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Cythereal posted:The longest-running paladin I ever played in a campaign started her career as a prostitute. Best Pal I ever played was one that I styled after Indiana Jones of all people. As I explained it, why wait for the latest evil to show up? Why not skip the heavy armor, go lighter, and go looking up all these rumors and legends and histories of ancient evils? If it turns out to be a dead end, great! If it's a major problem, get info and come back with help. Or just deal with it then and there because I'm a Pal. DM tried to force levels of Rouge onto me because in their mind a Pal was a cavalier, and a Rouge was the sneek.
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May 4, 2024 13:26
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berryjon posted:Best Pal I ever played was one that I styled after Indiana Jones of all people. As I explained it, why wait for the latest evil to show up? Why not skip the heavy armor, go lighter, and go looking up all these rumors and legends and histories of ancient evils? If it turns out to be a dead end, great! If it's a major problem, get info and come back with help. Or just deal with it then and there because I'm a Pal. "You are strangely dressed for a knight."
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May 4, 2024 14:41
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Paladins will never stop ruffling someone's feathers. People have differing ideas of who or what a paladin is which is kinda fair, as an invented concept (though D&D's 2e description was particularly significant). I am partial to the Arthurian Ser concept, but seeing other interpretations is refreshing.
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May 4, 2024 14:54
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quote:Honestly, I'm kind of sad that Wrath defaults morality in this game to the most uptight paladin stereotypes That's just another part of "'lawful' and 'fascist' are basically the same" Owlcat writing.
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May 4, 2024 14:59
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Technically you can't be lawful evil without being lawful.  I really don't understand how the game can have fairly detailed descriptions of the different alignments and then fail to actually follow through when it comes to the characters. Cythereal posted:So, fun fact I discovered while loving around with Crinukh and Toybox: he can't die, ever. If you come back to him as one of the evil paths you can try to kill him, but he mocks you and escapes through a portal in a cutscene while you just stand there like an idiot. Poil fucked around with this message at 23:32 on May 4, 2024 |
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May 4, 2024 15:27
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SettingSun posted:I am partial to the Arthurian Ser concept, but seeing other interpretations is refreshing. My take on paladins is the opening lines from the 3.5E splatbook Book of Exalted Deeds: "Good is not nice, polite, self-righteous, or naive, though good characters may be some of these things. Good is the righteous force of the heavens that uplifts the weak, inspires the helpless, and always puts the needs of the innocent above oneself. Good is the enemy of selfishness, fear, and hatred, and casts these things out wherever they may be found."
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May 4, 2024 17:55
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Order of the Stick nailed both wrong and right way to play paladin.
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May 4, 2024 18:15
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It was mentioned it earler, but the issues with "lawful" alignment and paladins aren't really Owlcat's fault. They are, if anything, using the alignment as it is actually written in the rulebooks. If it gets weirdly racist and authoritarian and fashy, well...yeah. Thats been "lawful" and "lawful good" ever since day one. Gygax was a loving psycho. Consider how the 3e SRD describes lawful good: quote:Lawful Good, "Crusader" A lawful good above all is focused around fighting and hurting "evil." They are described as a "crusader." They hate to see the guilty go unpunished. This isn't to say I think this is good. I'm just saying that the problem is less Owlcat, more D&D. Like yeah it's noxious to have poo poo like that kobold going "I'm secretly NOT EVIL!" and mocking it and poo poo...but then you have the flip around that like, yeah, because most D&D would in fact never have a non-evil character there. See also Baldur's Gate 3's goblins. Or, if you want, see Gygax's direct words on the matter: quote:"Paladins are not stupid, and in general there is no rule of Lawful Good against killing enemies. The old adage about nits making lice applies. Also, as I have often noted, a paladin can freely dispatch prisoners of Evil alignment that have surrendered and renounced that alignment in favor of Lawful Good. They are then sent on to their reward before they can backslide.
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May 4, 2024 19:23
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Yeah, I don't think I'd get along well with Gygaxian Paladins. I'd also wonder about them sliding into Lawful Neutral or worse alignment. You have to care about people to be of Good alignment. It's discipline and justice, yeah, but it's also mercy and empathy. A hard road to walk. Some Paladins do it, though. I too am a fan of the Arthurian Ser archetype. Seelah is cool also, with the ability to kick back off duty and kick rear end on, atone for her past. I'd definitely get along with a Paladin like Indiana Jones or the non-Miko examples in Order of the Stick.
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May 4, 2024 19:53
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ProfessorCirno posted:Or, if you want, see Gygax's direct words on the matter: 
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May 4, 2024 20:55
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I've always assumed that paladins having to be lawful is because considering yourself accountable to the rest of society is pretty much a requirement for being good over a certain threshold of power. Given that paladins are usually some kind of knight, they (and most D&D characters for that matter) fall well above the threshold where you need to start making an active effort to not bulldoze over people. For example, a paladin should not believe that taxes don't apply to them. I am aware that the actual reason is Gygax being a weird reactionary, but my view is informed by the chivalric archetype the D&D paladin is derived from.
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May 4, 2024 21:38
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ProfessorCirno posted:Or, if you want, see Gygax's direct words on the matter: Incidentally, if anyone is unfamiliar with the "old adage" Gygax is referring to here: it's a quote from Colonel John Chivington justifying the 1863 Sand Creek Massacre, one of the most horrifying atrocities in the US campaign of genocide against Native Americans. Gygax was offering his take on the, uh, "classic" alignment trap question about what to do with orc children.
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May 4, 2024 21:54
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D&D hasn't been so much running as sprinting away from Gygaxian theories of how lawful and good people work, accelerating faster with every successive edition, because most people recognize that Gygax's ideas about them are sociopathic. The "old adage" about nits becoming lice is actually a historical justification for murdering children of enemy nations (originally applied to the Irish, but then later to Native Americans). 3.5 hadn't run as far as later editions yet, but I think we've at least gotten away from "actual infanticide". In general, a lawful good character is someone who believes that the best way to be good is through enforcing the law, but what "the law" is is the topic under debate, and what should actually provide conflict for those characters. Cythereal posted:Of course, trolley problems feel different when literal magic is involved. And I loathe trolley problems with a passion. Oh, hey, an excuse for me to go on a long semi-related tangent. In an introductory moral philosophy class (the place you're most likely to encounter the trolley problem outside of an Internet meme), it's generally half (or maybe even a third of) the lesson, not the whole thing. The way it usually goes is that the professor will describe the scenario (well, one of them - I recall hearing about one involving a bunch of people trapped in a cave gradually filling with water that can only escape if one of them who is stuck in the entrance is killed, for instance) and then ask the class what they would do in that scenario. Even in the first couple of days, they will sense a trap, and everyone will freeze up and pray not to be called on. Eventually either a brave student or two will speak up, or the professor will pick someone that looks like they might be able to speak coherently. The first couple of responses are inevitably people trying to avoid the problem in various ways (running out onto the track, trying to untie someone, etc) which the professor will patiently dispose of because they are genuinely irrelevant to the issue. Eventually, someone will admit that they would pull the lever. Because almost everyone would pull the lever, just generally across the human race. Not everyone, but almost everyone, and it's a safe bet it will be most of any given class of undergraduates. There will be some discussion of this, and some objections, but most of the class will agree: pull the lever. Once that's established, smiling beatifically, the professor will introduce the second problem. Usually that one goes something like this: there are five people in the hospital because of problems with various internal organs. (One has a heart issue, say, two more have lung problems, etc.) All of them will die within a few days if nothing is done. Clearly, based on the answer to the previous question, the correct thing to do is for the hospital staff to find a homeless (or otherwise less likely to cause comment) person in relatively good health, secretly kidnap and painlessly murder them, and distribute their organs amongst the people in the hospital to save all of their lives. Obviously, the class does not like this and will likely say so loudly, and that's the important part of the material. It's not really about pulling the lever vs not pulling the lever, it's about how most people would make a decision to sacrifice one person for the sake of five in one situation, but not another, and what the difference is between the two. It's not that there aren't differences; there are, or people wouldn't view them differently, but the central moral conflict is the same in both cases, so what is it about those differences that matters? Examining why those answers differ can be very fruitful for discussions about how human morality works (and how it should work). It's also an opportunity to introduce two major schools of thought on ethics: consequentialism, or the belief that what makes an action good or evil are the results of that action, and deontology, or the belief that what makes an action good or evil are the actions themselves (actions having a quality of goodness or evil of their own). Specifically, it's to introduce them by putting the class in the position of each in turn. With the trolley, most people are consequentialists, and then ten minutes later in the hospital, most people are deontologists; you don't just get the clinical definition of the schools of thought, you acquire sympathy with each of them, which is great because you're about to spend several weeks talking about them. Taken to an extreme, each approach can lead to truly monstrous results, but if the answer to figuring out what is moral is neither, how do you figure it out, and if it's both, when do you decide to apply one or the other? This is often how I think about the law and chaos divide, in fact; lawful characters tend to be deontologists (action X is evil, the penalty for action X is consequence Y) and chaotic characters tend to be consequentialists (sure, I'm technically stealing by pickpocketing this key from the guard, but I need to do that to get my party member out of jail and save the kingdom). The "good" half of the alignment indicates a desire to do right, and the law-vs-chaos half indicates how the character decides what right is in the first place. Of course, these problems are substantially less interesting and useful when they're reduced to people just shouting at each other on the Internet or people springing them on you as a gotcha. (Not to mention some jackass deciding to write several paragraphs of text about them for no particular reason.)
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May 4, 2024 21:57
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As it is, the big thing that bugs me about this quest, and Daeran in general, is how immaturely everyone acts. Completely leaving aside that 90% of Mendev is portrayed as the fun police, Daeran acts like your garden variety teenage shithead who acts out in the most wildly transgressive ways he can think of to offend people and get a rise out of them. And every loving time, people oblige him instead of acting like adults and not giving him the reaction and attention he craves. Christ, I don't intend to ever have kids and I know how to handle bratty teenagers better than that.
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May 5, 2024 00:12
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To me there’s definitely an undercurrent of classism. Daeran is a noble whose lineage is fairly close to the queen. He appears to be given a lot of leeway. You don’t really hear Hulrun disposing of cultists within the upper class, whom demonstrably exist.
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May 5, 2024 00:26
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Yeah, it's sadly realistic; if you're rich and powerful, you can get away with basically being a child your whole life. (See also: Donald Trump.)
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May 5, 2024 00:39
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My favorite Pal that I played, she would help those of her enemies that were genuinely contrite. Even a would-be assassin that literally tried to kill her, because it turned out he was just a runaway slave kid from another country desperate for some money to stay ahead of the bounty hunters looking for him. She also had ranks in Profession: Barrister because she would take up cases pro bono for lower-class citizens who had been truly wronged but didn't have the money to fight it in court. Also befriended a goblin shaman that we were going to fight because it turned out the other goblins in his tribe thought he was uppity and a wimp for wanting to do that magic stuff, so he was like, "sure, your temple sounds like they'd be less assholes than these guys." I basically wanted to do a not-Lawful-rear end in a top hat take on a paladin as a way of playing against my regular character type: the quiet rogue who sneak attacks everything, loots everything that isn't nailed down, and looks at locks and traps and just has to say "boo" to get them to open.
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May 5, 2024 03:01
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Szarrukin posted:Order of the Stick nailed both wrong and right way to play paladin. burlew makes the best possible case for gygaxian alignment in general, while having some legitimately interesting things to say about ends and means.
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May 5, 2024 04:21
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I'm also a bit of a fan of D&D 5e's paladins. Since that edition by and large eliminated alignment as a mechanic paladins needed a little refocus. They swear oaths and believe in them so strongly it grants them powers to uphold it, and there are quite a few baked in oaths you can swear. They don't even need to be religious and technically speaking, they don't even need to be good (though all the official ones are at worst neutral leaning except one in the DMG for evil characters).
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May 5, 2024 05:26
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taiyoko posted:My favorite Pal that I played, she would help those of her enemies that were genuinely contrite. Even a would-be assassin that literally tried to kill her, because it turned out he was just a runaway slave kid from another country desperate for some money to stay ahead of the bounty hunters looking for him. She also had ranks in Profession: Barrister because she would take up cases pro bono for lower-class citizens who had been truly wronged but didn't have the money to fight it in court. Also befriended a goblin shaman that we were going to fight because it turned out the other goblins in his tribe thought he was uppity and a wimp for wanting to do that magic stuff, so he was like, "sure, your temple sounds like they'd be less assholes than these guys." On that note, I'm also playing through this game as a paladin, and I was recently reflecting on why it's easier to give some characters the benefit of the doubt and why I had such a strong reaction against other characters. After thinking about it, I think that it comes down to a capacity for self reflection, can they think about the reason for why they do things and can they decide to do things differently, like differently in a "pro-social" manner. There's loads of cultists where it seems like there's no philosophy or processing going on behind their eyes. I'll go into the specifics when it comes up, but there are a few cultists where you can tally up their crimes and it works out to something like multiple consecutive life sentences, and there's no indication that they're insightful enough to change; so your choices boil down to "prison forever" or "death". On that note, it's interesting that there's very few options to throw someone in prison, but it seems like the kingdom just isn't set up to hold people for long lengths of time. They probably don't even really "do" reform. It's worth thinking about. With the ability do detect alignments, prison reform programs could work really, really well. You could absolutely tell who was in danger of re-offending and who was genuinely repentant.
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May 5, 2024 06:25
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Cythereal posted:
Being a noble with connections makes people around you surprisingly agreeable.
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May 5, 2024 18:01
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Next update is going to be a bit short, but there was a natural break point. Those who haven't played Wrath before, you may place your bets now on what otherwise competent female character gets to be a helpless damsel in distress in need of rescue.
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May 6, 2024 12:20
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SettingSun posted:I'm also a bit of a fan of D&D 5e's paladins. Since that edition by and large eliminated alignment as a mechanic paladins needed a little refocus. They swear oaths and believe in them so strongly it grants them powers to uphold it, and there are quite a few baked in oaths you can swear. They don't even need to be religious and technically speaking, they don't even need to be good (though all the official ones are at worst neutral leaning except one in the DMG for evil characters). Yeah, it's one of the things I like about D&D 5e, though I think Pillars of Eternity did both good and evil Paladins a whole lot better.
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May 6, 2024 13:28
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Cythereal posted:Those who haven't played Wrath before, you may place your bets now on what otherwise competent female character gets to be a helpless damsel in distress in need of rescue. 
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May 6, 2024 13:58
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Pillars Paladins are by far the best Paladins I’ve seen in a D&D like and while 5th are good I’m still usually gonna be disappointed by comparison.
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May 6, 2024 13:59
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I thought Seelah at first, but IIRC someone mentioned that your companions are mortal on higher difficulties? The queen was my second thought, but that might be a bit much, so I'm going with Irabeth - but I'm putting only imaginary chalice on it.
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May 6, 2024 15:36
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Your companions can die on any difficulty but the lowest, but it's pretty hard below Core (effectively, they have to die twice).
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May 6, 2024 15:41
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Going with Neino
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May 6, 2024 16:14
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One of the Irabeth/Anevia pair would make sense story/gameplay wise. Generally likable character that players already have some attachment towards, plus the other one is there to provide more "we have to save them!" motivation if needed. Probably too early in the story to rescue the Queen as that seems more like an end-game mission and Nurah wouldn't have much impact. Even if the list got extended to male NPCs, there's not many people that I'd care enough to make rescuing a priority at this point. Maybe Horgus? The Desnan leader was nice. Everyone else would generate a "who was that again?" or "oh well, if I find them I find them. But if not, oh well casualties happen (IE Hulrun)" reaction rather than "oh no, gotta go save them!" And using party member companions for set pieces is tough gameplay wise unless you have BG3 levels of redundancy to account for people being unavailable because they're dead/skipped/etc. So that probably rules out Seelah, Nenio and Ember.
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May 6, 2024 17:10
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It's Cythereal tediously jousting at windmills again. A shitload of people are about to get kidnapped in the next set piece - party members, major and minor NPCs, and faceless troops alike - one of which is by the boss, done to establish what a large threat they are. Funnily enough, literally every single major NPC who could be used for this sort of role (i.e. Horgus is a noncombatant - useless for use in establishing some new enemy's threat) is female, so that was only choice that could have been made.
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May 6, 2024 22:34
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Lord Koth posted:It's Cythereal tediously jousting at windmills again. If you don't like how I write or the criticisms I have of games you're free to not read my LPs.
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May 6, 2024 22:41
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Cythereal posted:If you don't like how I write or the criticisms I have of games you're free to not read my LPs. I think "stop going out of your way to imply sexism in the game" in scenes where it's blatantly not present isn't that big an ask. Hell, said setpiece has another "competent female character" allow herself to get kidnapped and then gets free perfectly fine on her own.
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May 6, 2024 22:53
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Can we please not start a fight, you two? I want Cyth to finish this game, not get derailed by arguing about it. Thanks.
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May 6, 2024 23:21
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Yo quit antagonizing the OP we got a good LP going here
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May 6, 2024 23:25
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SettingSun posted:Yo quit antagonizing the OP we got a good LP going here
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May 6, 2024 23:27
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Backdraft The bulk of this update is just cleaning up in crusade mode. You can't actually purge the map entirely of demon armies, enemy armies will periodically spawn even in previously cleared areas, but there's a fair few pre-set armies that still need clearing out before we can approach Drezen.  Most are brief and uninteresting.     I don't have positions I need to actually hold and defend in this chapter, but I very much have the impression that will change in the future, so lopping off enemy armies is always worthwhile even if the rewards are nothing special.  Once you push through Leper's Smile, random encounters step up their game a bit. Not enough, but they try.  The first serious appearance of enemy stacks in crusade mode with special abilities! Dretches are surprisingly dangerous, not because of their own stats but because they fire off stinking clouds that disable your units. I will be treating them as higher priority targets from here on.   Ash giants are the first enemies we've seen that are so huge they take up a 2x2 square on the battlefield! These chungi have a lot of HP, but Ageboya and her army have a lot of damage.  Ageboya levels up again and I opt for what sounds like a long-term gain.  And then there's this random encounter, helpfully presaged as a traveling merchant.   "Ha, here I was planning to attract new customers with the offer of a free Potion of Fox's Cunning... But I can see you don't need one!" (Pleased with his joke, the skeleton utters a rasping chuckle.) "Show me your wares."He has nothing useful to sell, but he pops up throughout the game as a friendly random encounter (and if you try to attack him he runs off and portals out in a cutscene). I have no idea what his deal is supposed to be or why he's in this game, but he can be handy for offloading loot. However, things change when I move the party to one particular spot on the map, drawing close to Drezen...    (Lann, bow in hand, is right behind her.) "The fools. This is no war camp, it's a garden party. I warned them to watch the sky!" "There's no time to waste! To arms!"So yeah, remember how we met the Hellknights?  No one learned anything and we're in the same scenario again, this time with the twist that you only have Anevia and Lann/Wenduag for support.  The obvious path is going right from the initial fight, but there's something important that's easy to miss. If you head left and up immediately, before triggering the scene if you go right, you'll catch somebody red-handed.  [Perception check passed!] "Why do you have a vial of alchemist's fire on your belt?" "What? Where?" (Nurah looks at the vial on her belt as if she's seeing it for the first time.) "Aaaahhhh! Gargoyles!" (Ripping the vial from her belt, Nurah throws it at the approaching monsters.)If you neglect to check up here, Nurah will complete setting fire to this part of the camp and escape.  She does chip in some damage, at least.  "Let's move, Camellia. We need to retake the camp." "Let's go. If these monsters thought we'd be easy pickings, they're in for a disappointment!"Yeah, that's another crusader she murdered in the chaos but she'll deflect it if you accuse her because you're not allowed to figure her out yet.  Now, this event happens whether you rescued the Hellknights or not, but I do not like that this scene remains exactly the same even if you did rescue the Hellknights. I would have thought it make sense if you were rewarded for doing that sidequest by the crusade force becoming wise to this kind of aerial assault and being better prepared for it, either mooting this scene or at least making the attack less effective, but I strongly dislike this whole sequence between this part and what it's leading to for reasons I can't fully explain in this update.  [Diplomacy 10] (Talk to the soldiers) "Hold your positions! Steel yourselves! Are you crusaders or cowards!" (Success!) "The Commander is here! Fight for the Queen! For Mendev!" "Let's go, Seelah. We'll teach these monsters a lesson!" "Yes, Commander! They'll be sorry they ever came here!"I've heard tell of some people finding this sequence very difficult in a mechanical sense because of how sharply it limits the party. If you're on higher difficulties and neglect Cammy or Lann/Wenduag or whatever, it's very easy to make this sequence very hard.  It's all business as usual against the same gargoyles we saw at the Hellknight camp, until...    "Irabeth, we're here! Hold on, we're coming!" "Oh no you won't!" (Surging forward, the demon knocks Irabeth off her feet with a sharp blow to her face. Then he leans over her limp body and sniffs.) "Mmm... Young. Healthy! Strong! This one will be tasty! What a fine ghoul it will make!" (The monster's fiery eyes consider the people surrounding him, and finally fall upon you. For a moment you feel a strange connection to the demon — as if there's no one here but the two of you. Bafflement, almost fear, crosses the monster's face, but then his grin grows even wider.) "Oh! There! That's the one she was talking about! Hahaha, so you are supposed to be my equal? You're just the same as your toys! Weak, fragile... Tasty!" "What do you mean, 'I'm your equal.' How could we be equals?"Part of why I find this scene so uncomfortable is that this strikes me as imagery extremely suggestive of impending rape: a monstrous villain defeating a lady warrior, beating her unconscious, and talking about her like a piece of meat he's going to enjoy. There is a long and unfortunate history of men fetishizing defeating and raping women warriors (going back to ancient mythology in many cultures), and in more modern times a history of men fetishizing raping queer women. A strong, independent lady warrior who happens to a lesbian? That is catnip for a certain kind of sexual fantasy to brutalize and rape. Now this is obviously not, on a factual level, a scene of sexual menace, but the imagery and dialogue are striking to me and evoke that feeling even if the threat is a bit more fantastical than that. A classic play in the writer's book to make a villain be especially monstrous to the reader is to make them a sexual predator and menace innocent women.  "But later, later! First I will take your toys!" (He runs his paw over Irabeth's hair.) (Attack) "You came here to die, demon!" "I don't think so! A fortress, a fortress on the mountain, where mortals once prayed to their little gods. The Lost Chapel. It is my nest now! Come see what happens to your soldiers when I play with them... Maybe you'll become one of my toys too!" (Anevia shoots an arrow at the monster as it flies away — and they both vanish into the black of night. She looks at you, terror and resolution warring in her eyes.) "Commander... convene an urgent council." (Before you can answer, she runs off to the camp headquarters.)There is, of course, nothing you can do to avert or change any of this. Also take note of his warning: he has mythic powers just like Yua. The powers she has are not unique.  Partial credit to those who suggested Galfrey as the primary damsel in distress - if Yua had used the dialogue options to get Galfrey to stick around, she would have been taken along with Irabeth.  (Nurah taps her finger on the map.) "Here. The Lost Chapel. Our scouts reported there was trouble brewing there. But this..." "Who did the monsters carry off?" "Irabeth. And two dozen soldiers — both recruits and veterans." "Half our squad was taken too. We're all that's left." "One of your companions, a tiefling... Woljif, I think... I last saw him running from the camp but there were no monsters chasing him. I don't want to badmouth anyone, but I think he disappeared of his own free will. I am very sorry." "I see. We'll depart for the chapel immediately and save whoever we can."No, you can't bring up the fact that Nurah is almost definitely a traitor now despite what could very well be her sending the crew into a trap.  "Let's not keep our friends waiting. Or our enemies." "Uphill again, through the mud, no road... Well, I do hope these demons will be entertaining enough to make up for the inconvenience!" "Is everyone ready? Commander, we don't have much time. While we stand around here, our friends are being eaten alive. I'll run on ahead now to scout out the area. Don't sit around here. Come after me, quickly. We'll meet at the foot of the mountain!" So, to reiterate, a sizable contingent of the regular rank and file had been captured. Ember, Nenio, Daeran, Katarina, Sosiel, and Regill had been taken prisoner. Woljiff had deserted. It was back to me, Seelah, Lann, Camellia, and Anevia, just like the caves under Kenabres, in conditions that felt about as dire. We'd all grown in power since then, but in that moment, I wondered if it would be enough.The Crimson Path (this update) Gargoyles 14 Nabasu 1 Succubi 2 Ash Giants 15 Babau Hordes 46 Cultist Platoons 181 Dretch Hordes 29 Gargoyle Hordes 12 Ghoul Hordes 63 Giant Fly Swarms 123 Locust Swarms 46 Skeleton Hordes 116 Zombie Hordes 63
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May 7, 2024 00:59
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Cythereal posted:I don't have positions I need to actually hold and defend in this chapter, but I very much have the impression that will change in the future, so lopping off enemy armies is always worthwhile even if the rewards are nothing special. Not really a spoiler, but if you care enough I put it under one. Only the obvious target of Drezen has to be held and you can see armies approaching with plenty of time to spare
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May 7, 2024 01:23
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Cythereal posted:
He's a returning character from the first game, where he served an identical role. Just showed up as a random encounter with some loot for sale, with a selection that would get upgraded at certain points during the plot. In that one, he had a backstory where he attempted to rob a dead dragon's lair, only to discover that the dragon was actually a lich. He made a deal with the dragon to sell poo poo from its hoard that it didn't particularly want anymore in exchange for only being sort of dead now. In other words, he used to be an adventurer like you. Then he took a dragon in the knee. Cythereal posted:If you neglect to check up here, Nurah will complete setting fire to this part of the camp and escape. Clearly she was just going to do a controlled burn on a couple of tents to set up a firebreak! Why must you keep maligning this very innocent halfling who definitely is not a spy and saboteur in any way? Cythereal posted:
Man, I have no idea how you could possibly have interpreted this scene as rapey at all. Cythereal posted:
Clearly the imagery here is completely neutral. Cythereal posted:
Yep, just not seeing it.
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May 7, 2024 02:58
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Cythereal posted:
I adore the joke. It's the little things, you know? Just recognition of who you are and it's never held against you.
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May 7, 2024 03:43
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| # ? Jun 6, 2024 17:40 |
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That whole scene of kidnapping is just kind of gratuitous. Plenty of other named NPCs in the game got kidnapped without such fanfair, after all. One fun note is that both Wendy and Lann, with Wendy doing it way more, comment before this on how the Crusaders don't look up nearly as much as they do, they being used to monsters hiding on the tops of caves to murder from above. It adds to the running theme of the Crusade constantly proclaiming "I've been doing this awhile now, I think I know what I'm doing!" just before loving it all up. This area can definitely be a difficulty spike depending on how much attention you've paid to both yourself and those companions you are now left with, but if you haven't been neglecting them, it's not too bad. You're gonna watch a lot of nameless Crusader NPCs die trying to feebly smack gargoyles for 4 points of damage, but ehhhhh, that's war! I can forgive the bit with Nurah under the idea that nobody is making calm, collected, understanding decisions right now. The camp is in a panic and people are hyper-focusing on one thing at a time. You and I are sitting easy in a comfortable room behind a monitor's glow, while our NPCs don't have the benefits of knowing the "pause button" exists. The Skeletal Salesman is fun! Not everything needs a big explanation. Sometimes there's just a fun ol' skeleton with a spooky horse selling you poo poo. I should note wrt the previous update before this, Draven's Hat there is an exceptional bit of gear for Nenio and I frequently keep it on until like, chapter 4, maybe even 5. It stacks with most other increases to Intelligence, and while, theoretically, you can get a hat of +4 int fairly easily (which would give you like, one singular bonus spell more), I'd rather have the quickened Haste + higher Int during combat for spell save purposes.
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May 7, 2024 04:53
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