Icewind Dale The Icewind Dale Series Thread

[Sykar]

Paladins of Ilmater will reject any sort of reward because muh religion, for instance.

Some would call this hardmode.

Nah, it's called Party of the Stupids.
Because any normal characters with anything resemble normal IQ would let another non-Paladin to be party leader. They would object to Paladin make others to pay for HIS/HER alignment.
My party almost always has Paladin or mixed, but if having them as party leader would affect party reward, down they go~ If we can afford the crippling disadvantage of a Bard in party, THAT would be our normal leader. If not, it would be the wizard variant who has good intelligence to negotiate better deals for us.

Maybe the Paladin's respective god should get off his/her ass and reward the party for their piety? Granting meager spells and useless low-level abilities seems like a shitty payoff.

THAT, or paladin thinking doing good deeds for free is its own reward~

But that's paladin's thinking only~ Nobody other than that class would think like that~

Thus, in the end, a paladin leader sacrifice party's just reward to please his own opinion/alignment.

A Paladin of Ao then?

Ao does not answer mortal prayers. Basically would just mean that you are a second rate fighter.

 

[PapaPetro]

Ao does not answer mortal prayers. Basically would just mean that you are a second rate fighter

Sounds like a hardmode shit test for True Paladins to me . Good for RP but gimped for gameplay.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Do you believe in God because you expect to be noticed by Him, as if you were some kind of anime schoolgirl?

 

[PapaPetro]

Do you believe in God because you expect to be noticed by Him, as if you were some kind of anime schoolgirl?

No I believe in God because I am Him.
The doubt comes because I'm also a shitty limited/liminal human like the rest of you.

Here's a new think: how does an Omniscient Being know what it's like to be an Non-Omniscient being? I'll give you a hint, the past 38 years has been hell for me with you people...

But it's worth it.

Oh and I could give a shit if you believe me or not. I'm competing against guys who think their girls and loli anime pic avatars on this digital astral plane/internet; Nihilism made all you all weak and easy for me. May as well be myself online and go balls out, what do I have to lose? Respect/clout from disembodied pfps and bots?
I'd rather just be Based.

Also to the midwits, feel free to shit rate the post so you can identify yourselves to me. Makes my life easier to know which plebs to filter out. I love you guys but I don't have to like you. Treat me as a God and I will treat you likewise as gods. Treat me otherwise...

Just be grateful God is a cRPG fan
What can change the nature of a man? Theosis Chris. Godhood

 

[Hagashager]

^Homeboy above is who all the Fundamentalist Christians warned us about in the '80s.

Don't play Dungeons and Dragons, kids.

 

[PapaPetro]

^Homeboy above is who all the Fundamentalist Christians warned us about in the '80s.

Don't play Dungeons and Dragons, kids.

Ask questions if you're feeling brave. Good ones, not the shitty a posteriori gotcha questions (e.g. how many fingers am I arbitrarily holding up stuff).

Remember I have a RL too. I'm on vacation in wine country and fielding questions / holding court in the Dex isn't the most exciting thing on my plate right now. However you guys are fellow dorks...

 

[Hagashager]

^Homeboy above is who all the Fundamentalist Christians warned us about in the '80s.

Don't play Dungeons and Dragons, kids.

Ask questions if you're feeling brave. Good ones, not the shitty a posteriori gotcha questions (e.g. how many fingers am I arbitrarily holding up stuff).

Remember I have a RL too. I'm on vacation in wine country and fielding questions / holding court in the Dex isn't the most exciting on my plate right now. However you guys are fellow dorks...

Alright, I'll bite.

I have a friend who's personal conception of God is as an entity of pure goodness so intense that the mere sight of God will burn all innately sinful human souls unless they emulate Jesus so closely God mistakes you for his divine son.

So how do you actually reconcile that you, yourself, are God? I assume in the context of being God's creation, in his image, we are therefore extensions of his consciousness and exist to bring him mortal understanding.

 

[PapaPetro]

^Homeboy above is who all the Fundamentalist Christians warned us about in the '80s.

Don't play Dungeons and Dragons, kids.

Ask questions if you're feeling brave. Good ones, not the shitty a posteriori gotcha questions (e.g. how many fingers am I arbitrarily holding up stuff).

Remember I have a RL too. I'm on vacation in wine country and fielding questions / holding court in the Dex isn't the most exciting on my plate right now. However you guys are fellow dorks...

Alright, I'll bite.

I have a friend who's personal conception of God is as an entity of pure goodness so intense that the mere sight of God will burn all innately sinful human souls unless they emulate Jesus so closely God mistakes you for his divine son.

So how do you actually reconcile that you, yourself, are God? I assume in the context of being God's creation, in his image, we are therefore extensions of his consciousness and exist to bring him mortal understanding.

Ah yes the "essential overload" conundrum...
Typical of Western Christian Theology (Catholicism & Protestantism). It's an philosophical error of Aquinas's dogma of Absolute Divine Simplicity which is incompatible with Trinitarian Theology: All Absolutism must lead to Monism and thus Modal Collapse. So in Aquinas's case (and by extension the bad catechism of your friend), God as an Absolutely Divinely Simple Monad (One) is ultimately unknowable and thus any actual real epistemic knowledge or experiences with God becomes an impossibly since limited beings cannot even handle/comprehend/ontologize an infinitesimal fraction of an Infinite Being. Thus, your friend isn't worshiping God but nominally worshiping God through imagination (since any real relationship with an Absolute God would lead to his existential destruction and collapse into the Godhead Monad of the Father).

He's correct though that through Christ, man can know God. But he has no metaphysical mechanism in his theology to describe/prescribe it: Western Theology lacks the dogma of Theosis via the Essence/Energy distinction as formulated eloquently by St. Gregory Palamas against the Barlaamites. This is the folly of Western Theology since God is only Essence to you and can't be described Energetically/Personally. Since Christ the Son of God is both God and Man, His existence changes the ontological cosmology so that Man can become like God; His Incarnation is what makes Theosis possible and thus the emergence of transcendent humans we know as Saints. Thus we don't just emulate Christ for this transcendent salvation of our Nihilistic fate, but follow the Saints as guides as they followed Christ in a long processional chain. These Saints are friends of God because they have come to know God through the Son and through the Holy Spirit. It is only rational that God would be friends with Those-like-Him aka fellow gods/deities/saints/angels/entities etc.

tl;dr your friend is being fed bad theology and he should probably look to Orthodoxy for a coherent and consistent metaphysical framework to grow in the spiritual path/ladder he seeks in his heart.

__________________________________________
On a side note, I have a lot of non-Orthodox Friends. Orthodox Christianity is a Perennialist Religion despite what more hardline naysayers believe. And I have A LOT of these Friends.
You'll be amazed at what a kind word to the God of Entropy does to get Reverse Entropic effects like wound/death undoing. I am "lazy" to you people
Think of it like Prospero and Ariel except they are bound by friendship.


That was a good question, thanks Hagashager. You now have the burden of responsibility to be a good friend. Thanks for biting the bit and being brave.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

I like the paladins in Baldur's Gate 2. They gain some innate abilities like immunity to charm and domination, paralysis, all depending on the specific kit.

The kits are nice but the critical flaw is that multiclassing/dualclassing are almost always the strongest option and Paladins can't. You can see how Anomen basically outdoes any Paladin, getting weapon grandmastery + full cleric casting. Inquisitor is OP though if you're playing SCS and don't nerf it.

SCS is only for Baldurs Gate

But Tweaks Anthology has a setting to allow more classes to dual-class and multi-class, so there's that.

If you could fix the IWD Paladin class, what would you do?

 

[Average Manatee]

Are we talking IWD1 or 2?

For IWD1 (and BG2), I think they are generally OK, it's just hard to compete since multi/dual classing is inherently OP. But giving Paladins/Rangers something like 3-4 max pips in weapons would make them a lot better. Right now a Cavalier is significantly worse vs. their favored enemies than a pure fighter.

For IWD2, I dunno. Make smite an effect that lasts a whole round rather than just 1 attack? Though that runs into another problem of IWD2: since there's no diminishing returns for stats, why give your character +2 charisma to get 1 AB during smite when you could instead add +2 strength to get +1 AB/+1 damage all the time? This is what leads to the problem of everyone taking 20 str/18 dex/18 wis and always taking 1 monk level to make unarmored tanks. Basically you'd need to make a lot of changes. Again though, Paladin ain't bad, its strictly superior to Fighter and gets to wield Cera Sumat.

 

[PapaPetro]

But Tweaks Anthology has a setting to allow more classes to dual-class and multi-class, so there's that

Can you finally multiclass as a Thief/Mage/Cleric with that?

 

[laclongquan]

There's no fixing Paladin because that class is perfect for the ideals, the builds it's developed for.

We just dont like the price we must pay for playing that class. That doesnt mean we want to change it~

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

But Tweaks Anthology has a setting to allow more classes to dual-class and multi-class, so there's that

Can you finally multiclass as a Thief/Mage/Cleric with that?

Yes

There's no fixing Paladin because that class is perfect for the ideals, the builds it's developed for.

We just dont like the price we must pay for playing that class. That doesnt mean we want to change it~

As long as it's based on a gameplay tradeoff and isn't some silly reasoning like "who cares if Paladin is unbalanced, because <dumb lore reason>"

 

[NecroLord]

BG2 Epic level Mage: "Noooooo, you can't just dispel my buffs so easily!"
Inquisitor: "Haha, Inquisitor Dispel Magic go brrrrrrrrr."


Edit: Even with SCS, the inquisitor's dispel remains awesome, only certain mages bother to cast Spell Immunity: Abjuration.
Actually, his dispel is classified as an Innate Ability, so Immunity: Abjuration shouldn't work. Fuck, I can't remember how this works.

 

[NecroLord]

Man, the music in Kuldahar...

 

[Average Manatee]

Edit: Even with SCS, the inquisitor's dispel remains awesome, only certain mages bother to cast Spell Immunity: Abjuration.
Actually, his dispel is classified as an Innate Ability, so Immunity: Abjuration shouldn't work. Fuck, I can't remember how this works.

If you use Inquisitor in SCS without nerfing his dispel, then you spent 20 mins installing SCS only to then use a spell that turns it off. Kinda weird but OK.

 

[leuMOX]

Do you believe in God because you expect to be noticed by Him, as if you were some kind of anime schoolgirl?

No I believe in God because I am Him.
The doubt comes because I'm also a shitty limited/liminal human like the rest of you.

Here's a new think: how does an Omniscient Being know what it's like to be an Non-Omniscient being? I'll give you a hint, the past 38 years has been hell for me with you people...

But it's worth it.

Oh and I could give a shit if you believe me or not. I'm competing against guys who think their girls and loli anime pic avatars on this digital astral plane/internet; Nihilism made all you all weak and easy for me. May as well be myself online and go balls out, what do I have to lose? Respect/clout from disembodied pfps and bots?
I'd rather just be Based.

Also to the midwits, feel free to shit rate the post so you can identify yourselves to me. Makes my life easier to know which plebs to filter out. I love you guys but I don't have to like you. Treat me as a God and I will treat you likewise as gods. Treat me otherwise...

Just be grateful God is a cRPG fan
What can change the nature of a man? Theosis Chris. Godhood

How to spot a DM.

 

[NecroLord]

Edit: Even with SCS, the inquisitor's dispel remains awesome, only certain mages bother to cast Spell Immunity: Abjuration.
Actually, his dispel is classified as an Innate Ability, so Immunity: Abjuration shouldn't work. Fuck, I can't remember how this works.

If you use Inquisitor in SCS without nerfing his dispel, then you spent 20 mins installing SCS only to then use a spell that turns it off. Kinda weird but OK.

That's bullshit.
So, you mean to tell me that in order to properly play a mod which prides itself on its difficulty you have to nerf core abilities of certain classes? The Inquisitor's dispel is his main strength.
Ah, yes, the SCS "balance"...

 

[Average Manatee]

It's a recommended component for SCS:

Reduce the power of Inquisitors' Dispel Magic

Inquisitors have a very fast powerful Dispel Magic ability, which is cast at twice their level. In most bits of the game, this is usually much higher than the majority of spellcasting enemies. This component reduces the power of the Dispel a little; you can choose to use it at 1.5xlevel or at 1xlevel.

Given that the main advantage of SCS is mages being prebuffed so that they can last a few rounds before being chunked the instant a fighter looks at them, having overpowered dispel basically negates that.

 

[The Jester]

Anyone tried this?

Icewind Dale II - Special Edition​

 

[cretin]

Anyone tried this?

Icewind Dale II - Special Edition​

No and after reading the changes I don't think I ever will

 

[Red Hexapus]

Anyone tried this?

Icewind Dale II - Special Edition​

Yeah, i've been playing it recently and it's ok. There are some changes and additions that are weird, but on the other hand it's WeiDU, so you can choose which parts to be installed and which to be omitted.

 

[Average Manatee]

Looks reasonably OK. New items/Spells = good, IWD2 was badly lacking both. Obviously depends on how well they are balanced though. Some new abilities for weaker classes = good, Fighters for example had no reason to exist as a class past level 4.

Title is retarded though and makes it sound like something official or at least just a fixup rather than a full mod.

 

[Melcar]

Did they add 3D acceleration? I remember the lack of proper 3D acceleration caused all sorts of speed issues in the latter parts of the game.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Wasn't this part of that "Enhanced Edition" people were making for IWD2?