Mara, I’m astonished – has it really taken us 10 pages of comments before you suggested better ways for me to integrate POISON into the game?
If a Theurge ingested a fast-acting poison, s/he would have to have extremely good knowledge of the workings of human biology to cure the poison before death. In terms of large-scale battlefield use of poisons e.g. gases, I’ll think more on the specifics of what alchemy (assisted by Theurgy) might have come up with.
Similarly, while Theurgy does seem to lend itself to bioweapons, in a gameworld where humorism genuinely explains most disease, I need to figure out quite how they would work.
@817819, absolutely. And if you could get close enough to the Theurge before they sensed the powder, they’d not be able to blow you up without a significant risk of killing themselves in the hard-to-control explosion. Of course, there are other ways they could kill you if they had enough blood to hand.
But yes, a rogue Theurge plus miner’s powder could lead to some interesting tactics.
@Havenstone lol who said i needed them to survive?
EDIT: or wanted them to which bring me to my next question is it necessary for a pearson who gives blood for theurgy to be killed in the process?
@Havenstone eh i was thinking in poison before but i was more focus in babies. I have to
attract more nobles, before eliminated half of population. poisoning water supply has to use delicacy and center in theurgy zones first. in small populations and forts could be powerful.
Another good use could be spread a virulent illness using rats and caused the evil god of theurgy from the illness. A gas could surprise them first time enough to allow let they soldiers indefensible or better destroy all the blood reserves
@817819, the ritual of sacrifice (including the death of the person concerned) is supposedly essential to turning normal blood into aetherial blood. That’s part of what makes people so afraid of Goetes… if they aren’t using Harrowers, what kind of obscene sacrifices must they carrying out to get their power? Since the refinement process is a sacred secret, though, you have no idea of why this would be the case. And if you were caught asking the question, you’d be punished for sacrilege and/or sedition.
I wonder how the ritual goes. It has to be complex if you can’t do it on your own. Speaking of new I managed to go a whole week without asking up late missing the bus and missing my first class of the day woot!
I don’t recall it ever being said that you can’t do the ritual on your own, just that you don’t know how to do it. It’s a Karagond state secret, and a major key to their dominance.
I meant create the blood that the Theurges use on your own. The ritual you could prolly do if you knew how, just not the mechanics of how to make the blood to use in it.
I ran through the game a couple of times and I have to say I really liked it. It is a well-written story, however, I don’t know if it’s been mentioned before, I found that the stats, as it currently stands, are unbalanced. As it stands, if you choose combat as your primary stat, you have little chance of making through the winter intact unless you choose to send away something like 200 followers. And really, unless you choose charisma as your primary stat, there’s little you can do to avoid anarchy. I think that you should have a way of succeeding in most actions in the game regardless of what you chose at the beginning, depending on how you use your strengths. This is especially the case since you are a leader and being a leader should be all about how you can use not only your own strengths but the strengths of your followers to their utmost. Otherwise, what’s the point of saving special characters like Elery? For example, when going to ask for supplies from other helots but lacking in personal charisma, why couldn’t you either bring Bredan along or simply send him/her out to lead the mission. By all means make it not as successful as if you went yourself as a charismatic leader but at least it shouldn’t be a total disaster as it would be if you went as your charmless self. Likewise, maybe Elery (I actually haven’t seen her in any useful capacity as of yet, same with Radmar) can be used to help you plan your attack on the Alastor garrisons if your character isn’t too great at tactics.
Thanks, @hahaha01357 – really grateful for the feedback!
With combat as your top stat, I think you’ll find that you’re actually very well equipped to make it through the winter intact… as long as you’re happy to raid where the wealth is, i.e. nobles and merchants. If you’re not willing to do that, then yes, you face harder choices. There’s a cost to being exceptionally moral (or pursuing a strategy that’s inclusive of the wealth-holders of Shayard – whatever it is that keeps you from choosing all-out banditry).
Similarly, one of the themes of the game series is that overturning an old social order without creating lots of anarchy is hard. Charisma gives you an advantage in keeping anarchy low, while making it harder for you to win some key battles. Hopefully this balance will become a bit clearer when the first game is complete, as well as in the sequels.
I definitely agree that at the moment, Ch 2 doesn’t allow you to make enough use of the strengths of your followers. The game is still evolving from my initial, much simpler version (where Zvad was automatically your deputy, and Radmar, Elery, and even Breden played a more limited role) to one where the helot characters are better fleshed out. One of the next steps in that will be changing the raiding options so you can benefit more from followers other than Zvad.
It’s always been a sticking point for me when games have moral choices that don’t tempt me. I’m not a goody two shoes, and I’m not perfect - but I’m human and feel guilt and remorse - unless I’m really going to benefit from it (or want a different story), I’m going to find it hard to kill person_x after defeating them, instead of letting them go.
I think Fable and (arguably) Mass Effect are quite bad for this, I never at any point felt tempted to do an evil or ‘renegade’ play-through for either of them.
Knights of the Old Republic however, oh man, that NAILED it.
Trying to do a pure good playthrough is quite difficult, there are an endless number of evil choices that make things so much easier and more profitable that I did find myself slipping a few times, it’s both a horrifying and yet wonderful feeling.
But more importantly, it’s realistic. Being cruel is easy, being good is hard, very hard.
And it’s not so much good or evil either, it might simply be a matter of the lesser of two evils. Raid innocent villages for food so your army (fighting for a “righteous cause”) can fight on, or risk losing half your army to starvation and losing the war - which’ll end badly for those villages anyway?
Im don’t feel sincerely any moral issue in this games i don’t attack nobles or merchants heck i probably don’t use a weapon. I play the charismatic ruler all time i know that can be continue this way . Don’t worry my helots scum are totally prescindible.
And about fable and bioware games i don’t find any reason to play as q good character is more boring i try to do a paragon shep in Mass effect 1 and i end terribly tired like the second hour and left the game by the way you could achieve same being good than evil. But i hope this game has consequences like @CJW says for once Im being god and pacifist >:) poor helots they don’t know that they probably changing a oppressive regime for other more local but i probably stop harrowing but i have to invent another method to repress people like Stalin did or Robespiere all revolutions end in a bloodshed
@Havenstone
Okay, I see where you’re going with this. Another question I’m wondering is if the stats of your rebels (their morale and combat effectiveness) are tracked? Did I miss it on the stat screen? Also, I noticed that the choice to say you’ve let a helot die was present regardless of whether or not you actually did. Is that intentional?
Morale is tracked behind the scenes; you periodically get informed of how morale is doing in the narrative, not through a steadily updated number on your stat screen.
Good point on the “let a helot die” – I’ll have another look at how well that fits with your different choices.
Morale in English means how happy your helots are.? Sorry for question in Spanish morale an morality is written with the same word, moral . The text says my 50guys are happy an confident
@stsword thanks , I decided I prefer less helots like 50 that’s why I never stop harrowing at fir i try move my fellow aristocrats i now that i would suck in battles but my Mara would try to ti use more subtle methods like treason manipulation and… Say with me Poison.
As promised a month ago, I’ve added a couple new Prologue options. New and exciting ways to traumatize an eleven year-old and establish your wretched relationship with your dad… this time with extra religion and nationalism!
The new prologues aren’t integrated with anything else yet – I’d like some feedback on how well they stand alone before I start changing anything in subsequent chapters. So if you have the time…
I find the “three year old self” jarring. A three year old doesn’t think those sorts of thoughts. It feels at odds with the eloquence and understanding and explanations surrounding it. Just younger would suffice for me, without specifying the age, since I do like the rest of that page.
I like the religious path, it was compelling. I liked how I finally got to meet my mother, and that my father is a jerk.
It was strange to find out we’d just lost my mother, without something explaining how. Without some act from Olynna. Maybe I missed the mention?
I felt like there should be the option to cry out, to try and stop the beating, or even to pray. Even if it involves having someone grab me and drag me away, to stop me interfering.
Oh that last section where Zebed explains compassion is a nice bookend to the vignette.
I would have thought I’d have liked the path with the jongler better, that’s usually what draws me but it didn’t today. I may have just found Olynna more compelling.
I think part of my problem was it didn’t feel that interactive. I was mostly just watching things happen with no ability to influence, or even seem to influence it. I suppose that could be said to be the same with the religious path, but I didn’t feel it was that way there.
I did like the small mention of my mother, but I preferred the interaction with her, and with my father in the religious route.
