Prestige Classes of the Old Republic

Wizards of the Coast is running an article on their site giving d20 stats for prestige classes used in Knights of the Old Republic II. If you've been dying to make a Dark Side Assassin, then, you've finally got the excuse. From the article: "Dark side assassins were originally trained by the Sith to be the ultimate hunters. The assassins' unique abilities served the Sith in their battle against the Jedi. After the Battle of Ruusan and the scattering of the Sith forces, this changed. Dark side assassins became less common as the Sith went into hiding, but their deadly purpose remained -- to destroy the Jedi."

Comments

Hmm...

[Ykant]

Given the number of reponses to this news item, I'd guess that no one cares at this point... guess the game got nailed by the sophomore curse after all.

Re:Hmm...

[Kinryuu]

The problem isn't a lack of people who bought the game. (The game has done relatively well, sales-wise.) The problem is the lack of people who bought KoTOR II and also play Wizards of the Coast's d20 Star Wars.

Out of the dozen or so people who I know have played KoTOR II, only two others besides myself also play the d20 RPG. Also, WotC's support for d20 Star Wars has been dwindling and tapering off for some time.

And it looks like it's only getting worse. Rumor is that WotC has either lost, or decided not to renew the Star Wars RPG license. No new books have been announced or released since June of last year. This is really odd considering a new Star Wars movie is 3 weeks away, and WotC has had a major release planned around the time both Ep. I and II came to theaters. So, my gaming group has been migrating back to the d6 rules. They're better written, anyway.

Why bother?

[aurum42]

"The Sith Lords" was a promising but horribly flawed game, with very little polish and a cut ending. The game was apparently made on a very tight schedule, and essentially the last 25% of the game is simply not there, which is a major disservice to the people who coughed up the cash for the game. See this article, for instance. Until Obsidian/Lucas Arts add a major patch which adds content to the end-game, it's not worth the time investment. It's a pity, since the game has some very good moments, and clearly, at least some of the designers put a lot of thought and effort into what they were doing.

There are also some community efforts to polish up the game and fix bugs and restore at least some of the cut content, but without the voiceovers and cut scenes and so on, I'm sure it will be a tough task.

Re:Why bother?

[Kidbro]

[ SNIP: Long rant about how SL is unfinished ]

To paraphrase our dear Exile: "Somewhere in that long rant of yours, you forgot the part about how this affects the topic of TFA" ;)

This is primarily about the Pen & Paper RPG, not the computer RPG.

Just because the computer game was unfinished (a fact that nobody argues), some of the concepts from it may still be cool to re-use in the P&P RPG. And there are several cool concepts in SL.

Re:Why bother?

[screwballicus]

In keeping with posts by developers on the Obsidian Forums, it seems that a proposal for a content patch was made and rejected by Lucasarts for any number of predictable reasons.

The posts on this topic by John Morgan and Chris Avellone (though more particularly by the prior) have since been deleted from the Obsidian forums, presumably due to their controversial nature and their having spurred fan frustration. Obsidian is careful about not directing fan aggression against Lucasarts and thereby burning their bridges. Providing evidence of their own differences with Lucasarts (e.g., desire to actually finish the game as opposed to releasing it incomplete for Christmas sales) has tended to fuel the Lucasarts-hate. And so posts which give these emotions factual substance of tended to be erased.

There are any number of good reasons a content patch will not happen. Most crucial is that the originally planned ending was completely and totally different from the one that went to press, and Lucasarts is unlikely to permit the development of circumstantially not at all similar endings to the game. Another is that ending material was never finished (scripts, textures, models, you name it) and it looks like voice acting wasn't complete for the planned ending either. They aren't going to call in not only developers but all the voice actors too, again, just for a patch. The other is that coordination of an absolutely massive Xbox patch to recreate a completely new ending chapter to the game on a game which isn't Live! enabled and doesn't acknowledge support for downloadable content is highly improbable.

Re:Why bother?

[aurum42]

You're right - in my frustration with this game, I neglected to include something about the mechanics of the classes in my not-so-long rant, which would've made my post more germane. But I still think the post is of interest to anyone who is considering buying the game, so I assert that it is not irrelevant.

How about this? For some inexplicable reason, the developers of TSL erased one key difference between the three non-prestige Jedi classes (Guardian, Consular and Sentinel), and this (as far as I know) carries over to the prestige classes. All classes apparently receive the same "base attack bonus" (a measure of your character's ability to hit an opponent) increment per-level, which was one fairly major differentiator between the classes in the original game. So, if you're making a pen and paper character, you may wish to rethink this weird decision, and perhaps give your weapon masters a bigger bonus, or scale down the bonus for the other characters. Also, the implementations of some of the prestige class powers in the game are buggy (the "Fury" ability of the sith marauder was, I believe), so if you're basing your P&P character on the effectiveness of your in-game character, you may want to keep that in mind. There were also some very questionable implementations of basic combat mechanics (defense, for instance, if you look in the message log for a breakdown of the automatic calculations), so that's another thing to keep in mind.

Re:Why bother?

[IorDMUX]

KOTOR II,
Final Fantasy VII,

In my book, the most unfulfilling endings of all time. Anybody have anything else for the list?

Re:Why bother?

[IorDMUX]

Sadly, the big companies and their lawyers are often quite unhappy about these community efforts to 'restore' games that the fans love/loved.

Remeber the cease and desist order to the Chrono Resurrection project?

Re:Why bother?

[Momoru]

I've found most endings of RPGs (and other games) these days to be quite a let down...my fav endings are still FF2 (USA), and Secret of Mana, because they go back and visit all the random people you met along the way afterwards, and the ending lasts a few minutes, unlike most new games which just give a slightly extended computer rendered cut scene with explosions and what not

Re:Why bother?

[DeVryGuy23]

Go out and get yourself a copy of earthbound. You actually get to travel the entire game world again and talk to everyone you want to.

Flawed Reasoning

[JackBuckley]

It may also be that anyone who cares is still asleep. Remember, it generally takes longer for daylight to get into the basement through those little windows....

C'mon, people...

[Bob Cat - NYMPHS]

Get a life!

Re:C'mon, people...

[chris411]

Yeah! Stop posting on Slashdot!