. So the trilogy predates what you'd think of as FR metaplot, and is thoroughly grounded in 1e AD&D play.
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Apr 3, 2016 23:25
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A member of the Gibberlings3 team has released an automated tool that will unpack the Steam/GoG version of Siege of Dragonspear: https://github.com/K4thos/UnzipSoD
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Apr 3, 2016 23:26
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Arivia posted:This is the basic idea behind the Knights of Myth Drannor series. They actually tell the story of an adventuring company rising from being teens dreaming about being cooler in their podunk town to becoming actual heroes. The Knights do end up saving Cormyr by the end, but it flows naturally from their career as adventurers so far, instead of just being huge stakes for huge stakes' sake. Ed likes writing those kinds of stories more, but editorial keeps asking him for big plots that threaten all of Faerun and so on. AngryBooch posted:There are a lot of one off smaller stories. I'd suggest looking up The City of Ravens by Richard Baker. MonsterEnvy posted:Venom in Her Veins seems like that. Main character is a Yuan Ti Pureblood raised thinking she was human then adventure happens. Cool, thanks folks. I will have to hit eBay when I get home. I finished Baldur's Gate, the Novel last night. The ending just.....happens. Like, the author counted up the pages he had written so far, realized the end was in sight, and wrote the last ten pages on the bus to the post office to mail the whole mess to his editor. I would like to offer this fine book up to the first person to call dibs, on the condition you pass it on to someone else in the thread when you are done. I likely will not have time to mail it out until the week after next though.
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Apr 3, 2016 23:38
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bongwizzard posted:I would like to offer this fine book up to the first person to call dibs, on the condition you pass it on to someone else in the thread when you are done. I likely will not have time to mail it out until the week after next though. Ugh. Dibs.
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Apr 4, 2016 00:10
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sebzilla posted:Ugh. Dibs. PM me an address you poor soul.
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Apr 4, 2016 00:14
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bounty hunter traps - do they keep the effects of the previous levels? If not the third upgrade (resilient sphere, save to negate) is garbage.
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Apr 4, 2016 00:29
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They don't.Insurrectionist posted:That's quite the weird bug. I haven't run into any yet myself, but having no mods to break poo poo helps. That said I had some custom scripts that were borked before the update and are still borked now, they all show up as random lines of dialogue in the custom script menus. Doesn't actually seem to matter since the regular scripts work fine and the 2.0 patch added some nice general options that do me fine though. insanityv2 posted:Wow. I popped my head into the Beamdog forums to see if I could get some up to date info on mod compatibility and instead I find a bunch of grousing about a minor, minor npc who happens to be transgendered. Why are dnd nerds consistently the worst. e: Nice word filter. Karmalaa70 posted:It's been 15 years or however long it's been since IWD released, but I remember casting Web and Entangle a LOT. Those and the druid spell Spike Growth (? something like that) could take down a lot of things before they can even get to you. Wizard Styles fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Apr 4, 2016 |
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Apr 4, 2016 00:36
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Wizard Styles posted:Well, you can pickpocket two Rings of Free Action. I abused that a lot during my first playthrough. Yeah I found about those two rings when I read a walkthrough after finishing my run. Would have helped a lot but there's no way I'd have known about them going in spoiler free. And..the Beamdog forums. Jesus Christ. I'm thinking those are people who just don't like the company and they are using this moral outrage for a very minor NPC as a way to vent. At least I hope there's not that many people so thin-skinned they lose their poo poo over something so meaningless.
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Apr 4, 2016 01:15
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bongwizzard posted:Cool, thanks folks. I will have to hit eBay when I get home. give us the sordid deets iirc, the novel ends on the line "abdel leaned on his sword until sarevok was dead" or something like that.
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Apr 4, 2016 01:56
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jesus this loving dig site. are you meant to do the crypt area this early? i heard you can't go back to areas once you move on, is this true or are they talking about something else? so many undead. so many. on the plus side all my imported potions and poo poo i was thinking might overpower the game are finally coming in handy. im either really rusty or here way too early, it's the last time i have left to do on this map. poo poo feels harder than SCS was in bg1.
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Apr 4, 2016 02:08
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Arivia posted:I'm curious as to why you think this. Ed's novels have always been pretty great, with tons of fun stuff in them. I just always felt Greenwood's pacing was off and his prose was hard to follow sometimes. He has a tendency to go at breakneck speed sometimes, which leaves the stories feeling disjointed and little more than timeline recitations as he glosses over motivations and characters. (I especially feel this way about the Shadow of the Avatar books along with Making of a Mage) And, I generally do not like the characters he creates. I haven't read the Knights of Myth Drannor series. The Cormyr books were alright although they too have some of those timeline recitation issues.
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Apr 4, 2016 02:32
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Vikar Jerome posted:jesus this loving dig site. are you meant to do the crypt area this early? i heard you can't go back to areas once you move on, is this true or are they talking about something else? so many undead. so many. on the plus side all my imported potions and poo poo i was thinking might overpower the game are finally coming in handy. im either really rusty or here way too early, it's the last time i have left to do on this map. poo poo feels harder than SCS was in bg1. I solved a lot early on by just making Minsc, who thankfully still had Spider's Bane, immune to fire and just spamming Web and Fireball while he drew entire packs.
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Apr 4, 2016 03:22
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I know most folks here won't endorse Salvatore's work, but if you haven't read the Sellsword Trilogy, you should. The Cleric Quintet is also quite a good read.
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Apr 4, 2016 03:24
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Milky Moor posted:give us the sordid deets It does.
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Apr 4, 2016 03:25
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Sooo, uh, SoD is good then, and all the extremely negative reviews are just manchildren throwing a collective tantrum about whatever they imagine social justice to be? Good to know. 
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Apr 4, 2016 03:27
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Rollersnake posted:Sooo, uh, SoD is good then, and all the extremely negative reviews are just manchildren throwing a collective tantrum about whatever they imagine social justice to be? Good to know. I'm very pleased so far with SoD. It was well worth my money and I'm considering getting the collectors edition.
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Apr 4, 2016 03:31
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