Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[Rivmusique]

Yep!

Fluked that on my first playthrough by having pallegina with me on the way to TE (and following her suggestion to follow up). I figured it was easily missable, what happens if you don't bring her along? Does the ambush still happen if she isn;t there? Do they tell you they are after the valians anyway?

Anyway, thought it was pretty cool. It's the moment she really shows her class, and the only "this is what a PoEpaladin is" moment (unless you're playing one, I guess).

 

[AwesomeButton]

Josh continues to backpedal on his decisions, going with what Sensuki suggested all along

for the future i think a base combat speed close to (or slower than) our slow speed with an option to speed it up would have been better.

That's good news. I hope in the end they'll slowly revert the system to something resembling IE combat. This situation where one character has 1s between hits and another has 2.3-3 seconds is insane.

 

[Sensuki]

I dunno if that's what he means though, and I've never thought that action speed is the problem - it's per-hit damage and movement speed.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I dunno if that's what he means though, and I've never thought that action speed is the problem - it's per-hit damage and movement speed.

Ah, no, I think he meant the overall game speed during combat. My remark wasn't directly related. BTW, anyone know where the quote is from? I guess SA again.

On a sidenote, I have a theory that the 1-100 dice is causing problems by being a too big interval, compared to the 1-20 dice in DnD. I haven't done any calculations to test that, but I think the end result is that your accuracy/deflection matters less than your THAC0/AC used to matter, compared to the importance of the dice score. Didn't you have some similar observation a while ago?

 

[Sensuki]

Nah it's just crits and grazes man. With a lot of stuff, as long as you graze that's a good result. A grazed duration on a debuff or a disable will often give you enough time to fully take advantage of that debuff or disable until the unit dies. As a result of scoring a grazed debuff that lowers a defense, you score more crits.

The D&D system of miss, hit and die-roll critical hits is way better. Spells also couldn't crit in D&D.

Originally there was going to be no miss at all (we're talking 2012 here, maybe early 2013) but because a backer said "but that means I can't make a dodgy character", Josh changed it and put in a 5% base miss chance (originally).

 

[AwesomeButton]

Nah it's just crits and grazes man. With a lot of stuff, as long as you graze that's a good result. A grazed duration on a debuff or a disable will often give you enough time to fully take advantage of that debuff or disable until the unit dies. As a result of scoring a grazed debuff that lowers a defense, you score more crits.

The D&D system of miss, hit and die-roll critical hits is way better.

Strange, I have the opposite impression - when I graze with something that causes an affliction, usually the length of the affliction is too short for me to take advantage of it. In the end I've wasted a character action trying to cause that affliction. In such cases a graze is equal in effect to a miss.

 

[Sensuki]

Depends what it is I suppose, when I used Blinding Strike as a Rogue if I scored a graze on the hit part, that was enough to get a roll for the secondary attack. Base debuff duration is 10 seconds and a graze would be 5, higher than base int score gives you up to a few seconds more. Often that's enough to fucking drop a nigger, so to speak. The significantly reduced Deflection and Reflex makes attacks that target those defenses a lot easier to hit and it's not hard to have shit lined up immediately after the impact of that attack.

 

[Infinitron]

lol

Fluked that on my first playthrough by having pallegina with me on the way to TE (and following her suggestion to follow up). I figured it was easily missable, what happens if you don't bring her along? Does the ambush still happen if she isn;t there? Do they tell you they are after the valians anyway?

I suspect the ambush doesn't happen if she's not with you. Josh may be underestimating the amount of people who've seen it, because Pallegina's sidequest has you take her to Twin Elms, so it makes that you'd have her with you when going through the pass for the first time.

Anyway, thought it was pretty cool. It's the moment she really shows her class, and the only "this is what a PoEpaladin is" moment (unless you're playing one, I guess).

It's an interesting thing about PoE that some important character development for the companions happens outside their designated "companion quests". Most noticeable with Aloth, whose sidequest ultimately has little do with his character arc. So people who dump a companion after finishing their quest because "no more content" might be missing out on stuff.

 

[Starwars]

Pallegina has a pretty nice moment when you commune with Hylea as well.

 

[Infinitron]

Yeah, kind of a no-brainer to go with companions who have a relationship with the gods in the game's final act.

 

[Rivmusique]

I suspect the ambush doesn't happen if she's not with you. Josh may be underestimating the amount of people who've seen it, because Pallegina's sidequest has you take her to Twin Elms, so it makes that you'd have her with you when going through the pass for the first time.

Oh yeah, right. I was wondering how she was in my party at that time as I didn't really enjoy the paladin, so preferred Eder most of the time.

It's an interesting thing about PoE that some important character development for the companions happens outside their designated "companion quests". Most noticeable with Aloth, whose sidequest ultimately has little do with his character arc. So people who dump a companion after finishing their quest because "no more content" might be missing out on stuff.

That sidequest itself only reaches its real conclusion after it's complete and you have Aloth within your party when talking to the dryads in TE, when you then get the conversation about suppressing/working with the other soul. I didn't really like that, only stumbling in to it on a 2nd run. Too out of the way for such a big moment. Though maybe the intention is for you to get the people who want in the party then forget about the other guys and only work on those 5 companions SQs, save the rest for next time, rather than do all of them every run.

 

[Infinitron]

That sidequest itself only reaches it's real conclusion after it's complete and you have Aloth within your party when talking to the dryads in TE, when you then get the conversation about suppressing/working with the other soul. I didn't really like that, only stumbling in to it on a 2nd run. Too out of the way for such a big moment. Though maybe the intention is for you to get the people who want in the party then forget about the other guys and only work on those 5 companions SQs, save the rest for next time, rather than do all of them every run.

Ah, crap. I had no idea about that!

 

[Sannom]

Yep!

What are you trying to post here? I don't see a thing!

 

[prodigydancer]

What are you trying to post here? I don't see a thing!

Might want to tweak your Disconnect/Noscript settings then.

 

[Dorateen]

Some people talk about bringing along companions and special sidequests.

I enjoyed bringing St. Ywden's Redeemer back from the White March to level 6 of the Endless Paths.

 

[Darth Roxor]

St. Ywden's

Saint Juden...?

... reallly?

 

[Roguey]

"It might be out in six days, eh, we don't know."

I have a feeling it won't be the best one yet.

 

[Infinitron]

I read the other three today.

Actually think I enjoyed Ratcatcher the most because a whodunnit is probably the most compelling kind of story you can tell in such a short piece.

 

[Fry]

Think positive. Maybe Aloth dies on the first page.

 

[Roguey]

Think positive. Maybe Aloth dies on the first page.

It's a prequel and there's no resurrection in Eora.

 

[tdphys]

Fenstermaker has the best style out of the 3. Patel's grew on me; she's not a bad dialogue writer, though her characters seem flat at times. Kirsch sometimes reads like a technical paper; he's wordy and excited, but I thought he had the most creative story.

 

[Fairfax]

Interesting. I was disappointed at first as well. I thought it was going to be one of the first mods, but it's such a hassle that nobody bothered.

 

[Sannom]

What are those Disconnect/Noscript settings someone up there mentionned?

And I'm guessing that you're talking about Avellone's twit about the starting companions?

 

[Starwars]

I'm not a fan of having introductory companions that inevitably get killed off after the "dramatic event" in the tutorial section, but I can't say that either of those two was particularly interesting. Certainly not to the point where I actively wished I could keep traveling with them.

 

[Infinitron]

I'm not a fan of having introductory companions that inevitably get killed off after the "dramatic event" in the tutorial section, but I can't say that either of those two was particularly interesting. Certainly not to the point where I actively wished I could keep traveling with them.

In a BioWare-style game, the tendency is for you to get "mundane" companions (like poor Jory and Daveth in DA:O) in the introduction that help introduce you to the basics of the setting in a low-key way. Then something happens to them and they get replaced by the freak show parade of EXTREME WHEDON characters like Alistair and Morrigan. NWN2 does the same with Bevil Starling and that mage girl who gets killed.

However, in PoE, that's not quite the case because Eder is about as mundane as Calisca and Heodan. In fact, Eder is kind of like an expanded version of Bevil Starling, right down to the "older brother who left home and went bad" plotline.