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idonotlikepeas posted:Sure, you can use a pet to tank, but you can also use them to DPS if you want and there's nothing wrong with that When you realize that there is absolutely no difference between someone who's role is to be DPS, and someone who's role is to be in the front lines and occasionally take an enemy attack, then, you have achieved enlightenment. ...Jokes aside, you've kinda hit the issue with shields, and it's not specifically a problem in Wrath of the Righteous. There's no mechanic to ensure the "right people" get targeted by enemies. Someone who bulks up entirely on defense can - and will - have monsters just...run right the gently caress past them. To that end, "tank" as a role is nonexistant. Not just in this game, but in most D&D editions outside of 4e and their subsequent video games. The same problem exists in Baldur's Gate 3 - go ahead and make someone your tank with sky high AC, and then watch as enemies just run around them and focus fire on your wizard trying to hold concentration on Haste. Every front liner needs to have some means of "not dying" if enemies start hitting them, and no front liner needs to be "the defensive one." This is why shields don't have much use in Kingmaker, and why shields didn't have much use outside of early and select levels in Baldur's Gate 1&2, and why the main use for shields in Baldur's Gate 3 is to stick them on your concentration holding spellcasters. That you can also just...use a spell to replace that entire set of equipment just adds insult to injury, really. Lastly, going all offense IS a defensive maneuver. The best way to stop an enemy from dealing damage is to kill it and/or control it before it can do that damage. I promise you, the advice is not coming from "a batch of spherical adventurers slugging it out with stationary enemies on a frictionless grass tile." It's coming from harder difficulties where you need insanely high AC not to get splattered by enemies, and chances are you have someone capable of just casting the Shield spell on your whole party (remember how much we talked up the Alchemist? Guess what they can do!). The catch is, of course, none of that matters or the mechanical scope of this LP. We talk about these mechanics because we enjoy talking about the mechanics, not because we demand or even expect Cyth to follow through with the talk. This is Story Mode. Use a shield if you want! Maybe it looks cool, hey, go for it. It's great! Seelah uses a shield and sword, just like her art, and you can even use a rad super-paladin flavored sword. This is precisely why Story Mode exists. You are objectively playing the game correctly if you go into this difficulty and go for whatever looks and sounds cool. quote:Seelah I like Seelah's story a decent amount. not so much the "lawful = cynical hardass" part, but the part where Seelah kinda unconsciously doesn't realize how well things worked out for her, and how there's no guarantee anyone else is gonna get it just as good. Her view is, I was a thief, then I hosed up, then I became a paladin, and now it's all good, so clearly that can work for everyone. And this is a hard shot that, no, not everyone gets that lucky. Sometimes you gently caress up and you never recover from that gently caress up. Sometimes you gently caress up and nobody gives you another chance. Sometimes you don't even gently caress up, but someone else does, and it's gonna hit you. "You realize not everyone has a blessing from the gods themselves right?" is a pretty decent narrative to give a paladin. It's definitely a lot better then the usual "which bad choice do you pick? NOW FALL" tripe they usually deal with. ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Apr 5, 2024 |
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Apr 5, 2024 05:45
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Cythreal posted:The male of the species is a strange and mercurial creature oft given to mischievous wanderings and ramblings. To be fair, I've known a few women like this too. I am also a fan of Iomedae's appearance and Joan of Arc style lady knight heroism. I find Elan a bit bland, but appreciate his take on the PC gaining power a bit fast. The Storyteller will admit he's currently not into joining the Crusade if you ask him in the opening camp dialogue for this Act. He will return later, of course.
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Apr 5, 2024 06:41
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ProfessorCirno posted:...Jokes aside, you've kinda hit the issue with shields, and it's not specifically a problem in Wrath of the Righteous. There's no mechanic to ensure the "right people" get targeted by enemies. Sure, but I said the exact opposite of this. Because the mechanic to ensure that the right person gets targetted by an enemy is, in the CRPGs, "march that person towards the enemy first". You send (for example) Val with her tower shield in Kingmaker and her ridiculous AC in first, and almost everything attacks her and never peels off of her for the entire fight unless it starts getting pounded on by something else in melee range. You send the rest of the melee DPS around the sides so that they're only exposed to one enemy at a time and let the tank sit there eating the vast majority of the attacks while the enemies get burned down. (You can even have Amiri attack straight over Val's head with a polearm if you want, although obviously that isn't going to work on reach enemies like cyclopes or linnorms.) It even makes a little sense for the AI to behave like this, because Pathfinder as a system prioritizes standing in one place to maximize damage - since you have to sacrifice your move to get all your attacks, the AI is weighing up running over to the squishies and getting one attack (or none, if you really have good positioning) against being able to attack the heavily armored person in front of them five times and choosing the latter although in practice, the latter is going to result in much less actual damage to deal with. Obviously you don't want to do up your whole party like that, because as you say, you need to have enough damage to kill the enemies quickly or else they're just going to very gradually deplete all your health anyway, but if you can put a lot of armor on one person and use positioning to make sure that person is eating most of the hits, it does result in a lot less damage overall. The exception is the occasional enemy with "rogue" style AI, like actual rogues but also dweomercats and stuff like that, which will indeed run right past the tank. Hopefully they eat an attack of opportunity along the way, which is nice, but that's not going to kill them. It's definitely a smaller number of enemies that do this, though, and thankfully most of them tend to have fewer HP, so it's still a very effective strategy. (Source: literally replaying Kingmaker at this exact moment - I'm about halfway through and I've only very occasionally run into things that ignore the tank, certainly fewer than one in twenty encounters, maybe fewer than one in thirty - I don't recall the ratio in Wrath, but I think it's similar.) This is kind of what I'm talking about when I refer to abstract mechanics discussions. Sure, they CAN run past the tank and just completely ignore them, based on the rules, they just usually don't because of the way the AI is programmed in these games. Seelah can be pretty effective in this role; her AC will be slightly less crazy, but she's got some magic benefits that help her pull it off. Putting her on a tank horse is a good option too, though. In terms of unfair difficulty, I think the most common strategy I've seen is to use summoned animals and characters with the mirror image spell as tanks since they're effectively ablative HP sacks that are trading your spell slots for a little more health than the damage or debuff you might otherwise get out of them. Still the same general idea of "send this useless poo poo brigade in first and the enemies will burn them down and ignore the people murdering them". You can achieve the same thing in BG3 pretty easily, especially if 3/4 of your party is doing ranged attacks from just outside the enemy's move distance* so that only one is in melee range at any given moment anyway. (This is one of the reasons I don't like spreadsheet math for these games - it tends to ignore movement speed, one of the most important factors in 5E.) Most enemies will prioritize attacking the thing right next to them as opposed to running over to where your squishies are. And if they do choose to do that, they just wasted an entire round on moving, and 5E combats don't last long enough to waste even one turn. It is definitely harder in tabletop, because your DM is probably not powered by a very simple AI, although there are a few mechanics in 5E that can push it (abilities that give disadvantage to enemies attacking anything but person A, that kind of stuff). Not to mention that in 5E the difference between sword and board and 2H is like a couple of points** of damage per attack anyway; you should absolutely stick a shield on anyone that can carry one in 5E, especially given how they've squeezed the AC values down across levels. I think the highest attack bonus in 5e is +19 for the Tarrasque, whereas enemies Cythereal has already seen in Wrath barely any way into the game already have +12. Even if you stick with completely non-magical shields for some reason (magic ones don't require attunement, so why would you?), that +2 bonus in 5E is going to be meaningful throughout your character's entire career. * If you're using Astarion or something, remember he can disengage as a bonus action - enter melee, hit the enemy, leave melee and move away so they keep attacking your tank instead. ** Standard 1H weapon at d8, average 4.5, 2H weapon at d12, average 6.5, strength and magical bonuses and special abilities and sneak attack and so on are not affected by 1H vs 2H in 5e, so you're likely to move from 7.5 - 11.5 for the 1H and 9.5 - 13.5 for the 2H for basic attack damage over the entire course of your character's career. That won't affect what you do with maneuvers, spells, smite, rage, and all the other places your damage is supposed to come from. Use a shield, MAYBE unless you're a barbarian or a Champion fighter or, God help us, an Echo Knight.
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Apr 5, 2024 08:00
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I mean, ultimately, you said my own tactics. Tank mounts solve sincerely all problems. They let melee do full attacks even when they move, they soak up attacks while being able to hit high enough AC to not worry overly much about it, and even if they DO die, they come right back soon as you take a nap. Early on the good ol' Leopard can solve the Shield Maze for you, but once you're out of that, just throw everyone onto an animal. They even give you an item that gives one character a completely free animal companion triceratops! That's why I just circle back to: tank characters don't have a purpose, because they can be replaced by a horse. You probably want a paladin anyways for Mark of Justice, and they come with a horse! It's a match made in heaven! Clerics can grab Impossible Domain to get their own animal companion. Lots of ranged classes have a varient that gives an animal companion. Everyone gets a horse! For a wide definition of horse. Beyond that, and this is probably the biggest gap in playstyles, I find it so much easier to make defenses a matter of buffs and control rather then equipment. It's far easier to buff everyone to the gills, and now everyone's a tank (or, now everyone's riding a tank). So much of 3.x's magic system is built around maintaining a bajillion buffs (albeit accidentally; both WotC and PF1e's devs sincerely had no idea what they were doing with their mechanical design), and both Kingmaker and WotR have mods to maintain just about all that for you. As for control, selective grease, selective web, and corruptor + stinking cloud solves chapters 1 and 2, where you're at your most vulnerable, and I'll happily bring these up as we hit those points in the LP. Even when they don't disable all enemies, they'll disable enough of them that you can focus fire and take out what threats remain. Also, not to go too deep into tangents, but the real reasons you use two handers in your general melee in BG3 are 1) itemization (Alas, poor longswords, your items are dogshit, save one, and that one isn't even good for attacks, it just gives your party a great buff) and 2) feats (using a shield means no Great Weapon Master or Polearm Master). Which is why shields work so well with your spellcasters instead - if I'm not attacking with my weapon, then I don't care about things like GWM. But if my goal is to do weapon damage, there's very little that's going to do better.
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Apr 5, 2024 09:46
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I think Iomedae's character design just owns and the short haircut works so good.
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Apr 5, 2024 14:01
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Vargatron posted:I think Iomedae's character design just owns and the short haircut works so good. The practical cut of a goddess who doesn't need anyone's approval.
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Apr 5, 2024 15:11
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ProfessorCirno posted:Beyond that, and this is probably the biggest gap in playstyles, I find it so much easier to make defenses a matter of buffs and control rather then equipment. Sure, playstyle is of primary importance. After all, these are games, and if we're playing them in a way that is annoying to us, we might as well not bother playing them. Speaking of which, that's exactly my feeling about using temporary buffs to get up to an acceptable level of tankiness; for me, managing a pile of different spells on everyone all the time is basically the sixth circle of Hell. I don't want to say "oh, I could replace that shield by creating an alchemist mercenary, putting them in the party, and repeatedly casting a spell on everyone", I want to say "oh, look, that shield gives +4 or better, maybe with an extra effect like the DR 5/magic that just showed up in the LP, and now I never, ever have to think about casting the shield spell ever again". I don't mind buffing up before an obvious boss room or opportunistically throwing a communal resist fire on everyone when I spot a brimorak, but keeping buffs running all the time just to deal with regular encounters is kind of the definition of tedium. A lot of people don't feel like that, though, and that's totally legit; if you have more fun managing the buffs than sticking a bunch of armor on a character, go hog wild. It clearly works well and will get you through the combat encounters in the game, which is the only thing a combat strategy has to do to be worth it. I only object to the idea that having a character tank with a shield is some kind of stupid baby way to play, when in fact it's a mathematically sound and very functional strategy. I almost never have to buff for regular encounters when I'm playing these games; I have my formation set up to shove the tank wwwwwaaaayy out in front and that does the trick almost all the time, and as a result the experience of playing the game is just plain more fun for me. ProfessorCirno posted:Also, not to go too deep into tangents, but the real reasons you use two handers in your general melee in BG3 are 1) itemization (Alas, poor longswords, your items are dogshit, save one, and that one isn't even good for attacks, it just gives your party a great buff) and 2) feats (using a shield means no Great Weapon Master or Polearm Master). Which is why shields work so well with your spellcasters instead - if I'm not attacking with my weapon, then I don't care about things like GWM. But if my goal is to do weapon damage, there's very little that's going to do better. Honestly, I probably already went too deep into the tangent on my last post (sorry, Cythereal, like a lot of nerds I get excited when talking about numbers). So let's talk about something that's actually in the game being LPed in this thread that might touch on some of the same concerns: power attack. For the uninitiated, regular power attack In Pathfinder 1E is an ability that you acquire via a feat which you can toggle on and off. When on, it reduces your ability to hit, starting with a -1, and then adding further penalties periodically as you go up in level, and increases the damage when you do when you do hit, starting with a +2, and going up in the same way as the penalty. (There are also two other feats, Piranha Attack and Deadly Aim, which function the same way for dexterity-based melee and ranged attackers.) Whether the tradeoff of turning it on is worth it is actually an fairly complicated calculation - the more damage you do without it, the less worthwhile it is, and the less likely you are to hit, the less worthwhile it is. So the best usecase for it is when you're low level with crappy weapons and fighting trash encounters... except that you might be able to kill those things in one round of attacks anyway, meaning the extra +2 damage just goes to waste. And as you get to higher level and start acquiring more attacks, not only does your total damage per round go up, the to-hit bonus on later attacks goes down, making the whole proposition more risky especially with the escalating to-hit penalty. But then you start adding in enemies with damage resistance, and having it feels like it might be more worthwhile again to deal with those since damage that hits the resistance doesn't do anything and you're probably not carrying around a sack full of swords with all the properties you'd need to void every enemy's DR. (Although if you've got Iomedae's belt buckle...) And if this is starting to sound like you have to check the AC and DR on every enemy you fight in order to determine whether you want to use this feat on them... it's because you more or less do if you want to use it optimally. People have literally set up speadsheets and online tools to help figure out when to use this and when not to. And if that doesn't sound like fun to you, well, you're not alone - again, this is a playstyle thing, where some people enjoy deciding whether to use it every time and some people really would prefer not to have to. It would be nice if you could look at this feat in comparison with what you get from other feats, especially because you may not enjoy having to make that determination before every attack (or feeling badly about the fact that you're not doing so, which is also a potentially significant factor), but in practice it gates a bunch of other feats people tend to like, so you're going to be picking it up with most melee damage dealers unless you're doing something weird. (If you want to get to Cleaving Finish, for instance, you're taking Power Attack even if you just turn it off forever and Cleave even if you never use it.) In a universe where that weren't the case, though, it'd be nice to be able to spend a feat (a limited resource!) on a straight increase to damage and to-hit rather than buying yourself another headache. It would be hard to say whether it's worth it overall without having a complete rundown of every single enemy encounter in the game and simulating attacks against them with appropriately levelled characters, and I am not sure anyone has tried that yet (nor do I think they should). Just as an aside: one interesting quirk in this game, featwise, is that the weapon-specialization feats, which are just straight bonuses, don't have much opportunity cost to them - since you can respec, if you find a really good heavy mace or whatever you can just pop back to town and change your character to give that a bonus instead of the warhammer you were previously relying on. Vargatron posted:I think Iomedae's character design just owns and the short haircut works so good. See, this is what I'm saying. Iomedae doesn't look like some abstract ideal of goodness with all the cultural baggage we've been taught to expect of that kind of character, she looks like someone who absolutely will wreck your poo poo if you're Doing Wrong. The visual design of any character communicates information, and the information she is communicating is that kicking your evil rear end is just item twelve on her twenty item to-do list today.
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Apr 5, 2024 15:40
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Cythereal posted:You know, maybe we should end this with Lann's idea of asking the PC on a date? If may I ask, what are your options to say to him there, and does the one you took makes him dislike you more, or it's just "romance off"?
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Apr 5, 2024 15:56
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full credit to modern game design giving everyone the experience of awkwardly having to shoot someone down because you're not that interested in them and were just being nice, I suppose the correlated fact that most of a side characters content is unavailable if you aren't interested in loving is annoying, but I get it
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Apr 5, 2024 16:27
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Gun Jam posted:If may I ask, what are your options to say to him there, and does the one you took makes him dislike you more, or it's just "romance off"? The options are yes, yes and horny, take a rain check, and gently caress off. I took the 'gently caress off' option because my first campaign I took the rain check option and that started the romance anyway. I'm told that the free Enhanced Edition update altered all the romance triggers to be less aggressive about starting (I'm told that Sosiel is particularly notorious for it, or at least he used to be, in addition to Lann), but I erred on the side of caution. idonotlikepeas posted:It's a little thing, but one of the things I like about Iomedae in general is that she looks like this: Christ on a cracker, leotard mail? Points for short hair and visible scars and whatnot, sure, but mail does not work that way you dumb horny gently caress of an artist. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Apr 5, 2024 |
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Apr 5, 2024 16:57
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Cythereal posted:The options are yes, yes and horny, take a rain check, and gently caress off. they did improve on this in Rogue Trader. if you want to start a romance you've got to positively pursue them, and in several cases pursuing too aggressively is going to immediately stop the whole show shout outs to the Subtext Is For Cowards romance with the dedicated aristocrat character, a nightmarishly inbred mutant who can only handle interacting with other people via carefully memorized protocol. she is personally sweet, shy, and painfully sheltered, and has the tongues of her servants removed because one of her books says that's the best way to prevent them from giving her offense. if at any point you stray from the How To Flirt As A 40K Aristocrat manual (which you find, in-game) read she freaks out and shuts the whole thing down. very much prefer that approach to 'you have said enough nice things to me, want to gently caress'
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Apr 5, 2024 18:06
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I played through the Lann romance and found it painful and unsatisfying for many reasons. The Daeran romance was similar. The Female PC on Male NPC romances in this game are just not well-written in many ways. I'm not quoting specifics to avoid spoilers, just trust me. If the Romances in Rogue Trader are like YMB describes, I'm glad I'm avoiding that game. I like it where trust is a two way street and both parties in a relationship are good people at heart who don't betray each other. There are few Owlcat romances like that, but this game does feature a couple IMO (Sosiel and a character we haven't seen yet). The Woljif mod adds another.  Kingmaker has a few also. As far as Iomedae's leotard mail goes, I think she modified it to be easier to move in with her godly magic powers. And I don't blame her for doing that in the least. After suffering through years of having to put up with armor's heavy awkwardness as a mortal Paladin, and then passing the Starstone Test, why shouldn't she enjoy the benefits of her position?
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Apr 5, 2024 18:21
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I also remember Daeran being a pain in the rear end about his romance. I think I said a couple of polite things to him and he assumed we were DTF more or less immediately.Cythereal posted:Christ on a cracker, leotard mail? Points for short hair and visible scars and whatnot, sure, but mail does not work that way you dumb horny gently caress of an artist. You're not wrong about that, but in terms of armored female characters in fantasy art I still have to give it an 8/10. I'm just thankful she hasn't got bare cleavage or somehow a skirt.
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Apr 5, 2024 18:25
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:they did improve on this in Rogue Trader. if you want to start a romance you've got to positively pursue them, and in several cases pursuing too aggressively is going to immediately stop the whole show This sounds rad, I need to pick up Rogue Trader at some point
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Apr 5, 2024 19:13
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achtungnight posted:I played through the Lann romance and found it painful and unsatisfying for many reasons. The Daeran romance was similar. The Female PC on Male NPC romances in this game are just not well-written in many ways. I'm not quoting specifics to avoid spoilers, just trust me. oh, Cassia's good at heart, will not betray your trust, and trusts you. implicitly, even! all it takes is a single comment from you saying the mute servants thing is a little hosed for her to have it undone effective immediately, regardless of any kind of romance path, she's that worried about inadvertently offending her peers! but she has also been raised to be a good little aristocrat, and so getting the heart of gold to the surface without breaking it or her is going to require a protracted and complicated mining operation, and nobody is going to blame you for saying "hey, what if I went after someone who -isn't- a fixer-upper." idonotlikepeas posted:I also remember Daeran being a pain in the rear end about his romance. I think I said a couple of polite things to him and he assumed we were DTF more or less immediately. the fun convergence of "totally in character" and "still insufferable"
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Apr 5, 2024 19:31
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I generally don't like romances in videogames because they are usually "gain 2137 love points to unlock sex as a reward", but WoTR and BG3 are especially bad with their "mistaking common courtesy with flirting" attitude. I know that target audience is average gamer, but c'mon.
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Apr 5, 2024 19:36
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Sosiel is at least a very nice person in his romance.
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Apr 5, 2024 19:55
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Lann is literally a basement dweller falling in love with the first girl he met that treats him nice, the only difference is that he has already lost his V card with Wenduag.
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Apr 5, 2024 20:10
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Ew. Squares.
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Apr 5, 2024 20:15
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:oh, Cassia's good at heart, will not betray your trust, and trusts you. implicitly, even! all it takes is a single comment from you saying the mute servants thing is a little hosed for her to have it undone effective immediately, regardless of any kind of romance path, she's that worried about inadvertently offending her peers! but she has also been raised to be a good little aristocrat, and so getting the heart of gold to the surface without breaking it or her is going to require a protracted and complicated mining operation, and nobody is going to blame you for saying "hey, what if I went after someone who -isn't- a fixer-upper." Yeah, I prefer not to do fixer-uppers. I can do them, I do live in a home that was one once upon a time, but I have my limits, and someone effed-up enough to cut out her servants' tongues like you describe exceeds my limits in many ways. Plus, I can usually tell when a Romance is doomed with me from the beginning. And putting up with someone who denies their employees basic human rights for whatever reason doesn't sound like my cup of tea. I'm not a good little aristocrat. I'm a supporter of people like the America Founders, Katniss Everdeen, and Alan Moore's V. Truth to Power. Down With Tyranny. Divergent 4 Life. I romanced Daeran, Lann, and Wendaug in WotR hoping I could fix them. I could not. I did research on the Romances I accomplished and enjoyed.
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Apr 5, 2024 20:38
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I generally like video game romances a lot (when they allow for same-sex romances for women, at any rate), and personally I'm kind of amused by how a number of modern RPGs are downright horny. Minus the married couple in the supporting cast, though, Wrath has no notable NPCs getting together. Everyone of compatible gender and orientation despises each other. 
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Apr 5, 2024 21:02
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I'd argue there are a couple supporting cast romances in Chapter four, particularly on the path we're on.
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Apr 5, 2024 21:24
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Cythereal posted:I generally like video game romances a lot (when they allow for same-sex romances for women, at any rate), and personally I'm kind of amused by how a number of modern RPGs are downright horny. There's two married couples in the supporting cast. Irabeth and Annevia, and Elan and his bride in Seelah's quest. Or do you not count Irabeth and Annevia because they're already together? Sosiel also gets together with a guy if you don't romance him. You can meet the guy in Act 3, his name is Aron Kir. There may be other Romances with exposure subject to Mythic Paths, but I'm not aware of them offhand.
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Apr 5, 2024 21:33
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Cythereal posted:and personally I'm kind of amused by how a number of modern RPGs are downright horny. Before one patch fixed/broke it, you could have your first sex scene in Baldur's Gate 3 sooner than in most hentai games. I believe world record was... about 2 minutes after character creation?
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Apr 5, 2024 22:02
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Szarrukin posted:Before one patch fixed/broke it, you could have your first sex scene in Baldur's Gate 3 sooner than in most hentai games. I believe world record was... about 2 minutes after character creation? the best part was that the way you got it was just "be a real rear end in a top hat to everyone you meet" the Would Be Lawful Evil If 5E Had Lawful Evil As An Alignment lizard lady absolutely despises the rest of your party and takes you trying to tell her what to do as an exciting challenge to her authority, as a result of which after saying about four mean things she was ready to roll. evidently the root problem was that somebody had misplaced a zero in the Affection Points Required To Bone setting across the board. this had some very funny results after the Let's All Become Marginally Less Horny patch, where people's various relationship statuses were caught in limbo, and the correct tech support answer was "have you tried turning the relationship off and on again"
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Apr 5, 2024 22:25
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Laezal rules and is probably one of my favourite characters in the entire genre. The speedrun was extra funny since it’s not really out of character for her either.
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Apr 5, 2024 22:32
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RevolverDivider posted:Laezal rules and is probably one of my favourite characters in the entire genre. The speedrun was extra funny since it’s not really out of character for her either. <smoothly going back to WotR> she reminds me of Wenduag, which would make third WotR character having its (vague) counterpart in BG3. (Astarion -> Daeran and Karlach -> spoiler character)
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Apr 5, 2024 22:58
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Nothing here at all.
Kanthulhu fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Apr 5, 2024 |
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Apr 5, 2024 23:15
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This isn't a BG3 thread, y'all.
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Apr 5, 2024 23:17
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The Known Unknown It's time for a chat with Nurah, the expedition historian whom Galfrey sent along.   "You've probably heard about the wound I have, the one that sometimes opens on my chest. Can you perhaps tell me if it is some kind of demonic curse?" "Yes, indeed, I've been told of your affliction!" (Nurah peers at the center of your chest.) "Can you will the wound to open? No? That's a shame." "What can you tell me about this wound?" "Well... It's difficult to say. I know of blades that leave never-healing cuts, of poisons that stop wounds from healing, I've heard of witches' curses that are rewarded with eternal wounds... But wounds that seem to reopen and heal over and over... Hmm." "Perhaps you know of other cases like this?" "Hmm, let's think. In 4671, a Mendevian army corporal had all his bones and cartilage turn to glass... In 4700 a scribe in Kenabres had all her skin simply come away like she'd been boiled... And in 4638... oh! You don't happen to have insects crawling over you? Locusts? No? Rats, perhaps? Hmm... Too bad." (Nurah looks at you with genuine regret.) "Thank you for your answers."Remember, this wound seems to be tied to Yua's mythic powers. This is more confirmation that something very strange happened to her, and we know now that Areelu Voresh herself brought Yua into Kenabres - and by implication was the one who attacked her outside the city.  "Oh, I could talk about that for hours! What do you want to know?" "How did the Worldwound come to be?" "It happened the year Aroden died — 4606, a little over a century ago. No one knows if the timing was coincidental or if there's some connection with Aroden's death... But I'll tell you what we do know. The priests and shamans who ruled Sarkoris hated arcane magic and all who practiced it. Wizards and sorcerers were driven from the land — or worse. One of their prisons held a witch named Areelu Voresh. We know nothing about her besides her name, and of course, the atrocity she committed. By some unknown method, she managed to harness the terrible power of the demon lord Deskari. Together they tore open the barrier between worlds, opening a rift to the Abyss in the very middle of Sarkoris. The Worldwound slowly but mercilessly expanded, devouring more and more land. In a matter of years, Sarkoris was a memory. (After a moment of silence, Nurah adds softly,) "Sometimes I think... What did they do to Areelu in that prison? Just imagine, she was ready to give herself to the Abyss, if only the demons might devour her torturers along with her. To imagine such hatred... It terrifies me." "Tell me about Old Sarkoris."Most of Nurah's function is an exposition bot, but much of what she has to tell, CommissarMega already shared in their very informative posts about the backstory and context for the game. This, however, is probably the most important thing: we've heard Areelu Voresh called the Architect of the Worldwound before, and know we know why, at least in general terms. Voresh didn't just do this for shits and giggles.  "It's said that even back then, before the Worldwound, the boundary between worlds was especially thin in this region. Since ancient times, Deskari has had his claws sunk deep into the minds of the locals. His cults thrived here for many centuries. Aroden tried to stamp them out, but in the end, of course... He passed away." "Thank you for your answers." "Of course! If you have any more questions, feel free to come back!"I'm told that one of the DLCs for this game, Last of the Sarkorians, expands on the culture and beliefs of Sarkoris quite a bit. What you see in this game without it, though, suggests a vaguely Celtic culture, heavy on the druidism and shamanism or at least nature worship stuff.  Moving on...    (Noticing you, the halfling's hand jerks toward his weapon, but then he relaxes.) "Hey, it's the Commander herself! Don't just stand there, have a seat by the fire. It's a bit damp today, you might as well dry off, at least." (In an amicable gesture, he passes you a large mug that smells of freshly brewed tea.) [Knowledge: World 16] "Who are you?" [Success!] "Front line scouting party. Our senior sent us ahead to look for ambushes. We've been walking all day, so we're making a bivouac. Go ahead, help yourself to some tea. It's an honor for us to be sharing a campfire with the Commander." (Something in the way the halfling speaks sounds off. "Senior" instead of "commanding officer," a "bivouac" instead of the more casual "camp." Maybe he's just a new recruit.) (A broad smile blossoms on Seelah's face.) "I never thought we'd run into such jovial company out here! I don't suppose you guys have anything stronger than tea in your canteens?" (Catching the halfling's conspiratorial look, she smiles even brighter.) [Perception 14] (Look around to make sure the area is safe)This is, of course, a trap.   "It's quiet here, all right... as the grave. I don't know why, but I don't like the feel of this place. It makes my scales stand on end." (Draw your weapon) "Something's not right here. Attack!" (Smirking brazenly, the halfling licks his lips with a surprisingly long, pustule-covered red tongue.) "Hah, would you look at that, she didn't buy it. Enough of this masquerade, then, everyone. No more games." (The figures by the fire ripple and transform. Three gray-haired and dark-skinned elves watch you with mocking sneers. Their twisted, grimacing faces look demonic. From the haze, more, previously unseen shadows materialize — they are all just as loathsome and unsettling. The campfire emits a sickly sweet, intoxicating smell, and in the squat kettle, you see some slimy mushrooms swimming in a disgusting, boiling slurry.) "What was the point of this charade?" "Lady Anemora desires your head! And we'll gladly deliver it!" (The elf, whose voice as Tran was so convincing, lets out a repulsive snicker.) "You monsters!" (Seelah looks at those who appeared to be trusted allies a moment ago with open disgust.) "How did I not see you for what you are right from the start?"So yeah, Seelah's ability to detect evil will pretty much never be allowed to be useful - and the PC's, if you happen to play a paladin. Lots of people in this game can just arbitrarily fool such things by writer fiat.  "Who are you?" (The one who was pretending to be the halfling Velhm makes a face, mimicking you in an obnoxious voice,) "Who aaare you... We are servants of Lord Deskari! And you are the pitiful insect that got caught in our web!" (The elf who was masquerading as the cleric Asty gives you a lecherous smile, enthusiastically dragging her tongue along the blade of her dagger.) "Did you like sweet little Asty? Did you want to play with her in your tent?" "You think I'm at your mercy? We'll see who the real prey is!"Yeah, the only outcomes of this scenario are them drugging you and then attacking, or you deciding at any moment - and you can do so from the first dialogue branch - to attack them. All the skill checks and saving throws you can make mean jack poo poo beyond telling you that this poo poo's suspicious. You will have your drow ambush and you will like it.  I'm told that this is actually a pretty nasty fight on higher difficulties. There's a lot of them, and they have a wide range of classes and kits.  Including snipers waiting on the high ground, a nasty surprise if you don't have enough ranged firepower to deal with them.  I clock in the drow as cultists on the kill tally and move on because I frankly don't care enough to think about whether they're tied to that stupid kickstarter quest or not.   "Yours? Well, watch me... Wait, someone's here! Run!" "Nobody's running! Draw your weapons and fight, you cowards, or I'll kill you myself!"This map exists for this one fight.  They're just bandits, though the leader has a cute trick where he drinks a potion of invisibility at the start of combat and tries to get behind the party to backstab your squishiest party members while you deal with the mooks.  Odd thing but I'll take it.  I won't show off all crusade battles in the future, just when I think there's something new or noteworthy. This fight features the first stack of demons in such an army. I'm guessing they have the same fireball that they have in regular combat, so I eliminate them first.   I get a free (if small) stack of reinforcements I currently can't use because generals can only have three stacks in an army without skills to change that and I don't care to hire another general at this point for just seven ranger platoons.    There's more than just cultists in the Worldwound, and I suffer my first not-quite-losses. The infirmary lets you count a certain number of 'dead' units from your stacks as merely injured and able to recover, providing a margin for error. One thing becomes clear to me over the course of the crusade battles in this update: I need a bigger army. Perhaps I should let the week tick over so I can recruit another brigade of archers (and footmen, I guess).  Another map has nothing but a pair of these and miscellaneous loot. Undead animals like this are very nasty.   Another battle awards a permanent increase to my crusade income, and Ageboya levels up getting nothing that seems valuable so I take Bless by default.  Now, who's ready for puzzles?  If you play this game, you will come to recognize places like this and, in all probability, hate them.  The vases contain domino slabs that you need to use on those floor tiles.  This is the solution here, and to be honest I have no idea what the logic is. It would seem like you need the symbols on the slabs touching each other, but that's clearly not the case for the upper-right diagonal here. Puzzles like this are, by the way, the meat and potatoes of Nenio's quest if that gives you any indication why fans of this game tend to skip her quest. And completing this puzzle triggers something.   "Oh, puzzles! I love them!" "Mortals are not meant to unveil the secrets of the Universe and grasp the meaning of Creation... But is this really so?" "Of course not!" "The secrets of the Universe will only be revealed to the most worthy of mortals. Prove yourself, and be the first for whom all the secrets of the world are revealed." "Yes! Yes! What do we need to do!" "The Heart of Mystery is located west of here. Solve the puzzle, and you will comprehend the forbidden knowledge." (A map of an area that looks vaguely like the Worldwound appears in the figure's hands. A single dot shines brightly on the map.) "You can count on me, translucent masked figure! I'll solve any puzzles you have, so you better prepare some good ones!" "Who are you?" "...comprehend the meaning of Creation for the most worthy of mortals the Heart of Mystery prove all the secrets of the world..." (The translucent figure vanishes into thin air) "I think you broke it."If this all sounds like a trap for nerds, congratulations. I'll do the next step of this quest, at least, but I like to think that it's entirely legitimate to simply stop here. Recognize that this is a trap setting the promise of knowledge and hidden secrets as bait, and walk away. Alas, if you want to complete Nenio's quest for all the goodies and what little character growth she gets, you have to walk straight into the trap. You want to know what happens next, don't you? Or are you content to say that doesn't interest you and walk away?  Don't forget to loot these before you leave, there's another set of elven notes for Storyteller. Yeah, if you want to complete Storyteller's sidequest you have to complete Nenio's as well. The Crimson Path (this update) Bandits 4 Cultists 9 Undead Animals 2 Bandit Platoons 243 Cultist Platoons 44 Demon Bands 3
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Apr 7, 2024 14:20
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I have never done nenios quest and never will. I can deal with all their stuff regarding combat but nenios quest is where I finally drew the line
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Apr 7, 2024 15:35
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I did finish the quest after resorting to a guide for the final puzzles and while I did think the end was interesting, it was absolutely not worth all the fiddling with the puzzles it took.
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Apr 7, 2024 15:47
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I feel the same way about the puzzle quests. Yes, there are two of them. They have a cool story behind them, but getting it is annoying. That’s why I use a mod called Puzzle Skip.
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Apr 7, 2024 15:55
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The final fight of Nenio's quest is a really cool one, though.
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Apr 7, 2024 16:42
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Numeria: what if we just glued a Mad Max style post-apocalyptic technology wasteland straight into our fantasy world? Cythereal posted:
Uh-oh! Swarthy elves! (Seriously, though, the terminology they use here is a little unsettling, and not in a "being attacked by demons" way.) Cythereal posted:
For this puzzle, when you're laying down the dominos, each one that you put down has to have each of its pair of symbols touching an existing symbol that matches it along the major axes (not counting diagonals). You can see where your pairs are, because one of each of them is orange - not all symbols that touch will be matching, because the two symbols on your dominos won't necessarily match. (In fact, they can't, or the whole puzzle would just be one symbol.) So you might have laid them out like this to get the above arrangement: pre:A B AAC B AAC B BD AAC B C BDD Some of the other puzzles are nastier, and involve doing things like using vague clues to figure out which number a tile represents.
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Apr 7, 2024 18:34
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I have never solved these puzzles legitimately. I have always just looked up the solution to them. I'll vouch for the aforementioned DLC. The companion you get from it is really fun, and both it and he adds a lot of missing flavor about what this land was like before everything went to poo poo. The drow fight can be hard, but it's solved by using a tactic that has existed in these games since Baldur's Gate 1. Which is: just summon a bunch of poo poo to handle attacks for you. Namely, use your divine caster(s) and summon skeletons up next to the archers! I've talked about "control" spells, and I've talked about buff spells (which you frankly need a mod to use because it's such a headache to cast them all one by one normally, and buff spells are extremely powerful, making that mod near mandatory at higher difficulties), but summon spells are an odd bunch. My own feelings are that summons are rarely strong enough to deserve focusing on them, but the good ol' Skeleton Ablative Armor never goes out of style. Unlike most other summon spells, skeletons get a turn immediately, and while they almost never work out offensively, it can be valuable to throw some at enemies to soak up some attacks.
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Apr 7, 2024 20:17
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Do the unit portrait get more diverse? I mean, an archer is a beardless dude with a kettle helm, and a footman's a beardless dude with a kettle helm - try and spot the difference between them!ProfessorCirno posted:The drow fight can be hard, but it's solved by using a tactic that has existed in these games since Baldur's Gate 1. Which is: just summon a bunch of poo poo to handle attacks for you.
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Apr 7, 2024 20:21
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Yeah I just looked up a solution to the dominos puzzles after this one, they're just kinda obnoxious. While the Drow ambush is happening no matter what, the skill checks are what changes it from an evil act where the commander randomly butchers a scouting party to the commander figuring out that it's a trap and defending himself. The instant you pass the Knowledge check you can decide that something isn't right and it's not an evil act.
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Apr 7, 2024 22:22
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On the Power of Solitude Same day mini-update, sort of. I was in a mood to write, and this feels like it didn't warrant a full-scale update post. Also I'm expecting work to go completely to hell for the next few weeks so I'm writing when I feel the itch.  This is the male ascended portrait for Azata, just so this isn't a complete wall of text. Note that when you ascend, if your path has portraits for different genders, you can choose freely between them regardless of what gender you created the PC as. So this is going to be very different from any I've previously done in this particular LP. This essay began as part of my planned analysis of the Azata mythic path story before I realized that too much of that post was being taken up by my ruminations on one particular subject. There is something I rate very highly about Wrath of the Righteous and how the game is written compared to any other fantasy RPG I've played in the last few years, and it's something that I feel the need to defend and explain because from my conversations with goons over those last few years I've realized that this is quite different from how a lot of people see things. Without going into any specific spoilers, as I stated in the third post of this thread the Azata mythic path leans on the narrative voice of traditional romantic fantasy, prominently on what we might call 'the power of friendship.' I doubt the concept needs any explanation for my readers. The narrative, psychological, and in many settings literally magical, power of the bond between friends to motivate, support, and drive characters is one of the oldest concepts in human literature, with recorded evidence going back to Gilgamesh and Enkidu more than four thousand years ago (and I wouldn't be surprised if the concept is as old as human language). Collectively, the human race never seems to have lost our taste for the narrative right up to the present day. Yet, I personally have an extremely troubled history with the concept of 'the power of friendship,' not the least because of my probable neurodivergence. I, unfortunately, have a long history of being a victim of abusive behavior, and most of that abusive behavior only began after someone approached me as a friend. In short, kindness and enthusiastically attempting to become my friend reads to me as a precursor to abusive behavior, and the nicer someone seems the more suspicious I am that this is a love bomb. Yes, I have brought this up in therapy. But it is what it is. I bring this up, because Wrath of the Righteous does something that not many people would realize is an option yet I value highly as a credit to the game's writers and designers: you don't have to be friends with anyone you don't want to be in this game. I've shown before that, after you escape the Shield Maze, you can quite happily kick Seelah, Cammy, and Lann/Wenduag out of the party if you want. You can let the fake crusaders kill Ember. You can decide that Nenio is annoying when you bump into her and kill her because she implied you were stupid. Less belligerently, though, Wrath of the Righteous lets you settle on keeping things professional with members of the party - or even openly disliking each other but agreeing to work together because the situation is that bad. You can be openly antagonistic towards Irabeth and Anevia if you wish. Wrath is remarkably generous with letting you be as friendly or as hostile with whoever you want, as long as you don't want to try to actually run away from the plot. Moreover, you can actively choose to chill things or dislike characters as a valid choice in the story. In many games, the best you can do is simply not talk to someone, because if you do the story will assume you're friends. It's very, very rarely treated as an active narrative decision to not engage with this person. The wider narrative will assume you're friends with everyone. The game doesn't call you an rear end in a top hat for it, either. That's something I didn't like about the Mass Effect series, an RPG series I generally rate very highly: you're pretty much forced into being everyone's friend out of gameplay optimization, and options to tell people to keep it professional almost always make the PC look like a raging rear end in a top hat or a dictatorial martinet. Wrath is, I feel, honestly quite remarkable for letting the player choose who they like and who they dislike without creating - to me, at any rate - a feeling that the narrative is judging you for choosing to not be friends with everyone. Wrath lets you create and keep boundaries with people, I haven't been in any way punished for not selecting the 'Tell me about yourself' dialogue options with Yua, and that will continue as the game goes on. I know it probably seems very strange to a lot of people to write an essay about how much I like that a game doesn't make you like everyone. But it's a narrative and storytelling option that I wish more games embraced. Letting you choose who your friends are and aren't, without calling you an rear end in a top hat or disadvantaging you mechanically for being reserved. And of course there's a whole discussion to be had about how much of a protagonist's character should be put in player hands - but this is one area that's very important to me. In a sense, I'm all for the power of friendship. As long as I can choose who my friends are.
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Apr 7, 2024 23:41
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Cythereal posted:I've shown before that, after you escape the Shield Maze, you can quite happily kick Seelah, Cammy, and Lann/Wenduag out of the party if you want. You can let the fake crusaders kill Ember. You can decide that Nenio is annoying when you bump into her and kill her because she implied you were stupid. Less belligerently, though, Wrath of the Righteous lets you settle on keeping things professional with members of the party - or even openly disliking each other but agreeing to work together because the situation is that bad. You can be openly antagonistic towards Irabeth and Anevia if you wish. Wrath is remarkably generous with letting you be as friendly or as hostile with whoever you want, as long as you don't want to try to actually run away from the plot. The spy RPG/FPS game Alpha Protocol is famous for having a mechanic like this. You have various handlers throughout the game, and you can be cooperative and nice with them or you can decide you don't like them and either ignore them or actively harass them. You get in-game bonuses for having a good relationship with your handler... but you also get bonuses for having a negative relationship with them, so it's really up to you which way you want to go. It's kind of an underused concept in gaming, which covers a more general area of "Why Not Do The Thing?" Example: you're going to get offered a lot of sidequests in this game. You can say no to them, but what's the result? You miss some content and you don't get any items or XP. Generally, if it affects the ending you get, not doing things will make it worse. It's very rare that choosing NOT to do something is rewarded, even though in some cases it really, really makes sense not to. (Sure, the world is ending and we're racing to stop the demon lord from activating the unholy thingamajig, but I guess we can take a few hours away from that to help you find your potato peeler.) To be fair to game designers, it can be very difficult to figure out how to make not taking action an interesting decision. Making friends tends to fall under this same category; the assumption is that being friends is better than not being friends, so rather than advance not-being-friendly as an affirmative choice, it's the default that happens if you choose not to act. So, yeah, it's really rare for a game to say "what if we're just co-workers" and have that be a conscious decision rather than a failure state.
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Apr 8, 2024 01:21
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