I have my druid now. They get really snazzy starting armor, I've decided to wear it for the whole run.

On the other hand, the new Speak with Dead animation is incredibly creepy and I'm never using that spell again.

Ah, when you said that you saw no easy solution, did you mean that there was none on the player's end—that is, at the moment, no way to re-create those rolls?

If so, then my mistake, and my apologies—I thought that you were saying that you didn't see how those rolls could be re-created in the internals of the game!

I would definitely be fine with people being able to save-scum in a game like this. I see no reason to not do so! (Save for the development time involved in implementing the relevant elements, of course.)

Perhaps the devs would be open to the suggestion of an option to make the die-roll randomiser restore its state, as they did with weighting the dice?

More, I can't think of an easy programming solution to dealing with having to replay a section and dealing with the randomness of rolls.

Option one: Rolls are hard saved as progression occurs and cannot be save-scummed; you will quickly repeat a section if you have to reload. Problem is, no save-scumming which can make repeating the game for different outcomes a nightmare, or a nightmare for those who just want different outcomes for a variety of reasons, say a specific scene they want requires an extremely difficult skill check and now you just can't get that outcome to a quest at all.

Option two: Rolls are as they are now; You re-roll everything every time and can get any result. Problem is that it makes repeating a section to the original result frustrating; I now save reload if I passed every check the first time and then only screwed up the last roll.

Option three: Roll values are saved, but you still re-roll upon reloading. Your roll is then against what the original value was and it takes the better of the two. A kind of soft-advantage to get players back to their original set up. Problem is still if players don't WANT the better of the outcomes because a failures creates a more interesting narrative or they're exploring the 'bad' options of the narrative instead.

I don't really see an easy programming solution to make everyone happy.

Aaaah, I see—my apologies then, I did misunderstand.

And I agree, I don't see a single, clear programming solution. Indeed, I imagine that there's no mechanic that appeals to all people. (Or very, very few at least.) Different people want different things.

That said, I think that there is a non-singular programming solution: make it an option.

Have a toggle in the options menu that switches between restoring after a reload or re-rolling after a reload.

That way those who want to save-scum rolls can set the toggle to re-rolling, and those who want to keep rolls can set the toggle to restoration.

It might even be possible to have the state of the toggle be part of the save-file, allowing one to switch on the fly depending on the situation.

(Of course, this is all speculative: what looks straightforward in theory can prove quite tricky in practice, I've found!)

I finished the good druid path in the Grove and it was pretty neat, got a cool staff and a title and everything. Nettie was also much more helpful and informative than before - I'm not sure if that's because I was playing a druid or if the patch added to her dialogue.

It'll be interesting to hear if there's a decent evil path for a druid, siding with Kagha. Not something I'll try out myself, though.

Edit: Wow, Halsin has a lot more dialogue too. This is great.

Edited by Tarlonniel on Feb 27th 2021 at 3:00:48 AM

In my first playthrough I killed Halsin without realising who he was,he's survived this playthrough!

Also,playing this game with no crashes and good stability is really great,makes me wish I had installed the updates sooner

"with no crashes". Lucky.

I didn't have a single crash during my druid run, but then I started a second playthrough and ran into all sorts of problems with stability and cutscenes not triggering and stuff. Strange.

Really looking forward to this game leaving Early Access.

Related to the subject of weighted dice/loaded dice,this scene starts playing in my head

Hope they bring the giant scorpion form for the moon druid. that thing is so broke.

Ya know I finally read about Baldur's Gate and...

...Wait Baldur's Gate is basically a wretched hive where crime is totes okay if its done by rich people on poor and lot of mobsters? And city guard are basically the town guard who really only care about rich people and mercenary army?

...Yeah I haven't ever played Baldur's Gate 1 long enough to actually get into the titular city so I'm surprised if that is the case xD

My first experience with the Forgotten Realms was Baldur's Gate 1, and weirdly enough, at that point in time Baldur's Gate is more of a rough-and-tumble adventurers' city. Yeah, it has its problems (massive class inequality, for one; a thriving thieves' guild, guards that are willing to take bribes, and so on), but it all feels much more like a city that has its share of dangerous thrills, but it's not a Wretched Hive.

Then you have the Baldur's Gate described in 5e, mostly in Descent Into Avernus, which is 200 years later in the timeline. By that point Baldur's Gate has emphatically lost whatever glimmer of soul it used to have, and is basically a cesspit with a heavily guarded noble district patrolled by private armies of mercenaries. It was really quite a shock coming from 2e Baldur's Gate to 5e Baldur's Gate, I'll tell you that.

Edited by RedSavant on Mar 12th 2021 at 11:51:35 AM

Anyhoo what this about Dark Alliance getting new game?

There are two trailers up on Youtube and they're both pretty awful, if I'm honest. The first one will give you motion sickness, since it's basically "what if we put GoPro cameras on the ends of Drizzt's scimitars", and while the second one actually has some gameplay, it's got that mid-2000s style of "wouldn't it be edgy if we had an ogre flip off the camera" humor.

Overall, it doesn't look like the upcoming Dark Alliance has anything to do with the originals. It's an up-to-four-person third-person action hack and slash with rolls and stamina bars and so on.

It's a spiritual successor, yeah.

Been a while! Patch 5 is coming out 13 July. There was a 'Panel from Hell' and a community update video, which I'll embed now, but I'll summarise.

What's different or new:

• New dice UI. You can see it about 30 seconds in and I think it's an improvement, although it might slow things down a bit. It shows what your ability modifier, proficiency, Guidance, etc. are adding, and lets you cast buffing spells (or have a companion cast one) within the UI.

• Rest changes. You have a pool of resources. The more you consume, the better a rest you have. This is something they want feedback on, and is meant to separate a short rest and a long rest more. There's also no longer just one camping area; you rest where you choose to rest. If you're in a, say, cave and rest, you set up camp in a cave.

• Inspiration and Backgrounds. First, there's a cap on how many Inspiration points you can hold onto; after you have four, gaining new points will instead get you a bit of bonus XP. Additionally, you get Inspiration points for taking certain options that fit in with your background.

• Other gameplay stuff. Disengage and Jump are now separate, and they're trying out Disengage as an action. You can cancel Concentration on a spell. Rather than having a specific 'Knock Unconscious' action, you can toggle lethal/non-lethal attacks. When you click and tell a companion to do something in gameplay, they'll have voicelines.

• There's some new / changed scenes. Such as freeing Shadowheart from the capsule on the mindflayer ship, and being able to actually see the Absolute brand on certain goblins.

bard players tap their foots impatiently

Not quite enough for another run, but most of the changes look good. The only thing I don't like is requiring resources to take a long rest - I can cheat my way past that easily enough though.

Disengage is a bonus action in-game though, isn't it?

Not tabletop, unless you're a Level 2+ rogue.

I didn't do another run with the Druid update, but I'm kinda excited for Backgrounds, what extra dialogue you get. And I wanted Disengage-as-an-action, especially for enemies, so I'm curious to see that. And I would like to see more of the Speak With Animals stuff, while I'm at it. Very nice.

Edited by Unsung on Jul 8th 2021 at 6:01:19 AM

There are non-lethal options in combat now? That's interesting. It used to feel quite hollow in many older games, when your character professed to want to avoid needless violence, while you still murdered every single creature in the game.

Disengage as a bonus action for everyone never made sense since it kinda undoes the entire point of melee characters being able to lock down enemies of New dice UI and it still doesn't let other party members do the roll if they are more skilled. Why is this still not a thing???

The inclusion of food as a limit to spamming long rest is interesting but will need to see how it plays out. Long rest spam was definitely a problem

Edited by Ghilz on Jul 9th 2021 at 3:28:18 AM

Heh. I'm replaying SWTOR (the base game) and my peace-loving, diplomatic Jedi consular has a kill count in the hundreds, if not thousands. I'm glad this game is implementing so many non-violent workarounds.

I appreciate whenever a game offers me multiple ways to solve quests, especially if there are genuine diplomatic non-violent options. That's why I get miffed if a game pretends to give me such an option, with a "gotcha" when things go south through no fault of my own. The same applies if I want to play a good character and the game insists on subverting every attempt to do something good for others, by gleefully showing how it fails.