GameBanshee Forums

Yes, linking to those five forms would be nice.

Thanks, but I stopped reading very quickly...

As far as spoilers go, I'm only interested in the class abilities. Nothing more.

Same here. I'll discover the story as I play. ;-)

Well that's the whole point of playing!

I'm planning for a Spirit Healer / Blood Mage for the first walkthrough.

Crenshinibon wrote:[...] it looks like the game doesn't require min-maxing.

Say again ? All reviews say the game is hard.

Crenshinibon wrote:[...] I assume that you can only summon one at a time, but who knows? [...]

Only one summon per character ... they said that long ago.

It seems that the game doesn't require as much min maxing. Rather, there's very little room for it. By min-maxing I mean something like Icewind Dale II's level squatting or Mass Effect's "achievement" system.

Indeed, it seems that your choices are pretty straight forward: if you sword&board, you select all the shield skills; if you want an archer, simply go for all the archery skills. I suppose mages play the same way: you pick one or two defensive skill lines and max those, and the rest offensive lines.

Cren, I envy you, you can start playing tomorrow.

I have the pre-release jitters. And although I know that I really shouldn't open this now, with finals but a few weeks away, the temptation is too much for me.

Hopefully I can start a diary for the game though. That and find a frame for the map.

I got my pre-download complete, but that's it. I really would like to know why Europe has to wait three more days...

I'm annoyed with the warrior specializations. It seems that you have to pick some rather 'evil' styled specializations to really turn your warrior into a juggernaut of destruction (berserker/reaver).

But maybe I'm fooling myself, and there really aren't any 'good' guys in this world.

On a sidenote, I think assasin/duelist is going to be one heck of a popular build.

Err ... now what is so evil about Berserker ?

Unless you consider dealing damage evil per se, but if that is the case, then theres just no way to help you.

It wont improve in D&D either, by the way. Rather the contrary. The Frenzied Berserker from D&D 3.5 is a really bloodthirsty kickass.

What bothers me is how hackneyed most of the specializations are. Oh, look! A paladin like character. And here's one that, by chance, is just like a barbarian! And a bard. And so it goes. The idea of structuring them as goal posts rather than beginning choices is fine, since it narrows the field of starting stories, making it easier for Bioware to develop these--but still, I wish they could have shown a bit more creativity in creating quite a few of these specializations.

fable wrote:What bothers me is how hackneyed most of the specializations are. Oh, look! A paladin like character. And here's one that, by chance, is just like a barbarian! And a bard. And so it goes. The idea of structuring them as goal posts rather than beginning choices is fine, since it narrows the field of starting stories, making it easier for Bioware to develop these--but still, I wish they could have shown a bit more creativity in creating quite a few of these specializations.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this... I've tried coming up with maybe other ways they could have taken the Rogue specializations, but for the most part I come up empty. Keep in mind I've only experimented with Rogues; warriors and mages might be different.

Duelist is for melee combatant characters - and yes, it strongly resembles the Swashbuckler subclass in BG2 in the dual wielding aspect. The Assassin covers stealthy backstab characters, and it shares its name and perks with the BG2 Assassin subclass. The Bard is the scoundrel-type character who operates in urban areas, and the Ranger is in rural ones.

(Though I have to confess, I'm still having trouble associating Rangers with rogues instead of warriors. Maybe if they had used 'Scout' instead? And lost the animal aspect).

Regardless, these are in essence what a Rogue should be whatever his talents may be. Call somebody who backstabs everything that breathes by whatever name you'd like - he's still an assassin.

Maybe the class specializations are hackneyed, or maybe AD&D has been around so long and developed so many classes, that it is nearly impossible to avoid poaching their license and resembling their work a bit. Frankly there is only so much ground to cover in developing a fantasy based class. Seems to me the paladin class was actually split in two here, between Templar and Champion. Berzerker is definitely a rip off of barbarian, but whatever.

All the basic fantasy type roles are covered here. I admittedly do not have any ideas outside what they did.

Aqua-chan wrote:I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this... I've tried coming up with maybe other ways they could have taken the Rogue specializations, but for the most part I come up empty. Keep in mind I've only experimented with Rogues; warriors and mages might be different.

It's just that they've done some innovation (more or less) thing where mages are concerned, given them an eeevil class, and given them a cleric one. This shows in my opinion a bit of thinking outside the box. So the best they could do for warriors and rogues was...recreate the classes that they had, before? Just to throw out a bunch of ideas, without any weighting: why not a rogue skilled in triage (healing spells)? A warrior whose years in the urban wilderness left them with a solid basis in lockpicking, stealth, and pickpocketing? A rogue who uses the magical arts to augment their strength, or acquire shapechanging? A rogue skilled above all in negotiation, legal matters, forgery? (Why no forgery, for that matter? Great path possibilities, there.) A warrior bruiser with connections to the underworld, plenty of contacts, lethal and quiet?

As I see it, it's a matter of developing a few carefully chosen paths and skills in the game, then adapting them to fit a number of new kinds of PCs. And even if we don't go that route, it's still possible to envision other class specialties than just the standard ones always provided.

Just curious on these specializations...I hit level seven and got the pop up that I'm eligible for one. However, I can't select one because it says they have not unlocked. Is there a trainer or something one has to see to open up the specialization? Oh, and I don't like any of the mage specialization classes unless you want to be a healer.