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Skwirl posted:For a murderous, slave owning pimp Seems like a completely fitting and in-character dilemma for a child of the god of murder. Bioware had a specific story they wanted to tell in this case. A third path would be pretty cool, I'll admit though.
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Nov 23, 2013 05:56
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Tenacious J posted:I'm sure this has been asked a hundred times... If you already have basic familiarity with the game mechanics, going solo is a great way to learn how to master the game. Just about any class is possible, but some of the easier options are any multiclass involving mage or cleric (seriously, every combination has gamebreaking potential) as well as dual class kensai/mage or ranger/cleric.
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Nov 23, 2013 13:43
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DONT CARE BUTTON posted:I need advice for dualclassing from swashbuckler into mage for BG2. I want to go 2 weapons and buff/touch spells sorta thing with trap detection. What level should I dual into mage and what proficiencies should I take? The dual wielding buff warrior is still possible though! Start as ranger and dual class into cleric. Clerics even get the find traps skill too. You're eventually going to want 18+ strength to break locks, assuming you are soloing the game. edit- wait, it's the other way around, disregard Fruits of the sea fucked around with this message at 15:29 on Nov 24, 2013 |
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Nov 24, 2013 15:26
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Didn't Paths of Darkness also include the books about Wulfgar recovering from PTSD? That was actually a really refreshing take on the standard d&d fare. Salvatore can write some pretty good stuff when he has a topic in mind. The following series, the Sellswords Trilogy is loving awful though. A Jarlaxle/Entreri buddy comedy sounds fun, but trust me it really, really isn't. Edit: oh, Servant of the Shard (good book) was in the Paths of Darkness series, but people liked it so much that he wrote two sequels and turned it into the Sellswords Trilogy. Do not read the spin-offs. They are terrible. Fruits of the sea fucked around with this message at 09:23 on Nov 26, 2013 |
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Nov 26, 2013 09:14
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I only vaguely remember those books. Drizzt loses his shoes, gains a bunch of levels in barbarian and kills the entire orc race. Barefoot. I give it 4  's out of 5.
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Nov 26, 2013 09:54
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Lilli posted:I'm curious, would people be interested in another Ironman thread? It's been a while since the last one (or I've just missed any thread that has popped up since like the one in 2011). Would there be some interest in getting another one going? I really enjoyed reading it last time even if I didn't end up participating and would like to see folks do it again. That could be fun. I'm used to playing with SCS installed, so dropping down to an unmodded enhanced edition should be doable.
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Nov 27, 2013 18:23
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What exactly is the trigger for finishing Kivan's quest? Apparently the timer was drastically shortened in the Enhanced Edition. He started complaining just as I was finishing the Nashkel Mines. Do I have to annihilate every single bandit or is simply tracking down the camp enough? I'm doing an ironman run, so I'm not exactly eager to go on a kamikaze attack against the bandits but it may be necessary.
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Dec 5, 2013 17:56
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Factor_VIII posted:What level are you? The camp might be doable if you can peel off the bandits in small numbers. (I hope you have Resist or Remove Fear for the boss fight.) Level 4 (5 for the thieves), so the camp is doable, if not exactly a smart choice. To be honest it's a while since I've played BG without SCS installed so I'm not sure what to expect. I may do a frontal assault just to be safe. Infiltrating the camp is a pain since there's no room to maneuver after the fight in the tent.
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Dec 5, 2013 18:21
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Yup, without SCS I can hit and run with impunity. Hit and run is also my only option now. Dorn was annihilated by Taugosz and two archers rolling 6 natural 18s and 19s in a row. 
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Dec 5, 2013 19:14
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Are there any tweaks to BG1/2 that increase the speed of trap detection? I just don't have the patience for creeping forward anymore, even when I already know where most of them are located.
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Dec 12, 2013 13:14
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DeathChicken posted:Detect Traps seems to...er, detect traps way the hell faster than a thief with 100 in detection. I generally threw it up, sent Viconia out to scout and then sent Imoen in to disarm them. Or just abused quick saves and plowed through them to tell where they were. Oh right, I shuld really just abuse that spell. Not like there's many other cleric spells worth casting at level 2 anyways.
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Dec 12, 2013 16:40
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Rascyc posted:Slow Poison, Hold Person, Chant... I keep a couple slow poisons and chant handy at all times, but I've always found hold person to be one of the more underwhelming AOE disablers. It has a short range and has to target a unit, making it a crappy spell to open a fight with. Long casting time makes it a risky choice for ambush situations too. So long as there's a mage with glitterdust memorized, hold person is superfluous. I still cast it sometimes because hey, there's lots of slots at level 2 even in BG1, but it's seldom been much help. Edit: caleramaen posted:Barkskin This spell is kinda silly. The AC bonus scales extremely slowly compared to the rate at which magical equipment is rewarded, so the only class that can benefit from it is mages. Even then, an archmages robe provides more AC up until the cleric caster is level 12. +1 to save is OK, except the bonus is added to everything except save vs spell, one of the most important saves. Fruits of the sea fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Dec 12, 2013 |
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Dec 12, 2013 17:15
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People keep on bringing up the Icewind Dale as having great combat and I don't agree entirely. The encounters are crafted really well, but that's largely because the game is linear and can be balanced around XP progression. You lose a lot of flexibility in terms of party composition and character builds compared to BG1 and 2. I've never actually finished Icewind Dale because I always end up bored of the standard party and experimenting with goofy tactics is punishing.Nebalebadingdong posted:I played it again for the first time in a long, long time and I think its definitely taking the piss out of one. Those are some interesting observations. Not sure if it was done on purpose, but it's fun to pick up on new details in a game after all this time.
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Dec 17, 2013 17:48
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Once you get to the city, you get the same setup but with a twist: there's a (rich) guy who's lost his son and you retrieve his body. He raises his son from the dead and sends him to bed without dinner or some poo poo.
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In Throne of Bhaal you want your front line fighters to stack resistances instead of AC. You can get physical resistance from a lot of items and the high level ability hardiness. There's lots of equipment that also gives resistance to fire, but it's easier to just cast have a mage or cleric cast protection from fire to give 100% immunity for two hours. I'm pretty sure chaos shield doesn't stack. Spamming horrid wilting and the HLA spell that isn't fire based (sorry, forget the name) works ok. Edit: verybad posted:That's amazing. I've literally never thought about this before, and I've been playing these games for 10 years. and that's why I'm still playing 15 years later... Fruits of the sea fucked around with this message at 14:03 on Dec 19, 2013 |
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Dec 19, 2013 14:01
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If you don't enjoy the magic meta-game, swarms of summons or buffing the crap out of the party are the other viable alternatives. For summoning, Animate dead, level 3 summon monster and animal, call woodland beings, summon efreeti/djinn, etc. Cast haste on them for extra fun. The demon summons are also great as they have magic resistance and immunity to normal weapons. Just make sure you cast protection from evil radius 10 on your party first, the demons WILL target anything friendly that isn't protected. Elementals are good but highly situational and the long casting time plus the chance they will turn on you makes them a dangerous choice once combat has started. As for buffs, Chaotic Commands protercts against most stuns/charms and Negative Plane Protection stops level drain (it has a very short duration though, watch out). Other buffs you want to be using in every difficult battle are Haste (extra attack, improved saves and AC), Improved Invisibility (character CANNOT BE TARGETED by single target spells as well as extra saves and AC), Protection From Evil Radius 10 (Saves and AC) and Chant (Saves and AC, do you see a pattern here?) Oh yeah, and cast True Sight if you think there's even a chance of there being a rogue or mage around. Fruits of the sea fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Dec 24, 2013 |
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Dec 24, 2013 22:06
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Captain Oblivious posted:Requiring a complex, but largely uniform, spell preparation and methodology for every single mage fight is fake difficulty because by the time you have the veterancy to play SCS, you have the veterancy to know exactly what is required. It's simply added prep time and...time on the whole. There is no real demand in player performance, just preparation, which I can't reasonably label "difficulty". I think this discussion is losing track of what SCS and Tactics (they are quite different) actually do. They add quite a bit of variety and flavour to most of the unique encounters by giving casters specific spell sets, AI and abilities, as well as adding new creatures to encounters. SCS specifically tries to counter the tedium of savscumming by randomizing NPC contingencies and spell sequencers upon each spawn, so a mage that might have elemental resistances and mislead in one fight might start the next with a bunch of spell protections. "Fake difficulty" as it has been defined thus far does suck, but it would inaccurate and misleading to claim that SCS or Tactics' alterations are all fake difficulty. This conversation was originally about the vanilla game anyways, it's hard to tell what this tangent is even about. Edit: and for an anecdotal example, some of my unorthodox solutions to difficult mage fights (with a full SCS install even) have included: running away for a bit, parking a mage with fire shield next to the enemy caster, mustard jelly polymorph, summoning 5 fiends in succession, thief traps everywhere, dominating the mage's buddies and stacking all the magic resistance items on one fighter. There's always another solution. Fruits of the sea fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Dec 25, 2013 |
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Dec 25, 2013 23:13
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Colgate posted:Is Set Snares worth it in the first game, or should I wait for the second game before investing in that? Set snares is certainly useful in the first Baldur's Gate with two caveats: -A misfiring snare can kill a thief in the very early levels so make sure you have 20+ hp or 100 in snares before using them. There's no point in investing over 100 btw, save that for hide in shadows/move silently. -You only get a couple snares a day at low levels, making it harder to cheese encounters with ridiculous death traps. I suggest having a mage cast invisibilty on a thief with 100 in detect traps. Have them scout ahead, disarm any traps and then get your F/T to plant your own booby traps and lure the enemy into an ambush. This becomes incredibly useful in Durlag's Tower. There's not much point to setting up ambushes in wilderness areas, but they are extremely helpful for protecting a wounded party if you need to rest and replenish spells. Edit: Also a bit of advice that I recently learned the hard way during an ongoing ironman run: Don't plant snares when fighting opponents that can charm your party. I think you can guess what happened...
Fruits of the sea fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Dec 27, 2013 |
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Dec 27, 2013 19:58
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Wingless posted:Boring at first, keep going, totally awesome. It's also one of the few games where you should max out INT and WIS regardless of class. Wouldn't a max int/wis character be better suited for a second playthrough? I found it almost a little too easy with all the dialogue options unlocked. The PC could talk their way out of almost any situation (which is very cool) but I felt like it would have been more interesting to see the consequences if I messed up more often.
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Jan 6, 2014 13:18
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GuyDudeBroMan posted:Is there an improved, tougher Irenicus mod somewhere? No one plays BG2 these days without TOB installed and having even just 2-3 TOB levels to take into the Irenicus fight makes it way to easy. The fight was clearly balanced for vanilla BG2. It's such a huge anticlimactic ending to such an amazing villain. I don't think it would even be all that hard. Just give him some wizard level 9 and 10 spells like improved alacrity, dragon breath and wish and what not. Both SCS and Tactics can change the Irenicus encounter with higher level parties in mind. They are pretty modular so you can skip whatever other changes you aren't interested in. Just a warning though, they make Irenicus a LOT harder, not by adding ToB content but by extending the battle so that the party is likely to end up low on spells and healing halfway through. It's a good time to blow any consummables you may have saved up. Edit: I believe SCS is compatible with the enhanced editions, not sure about Tactics.
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Jan 7, 2014 17:51
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Ilyich posted:Tactics hasn't been updated for over 4 years, it's definitely not compatible with BG2 EE. SCS is compatible with BG2 EE and will improve Irenicus' AI in both fights through Smarter Mages and there is a component that will give him HLAs, but it doesn't change the fight in Hell like Tactics does. It used to have the 1st part of that fight (the one with the dragon, beholder etc) as a component, but that was removed in v.22. Huh, so it was. Can't say I mind too much, having multiple stages in a boss fight was kinda gamey and immersion breaking.
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Jan 7, 2014 19:03
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gender illusionist posted:Hey so what fun things can you do with contingency? I've never bothered using it before but I'm not above turning Edwin into some sort of suicide bomber or something Contingency is good, but it doesn't have much potential for abuse. Chain contingency on the other hand... -3 horrid wiltings on the first enemy sighted -3 incendiary clouds on the first enemy sighted -3 mordekainens swords on the first enemy sighted -3 summon fiends on, well, you get the idea. -project image/simulacrum/mislead on self -improved haste/tenser's transformation/simulacrum cast on self when low on health Cleric/mages have even more possibilities. There are some spells that stacked unintentionally in the original game, including project image and regeneration. That's been patched out in the enhanced edition and the unofficial patches.
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Jan 26, 2014 02:33
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Torment is arguably the most dated of the lot and it's still perfectly playable. Cumbersome ui and terrible cinematics, but the writing more than makes up for it. In any case, this is a forum with threads dedicated to games with infinitely shittier interfaces - dwarf fortress, jagged alliance, dominions 4 and dungeon crawl spring to mind. Maybe more grognards than Dudebroes around here.
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Aug 6, 2014 09:59
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Necroskowitz posted:I'm trying to use EEKeeper to change Hexxat's class into something more useful but it doesn't give her the abilities she should have at that level. How do I go about giving her appropriate abilities? Also, under 2e tabletop rules would her "race" be able to dual-class or multiclass? SCS makes liches quite a bit tougher, and removes some of the cheesier ways to take them out. You should probably just wait a couple of levels, but if you are determined, surround Nevaziah's spawn point with as many traps as possible (sleep and refresh until you get a message saying no more traps are allowed on the map) and send in an army of undead summons to finish the job. A scroll of Protection from Undead should also trivialize the encounter, but I can't remember if SCS nerfed those or not.
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Aug 9, 2014 15:55
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Full plate is the best armour in BG1, despite not being magical, because it allows wearing rings and cloaks of protection.
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Aug 24, 2014 13:55
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Firstborn posted:I've been bashing my head against Baldur's Gate trying to progress through it, but I'm up to the Cloakwood Mines now and I just want to abandon it and go to BG2. It's not even the tomes that make me want to bother, I have absolutely no shame in cheating up my stats with EEKeeper or something... it's that I really want to experience the story. There is barely anything there, though! The story speeds up quite a bit after the cloakwood mines. There's a lot of optional content inside Baldur's Gate (the city) but it can be skipped if you're feeling impatient.
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Oct 19, 2014 09:16
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Time to give Icewind Dale another try. My secret shame is that despite finishing BG2 multiple times with difficulty mods, gimmick parties and random spell selections, I've never gotten very far in Icewind Dale before giving up in frustration. It's possible (sometimes even advantageous), to get away with goofy poo poo like all rogue parties or melee mages in the BG games, even with SCS 1 and 2 but I don't think that poo poo's gonna fly in the Dale...
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Nov 28, 2014 00:32
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Are quarterstaff-based backstabbers viable in Icewind Dale?
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Nov 28, 2014 06:47
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Algernon's cloak was nerfed in the enhanced edition so it doesn't have unlimited uses per day. The charm is still really useful, but not to the point where it's worth designing a character around it.
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Dec 12, 2014 08:47
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Just finishing up a playthough of IWD EE so it's about time I gave hardcore BG another shot. Probably won't get far though. I only play with SCS anymore, since vanilla got boring after a while. Most encounters in SCS still aren't too challenging for a prepared party. The only issue is that some of the world travel encounters and surprise bounty hunter attacks are absolutely devastating, and low level spellcasters don't have enough "oh poo poo!" panic buttons to survive ambushes unscathed.Vichan posted:Haer'Dalis always felt a bit unfinished to me, it may be because the Aerie/Haer'Dalis/CHARNAME love triangle got cut or whatever. I actually have that feeling with a lot of BG2's characters. There was a lot of content left on the cutting room floor unfortunately. I think Valygar got the worst of it, but there's other npcs like Mazzy and Cernd who could really have used a bit of extra polish. Not to mention all the problems with Dynaheir's quest line.
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Dec 22, 2014 17:55
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Cythereal posted:Haer'Dalis and Valygar were both planned to be romance options for a female PC, and Gaider briefly pushed for HD as a bi romance option before Black Isle said no to that. Huh, that's a little ironic considering the vocal part of Bioware's fans that are now clamouring for more bi/pan-sexual npcs. They had no idea what was going to happen over the course of a decade and a half.
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Dec 22, 2014 18:48
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Time for another run-through of the series. This will be my first attempt at playing the Enhanced Edition modded - are there any pitfalls I should be aware of? It's basically going to consist of: -Ascension -NPC Project/Banter pack -Some tweak pack that I always use, I can't remember which one to be honest. -Unfinished Business -SCS Or is there anything new and awesome that's been made in the last year or so?
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Dec 16, 2016 12:37
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Sanzuo posted:Is it cheating to console yourself a bag of holding I always do it just for convenience. It's almost a necessity for solo characters. Whether it's cheating depends on how much equipment you hoover up. It will give you a lot of surplus cash in Baldur's Gate. Matters much less in BG2, where the player will end up with too much cash anyways.
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Jan 4, 2017 12:30
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Any game with a discovery-based crafting system and lots of junk items.  They aren't new anymore, but dear god Divinity:OS and Dungeons of Dredmor are bad for this.
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Jan 4, 2017 14:42
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I'm just finishing up Dragonspear myself. It's remarkably solid, I hadn't expected it to be as fun it has. It's particularly nice to spend a little more time at the mid-levels where creatures like Umber Hulks and ogres can still present a threat. The battles in the last third of the game are pleasingly climactic and it's nice to have drawn out encounters which force me to eke out a use of most of the party's abilities and items. My biggest complaint is that the fog effects tend to go nuts, making it impossible to see anything. Haven't had any problems with fps on a middling laptop, but there have been a couple times where the game itself starts to chug. I think it's something screwy with the AI or scripting because reloading fixes the problem instantly. For nerds who like playing through the series with difficulty mods, I recommend playing with SCS on full, including the experience reductions, but don't install the extra spawns from bgtutu (I think?). The spam from the extra spawns generates a lot of XP. With that configuration I finished BG:EE, including TotSC a fair bit under the XP cap, so Dragonspear has still provided a decent challenge, which looks set to carry on to BG2.
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Feb 8, 2017 15:10
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I'm running a Big World EET Tactics installation which has worked fine, apart from Dragonspear's icons on the world map being messed up. Admittedly, I also unselected all of the extra npcs and the larger quest mods. So, good luck with those.
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Feb 12, 2017 21:03
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I'd do terrible things for a mod that increased detect traps' tick rate. I know just about every spot where there are traps, but my rogue inevitably triggers them anyway, because I misjudge how long they need to stand still before inching forward another couple feet. Impatience kills 
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Mar 7, 2017 20:15
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I recently ran through IWD as well, and had a fine time of it apart from the end of Dragon's Eye and the final fight. My party composition was.... not great, because I tried the Icewind Dale NPC mod which adds 5 semi-voiced npcs and then changed their kits around without looking at their proficiencies. So the group was heavily skewed towards melee dps and not much else: PC (Wild mage) Undead hunter using greatswords and axes Kensai specializing in using 1 club, because I'm an idiot Ranger/cleric dual wielding blunt weapons Fighter/thief dual wielding long swords Bard I didn't abuse Nahal's much at all, so the only real advantage was the undead hunter's bonuses to hit. Straight Kensai are very much a double-edged sword, moreso than in BG2. The game is packed with robust melee mobs for the kensai to pulverize. Only problem is that those physical dps opponents are equally good at hitting back at the kensai's crap AC. The strategy I found worked best was hasting the kensai after the start of combat (giving time for summons or the paladin with boots of speed to draw fire first) and then clubbing everything to death. If the kensai's health bar ran down faster than the other team's, I would run her behind enemy lines, or cast invisibility on her. For the record, the Icewind Dale npc mod is decently written, although they have a tendency to interrupt conversations and fights with non-sequiturs. They are all romanceable (which appears to be a large part of the mod) but thankfully it was possible to to tell them I was definitely not interested afer a bit. The npcs come with a bunch of possible kit choices, so don't think you have to arm your fighter with a stick and tunic like I did.
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Mar 16, 2017 00:36
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The RTWP crowd is a fickle judge. I don't think much will be changed beyond the UI and bugfixes in Planescape. Which is fine, it has aged the worst out of all the IE games. Definitely a nice surprise though. I thought there were problems getting hold of the original assets for reworking the game.
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Mar 25, 2017 10:31
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Entropy238 posted:I hope they take every beloved npc in the game and make them trans for maximum internet drama value. It's hard to go into more detail without a giant block of spoilers but Torment: Numenera has a trans character who plays a big role It's the player The funny thing is I don't think any of the usual suspects who get offended noticed, probably because it's written in a pretty matter-of-fact, understated way.
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Mar 25, 2017 11:34
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Is your sister a skeleton? Then Planescape may have an answer for you.
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Mar 25, 2017 21:41
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