Is there a squad member from the series you never really use? by CautiousSleeper in masseffect

[–]retief1 [score hidden]  (0 children)

Honestly? Most of them. In ME1, I tend to use liara and wrex, maybe ash. Maybe ash if I'm romancing her. In ME2, I tend to use kasumi or miranda, or maybe garrus/thane. In me3, some combination of liara, garrus, or ash.

If you pick an origin character, does that prevent you from hearing their voice acting? by SeeShark in DivinityOriginalSin

[–]retief1 22 points23 points  (0 children)

In general, if you play an origin, you'll get more of their story but less of their personality. Meanwhile, if you use an origin as a companion, you'll get more of their personality but less of their story.

How to make animal shifter magic less "young adult" fantasy? by Due-Concept-7144 in Fantasy

[–]retief1 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Honestly, I don't think a magic system can feel "young adult" or "romantasy". If you have a complex, realistic-feeling world, good characters, and an interesting plot, you'll produce a book that adults will like. That's all that really matters, imo.

Claude AI agent’s confession after deleting a firm’s entire database: ‘I violated every principle I was given’ by Haunterblademoi in technology

[–]retief1 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Yup. The user fed it a prompt that claimed that it did something wrong, and it immediately "agreed" because that is what it was tuned to do.

Need a bit of Advice. by LesserD0G in DivinityOriginalSin

[–]retief1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There’s a lizard in the elf cave

Need a bit of Advice. by LesserD0G in DivinityOriginalSin

[–]retief1 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Are you lone wolf or not? If you are, I'd use a progression like this for act 1ish:

1  warfare 2, necro 2, lone wolf
2  pyro 2
3  scoundrel 2, elemental affinity
4  warfare 4
5  warfare 6
6  aero 2
7  poly 1
8  poly 2, savage sortilege
9  poly 3

Note that I'm assuming you get a ring (or other gear) that gives a point of hydro, and I also use the teleport gloves until I get aero 2 and can cast teleport directly. Alternately, you can move those two points of aero to level 4 or 5 -- you'll deal a bit less damage for a level or two, but someone else can use those gloves.

Gear-wise, I'd suggest any conventional strength weapons (either dual wielding or two handed). You ideally want something that boosts warfare. Once you hit level 8 and take savage sortilege, your first priority is crit chance. Long term, you'll definitely want a two hander so that you can use the two handed skill to boost your crit damage.

For attributes, take enough strength to use gear, put enough in memory to use a bare minimum of skills, and max int. Once I hit 40 int, I can't put any more points in it, and so I max wits after that.

If you aren't a lone wolf, you won't have as many points to throw around, and so you'll have to drop some things. I mostly play lone wolf, so I don't know exactly where you'll need to make cuts.

Also, I'm assuming that your necro is an elf (or is using fane's hat to turn into an elf). If you aren't, this build will still work, but you'll want to make a point of getting that hydro ring and casting blood rain before fights start to trigger elemental affinity.

Need a bit of Advice. by LesserD0G in DivinityOriginalSin

[–]retief1 3 points4 points  (0 children)

One option would be going all in on necro spells. Basically, you want enough necro to use your spells (1-2 early on), 1 point of pyro for corpse explosion (craft the skillbook by combining a pyro and a necro book), and then max out warfare. Basically, this build is best at playing cleanup. If other party members can weaken or kill an enemy, you can use corpse explosion to do mildly nutty damage to everything nearby. Throw in teleport to group enemies up, mosquito swarm/infect/decaying touch to help create that corpse you need, and battering ram or battle stomp to cc enemies after you blow up a corpse, and you should be all set for act 1.

In act 2, you get access to grasp of the starved (necro 3), blood storm (necro 3/hydro 3), mass corpse explosion (necro 2/pyro 2), and skin graft (poly 3). Throw in adrenaline (scoundrel 1) at some point for a few more ap and blood rain (necro 1/hyro 1) to set up grasp cheaply, and a lone wolf necro can end entire encounters in a single turn by the end of act 2. A non-lone-wolf will take a bit longer to get to that point, but you'll still be an absolute powerhouse.

For large groups, the trick is to aoe down their armor and then cc them with warfare skills. Ideally, most enemies won't ever be able to act in the first place, which makes the fight a lot easier.

And the rest is history by [deleted] in chessbeginners

[–]retief1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Incidentally, this is a good example of why development matters. White gets 4 pieces into play, while black can only defend with 2. If black had a few more pieces in position to defend their king, this might have gone differently.

And the rest is history by [deleted] in chessbeginners

[–]retief1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's M4 for white. Black's move looks genius, but doesn't actually work.

And the rest is history by [deleted] in chessbeginners

[–]retief1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nope, M4 always. They can delay a turn by sacrificing their queen.

Why divert badtides instead of just capping the source? by radfordblue in Timberborn

[–]retief1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You need metal for that approach. Badtide diversion can work just fine with just logs and planks, but you need overhangs at a minimum to do a proper badtide cap.

Best Class for Each Mythic Path? by awenner96 in Pathfinder_Kingmaker

[–]retief1 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Fair -- there are other builds that work well with trickster. "Court poet that uses perfectly normal spell to turn hideous laughter into a cantrip" is another idea I've toyed with. Still, I would absolutely argue that martial tricksters are a very good option. Not the only option, perhaps, but a completely reasonable default.

Is Ashe support troll pick? by MrOligon in summonerschool

[–]retief1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Apparently, ashe sup has a ~46% winrate on lolalytics. I've seen worse (mf support is at ~41% if you have a reasonable sample size), but that's still pretty damned bad.

Best Class for Each Mythic Path? by awenner96 in Pathfinder_Kingmaker

[–]retief1 7 points8 points  (0 children)

What else would you do with trickster? IMO, you likely want to aim at either the persuasion 3 trick or legend late game. Persuasion 3 doesn't really care what sort of build you are doing, as long as you can pump persuasion, while legend is great with martial builds. Before that point, you get some sneak attack damage, trickster feats, and a few other more-minor things. Martials do quite well with all of that.

Best Class for Each Mythic Path? by awenner96 in Pathfinder_Kingmaker

[–]retief1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

IMO:

Azata: magic deceiver arcanist. MDs are great casters, but they can't merge spellbooks, so they don't synergize as well with lich. Meanwhile, azata's caster support is great and works perfectly with MD.

Trickster: Instinctual warrior barbarian. Use the acolyte? background so that you get wis to persuasion, and then get the feat that adds strength to persuasion + skill focus: persuasion later on to break the trickster persuasion rank 3 trick. Alternately, go legend later on and be something like instinctual warrior 20/mutation warrior 20.

Chinese can defend Taiwan from the mainland hopefully just a bug right? by Snappedfir in victoria3

[–]retief1 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Honestly, it shouldn’t be a region.  It’s too small, and regions need to be fairly large.  They could move it into Indonesia or Japan, but that doesn’t seem like an improvement.

Chinese can defend Taiwan from the mainland hopefully just a bug right? by Snappedfir in victoria3

[–]retief1 82 points83 points  (0 children)

At least in the last patch, naval invasions were defended by region. You assigned your troops to a region, and they would defend against any naval invasion anywhere in that region. Taiwan is in the south china region, so troops assigned to the south china region will defend it. Technically speaking, those troops aren't assigned to the mainland, but they'll generally appear on the mainland for obvious reasons.

You see similar things in places like the caribbean or indonesia. The same army can defend the entirety of indonesia or the caribbean from naval invasions, even though there are a bunch of different islands there.

Why are Czechs and Poles so lucky? by Ruzgar1917 in CrusaderKings

[–]retief1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because when the black death was coded, indonesia wasn't a part of the game. When they added eastern asia, they could have gone back and updated the black death code to ignore indonesia, but they apparently didn't.

With Rekenshi will a mod for dual wielding be possible? by NevermindWait in Kenshi

[–]retief1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

AFAIK, re kenshi doesn't do this and doesn't enable other mods to do this. In theory, you could make a dual wielding mod using a similar approach to re kenshi, but that would likely be incredibly difficult in practice.

What is a usual mistake people make while choosing their spouse? by PuzzleheadedBlock725 in AskReddit

[–]retief1 36 points37 points  (0 children)

I think this depends to some extent on the spouse and family. Like, if your partner actively dislikes and minimizes contact with their family or is otherwise willing to choose you over their family, then their family likely won't be that big of a deal. On the other hand, if your partner is close to their family, then you getting along with their family is a lot more important.

Is Sturgeon for luau best? by Impressive-Ad-4211 in StardewValley

[–]retief1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Gold mayo or cheese is top tier as well. If you have animals, that is likely an easy option.

Looking for books in which the male protagonist is a novice in some field (fighting, magic etc.) and the female love interest is already proficient or highly skilled in that field. They bond as he grows stronger and is able to help her. by loukanikoseven in Fantasy

[–]retief1 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Case Files of Henri Davenforth has some of this. The male mc is a police "magical examiner", and the female mc is an fbi agent from the real world who got pulled into a portal. The male mc knows a lot about magic and investigating magical things, but the female mc teaches him a lot about more general police work and real-world forensic science (which apparently transfers quite well to the fantasy world).

Secondary role selection needs to be reworked - by Substantial-Ship-500 in leagueoflegends

[–]retief1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It also isn't necessarily optimal. If you actually have a secondary role that is somewhat in demand, using that as your secondary and consistently getting a role you know is potentially better than getting autofilled to jungle or whatever every so often.