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Messages - Weeblie
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41
« on: September 25, 2008, 12:01:12 pm »
Dearest Sasha,
There are others in the progress of considering the extent of their aid in this matter, but who has yet not reached a definite conclusion of what their capabilities would be.
With warm embraces,
Alleina Shiante
Priestess of Ilsare
42
« on: September 25, 2008, 05:06:30 am »
The alignment system is much more complex than to say Good is Good and Evil is Evil. If the circumstances are not considered (i.e. the different parts of the circumstances are not weighted against each other), then you have some very serious conflicts. For example: "You are killing an innocent child (someone good)." vs "You are killing a dark elf." If one follows the "usual common sense" about the alignments used in layo itself, then there is a conflict. But strictling following the PHB guidelines, I agree that there are none (in this particular case). Because: Evil implies harming, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient or if it can be set up. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some malevolent deity or master. As for alignment points beind used as rewards. Yes... well... heh... indeed. I personally find them as an excellent tool to do that too. I'm more than agreeing on that Jennara deserves those points, but being good already, would you be very comfortable of being awarded good points for some vague "generally good behaviour" rather than the two much clearer cases of doing something good? Granted, the events she was awarded for most likely took months instead of minutes, but they were still very specific cases of "because of this, you got that". I consider the "pattern behaviour" to be expected to follow the "current alignment" of one's character and only use that analysis to do a shift if the "pattern alignment" is found to be greatly different from a character's "current alignment". Otherwise, it is the events that I think should be judge of a shift. It could be a short term event (running forward and killing the kind king)... or a long term one (making a deal with a Corathite high priestess in order to secure some large sum of money for yourself).
43
« on: September 24, 2008, 05:54:40 pm »
The only problem in this case is that there was three others dark elf guard, in the same place as we were. So the others could have  . "... so their ensured death would likely have been as a result of other dark elves snooping on the people doing this most strange act of compassion ..." :p
44
« on: September 24, 2008, 03:35:53 pm »
Some matters can just be debated so strongly... Politics... Religion... and now Alignments.
46
« on: September 24, 2008, 03:19:03 pm »
The old lady is not going to start screaming out "SURFACER! SURFACER!" and get a posse of deadly assassains to MURDER you for helping her. The dark elf would not have been able to scream that (unconcious?). In either case, they were out in the open for everyone to see, so their ensured death would likely have been as a result of other dark elves snooping on the people doing this most strange act of compassion, rather than the dying dark elf herself blowing their cover. Heh, almost the same thing, but not exactly the same sort of severity as you make of it. As I said earlier, I acknowledge that they could almost impossibly have actually helped the dark elf without things getting messy, but that does not excuse the no reaction at all, before and after. I didn't consider not helping the dark elf to warrant anything. But I did consider having no reaction to warrant the shift. This opinion is also shared by many others on the quest.
47
« on: September 24, 2008, 02:58:00 pm »
Once again, I completely disagree.
The alignment system is based upon that the closer you come to the edges, the more difficult will it be to sway your alignment further in that direction. It comes to a point when "what you did was expected of you".
An easy way to see why it is so? Well... otherwise, everyone would end up as 50/50, 100/0, 100/100, 0/100 or some other similar combo. Those with slight tendencies towards one direction would, after a short time, accumulate enough points to "bottom"/"roof" the axis.
48
« on: September 24, 2008, 02:53:43 pm »
Just because it's a dark elf in this case instead of an old lady does not mean that everything is suddenly changed.
It's a matter of weighting the two factors:
1. Evil Dark Elf being there.
2. No reaction or action at all, neither before nor after, despite someone being unconcious and bleeding to death on the ground.
I am weighting number 2 greater than number 1 and the sum to justify a shift.
The circumstances tells that while it's not necessary to actively aid the helpless person on the ground (which would be an action of good, but at a too great cost), no reaction at all was deemed too severe to be ignored.
49
« on: September 24, 2008, 02:44:39 pm »
Then, by your reasoning, it is completely fine to always do nothing, in order to "save" your alignment in a tricky situation.
Being a good character, you see a gang of people kicking an old lady on the ground? Quite obviously, your alignment do tell you to intervene... but oh... there is an alternative easy solution: I do nothing.
I'm sorry, but I am not bying that.
There are technically nothing as a neutral point, no. And neither would I ever award points for what I consider "alignment free" actions. The "neutral point" in this case is just a matter of saying "everyone above neutral was hit by an evil point, everyone below was left unchanged".
Edit: A short way of saying this is that I consider "doing nothing"/"no action" to also be an action that can be judged on the alignment system.
50
« on: September 24, 2008, 01:00:01 pm »
The US solders that liberated Dachau summarily executed the SS officers they found there. General Patton pardoned them. RL historical events are somewhat tricky to use as examples as it is really the winner that decides what's okay and what is not. If, for example, the Japanese suddenly had won the war against the US, I'm sure all the commanders for the US fleet of Strategic Bombers would have been trialed and found guilty (likely executed), along with all those who ordered the use of the two nuclear weapons. Karl Donitz was trialed and found guilty due to the use of unrestricted submarine warfare... which is not much different from what the US used on the pacific side (interestingily even stated so by the famous admiral Nimitz). In real life wars, everyone tend to lose, and there are no true "good" and "evil" side - everything is instead mixed in different shades of gray.  And evil act for a good reason (killing the Joker in cold blood, for example) is still an evil act... But the good act of saving those lives tends to balance it out. Indeed! But then, you are walking a very, very fine line. Any sort of miss-step and the evil might as well outweight the good.
51
« on: September 24, 2008, 11:11:20 am »
I have to disagree with this. Any one that has trained with a blade, knows the weak spots. It's not because its a broad sword that it can't be used to slash a throat in a swift pass, to move faster to an other opponent. Even longsword hit on a kidney would leave the opponent bleeding to death slowly. So it's not only assassins and rogues that would know that. The difference in the classes, skills and feats appart, is in the way it will be done. Fighter will go up front unless they need to be silent about it (which would be harder for them as they don't train in that way most of the time. While assassins and rogues will use the shadows and things to hide their approach to attack from the back or in ways that they wouldn't be seen. The ways Sneak Attack and Death Attack are described are based on that they have special "one hit, one kill" training while other normal people do not have the same knowledge. Closest you can come to that is probably weapon masters, in order to increase the critical threat range which is essentially also to hit "critical areas". The difference lays in that a crit is really only about striking against a "no-brainer" area. Aim whatever weapon you had against your opponents head? If you hit, of course it will hurt a lot. Practicing that is a good idea to get combat over quickly (and an option to lessen the "torture" of your victim). But to get training in that "four centimeters from the center of his chest, you will find a small gap between his ribs, easily allowing you to slip in and hit vital organs, in order to implement the said one hit, one kill policy"... that's something, per game definitions, reserved for sneaks. Training in the use of a weapon and training to use it in an assassination "kill directly" fashion are not the same. Combat is of course almost always about killing your opponent as fast as possible anyway and your arguments about learning about how to easier kill some creatures is also very valid. It's just that there are very few exclusive bunch of classes that are specialized in the "super rapid killing"-method.  But it doesn't matter overly much for this particular discussion, as you mentioned the exact point I wanted to get through with: Even longsword hit on a kidney would leave the opponent bleeding to death slowly.Which effectively means that hitting someone else with a weapon, regardless of type of weapon, cannot be the sole grounds to define "torture".
52
« on: September 24, 2008, 05:39:50 am »
Unless you are someone who truly knows all the weak spots of your target (i.e. you are assassin/rogue like), then a dagger in your hands is more to inflict a slow and painful death, and hence by your reasoning torture. If you want someone dead, then you should really only use a "real" weapon. Staffs? Definitely falling into the same category (slowly crushing every bone in your opponents body?). And because of this light definition of torture, you have really dropped a lot of people into the category of evil (torture is with no doubt an evil act). The dark elf was obviously not "torturing" anyone. She was after killing one of them for the disobidience. As simple as that. If one is to warrant good and evil points, then let it at least be for OPENLY evil and good acts. Um... no? That's as though saying "a PC should never die unless the player wants the PC to die" or "a quest should never fail unless the participants actively request that the quest should fail". Open acts are okay, but they shouldn't be the sole factor to define a character's alignment, if not for the fact that it would be far too "cheap", then for the fact that many of the LE characters would be auto-turned into good ones. The whole point of many shady characters is that they do not OPENLY perform evil acts. I see that you are still of the thinking that "if you are not good, then you are evil". But as I said earlier, that's not the case. Nor is it the case that most characters are good. In fact, the majority of the population is neither good nor evil, but rather neutral. Strong signs of self preservation... oh... isn't that one of those clear signs of being of a neutral alignment? Or perhaps even an evil one? General tendencies for a neutral character seem to be leaning towards good, when it is not a too much danger to be so. Seeing someone trip on the street? Sure, why not give them a hand to come back up? Perhaps someone else in the future would do just the same if the helper was the one tripping? That is how a good society looks like, but a good society does not mean that its inhabitants are an exclusive bunch of a good aligned flower-lovers. Someone smacks you on the cheek and you walk forth to embrace them? The act of "showing compassion to your enemies"? That's what I would consider an undisputable act of good... stupid and crazy, certainily. But good nonless. Likely not anything that warrants a shift, but then, the situation is so trivial so whatever you do (unless outright killing the offender) would not really warrant shifts of any kind. The lone act of "defending those you love"? Good action? Erh... no? Defending those that you care about is something that happens all across all the alignments and hence the act itself is really an alignment-free action (note: neutral != alignment-free). Circumstances is of course what's ultimately deciding for which side has the heavier weight. No risk and you, as a good character, performs some small act of good? That's expected of you. Huge risk and you as a good character performs some act of good? That might even be justifeable to warrant a good point award. A thief with a knife is rushing towards your family and you happen to have a gun in your hand? That sounds like a circumstance that would not really change your alignment. A thief with a gun is rushing towards your family and you happen to be unarmed? Hmmm... now we are talking... but because it's your family that's threatened, only a minor shift would be in order, I think. Must really have more info before one can decide. A thief with a gun is rushing towards some strangers and you happen to be unarmed? Aaah... now, that sounds like a heavily unselfish and strongly good act, if you were to intervene. Dark elven societies are evil-based ones and it was already clearly said outright that going in might change things. In fact, that's likely why there were so many who choosed to stay behind like Grohin; they recognised the "spiritual danger" they would put themselves into. More than ample of opportunities were given to change the neutral shift towards a "no shift". From what I saw, there was only two reasons for why things happened as they did (or didn't happen): 1. The affected players did not recognise the alignment danger they were in and therefore did nothing to prevent it. 2. The affected players did recognise the alignment danger they were in but choosed to do nothing to prevent it. 3. Either of the above but also added that they perhaps did not think alignment shifts would ever be handed out for these sort of things. Once again, in the end, it is a judgement call. In this case, it was simply decided that all the events leading up to this and the reactions afterwards did not warrant a dismissal of not handing out a single point of neutral, as watching someone take minutes or even an hour to bleed to death without any sort of reactions, regardless if the victim is a dark elf or not, is just something not in the spirit of being good. Not much reaction was needed, and neither did the reactions have to be obvious for the bypassers. Angela's actions were more than enough to "deflect" the alignment shift, but ironically, she was not touched by the neutral shift anyway (due to her already neutral alignment on the good/evil axis). Edit: Oh, and... another extraordinary important aspect. Alignments are not defined by what others think about you, or what you think of yourself. While being an IC matter, alignments are defined in an OOC fashion. No "you are not my friend, and therefore you are evil" or "because I don't know of all the acrocities you have done, you are evil in my eyes".
53
« on: September 23, 2008, 05:13:40 pm »
I think you have missed the point of the evaluation of that event altogther, mixed with a misunderstanding of how it unfold. No torture was involved what so ever. And the examples you give are somewhat exaggerated. It is as though I would give an example of: "A child runs towards you with a food-knife and tries to stab it into your leg. You feel threatened as you sit there while drinking your jar of ale, and lashes out with your longsword at his throat. Unfortunately, you do not kill him directly, but instead he is left bleeding on the ground. You do not as much as give him a second glance, but rather continue your drink while it's still cold."The alignment system is not rigid and neither is it black or white. Being neutral is also a fundamentally important aspect of it. Generalising it or to make up rigid guidelines is extraordinary difficult... in fact, I would say it's not even feasible nor desireable, as it would then be far too easy to "walk the line". So, in the end, it boils down to a judgement call. Only in the most extreme cases can any action truly have a universal agreement on what is good and what is evil. ps. Yes... using a child in an example is somewhat as a kick under the belt, heh.
54
« on: September 22, 2008, 02:37:21 pm »
*The letter, while being adressed to Connor, is sent to all.*
Connor,
I am curious to what you will do the next time he uses such an ultimatum?
"Oh... here is some more poison. Give it to this other dwarf, or I will kill this child. Don't try to capture me, because if you do, the rest of the children will die.".
Will you be the one delivering the poison to the next victim then? And the one after?
I certainily am not.
He can keep on doing this forever, as long as he remains alive. For every child he releases to you, he can kidnap two others. Which - I am sure - you also have realised.
ps. This whicked man of course holds his words. There are, after all, no reason for him not to.
- Alleina
55
« on: September 20, 2008, 04:43:36 am »
In fact, it is not possible to kill the bear, as it seems to be toggled as invurlnable.
56
« on: September 16, 2008, 03:55:23 pm »
I will only answer the second question, and to be absolutely certain, you probably have to wait for Dorg or someone more official to shime in. Second question: CNR will not be replanted.
57
« on: September 09, 2008, 06:30:30 pm »
Dwarf appearance due to double-dismount (Angela).
Me and Alantha having "horse" as footstep sound. We didn't really do anything more than just to mount and dismount. Angela had this issue too, but for some weird reason, it got "fixed" after the double-dismount.
58
« on: September 09, 2008, 05:39:50 pm »
It depends a little bit on how much we are using the default Bioware horse scripts. The zero-ing out might in fact be unrelated to the second dismount (more on that later).
I believe a normal mount/dismount cycle should look like the following (assume that STUFF = "phenotype, appearance, footsteps and other stuff"):
1. PC's current STUFF is stored onto variables on the creature skin (lets call it OLD_STUFF).
2. PC changes STUFF to MOUNTED_STUFF (mounts).
3. PC takes a ride.
4. OLD_STUFF is read from the variables on the creature skin.
5. PC restores STUFF to OLD_STUFF (dismounts).
6. OLD_STUFF is cleared from the creature skin (I'm not 100% sure about this step).
A potential double-dismount would give the following:
7. OLD_STUFF is read from the non-existing variables on the creature skin. Non-existing variables always return a value of 0 (hence the "zero-ing").
8. PC "restores" STUFF to OLD_STUFF (dismounts). I.e. PC gets a dwarf (0) appearance, phenotype 0, footprints 0, etc.
Now, I cannot confirm that step 6 actually happens. What do can happen is:
1. PC's current STUFF is stored onto variables on the creature skin (lets call it OLD_STUFF).
2. PC changes STUFF to MOUNTED_STUFF (mounts).
3. PC takes a ride.
4. Original creature skin is destroyed (and a new one created) by our old scripts. Like... Duelist weapon toggling? Subrace relogging (potential race condition on that one)? Dying while riding a horse?
5. OLD_STUFF is read from the non-existing variables on the creature skin. Non-existing variables always return a value of 0 (hence the "zero-ing").
6. PC "restores" STUFF to OLD_STUFF (dismounts). I.e. PC gets a dwarf (0) appearance, phenotype 0, footprints 0, etc.
While the dwarf appearance thing has only been witnessed once so far (with Angela doing a double-dismount), both me and Alantha has been affected by that even though we are dismounted, we have the "horse footstep" sound.
59
« on: September 08, 2008, 11:56:39 am »
Fixed now!
60
« on: September 05, 2008, 01:46:31 pm »
NWN works flawlessly on my Vista 64-bit with an ATi Radeon 4870 card.
Only thing of note is that unless you have a ASUS Xonar D2/D2X (and perhaps a few other high end sound cards), you may -not- enable EAX/3D/stuff under the sound settings or you will have some extraordinary weird "lag".
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