fangGWJ

You do realize that warriors heal small amounts of stamina automatically and IMHO the best racial bonus is the moon godlike that heals some when reaching 75%, 50% and 25% stamina, again automatically?

Because we start at level 5 instead of 1 I don't feel like we can accurately say what effect no combat xp has on the experience. However, I do have some concerns that the sporadic brutality of combat, even on easy, is making combat much less fun. And it isn't necessarily that you party members die or the stamina/wounds system, which I like a lot. I think it is that you accumulate wounds way too quickly. Often you accumulate them side by side with stamina loss which equals game over incredibly (far too) quickly. There really isn't a choice on whether to rest or risk one more battle to try and get better mileage out of your characters between rests. You rest, period and sometimes after single non boss encounters. (on easy)

I love the Diablo 3 failed comments... It failed to the tune of 20 million copies. I hope beyond hope PoE fails just as much! I won't say that D3 doesn't have variety issues, even currently. However, the fact that they keep pushing that lack of variety to higher and higher difficulties and much later in the uber high end game means to me they are succeeding at working the problem. I.E. it was one thing when people bitched about lack of variety in Diablo 3 at level 25 on normal difficulty. But now the complaints are more muted and don't occur until level 70 with 100 paragon levels on torment diffuclty 4+. And to obsidian's credit, there are several nice conversation options/uses for resolve. (and perhaps perception?) My biggest problem is the crashes/stalls on loading and leveling up. Plus, while I understand and support the reasoning for no combat xp, the fact that the combat can be so sporadically brutal even on easy begs for some sort of compensation and risks combat being less fun. And if combat is less/not fun, then classes, stats and party composition matters even less.

They should just give them some encounter powers or things like an aura. It would be neat if the aura was reversed where instead of having allies or foes in the area of effect to provide benefit, it should provide a bonus if there are no enemies within the area of effect. (for wizards... it could do something like provide a damage bonus or elemental effect on weapons)

The upside potential for this game is so high. It is really capturing the nostalgia without a lot of the clunk headaches in the UI. The change in starter equipment based upon "faction" is terrific as well. I had originally questioned the decision to go the 2.5d route but the game is flat out gorgeous!

Cannot wait for this. I have fired up IWD 1+2 to try and curb the anticipation. It is not working at all. I am scrambling trying to remember all the rules for 2e for IWD. I am wracking my brain trying to remember all the tucked away quests in both games. And, I have horrible altitis with barely making it past the prologue in both games.

Well things like the god touched race and wizards familiars sounded a lot like "demons" to me. And when one race is anthropomorthic fish or sea creatures, and soul wells/tornados demons don't sound like such a big stretch.

Never thought I would get such hostility/ridicule for suggesting ranged capable animals in a fantasy game with spells and demons. Especially since there are plenty of animals other than monkeys that fling projectiles at you or use tools. Even silly little squirrels can be down right nasty and territorial throwing rocks, branches, and pine cones at you. Otters use rocks to break open shells to get their food. And raccoons are quite crafty. Plus many games have had swooping birds as sort of a boomerang style attack. Insect swarms and slithering snakes comes to mind. Oh and it is not like we haven't seen spine/needle shooting porupine type creatures in fantasy RPG's before. *shrugs*

One other thing I am sure they have on their mind is class collaboration with status effects. This seems really well done in Divinity Original Sin with elemental effects but was also used in Dragon Age 2 with status effects like knocked down, dazed, weakened, bleeding, etc. One of the benefits of this is that it lessens the need for every class to be on par in damage capability plus you don't also have to have dedicated support classes that almost always break boss encounters or are nerfed into uselessness. Classes can then follow a theme and that theme will dictate what status effects they offer to the party or are prone too. If this can somehow tie into the stat system like the afforementioned increased AoE from INT, say that WILL or the equivalent offers bonuses to "weaken", PER offers bonuses to "dazed" and DEX offers bonuses to "slowed", it will open up a lot of interesting character builds. Perhaps weapon types can contribute to status effects as well. Like a spear should certainly give bonuses to weaken and slow because well aimed spear attacks maim. That would make an awesome fighter based on WILL, INT and DEX with bare minimum STR that would be a master of AoE weaken and slow =)

This is an outstanding idea. There were several times I essentially kited with my whole party to thin the mob in the infinity engine games. Or range focus fired on the enemy mages because if you waited to slog through the melee underlings to get to even just one caster, that caster wiped your party in 1-2 rounds. If you could also bind it to a key that would be great.

Yes, yes, yes please offer helmet hiding as an option. Or please add cosmetic "costume" options for the visible equipment slots. At some future date, offering a Diablo 3 style transmog system would be great too!

One of the most interesting races for me so far is the aquatic one. I am wondering though if they are humanoid with gills or more murlock like or perhaps there are sliders with humanoid to murlock at the extremes? I also really like the sub race additions to D&D and if there were no boring stock races, the excessive xp/leveling penalties could be diminished.

One of the first things I was compelled to do upon reading class descriptions is make a dual wielding rods/scepters/wands wizard for the natural AOE damage when using implements (rods/wands/scepters). The other things was to see how good exploiting INT was for non caster classes to increase AOE damage with guns/bows or two handed weapons. Are there throwing weapons? I hope there is a talent to allow rangers and rogues to use some abilities with implements. Also a plate wearing grimoire smacking wizard sounds too awesome. But I am already letting my inner altoholic get the better of me!

I really hope that Rangers get animal companions with ranged attacks. Or perhaps there will be some sort of stance system where if you hold you animal close to you and don't have them attack, you can get special bonuses. I guess it will seem a bit like the Wizard familiars. And since wizards, chanters and priests can cast melee summons, rangers should get familiars too =)

I really like the idea that the game can be completed in whole or in part by a single character. I myself really loved creating parties of 2 druids or 2 animate dead using clerics and seeing how far I could get in Icewind Dale 2. One thing that will help this is if in the future they allow multiclassing. Here are some other options this would benefit from: I would love to see an option (in the future of course) to purposefully maim a character (in game or at character create) to gain further benefits/trade-offs for your character. Like if you lose a hand, you can replace it with a metal or wood prosthetic that acts like an offhand weapon without penalty. But of course the trade-off is that you can't equip shields or cast higher level spells (that with a lore based excuse requires fingers on both hands to cast as a possibility) Or perhaps you have a prosthetic leg that slows your movement by a percentage permanently but is immune to roots and perhaps is more succeptable to knock downs and allows a special attack or automatic riposte when knocked down. If you choose not to got with the limb replacement strategy, you can just cripple the limb for bonuses. A crippled leg (with the same knock down vulnerability and movement speed loss) would increase strength and dexterity. (increased focus on use of arms growing up causes those bonuses) A crippled arm removes the ability to use heavy shields or maybe only bucklers and lowers deflection but increases damage/penetration with one handed melee weapons.