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Gun Jam posted:Lemme guess: nobody gets a "no fix needed" here.
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Feb 17, 2024 20:35
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I vastly prefer dealing with openly evil characters rather than the tiresome sudden "unexpected" twist betrayal ones that you couldn't actually prevent despite it being Shame Cammy didn't mysteriously die to the centipedes. But there is always next time I suppose. Vargatron posted:I appreciate the "Can I fix her?" category inclusion. glwgameplayer posted:I get the feeling that dropping a huge Big Bad Evil Guy towards the start of the game works much better in a video game than at the table. DM: Are you sure? You're level 1 with no magic items. He's 50 feet tall, wields a scythe bigger than a horse and just slew an adult dragon in one blow. Player: Yes I'm sure. *rolls* DM: Ok, miss. He attacks back and *rolls* utterly destroys you. Player: loving BULLSHIT!!!!!! I should have won that! Although Matt Colville had a fun idea where he described how the big bad effortlessly crowd controlled the party with a simple ability because they were so insignificant, unthreatening and far beneath his notice he couldn't be bothered to kill them. Poil fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Feb 17, 2024 |
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Feb 17, 2024 20:51
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If there is anything I absolutely love in Pathfinder: WotR, it's mythic themes. Rule of thumb is "if your mythic class name starts with "A", it has absolutely perfect theme". Oh, Cammy. The good thing about her is that she is absolutely perfect deconstruction of "I can fix her" trope. The bad thing about her is that aforementioned deconstruction is the only good thing about her. I really don't like "sexy, sadistic evil female NPC" trope in cRPGs but at least she's not a drow. As for Lann mistaking basic human decency with flirting, while I generally consider Baldur's Gate 3 far better game, literally every joinable NPC there has a similar problem, jumping on my asexual rear end literally after exchanging two banters.
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Feb 17, 2024 21:17
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Cythereal posted:Mechanically, though, Cammy is one of the most powerful characters in the game. Build her properly and she's an astounding support character and front-liner. I, however, will be discarding her from the party as soon as the game lets me, and killing her the moment the game allows me to, so her build is of no concern to this LP. Now how could you kill off someone so useful - She is always helpful, is she not?  But yes, it becomes clear you're in for some  the moment you hear THE WORLD IN CRIMSON - Among others. I know a fair amount of people who still fell for her act all the way to the end even with her every voiceline being what it is.Gun Jam posted:Lemme guess: nobody gets a "no fix needed" here. That depends a lot on personal preference, but the list is pretty much just Seelah. Then there's the people for whom Cam-Cam belongs in the "no fix needed" category.
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Feb 17, 2024 21:31
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Gun Jam posted:Wait, so how the game handles party members dying in combat (unless "deliberately getting her killed by demons" is possible, but you're not doing that?" The game has 3 death settings. Just stand up at the end of the fight (like is enabled here), Death's Door (where characters can stand up once, but then get a debuff that stops them from doing so again until you've rested in a safe area), and normal death. In the latter two cases it's just a matter of casting or hunting down resurrection magic to get them back, but they're still technically in the party as a grayed out portrait until then. To actually kill and remove them from the party permanently generally requires special circumstances. Poil posted:I vastly prefer dealing with openly evil characters rather than the tiresome sudden "unexpected" twist betrayal ones that you couldn't actually prevent despite it being It's not so much that Camellia betrays you (she doesn't), as it is that you suddenly get a scene that smacks you upside the head regarding her particular interests if you'd somehow missed ALL the signs before then. Wenduag's the one you need to watch out for betrayal from, Cammy's perfectly fine being not being in the spotlight, reveling in the bonuses that come from being one of your companions and having "fun" on the side. The Undetectable alignment thing will always be annoying, regardless of how it came about. True Neutral IS what you effectively detect as if you've got your alignment hidden.
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Feb 17, 2024 21:32
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Cythereal posted:Our second cannibalistic serial killer for the party, Wenduag is mostly as advertised: a survival of the fittest dog-eat-man libertarian survivalist. She is also a certified BDSM enthusiast happy to bottom for anyone she deems strong, so if you want a murderous spidercatgirl sub who calls you Master/Mistress all the time, Wrath might be the game for you! Wenduag is, unfortunately, a victim of most of her character exploration and growth being locked behind romancing her. There is more to her than what you see on the surface, but getting to that part of her character is contingent on dealing extensively with the surface impression and playing your cards just right so that she opens up. To be honest, I have never romanced Wenduag (see: cannibalistic serial killer) so I can't tell you any hard details, but she has some very dedicated fans out there. I'm actually replaying the game and I'm one of her aforementioned dedicated fans; mind if I post her romance scenes when they would have come up in your own story? To be honest, even if I wasn't romancing her, I'd still genuinely prefer her to Lann regardless of what gender I'm playing. Also, while I did not play the alpha/beta for Wrath, from what I hear her combat barks and most of her dialogue was unchanged from before- guess most of us straight dudes really are suckers for pretty faces 
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Feb 17, 2024 21:35
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Not really a fan of Wendaug or Camellia since they play their alignments full bore, but at least Wendaug's voice actress (Amelia Tyler) is awesome. They're also both good for evil players, I guess. If being evil rubs you the wrong way like it does me, it's the opposite. Not really a fan of Lann either, he's a bit over the top into himself. Then there's the assumed love interest bit Cyth already brought up.  Some male players aren't a fan of that any more than female players- largely it depends on the characters involved.Seelah is a cool character to whom I too wish players could get closer. Oh well. I like to give her the Horse companion also, although a one level dip into Hunter, Inquisitor Sacred Huntmaster, or Cavalier Beast Rider can give her a Mount early and cause the different animal you might pick to take over for the default Paladin Animal Companion when you get to higher level if you like. Paladin Bear Cavalry- the Demons are in trouble now. Heh. Cyth is probably going to bench Cam soon as she can. Not sure if getting her killed by demons is a prerequisite for that. Up to her if she wants to bring in a mercenary with identical stats to replace her like Cohh Carnage did in his LP, but that may not be necessary at Story Difficulty. If you ask about the corpse next to Cam, Annevia identifies him as Aravashniel, an elven scholar from the original Pathfinder module series on which this game is based. Owlcat Games changed up the plot of those modules a bit. Mongrelfolk are a race of humanoids from the original D&D Monster Manual. Their mixed animal body parts are canon, but I think the bunch in this game has some unique origins with demons being involved. I also haven't heard them called "neathers" outside this game. Wendaug puts down your character if you're a tiefling and accuse her of being one. Lots of racism against tieflings in this game. She also calls you out if you're a dhampir or aasimar, I think. I'm enjoying Cyth's commentary on the game's themes. Yua's asides too. You can use party member stats in later text adventures, but the game doesn't always allow you to do it. This game has a very large amount of shitheads in the party. I will let Cyth introduce and comment on them as she will. Some (including the character people have referenced) are IMO endearing. Unfortunately (my opinion), Cam and Wendy aren't on the list. Even if you romance Wendy, she still behaves a lot like a selfish thug before you get her to calm down. And that was not appreciated on my end. Cam is just... gack. I'll leave it at that. Kudos to CM for his original AP Lore. achtungnight fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Feb 17, 2024 |
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Feb 17, 2024 21:39
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Lord Koth posted:The Undetectable alignment thing will always be annoying, regardless of how it came about. True Neutral IS what you effectively detect as if you've got your alignment hidden. People of her house carry lead sheets to prove their noblehood.
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Feb 17, 2024 21:48
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Gun Jam posted:People of her house carry lead sheets to prove their noblehood. Seelah first contact with Cammy be like:  quote:Then there's the people for whom Cam-Cam belongs in the "no fix needed" category. This game has literal fascist as joinable NPC and people somehow love him.
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Feb 17, 2024 21:50
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Camellia rules, and future fascist character also rules. No notes.
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Feb 17, 2024 22:13
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I will deal with that particular shithead when he shows up. Until then, if you want an LP that will be charitable to Cammy or use her, this is not the LP you want.
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Feb 17, 2024 22:30
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I'm personally more Pragmatic about Azata, and go full bore into the 'POWER OF FREINDSHIP!' territory. In my own game, I plan to recruit and use everyone. Now since I'm playing on Core, the Shield Maze is kicking my rear end. So Mounted Seelah and Pet user Lann are my preferred builds for them, though I give Seelah a Smilodon instead of a Horse due to taking a level of Beast Rider right before Paladin 5. Not sure what class you're planning for Lann, but I go Sacred Huntsmaster on him for Inquisitor spells and teamwork feats with his Monitor Lizard.
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Feb 17, 2024 22:38
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Ain't No Party Like An AP Party And here we are having met five people (kind of) from the original AP as well as one OC. Since Cythereal has done a good job of covering their mechanics and their general personalities, this is just going to be a post mostly showing off their original artwork and roles in the AP. First things first though- this might be my personal preferences showing, but I personally think Owlcat gave many of the OG Adventure Path characters a bit of a glow-up when porting them over, with the exception of Wenduag and one other character we won't meet for a while yet. And yes, I said Wenduag  SO! Let's start off with Lann.  I said Owlcat gave them a glow-up. I didn't say how much; say what you like, but if you're attracted to men, Lann ain't bad-looking, I say. In the original AP, Lann is the two mongrelpeople you meet after falling into the caves, along with another character named Dyra, who is described as "her face so warped by tumors that she's incapable of intelligible speech,'; as anyone who's played the game can tell, Wrath!Dyra will be quite a far cry from AP!Dyra, but I digress. In the AP, Lann's only purpose is to guide you through the caverns to the next plot point, with he and Dyra sharing the same generic mongrelperson stats. Also, since mythic paths worked differently in the general Pathfinder system (and have very specific details in the AP that the game doesn't really have) than they do in the game, the whole golden sword thing doesn't show up- instead, the PCs simply have to help Lann and Dyra clear some rocks before proceeding onward. Unlike the game, which places a lot of plot and character development after meeting the mongrels, the AP does quite a bit to develop the personalities of Anevia and several other NPCs before meeting Lann and Dyra. I'm not knocking Wrath for doing so, just noting the change of pacing. Next up, Wenduag!  Here's Wenduag's original artwork. Like I said, I don't think Owlcat glowed her up all that much, if at all. Don't judge me. RP-wise, OG Wenduag has even less of a role than OG Lann. Not only does she only make an appearance in the first real dungeon of the AP, she only serves as a meatshield miniboss who's only really there for players to see if they built their characters properly. Of course a DM can adapt things if the players decide to take her prisoner or somesuch, but considering most PF characters won't have access to the tools, mechanical cpability and/or feats necessary to recruit otherwise unfriendly NPC characters, it's very likely that even the most redemption-happy party will have to kill Wendy when they meet her. Mechanics-wise, I have to say she's quite interesting- her Strength and Charisma are lower, her Dexterity is quite a bit higher, but AP Wendy also has very good Wisdom and above-average Intelligence, as well as a CE alignment compared to her Wrath incarnation's NE. It kind of makes me wonder what she could have been built into if Owlcat had kept her original stats- one of the builds for her out there is as an axe-throwing Cult Leader Warpriest, and having 16 Wis would have certainly helped her out with that. And now we get to Seelah!  Seen here being badass in more ways than one. Not a spoiler for Wrath, fear not. Seelah is Pathfinder's Iconic Paladin, by which I mean that if an artwork requires someone doing Paladin things, they're going to feature Seelah.  Here we see Seelah dealing with the many moral dilemmas a Paladin faces. Without going into too much detail, Seelah makes the perfect iconic character for Wrath, and a much better match than Amiri the barbarian made for Owlcat's previous game, Kingmaker. As Cyth said, she's easygoing, boisterous and brave, and while this might not fit everyone's definition of a Paladin of Iomedae, she does fit the general Pathfinder ideal of a Paladin, in that she's righteous without being uncompromising, faithful without being fanatical, brave without being foolhardy, forgiving without being weak. That being said, she doesn't acually feature in the original AP as a character, per se, just as a featured iconic in the AP's artwork. Each AP features four iconics in their artwork showing off the things the party could be doing, and for Wrath, Seelah was one of them. The other three are Merisiel the Rogue, Alain the Cavalier and Seoni the Sorceress, but they don't appear anywhere in Kingmaker or Wrath so I'm just going to leave things there.  Remember when I said Seelah was 'badass in more ways than one'? Take note of the pendant the demon is now wearing  I'm not going to go into more detail on Anevia, the fourth member of the AP's original characters, but I do want to talk a little about the could-have-been fifth member of our party, Aravashnial.  Good night, sweet prince, we barely knew ye. Yes, Camellia's murder victim was actually a major character in the AP, accompanying and assisting the party for 4-5 books out of 6, and the fact that he dies right at the beginning of the game would have been quite the kick in the nuts for anyone familiar with the AP. And he wasn't a damsel in distress either. Having travelled from his homeland of Kyonin to learn ways to fight the demons plaguing his homeland, Aravashnial would have been the PC's primary source of anti-demon knowledge from his work as a Riftwarden, who travel the planes, guarding multiversal integrity and stability- so yeah, a legitimate badass. The festival attack would have blinded him, but he would still have had enough magical power and talent to assist the party if they ever got into a tight spot. Considering that the AP was supposed to start at 1st level, tight spots would have been in abundance. To be perfectly honest, I thought he would have made it into Wrath as a recruitable, romanceable NPC. Talented, handsome elf at risk of losing himself to darkness, just waiting for someone to save him? Yeah, this guy had 'tortured soul in need of a good man/woman' written all over him, and to be honest, I'm not sure Cammy's a good trade  achtungnight posted:Kudos to CM for his original AP Lore. Thanks! Pathfinder's APs are some of the best parts of the system (even though there are quite a few misses, and there are some dated elements), and it's been a lot of fun nerding out about them! CommissarMega fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Feb 18, 2024 |
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Feb 17, 2024 22:45
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SettingSun posted:Camellia rules, and future fascist character also rules. No notes.  I am one of the people that completely missed Cammy's... lovely attributes until she beat me over the head with it in Act 2 during That Thing. I'm so used to NPCs and PCs yelling crazy poo poo during combat in games that her voice lines didn't really do anything for me. The hidden alignment made me roll my eyes and guess she would turn out to be evil. Just, not what she ends up as. Wenduag is better than Lann at being a good person. There, I said it. You can fix her, you can't fix Lann.
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Feb 17, 2024 22:55
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SettingSun posted:Camellia rules, and future fascist character also rules. No notes. I've given Camellia a chance from beginning to end, and whilst she's useful, I'd fall short of saying she rules. As for the other character, definitely rules.
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Feb 17, 2024 23:16
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I have... thoughts on that One Character, and while I sure as hell wouldn't go so far to say that he rules, I do think the issues he has regarding people's perception of him and his actions stems from the writing of both the game and the setting. To be honest, it's one of the things I'm most looking to writing about.
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Feb 17, 2024 23:21
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Folks, chill. We won't meet that character for quite a while.
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Feb 17, 2024 23:22
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Cythereal posted:
Fixed it for you Also, I do have a request: CommissarMega posted:I'm actually replaying the game and I'm one of her aforementioned dedicated fans; mind if I post her romance scenes when they would have come up in your own story? EDIT: I'm talking about Wenduag.
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Feb 17, 2024 23:24
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CommissarMega posted:Also, I do have a request: No, thank you. This thread seems to be having trouble staying on task as it is. For gently caress's sake, y'all, we aren't even to Act One yet. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Feb 17, 2024 |
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Feb 17, 2024 23:37
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Cythereal posted:No, thank you. Fair enough! Hard enough to herd the cats here as they are, I suppose
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Feb 17, 2024 23:40
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Cythereal posted:Character Overview: Seelah Seelah was 100% my favorite character in this game (although there are a few others that come close), and I never voluntarily removed her from my party at any point. She's just great all the time! Honestly, she makes me think of the conception of paladins from the Quest for Glory series. Sure, they can be badasses when needed, but they also take the idea of being good seriously, which can mean being kind, generous, funny, or in any other way nourishing to the spirit of other people without necessarily being a self-righteous jackass.
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Feb 17, 2024 23:42
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Lann and Wendaug are interesting artifacts of iterative game design the writers went back later and gave both of them significantly better characters than their original "i am the good one" "i am the bad one." unfortunately by that point the game had already been scripted out quite a ways, and so the player's experience of them is an interesting character who is replaced by a cardboard cut-out for the purposes of set pieces. Camelia's a one-trick pony, but I'll give the writers credit for trying to figure out an answer for "how does an evil person operate in a fantasy society anyway"
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Feb 17, 2024 23:45
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Seelah, together with OOTS paladins other than Miko, is a great example of "how to write paladins right".
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Feb 17, 2024 23:49
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The tragic thing about Cammy is that she's a really useful combatant.
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Feb 17, 2024 23:59
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As it stands, for those curious, we're about 20-30 minutes into the game. I will not be covering future combat in anything like this detail, as I hope I now have the basics clear for people.
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Feb 18, 2024 01:30
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Cythereal posted:As it stands, for those curious, we're about 20-30 minutes into the game.
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Feb 18, 2024 01:53
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I think Wendy is more of a spider-eat-man libertarian survivalist imo
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Feb 18, 2024 02:12
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DTurtle posted:How long is the game in total (by which I mean one normal play through)? Each of my games has been about 60 hours. I've never played Crusade mode either, but I've seen videos so I have a general idea of how that works when it starts. Right now, though, we're still in the prologue/tutorial.
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Feb 18, 2024 02:13
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DTurtle posted:How long is the game in total (by which I mean one normal play through)? I have never played, but since this is a full scale d20 campaign think like a two week shift at work to finish it.
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Feb 18, 2024 02:17
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My first playthrough was about 80 hours. I've seen reports of people taking as much as 200+ hours.
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Feb 18, 2024 02:28
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Yeah, playing on normal with Crusade mode on, I'd say more usually like 80-100 hours for most people, but this is one of those games where it can vary a lot based on what sidequests you do, how many minor NPCs you talk to, etc etc. You can spend a lot of time in there if you really want to.
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Feb 18, 2024 02:53
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My first run was about 100 hours on story difficulty because I was honestly enjoying the game (well, most of it, the enforced putting up with certain evil party members isn’t enjoyable- at least other stuff balanced things out a bit) and trying to explore all I could. My second run (same difficulty, different mythic path) was about 80 hours because I knew better what I was doing. I had Crusade Mode on both times. I’ve only done Azata and Trickster paths to completion. I plan to do Angel next or maybe one of the evil paths just for laughs, but right now a lot of other games and life in general are monopolizing my time. Documenting your play does tend to slow things down a bit, but our navigator is a veteran gamer who has a plan, so things are probably evened out a bit. Heh.
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Feb 18, 2024 08:53
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My only playthrough clocked in at 135 hours; I think a lot of that can be chalked up to the fact I played on Daring and used the turn-based combat system.
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Feb 18, 2024 11:14
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I noticed Seelah is incompatible with a Lich run, but not Demon? I imagine she wouldn't be very happy with the PC on a Demon Mythic path.
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Feb 18, 2024 12:51
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Kanthulhu posted:I noticed Seelah is incompatible with a Lich run, but not Demon? I imagine she wouldn't be very happy with the PC on a Demon Mythic path. There's a lot of oddities where people stick around in mythic paths you wouldn't think they would. Camellia, for example, runs off the instant you commit to the Aeon path because Miss ALL WILL BE KNOWN, ALL WILL BE JUDGED understandably makes her think that she'll be found and caught. But... she doesn't react that way to I AM THE SWORD OF HEAVEN COME TO CLEANSE THIS CORRUPTED LAND! or the like.
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Feb 18, 2024 13:48
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I'm at hour 70 and I haven't finished act 3 yet. I think the DLC adds a lot of runtime to the game if you have it. But I also spent a lot of time just exploring the map and murderhobo'ing.
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Feb 18, 2024 14:41
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Cythereal posted:There's a lot of oddities where people stick around in mythic paths you wouldn't think they would. well, yeah, she's from Crusader City, her whole life has been based on the observation that if you say the right words before going on a killing spree those types will sign off on it
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Feb 18, 2024 14:53
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The more gruesome your murders, the easier it is to say a demon did it.
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Feb 18, 2024 14:57
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Cythereal posted:Each of my games has been about 60 hours. And to everyone else: we apparently have years ahead of us. Please have patience for stuff to become relevant before talking about everything.
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Feb 18, 2024 16:31
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Cythereal posted:There's a lot of oddities where people stick around in mythic paths you wouldn't think they would. Fooling holy types is her bread and butter.
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Feb 18, 2024 19:10
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