Lonely Vazdru
Pimp my Title
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That "Most Powerful Vanquished" line is rather degrading.
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I love it when used in moderation. You can ambush them, they can ambush you. Fair.Did I ever tell how much I hate "suddenly monsters behind party!" design?
Think of enemies as being in 100% cutscene paralysis 24/7 until they see your party.If only we used same mechanics to ambush each other - that would be fair.
The Battle with the Lost Six, and the accompanying backstory about Duke Kholsa Ehld was one of the highpoints of the Infinity Engine. Many of the item descriptions in the Icewind Dale series (such as Pale Justice) surpassed in quality of writing the level of narrative from other titles.
The mini-stories told in many item descriptions can be pretty entertaining and imaginative, but I feel that the time devoted to writing them could often have been put to better use. It's fine for a special weapon such as a Holy Avenger to have a developed story, but most magical items could do with less than a dozen lines.
The Battle with the Lost Six, and the accompanying backstory about Duke Kholsa Ehld was one of the highpoints of the Infinity Engine. Many of the item descriptions in the Icewind Dale series (such as Pale Justice) surpassed in quality of writing the level of narrative from other titles.
The way the story told on the Medallion suggests how to deal with each of the Lost Six is a nice touch.
The mini-stories told in many item descriptions can be pretty entertaining and imaginative, but I feel that the time devoted to writing them could often have been put to better use. It's fine for a special weapon such as a Holy Avenger to have a developed story, but most magical items could do with less than a dozen lines. Few people are going to bother reading the description of an item inferior to what they already have (and it's common to find such items in IWD2) if it's longer than that.
It's not that writing down such a story takes weeks to do...
Here's how 3ed works:
Fighter class and similar get +1 BAB (base attack bonus) per level.
Monk, Cleric, etc kind-of-fighters get +.75 BAB per level.
Full casters get +.5 BAB per level.
BAB (obviously) is a big part of your attack bonus, but you also get an additional attack per round for every 5 BAB, at -5 to hit from the previous attack.
A lvl 10 fighter with 20 strength will have 10 BAB, +5 AB. That translates to 3 attacks at +15/+10/+5 AB. Keep in mind warriors are also using big, beefy weapons that will have a base damage twice that of a dagger along with their inherent +5 damage.
A lvl 10 monk with 20 dex and weapon finesse will have 7 BAB, +5 AB. That translates to 2 attacks at +12/+7 AB. And a monk/sorc dualclass will be even worse than that. Your hakf-decent starting AB bonus at level 1 becomes paltry because you are losing AB and eventually attacks with every level you gain.
Basically the only way to make non-fighters worthwhile in melee is to: A. Buff them a ton (This is where clerics become imba) or B. Have some kind of class-specific ability (Rogue backstab, Monk unarmed bonus damage, and even 2d10 fists fall short when you realize they hit less and don't buff). But catching up to them in their own game they were designed to play is futile. Full BAB progression is the primary draw of fighter classes, like full spell progression is the draw of caster classes. And Clerics are imba.
"Writing compelling dialogue requires a different skill set than writing compelling exposition."--Josh SawyerWhat I meant is that writing a more developed dialogue for a minor character (for instance) would be a better use of time than writing 25 lines of description for a Hammer +1 that has a 15% chance of deafening your opponent for 3 rounds if he fails a Fortitude check.
He wrote that in response to someone asking why the books in the ES games are more interesting than the plots.Well, dialogues in IWD2 are exactly that, exposition. You either stand there and listen to cutscenes, or pick lines which constantly loop with each other.
For example, druid really needs those 2 dots in Transmutation - it oomps all his crowd control (Entangle with +4 at level 1? yeaaaah) and electrical spells (which are devastating).
I did just that in my current playthrough. I don't have a monk so I used my druid, he breezed through all chambers except the last which was tough as usual. I was so happy to finally put those shapeshifting abilities to some use.He is also the dude when you need to finish all 6 challenges in the Monastery..