Gromnir said:
pretty much all nonsense... am not sure how the the prestige class stuff were having a point...
You said it's stupid to multiclass wizards with other classes. These prestige classes prove otherwise.
huh? what? the fact that a ranger cohort is available does not change fact that a ranger leader is still virtual essential. you is confusing yourself... or trying to hard.
Wrong. You can get a spirit shaman and quite quickly give him the harper agent prestige class which covers both survival and hide.
as for the grey orc cleric/monk stuff... *chuckle* somebody musta been exp farming to pull off. you don't scare off anybody unless you take the fearsome roster feat, or if you is several levels tougher than the encounter level you is facing. so either the example is from 1/2 to 2/3 through game, or... *shrug* grey orc gets ecl penalties and probable has to take daylight adaption to be viable... which makes tougher to take able learner. and grey orc longstride not count for squat in jungle terrain w/o many levels o' survival. no survival in that build.
Reading comprehension is not your strong side, isn't it? Allow me to point you to one crucial sentence, because maybe the letters are too small for you:
'
BECAUSE I CAN JUST OUTRUN THE FOOS.'
not really worth bringing up then were it? Gromnir did same thing with our mage... when no critters were nearby we switched mage to leader to see if anything new popped up on the overland... but that not change fact that a Ranger were our functional party leader.
The point was about avoiding detection. Three characters were brought up to back it up.
the hunting cabin offered a 10-15 second combat encounter that were only "creative" 'cause of a name change? HA! if that is all it takes to be creative and compelling, then am not sure what you found lacking 'bout the saramach maps.
I love how you seem to think that I find the hunting cabin to be the best encounter evar
again, you yourself used a ranger leader to play (strike one)
And? How does that prove anything? I chose a ranger because it's convenient and I generally like rangers. I could choose anything else if I wanted to.
and there is multiple threads at bio boards discussing how game does indeed force a specific kinda leader type upon player (strike 2)
And there was a thread on the Bethesda forums about roleplaying in Oblivion, so I guess there must be a point to it.
is no tyranny of choices if a vast majority o' players find themselves building similar leader characters. is bad design.
When you go to a tourist attraction, would you prefer to be led by a professional guide or by some random bum who's never been to the site? Doesn't logic command that while going through a jungle it is a better idea to take someone who is familiar with the wilderness e.g. a ranger?
And hey, you know what? I can bet that if the overland map didn't have this system, the same lot of people would whine about useless skills, just like they were useless in IWD2.
but again, the biggest flaw of soz isn't the sometimes tedious randomn monster encounters on the overland map... is the static encounters that the obsidian developers put their "creativity" into. HA! the arcane brotherhood encounter were including 2 15 second combat encounters... 'cause the building had 2 floors. no dialogues or spell checks or any o' that role-play stuff you might wanna tout. oh, but there were another arcane nexus, and there were piles o' 1007 strewn about tables and beds, so maybe that made it kewl? the vast majority o' static encounters in soz were brief, and uninspired... and if the totality of manner in which obsidian made encounters compelling for roxor were to call the attacking enemy a "malarite druid", then Gromnir (and others) am seeing why You were so easily impressed with depth o' gameplay.
Wow, again your reading comprehension makes me shiver. Have I not stated in the review that nearly all the caves, dungeons etc scream about their will for further development?
am curious; how did playing evil or good (or whatever) change your gnoll cave encounter... or the forktongue bandit cave?
Nope, didn't change that. But hey, it did change Port Llast, West Harbour, some cohort reactions, some things in Crossroad Keep, some encounters (such as the thayans), a couple of quests... need I mention more?
took 1 minute (tops) to clear out gothaladreum and confront nya with a rather traditional and anti-climactic good v. evil dialogue.
R00fles, there are... wait, let me count... four ways to resolve the matter of undead in Port Llast, I believe.
or a whole heck of a lot of yuan-ti assassins.
You mean that whole lot of assassins that I sneaked by? Oh yeah, that was a real pain in the arse
the sad thing 'bout soz is that in spite o' the overland map innovation, obsidian took a big step backwards from motb in the design creativity department. a vast majority o' the soz encounters were the kinda fare you typically see in forgettable free module downloads over at nwnvault.
Ooooh, now I understand. You're just butthurt, because Obsidian didn't make motb2. Thanks, now it finally all makes sense.
soz story and character development were, at best, sparse. likewise the vast majority o' static encounters were suffering from an similarl paucity o' developer creativity and care. the overland map were, for a character with maxed survival and hide/move silent, little more than a 1007 gathering opportunity, and for others... mind numb exercise in tedium.
Character development was sparse? I can agree on story, but character development? Just how is it worse than the previous NWN instalments? It's even made better thanks to new classes, races and party feats.
I suppose that the spirit meter in motb was also a mind numbing exercise for many people who played that game.
ignore the bugs and technical issues with load times n' such, and you still end up with a game that feels largely unfinished or criminally underdeveloped.
Bugs? I believe I found only two of them, one was a series of crashing after a conversation with Septimund (which already got fixed) and another one after I killed the mayor of West Harbour and his friends, and later found Tarmas alive again in the city after I betrayed the dragons, even though his corpse was laying there in front of the gate...
Didn't experience any significant problems with loading times, but I heard that's an issue for many, yes.
but hey, it were kewl 'cause the 2 room cabin with the unavoidable 15 second combat encounter had a "malarite druid" as the primary antagonist. *chuckle* truth-to-tell, angry malarite antagonists has been an obsidian staple since iwd2. am knowing that josh likes yuan-ti, but somebody at black isle/obsidian must also be a fan o' malarites. seen malarites far more often than batari.
Unavoidable? Oh yeah, because it's a place of critical importance and you just NEED to go there.
Also, perhaps batiri are less 'popular' because they are native to Chult, genius? What other D&D games have featured Chult? IWD2 in a single location, whoa.
I found the hunting cabin to be well done, because it takes you by surprise: you see a hunting cabin, what do you expect? Yes, hunters. You go inside and see what? A druid. What do you expect from a druid? A hobo hippie mumbling about nature, balance and global warming, while what do you get? A madman who's just finished killing the hunters you were expecting to meet.
Gromnir said:
have a sneaky trap finder in a d&d party? nope, nothing strange about that. 'course that ain't the same as making a ranger or ranger multi-class you party leader, is it?
And why do you keep yapping about the ranger being the 'party leader'? You don't have to get him to be the leader, but he takes the role of a GUIDE. You're not obliged to make your very first party member a ranger (or a multi-class ranger, because it's IMPOSSIBLE TO TOTALLY AVOID RANGERS IN STORM OF ZEHIR!1).
those encounters are often far too powerful for your party to handle
And that's bad?
in iwd you virtual needed a trap finder, and it were smart to have a sneaker... play through the severed hand and dorn's deep and even the relative craptacular dragon's eye made a balanced party beneficial. but because the static encounters in soz is so brief you don't genuine need such a character for 99% of the game... save for fact that a sneaky character alleviates the burden felt from insanely dense monster swarms.
Whoa, soz doesn't need a trap finder? Now that's new. 90% of traps on chests and often in corridors are nearly deadly. Rogue is also ace in the end game dungeon and in Zecorrian's Demesne.
virtual all soz encounters is no more than a cave or building with one or two rooms...
Yeah... in Samarach... and again reading comprehension, I stated in the review that I'd really want the caves to be bigger.
Also, even though they are small, there's shitloads of the static encounters, and thanks to that, at least they are somehow varied. What do you prefer? A three floor long dungeon filled with orcs, or three different dungeons that have cultists of Shar, undead, yuan-ti and all also have different interior design? I might even risk the statement, that if summed up, all that lot of smaller dungeons takes as much time to get through as the few yet long ones of IWD.
a sneaky character with high survival? ranger? a barbarian/rogue? is a few other builds that make sense (especially at mid and low levels) but is not many.
Again: spirit shaman quickly multiclassed into harper agent. And still I can't see how substracting
one level and taking that in rogue/ranger/monk/whatever that has the needed skill is that much of a fucking problem.
says the guy who keeps yapping about a small and unimportant encounter on the map.
