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Anomen has two downsides, imo: 1) He's an insufferable bellend, at least before you complete his quest, though if you're purely min-maxing this doesn't matter 2) 10 dex is not ideal for a front-line fighter. Since you have Minsc and CHARNAME the kensai/mage I'm not sure your party needs more front-line brawlers. And for my money spell resistance is much better than physical stats like AC or HP because, as a general rule, spellcasters are what will murder you in this game, not fighter classes. He's a perfectly good choice though. You could then spec Minsc into axes for the Axe of the Unyielding late-game, which is really nice.
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Mar 11, 2015 17:09
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Anomen's dex weakness matters less in BG2 because by the endgame everything hits you no matter what your AC is, and because unless you're an archer, ranged attacks are significantly weaker than melee attacks. Yeah he's immature and annoying before you do his alignment quest, but when the alternative is literally turning into a cthulhu every so often just so that the cultist will decide you're evil enough for her, I don't think there's much moral high ground to fuss about the guy's personality. I agree that the magic resistance is useful in theory, but at best it's a coin flip to keep everything from going to pot, while the extra hp buffer works every time you need it, and you will need it if you're running a frontline cleric. Oh another thing Anomen has going for him is that his alignment lets him use the good aligned cleric spells like Holy Smite, those are really good. As you say, either cleric will work, but I think I'd give Anomen the edge here.
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Mar 11, 2015 17:27
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I wasn't really making a moral high ground claim though of course you can redeem Viconia through the power of hot lovin' if you so choose. Just pointing out that he's really annoying until the quest is done. But as you say, either is fine.
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Mar 11, 2015 17:32
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Zephro posted:I wasn't really making a moral high ground claim though of course you can redeem Viconia through the power of hot lovin' if you so choose. Just pointing out that he's really annoying until the quest is done. But as you say, either is fine. Can you romance more than one NPC or does that cause problems? Exactly how much of a fantasy is this fantasy game!? If Minsc went Axe of the Unyielding what would be a good off hander for him, presuming pc goes crom faeyr / belm?
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Mar 11, 2015 17:42
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Oh sure, I was more joking about the goofy stuff you can do to mess with your reputation in this game. Speaking of which, there IS at least one hilarious trick you can do with Viconia that you can't with Anomen, if you have a low-wisdom mage make a bad wish and conjure a bunch of hostile vampires, Viconia can dominate them all with her evil-variety turn undead, and have a big ol' vampire party. This is the best way I know of to level-drain enemies, which a lot of fights are absolutely not built to handle.
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Mar 11, 2015 17:46
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I am a little perplexed as to why people talk about Viconia's con score being so low. It is low (7, if memory serves), but that is not low enough to take a HP penalty, you just get no bonus and con in the BG games means nothing apart from HP bonus or penalty and regen for those with incredibly high con - correct me if I am wrong. She still gets 1d8 HP per level up to and including level 10, after which she is a fixed 2 per level. So, at most she loses out on 20 HP as clerics have a maximum of 2 bonus HP per level up until 10. Granted, that is a significant amount, but I think people are just spoiled because most other characters in the game have bonuses. If you play without max HP per level then that is more significant, but the way people talk about her you would think that if she even takes a swing in melee she will pass out, and if an enemy swings at her and misses she will catch pneumonia from the breeze and die gasping in 1d4 rounds. If they actually hit her she presumably explodes in a supernova of frail drow angst and annihilates the known universe. No doubt that Anomen in 2 and Yeslick and Branwen in 1 are better "fighting clerics", but I think that people are being a bit melodramatic. I think that the abundance of exceptional scores and the fact that the main character in these games never has less than 16 con just make "so-so" look "terrible" She is a caster cleric while Anomen is a brawler, and I think it is great that such a contrast exists.
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Mar 11, 2015 17:49
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Ok, here's what I'm thinking then: PC fighter/mage gish with crom faeyr and an offhand (belm or zerth blade) Minsc with either Axe of Unyielding and (?) off hand OR a good two hander (lilarcor just for comedy?) Anomen with flail of ages and, I suppose, a shield? Viconia with sling of seeking and a girdle of strength (? for melee) Jan for thief skills that progress and illusionist magic Imoen for even more magic and maybe ranged shortbow? Any suggestions for filling in those question marks appreciated. ---------------- Past that, second set of questions: Just from skimming walkthroughs I've gathered that you can do a lot of the quests either early or late. Given that party I take it there are specific quests I should beeline -- the obvious ones are "Collect those party members and weapons and do their personal quests" but are there any others that are particularly worth doing as early as possible, or should I just grab party ->mainquest ASAP and do everything in the late game? gently caress I don't even remember if this thing has level scaling or not.
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Mar 11, 2015 18:57
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Can you romance more than one NPC or does that cause problems? Exactly how much of a fantasy is this fantasy game!? Can't romance more than one NPC without mods, sorry.
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Mar 11, 2015 19:08
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Anomen is such a punk I make a point to insult and murder him every play through.
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Mar 11, 2015 23:56
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Ok, here's what I'm thinking then: I think Anomen and Viconia in the same team is overkill. I'd just take one and throw in Jaheira if you want a melee presence who also brings divine casting or Keldorn if you want melee that just shatters the difficulty.
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Mar 12, 2015 00:02
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Just from skimming walkthroughs I've gathered that you can do a lot of the quests either early or late. Given that party I take it there are specific quests I should beeline -- the obvious ones are "Collect those party members and weapons and do their personal quests" but are there any others that are particularly worth doing as early as possible, or should I just grab party ->mainquest ASAP and do everything in the late game? I prefer to do the main quest ASAP (I do the de'Arnise Hold and Yoshimo's sidequest first to gather the neccessary resources and the Flail of Ages (and because Yoshimo becomes unavailable later)) so that Imoen doesn't fall too far behind in levels, if I plan to have her in my party. Or, you know, you could EE keeper her to catch up when she joins if you don't mind that. E: Most companions can be picked up without doing their specific quests, unless you rest / idle a lot before going on with the main plot. Their side quest timers are, as far as I know, put on hold as long as you are away from the opportunity to do their quests. pun pundit fucked around with this message at 01:41 on Mar 12, 2015 |
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Mar 12, 2015 01:35
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Metal Meltdown posted:I think Anomen and Viconia in the same team is overkill. I'd just take one and throw in Jaheira if you want a melee presence who also brings divine casting or Keldorn if you want melee that just shatters the difficulty. OK, how about this: PC with Crom Faeyr and offhand (belm or zerth blade) mage gish Minsc with ? Keldorn with a nice big paladin sword like Carsomyr Anomen with Flail of Ages and I guess a shield Jan Imoen & Substitute Imoen Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Mar 12, 2015 |
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Mar 12, 2015 01:52
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Minsc naturally has two-hander and mace pips so he's a good candidate for Lilarcor in the early game, the vorpal sword later, and the mace of disruption as needed. The EE makes the +2 mace of disruption hit as a +5 weapon so it's one of the best weapons in the game even through TOB.
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Mar 12, 2015 03:10
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Draile posted:Minsc naturally has two-hander and mace pips so he's a good candidate for Lilarcor in the early game, the vorpal sword later, and the mace of disruption as needed. The EE makes the +2 mace of disruption hit as a +5 weapon so it's one of the best weapons in the game even through TOB. Mace of disruption is also really fun to instablast dace (or any other vampires) in the asylum when he fails his save. Also, why does no one mention the celestial fury for offhanding (or main handing for that matter). The chance to stun + the wacky bonus damage is really nice. Whats a good setup for an evil party? I want to MC either the evil paladin or a dwarf defender dual wielding axes. I know at least 3 slots Korgan and viconia and edwin but after that I am all ??????'s Also, there is a + 2 mace you can get that sets str to 18/50 or 18/75 or something so you could also give that to viconia if you want her to pound stuff. Or if you want to pound her... 
Booyah fucked around with this message at 05:03 on Mar 12, 2015 |
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Mar 12, 2015 04:57
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A balanced evil party with a heavy frontliner MC such as your blackguard or Dwarven Defender would probably be Korgan for a second tank, Viconia for cleric magic, Edwin for arcane magic, Jan for thief stuff and backup arcane, and you can fill the last slot with anyone you want. I dunno, Cernd for giggles.Hieronymous Alloy posted:OK, how about this: This is a fine setup. As a ranger, Minsc gets two free points in dual-wielding, so I usually take him down that road. Katanas, scimitars, longswords, maces, and axes are all viable dual-wielding options. Mzbundifund fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Mar 12, 2015 |
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Mar 12, 2015 06:52
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He could also pick up Hexxat if he wants. Edit: VVV Ah fair enough. TexMexFoodbaby fucked around with this message at 07:20 on Mar 12, 2015 |
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Mar 12, 2015 06:59
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CF is wasted in the offhand and enemies tend to make their save late BG2/ToB.Booyah posted:Also, why does no one mention the celestial fury for offhanding (or main handing for that matter). The chance to stun + the wacky bonus damage is really nice. If playing a Blackguard, Korgan (replace with Sarevok in ToB), Viconia, Jan, Edwin, and Haer'Dalis. If playing a DD, take Dorn over Korgan if possible. FauxGateau posted:He could also pick up Hexxat if he wants. Single class thieves are not so hot until they get HLAs, which probably won't be until ToB in a 6 person party. Corvinus fucked around with this message at 07:18 on Mar 12, 2015 |
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Mar 12, 2015 07:15
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Didn't they change it so that all traps are AoE now and not just the Bounty Hunter variety? Because those sorts of traps are seriously underrated.
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Mar 12, 2015 07:31
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I really love how the first response you can have to Anomen is to laugh in his face and ask if he's for real.
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Mar 12, 2015 08:34
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You can spend hours fine tuning your party and it won't make a huge amount of difference. There are a lot of overpowered combos in BG and you kinda just have to play through a bunch and try them all out. Personally I'm a big fan of melee damage in BG2 so in the Keldorn-variant party I'd swap Minsc for either Valygar or Haer'Dalis with Celestial Fury mainhand and Kundane offhand. Defender of Easthaven would make a better offhand for Anomen too. You'll want to up his APR as much as possible with flail of ages.
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Mar 12, 2015 09:15
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:OK, how about this: Want real advice? Stop worrying and just play the game. It's not worth to min-max your party in BG2, the game isn't too difficult to begin with. The personality of an NPC is far more important than his or her effectiveness in combat, and you won't find out who you like and who you hate without playing the game.
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Mar 12, 2015 11:45
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Booyah posted:Also, why does no one mention the celestial fury for offhanding (or main handing for that matter). The chance to stun + the wacky bonus damage is really nice. I did a kensai/mage on my most recent run with longsword/katana. I used celestial fury in the main hand until late in TOB when I switched it to offhand. Celestial fury is easily the second-best weapon in Shadows of Amn, but it loses usefulness in Throne of Bhaal because of the excellent crafted weapons and because the +3 bonus isn't enough to hit a number of major enemies. It also has limited value as an off-hand weapon because its abilities are on-strike and the off-hand only gets one attack per round. The best off-hand weapons add passive bonuses that will apply regardless of how many attacks they get.
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Mar 12, 2015 12:01
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Smol posted:Want real advice? Stop worrying and just play the game. It's not worth to min-max your party in BG2, the game isn't too difficult to begin with. The personality of an NPC is far more important than his or her effectiveness in combat, and you won't find out who you like and who you hate without playing the game.
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Mar 12, 2015 12:54
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Smol posted:Want real advice? Stop worrying and just play the game. It's not worth to min-max your party in BG2, the game isn't too difficult to begin with. The personality of an NPC is far more important than his or her effectiveness in combat, and you won't find out who you like and who you hate without playing the game. It's a single-player game, if you "cheat" you only "cheat" yourself. If you're sperging out about a pip or a stat just use a utility or CLUA console to set things up how you like so you can move on and own some dragon face.
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Mar 12, 2015 13:39
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Smol posted:Want real advice? Stop worrying and just play the game. It's not worth to min-max your party in BG2, the game isn't too difficult to begin with. The personality of an NPC is far more important than his or her effectiveness in combat, and you won't find out who you like and who you hate without playing the game. What if . . . min-maxing is part of the fun for me?!?!??! MIND BLOWN I've played BG 2 before but it was over a decade ago. One of the few things I remember is that it annoyed me my party had all sorts of great top-end weapons they couldn't use because who with any AD&D experience would ever specialize in (for example) Flail? Zephro posted:I agree with this but can't resist arguing that giving Flail to Anomen is a waste when your PC is going to be a Hasted, Tensers'd, Time Stopped melee wrecking ball. Heh. I thought about that when I made the character, but there's a dearth of good flails in BG 1, and this is about a unified playthrough with the same character, without using a hack or utility. Same reason I ended up picking Berserker rather than Kensai -- Kensai is the better pick for BG 2 but playing one in BG 1 would be painful. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 13:59 on Mar 12, 2015 |
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Mar 12, 2015 13:50
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Doing an Ironman on core rules (not rerolling hps) with a lawful evil halfling barbarian right now and it's pretty fun. Got me + Dorn/VIconia/Montaron/Xzar/Edwin Kinda steamrolling most enemies so far. WIth the claw of kazgaroth plus being a halfling my saves are just through the roof. I'm going for scimitars for bg1 since I plan to kill Drizzt and it would be a shame to let those go to waste. I think one of them is good only alignment but there's a sneaky fix for that since the Death Knight in Durlag's drops a helm of opposite alignment now. Pop that baby on and my Halfling will have two diesel weapons. Of course that's a bit of a wait but both of Drizzt's scimitars are strong so it won't be a big deal. By bg2 I'll be using flail of the ages/defender of easthaven which will pretty much be my combo all the way to the end. Between that and the human leather I should be near impossible to kill. I actually haven't been doing too poorly with hp rolls yet either. I don't think I've gotten below 10 on a level up yet. The 17 str for Halfling also isn't too much of an inconvenience since I can rage if needed and will have the ogre gauntlets before too long. Just need to figure out when would be a good time to try to kill Drizzt. I have no room for error and I'm not sure if BGee made him tougher at all since I've never tried fighting him in it. I'm thinking I might try him after clearing all of the wilderness zones but that one and cloakwood. As long as I have wands of monster summoning I should be able to wear him down. Right now I've done Nashkel + most of the West aside.
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Mar 12, 2015 14:25
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Re; Evil Party chat I'm not sure if I will be able to motivate myself to play a new BG run (I bogged down at the mid-end of ToB last time) but I have had it in my head that I would want to do an evil run. I've never made a mage PC and I was thinking I would make some sort of mage, but I really enjoy backstabbing and love the thought of doing a fighter/rogue too. If I did do the F/R I think I would go Edwin, Viconia, Dorn, and maybe that one evil dwarf to be a meat shield. If I did a mage (or mage/?) I guess I would do the same thing I guess? edit: I never played IWD1 through and I hear f/r is pretty great in that so maybe I'll get my f/r fix from that now that the EE edition is out and I heard pretty great.
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Mar 12, 2015 16:04
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Bort Bortles posted:Re; Evil Party chat If you go mage, try a Sorcerer or Wild Mage. Both are a blast, and incredibly powerful. You could grab Hexxat for your thief if you decide to go Mage. Or just take Yoshimo and then replace him later with Imoen or whoever. Yoshimo has a quest that gives a shitton of xp and he's powerful so he's always worth taking along as well. If you go fighter/thief you can really do just about anybody for the final slot. Eventually you'll want Sarevok regardless, though.
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Mar 12, 2015 16:54
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Someone mentioned earlier that aoe CC like entangle and web is super strong, how do you use them without screwing over your melees?
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Mar 12, 2015 17:10
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Dutymode posted:Someone mentioned earlier that aoe CC like entangle and web is super strong, how do you use them without screwing over your melees? You either have all your melee convert to ranged with bows/slings or you have free action handy so they can just run through it. Anything webbed is totally helpless so it's fine to have everybody sit back and pick away at the target even if it isn't maximum possible damage.
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Mar 12, 2015 17:17
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Yeah the standard solution is to just convert everyone to ranged weapons, but If you don't have anyone in your party who can cast Free Action, BG1 has a two-handed sword called Spider's Bane that gives the wielder passive free action, and you can pickpocket a ring of free action from Dushai in Ulgoth's Beard. BG2 has a short sword with the same effect, and there's also potions of freedom in both games. Mages can also cast Polymorph Self and take the spider form to get web immunity, or cast Summon Monster 3 and hope for ettercaps, those are immune to webs as well.
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Mar 12, 2015 17:35
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Ginette Reno posted:If you go mage, try a Sorcerer or Wild Mage. Both are a blast, and incredibly powerful. Oh yeah I forgot about grabbing Sarevok in ToB.
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Mar 12, 2015 17:39
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Bort Bortles posted:Re; Evil Party chat Tbh I almost never play through TOB. The combat becomes so loving samey I find it really boring. Its like a bunch of copy pasted mage fights strung together and just becomes a slog. BG1->end of SOA owns
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Mar 13, 2015 05:19
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I've seen a few mentions of time limits in BG. Do you get locked out of quests or get negative outcomes if you take too long or something?
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Mar 13, 2015 09:50
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Amused Frog posted:I've seen a few mentions of time limits in BG. Do you get locked out of quests or get negative outcomes if you take too long or something? If NPCs keep bugging you about their quest over and over again, that's a hint that they might leave or the quest might become impossible to finish if you don't go take care of it. There's another quest in BG1 that has a specific time limit, but you'll be informed. One specific area later on in BG2 The Drow City has almost all its quests on time limits, for reasons I can't clearly remember.
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Mar 13, 2015 10:32
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Mzbundifund posted:Yeah the standard solution is to just convert everyone to ranged weapons, but If you don't have anyone in your party who can cast Free Action, BG1 has a two-handed sword called Spider's Bane that gives the wielder passive free action, and you can pickpocket a ring of free action from Dushai in Ulgoth's Beard. BG2 has a short sword with the same effect, and there's also potions of freedom in both games. Mages can also cast Polymorph Self and take the spider form to get web immunity, or cast Summon Monster 3 and hope for ettercaps, those are immune to webs as well. I always resist using free action because it cancels out haste and the effects of the boots of speed. I just want to move fast 
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Mar 13, 2015 11:50
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fong posted:Tbh I almost never play through TOB. The combat becomes so loving samey I find it really boring. Its like a bunch of copy pasted mage fights strung together and just becomes a slog. Draile posted:I always resist using free action because it cancels out haste and the effects of the boots of speed. I just want to move fast
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Mar 13, 2015 16:16
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Watcher's Keep is the best part of ToB, and luckily you get that in SoA!
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Mar 13, 2015 16:35
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Just want Planescape Torment Enhanced Edition already. Full screen high resolution on tablet with all content and quests and what not, and that's that. /wishpost
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Mar 14, 2015 23:44
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BadAstronaut posted:Just want Planescape Torment Enhanced Edition already. Full screen high resolution on tablet with all content and quests and what not, and that's that. /wishpost
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Mar 15, 2015 02:35
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