{"id":29727,"date":"2015-12-03T17:10:01","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T22:10:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=29727"},"modified":"2015-12-03T17:15:11","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T22:15:11","slug":"knights-of-the-old-republic-ep35-examining-cross-witnesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=29727","title":{"rendered":"Knights of the Old Republic EP35: Examining Cross Witnesses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FvyhZ5MuQo8\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=FvyhZ5MuQo8'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t have anything to say about this trial because I don&#8217;t remember it. So let me talk about a different trial in an unrelated game: Neverwinter Nights 2.<\/p>\n<p>At some point you have to do a trail for some reason that eludes me now. I remember really getting into it. There was a lot of ground to cover and I remember thinking how easy it would be to mess it up. At the time I wondered, &#8220;Huh. If I screwed this up, how would the game continue?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So then I won the trial and the other guy demanded a trial by combat. I&#8217;m sure if I&#8217;d bungled the case, my side would have demanded the same thing.  And then I realized I&#8217;d just wasted all my time doing things the Right Way, when it was all fated to come down to a stupid brawl no matter what I did. <\/p>\n<p>So then my monk was thrown into 1-vs-1 combat with a barbarian. I spent the whole time thinking, &#8220;Man, good thing I didn&#8217;t play as a rogue!&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>I was really pissed about being forced into combat. I felt like I&#8217;d put the work in, and I&#8217;d earned the right to skip this. It was a brutal fight. I died half a dozen times. It seemed like the other guy had a million hitpoints. Finally I noticed in the combat window it saying something about &#8220;This character is immune to damage at this time.&#8221; (I don&#8217;t remember the exact wording. In fact, most of this is probably wrong. It&#8217;s been a decade.) <\/p>\n<p>So I looked up the rules and found out that barbarians have a rage ability that lasts N rounds, and it&#8217;s literally impossible for them to die while in rage. Now, if I was running a game at the table, I would do some sort of sanity check on crap like this. &#8220;Okay, he can&#8217;t die while rage is going, but he&#8217;s experienced four times his hitpoints worth of damage. The rule says he can&#8217;t die, but this is ridiculous. He should be missing major parts of his anatomy by now. You know what? He&#8217;s crawling towards you and no longer able to fight.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So what I had to do was deal enough damage to kill him, and then run away from him until rage ended. I was so pissed. I beat him in court, I beat him in combat, and now I have to run around like a helpless coward until his bullshit times out? <\/p>\n<p>So what talky RPG&#8217;s have contrived trials where your violence expert ends up acting as an investigator \/ lawyer? Let&#8217;s see&#8230;<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Sunry&#8217;s trial here in KOTOR.\n<li>Whatever that trial was in NWN 2.\n<li>Saren&#8217;s trial in Mass Effect 1.\n<li>Wasn&#8217;t there one in Jade Empire? I can&#8217;t remember.\n<li>No, the bullshit &#8220;hearing&#8221; at the start of Mass Effect 3 doesn&#8217;t count.\n<li>I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;m forgetting some obvious ones.\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Link (YouTube) I don&#8217;t have anything to say about this trial because I don&#8217;t remember it. So let me talk about a different trial in an unrelated game: Neverwinter Nights 2. At some point you have to do a trail for some reason that eludes me now. I remember really getting into it. There was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[188],"tags":[84,513],"class_list":["post-29727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spoilerwarning","tag-bioware","tag-kotor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29727\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}