PizzaSHARK

These type of threads would not be common if Pillars' system wasn't broken. It's functional, but that's about the best that can be said for it. There's clearly a reason Obsidian are putting a sizable amount of effort into tweaking and revamping the character creation system for Deadfire. These types of threads are common because it's common that some people have very strong opinions about their ideal system (that is as old-school as ADnD most of the times). The team is putting time in perfecting character creation but the stats is not something that will change much (if any), as Sawyer himself mentioned. Very stupid. Maybe the rest of the game will redeem the garbage stat system, then. It worked for BG2. There are plenty of spells available that mostly deal damage and/or have effects that last for a short duration. These are going to be least impacted by a low Int. To me it's mainly a matter of tuning your spell selection to your attributes. Low Mig/High Int: go for Aoe spells with long durations; High Mig/Low Int: targeted spells with short durations; Low Mig/Low Int: maybe jack up your Dex and Per, focusing on rapidly spamming a target with damage spells. Or: don't skimp on the only two useful stats in the game since there is no build where being deficient in one is better than being good in both. Low might and int - your spells do **** damage (and your auto attacks), have tiny AOE, reduced duration. Three casts of minor missiles will do about as much damage as one cast from a high Might build. Three casts of Fireball will do about as much damage and cover as many targets as one cast from a high Might, high Intelligence build. Oh, you pumped PER instead of MIG or INT, for that pathetic ACC bonus? Cool, my high INT build just pops a +50% duration Eldritch Aim and has more ACC than your PER build while also having larger spell AOE and duration. So remind me again why dumping INT or MIG ever makes sense? Seriously - it's not hard to figure this out. It's kind of crazy how many people are on a board that basically caters to the more dedicated/hardcore players and yet don't seem to even understand the stat system or how character builds work.

This is an illusion, though. Wizards pump INT here just as they do in D&D. Look at the build lists and look at how many Wizard builds involve maxed or at least strong INT scores. Look at how many Fighter builds involve maxed or at least strong MIG scores. No, that does not demonstrate it's an illusion. The attribute design was intended to make multiple possible builds be viable. The fact that many player's Wizard builds involve high Int does not disprove that. It only shows that a high Int Wizard is what many players conceive of as a "strong" Wizard character. What would demonstrate it is an illusion is several playthroughs using a low Int (but otherwise well-designed) Wizard, which all show it is a piss-poor non-viable character. Yes, and a low INT Wizard (just as a low INT virtually anything) is a piss poor non-viable character in Pillars. Compare a character with minimum INT to a character with maximum INT and tell me there's not a massive gulf in strength and usability. INT controls too many core elements to be anything but a god stat for basically every character (doubly so for characters who use a lot of spells... such as Wizards!) A Wizard with low INT will have spells which are effectively single-target when they should have a small AOE, will have DOT's and debuffs that last a couple of seconds when they should last several, will not be able to substantially benefit from short-term buffs like Eldritch Aim, etc. I swear, time after time, all these people acting like Pillars doesn't have god stats and dump stats just must not have ever really paid any attention to the system or tried a variety of builds. Once you start doing that it becomes immediately obvious that Might and Intelligence are the best stats, and stats which EVERY class and role wants. It's absolutely no different from classes having assigned primary attributes in D&D. It just gives the illusion otherwise. It may help if you looked at this issue from a different angle. The point of the attributes system in PoE is to allow multiple different builds to be viable. That does not mean that every attribute needs to be equally weighty to each class. Indeed, every class has a few slightly more favorable attributes and a few less favorable. So what? The point is you can still build a decent character even if you don't max out those favored attributes. Regardless of whether Might and Int are the marginally better stats for a Wizard, they do not limit the types of builds you can have. A player can build a playable Wizard with average to sub-par Might and Int, if they want to focus on a different play style. Does that make sense? If you want a properly balanced attribute system, you play Champions and accept the extra complexity. It isn't needed for PoE. Except you don't have multiple builds, you have one build that is "viable", with a small degree of flexibility, and the rest are all frankly sub-par - equivalent to a Pathfinder Fighter playing with 10 STR and 20 DEX and not taking Weapon Finesse, dipping into Unchained Rogue for DEX to damage, etc. You can play that way, but please don't lie and act like it's viable. Pillars doesn't allow "multiple different builds." It allows exactly one good build (high MIG and INT) and lots of mediocre builds (not high MIG and INT.) Literally every single class in the entire game wants and benefits from having high Might and high Intelligence, even Fighters. Putting points into Resolve and Constitution are mostly wasted. Perception and Dexterity are nice to have where affordable. Again - it seems like the only people that actually think Pillars' system really does allow for "multiple [viable] different builds" are people that haven't bothered to actually examine the game's mechanics. It gives the illusion of choice, but there really isn't any more choice in Pillars' system than in a mature system found in Pathfinder, D&D 3.5E and 5E, etc. You cannot allow mutliple different builds simply through a system, you need to hone the details for that, and the PoE stat system doesn't affect this at all. The problem with D&D stats is not with the stat 'system', it is with the way individual powers and abilities and classes function. For example, a sorceror doesn't need wisdom for anything, hardly any int (unless for some specific reasons) and absolutely no strength at all. Mostly they just need Charisma, Constitution and Dexterity being helpful. What if you made it so that Strength reduces spell-failure from armor, Intelligence increases the number of spells you can learn and gave the sorceror certain spells that are so powerful that you must pass difficult will saves just to cast them? Suddenly all attributes are useful and allow, a wide variety of builds are enabled with natural benefits to certain multiclass combos depending on which abilities you focus on and absolutely no violation of an instinctual understanding of how these character traits work has happened. My point is, trying to solve a complicated problem with a system is trying to take a shortcut where none exist; it will never lead to good results. Sorcerers do need Wisdom. D&D often ties Wisdom to the effects of your Wish spell, and Pathfinder GMs will often take the caster's WIS score into effect as well. Additionally, WIS controls Will saves and Will is one of the "important" saves (the other being Fort.) Sorcerers don't need to pump WIS but dumping it is very dangerous. A Sorcerer will want STR if they plan on multiclassing, taking prestige classes, archetypes, etc that involve melee combat (or thrown combat, though very few people use thrown weapons for some reason.) It's really weird. People say that the old 3.5E system is restrictive and focuses on dump stats, and yet I can spend hours devising interesting characters and builds for Pathfinder because it gives you so much flexibility and freedom. Pillars wasted a lot of time and effort fixing what wasn't broken to begin with, although since we're stuck with it now I think it can work just fine if they actually balance it properly - which they seem to be working on for Deadfire. If anything, I find Pillars to be overly restrictive and rather boring to build characters for since they're all generalists. One two-handed Fighter is much the same as any other two-handed Fighter - compare this to a switch-hitting Vital Strike Fighter to a traditional iterative attacks Fighter in Pathfinder, for example. To say nothing of archetypes or multiclassing...

Exacerbated by some unique items being quite clearly better than others (Tidefall and Hours of St. Rumbalt compared to virtually any other two-hander, for example.) Tidefall in particular is far better than other options at the time you get it (early to late Act II) because it's Superb enchanted and you'll be lucky to be able to Exceptional enchant anything before you wrap up Act II. There's also the issue of not being able to enchant for things like Damaging 3, Damaging 4, Damaging 5 (or Accurate 3, 4, 5, etc.) Beyond being more expensive, sometimes I don't really want an even spread of damage and ACC bonus, sometimes I just want a maximized ACC bonus with a bit of damage bonus or a fat damage bonus with only a bit of ACC.

Actually, I'd say damage focused Wizards are pretty weak compared to control focused Wizards (particularly early in the game and on higher difficulties where those AOE blinds, confuse, etc just end up having more impact than a Fireball that grazes for 35 damage on a 120 END pool.) That said, even a control focused Wizard will probably want a missiles spell or some other nukes in their active spell lists and will probably be autoattacking at least some of the time... so, you want Might too. You can justify skimping Might on a Wizard, but I can't think of any viable Wizard build that wouldn't invest strongly into Intelligence. You don't really need extra CON because the returns are so poor, you don't need RES because you can just drink a Spirit Shield potion for a Concentration bonus, and both DEX and PER tend to underperform relative to MIG and INT in terms of combat effectiveness (though both are more valuable than CON and RES.) This actually applies to most characters and most builds. MIG and INT are simply the strongest stats in the game by a considerable margin and even tanks would be ill advised to skimp on MIG. I like the concept but it needs a lot of work. Stats in Pillars don't have enough impact and don't have enough control over important stats. I'd like to see less emphasis on base Deflection etc and more emphasis on Deflection derived from stats, etc. A character with 18 RES should be substantially better in the areas that stat controls than a character with 10... but that's not how it works out. Even MIG and INT, arguably the best stats in the game, have relatively minor differences unless we're talking about a very large delta (like 8 vs 18 or something.) From Software absolutely has dump stats in their games, and it was a very obvious design choice for DS2. Adaptability had some uses, but was primarily a sinkhole for XP in order to increase the stat you actually cared about, Agility. It actually worked really well, because it was designed around it from the start. If you wanted really good rolls with lots of iframes (so your dodge timings didn't need to be precise), you had to "dump" a lot of XP into what you'd probably otherwise regard as a weak stat. Believe it or not, this design, this intended dump stat design actually created a considerable amount of build diversity. Someone planning on hiding behind a shield probably didn't need to "dump" XP on Adaptability, but then they wouldn't have an effective roll in the event they run into something they can't easily block their way past. Yes. A Wizard with 18 CON is still incredibly squishy and will still need to rest after a few fights, so why even bother investing the stats there? You just don't get enough return on your investment into "passive" stats like CON and RES in the current iteration, which is probably why INT and MIG feel so much stronger - who needs defense if they're dead or stunned? These type of threads would not be common if Pillars' system wasn't broken. It's functional, but that's about the best that can be said for it. There's clearly a reason Obsidian are putting a sizable amount of effort into tweaking and revamping the character creation system for Deadfire.

This is an illusion, though. Wizards pump INT here just as they do in D&D. Look at the build lists and look at how many Wizard builds involve maxed or at least strong INT scores. Look at how many Fighter builds involve maxed or at least strong MIG scores. No, that does not demonstrate it's an illusion. The attribute design was intended to make multiple possible builds be viable. The fact that many player's Wizard builds involve high Int does not disprove that. It only shows that a high Int Wizard is what many players conceive of as a "strong" Wizard character. What would demonstrate it is an illusion is several playthroughs using a low Int (but otherwise well-designed) Wizard, which all show it is a piss-poor non-viable character. Yes, and a low INT Wizard (just as a low INT virtually anything) is a piss poor non-viable character in Pillars. Compare a character with minimum INT to a character with maximum INT and tell me there's not a massive gulf in strength and usability. INT controls too many core elements to be anything but a god stat for basically every character (doubly so for characters who use a lot of spells... such as Wizards!) A Wizard with low INT will have spells which are effectively single-target when they should have a small AOE, will have DOT's and debuffs that last a couple of seconds when they should last several, will not be able to substantially benefit from short-term buffs like Eldritch Aim, etc. I swear, time after time, all these people acting like Pillars doesn't have god stats and dump stats just must not have ever really paid any attention to the system or tried a variety of builds. Once you start doing that it becomes immediately obvious that Might and Intelligence are the best stats, and stats which EVERY class and role wants. It's absolutely no different from classes having assigned primary attributes in D&D. It just gives the illusion otherwise.

Lagufaeth are pretty tough if you hit WM as soon as you can, when they're equivalent level or sometimes higher level. They're basically xaurips that aren't complete pushovers. The sidewinders can pretty easily get 60-70 damage crits on medium armor, and their front liners are generally tanky enough to keep your front liners tied up for a while. I think I saw Aloth eat a triple digit crit on PotD once. Poor Aloth. You can basically let the AI handle things against most xaurip groups and even the ogres as you enter town, the lagus are when **** gets real and the player needs to start paying attention again. It can come as a bit of a surprise. I wouldn't really call them problematic, though, because even if you hit WM right away, you have enough levels and equipment (slicken, scroll of paralysis, etc) that you have a decent size toolbox to work with. At the time you're facing phantoms, you have very little to work with (maybe just 2-4 elemental protection potions that wear off as soon as combat ends.)

Dumping isn't necessary in D&D, either. Charisma is often a dump stat for warriors, but a number of useful utility skills your party may expect you to have operate off of Charisma (or require a "feat tax" to make them operate off a different attribute, like Strength) meaning you can't just completely dump it. Handle Animal is a class skill for a lot of warrior classes, and it may be that your usual "skill monkey" classes can't afford to invest into it much... so it's your job to be the guy that calms down the horse when you're sneaking past the stables, and if you dumped CHA you're going to fail and the enemy camp will be alerted and you're in the **** now. Seriously, people that think tabletop D&D even really has "dump stats" just don't play tabletop much, or maybe have really bad DMs. There are stats of "least concern," but that is not at all a bad thing. A Fighter might not particularly want to focus on Wisdom, but they aren't likely to dump it either since it controls their Will save (with Will and Fortitude being "the important ones") and influences their Perception skill (and failing a Perception check could mean you don't get to act in a surprise round, or that you get surprised by those goblins that were hiding in a dark corner) so outright dumping it is a bad idea. Dumping was only a "thing" in the Infinity Engine games because they only had a limited number of scenarios a player could encounter and so it was pretty easy to engineer situations where your terrible WIS and CHA never really became a hindrance (this is also partly the fault of 2E's byzantine structure, something that went away in 3E and beyond.) Honestly, the Pillars system is not very far removed from modern D&D and Pathfinder, except that its attributes have very little impact on performance and that all of the classes are essentially generalists rather than specialists (no proficiencies, identical attack progression, etc.) I honestly dislike the Pillars system quite a bit, but it's forgivable because Obsidian had so much on their plate and while the system is rather bland, it's functional. I'm interested to see how Deadfire changes things, and particularly how the tabletop edition turns out.

Yeah, I'm not saying to scrap it. I think it has plenty of potential, it just needs some polish and tuning. Like half of the systems in the game, really. Like you said, it's a first iteration and Obsidian was definitely already stretched thin trying to get out what a massive game Pillars turned out to be. Balance was probably on the least concern list, and that was the correct decision. Skills are the solution to dump stats. Additionally, there should be dump stats for given classes because this is a team based game - you want a team of specialists, not a team of generalists. Except this is counter to the design philosophy of character building for pillars which was "all builds are viable." Whats the benefit of forcing people to min max? why should that be the only viable way to fix the current "issues" with stats? How is tying skills to attributes min-maxing? Have you never played D&D or Pathfinder?

I think you would be creating a lot of dump stats that way. It would make mix maxing much more common. Min maxing is already common among players that, well, want to min max. For virtually every class and role, Might and Intelligence are god stats, Constitution and Resolve are dump stats, and Dexterity and Perception sort of occupy a "well, they're nice to have, but..." range. Every class wants to do damage, which makes Might attractive - even pure tanks want Might, because the AI takes into consideration the potential incoming damage from a DA when it decides whether or not to chase that juicy, squishy Wizard rather than stick to your chufty, crunchy tank. Might also influences spell intensity, including amount of healing spells do... including a Fighter's Constant Recovery and the Veteran's Recovery talent. Might also increases the very important Fortitude defense, which is used to defend against most hard control effects like Prone, Stun, and Paralyze. Every class also has skills that have durations (whether buffs or debuffs), and every class can (and usually will) make use of scrolls... which is also affected by your Intelligence score. So every class also wants Intelligence. Oh, Intelligence also increases the AOE of all of these abilities (where applicable) and increases the important Will defense, used to resist dangerous control effects like Charm and Dominate, as well as common debuffs like Frightened. Paladins want Might and Intelligence to increase the size of their auras, make their Lay on Hands heal for more and last for longer (which also heals more), and to increase the duration of their exhortations. Fighters value Might and Intelligence to increase the throughput and duration of their Constant Recovery, increase the duration of their Knock Down and Vigorous Defense, to increase the AOE and duration of their Clear Out. Wizards want that Might to increase the damage of their spells, Priests want Might to increase the healing of that Consecrated Ground and they want Intelligence to increase its AOE and duration, etc. By comparison, almost no one wants CON or RES. Now, it's not usually a good idea to take too many points from them (with RES being more important than CON, unless you're ranged), but investing points into them is usually a bad idea. If you're worried about getting interrupted, just chug a potion of spirit shield. The difference between 10 CON and 14 CON in terms of END and HP isn't substantial enough to justify robbing your MIG and INT scores, and you get Fort bonuses from Might anyway. RES gives you an incredibly small boost to Deflection, making it really not worth the investment. Similarly, Perception gives tiny boosts to ACC and decent boosts to Interrupt... but if you want to interrupt people, just pop a potion of Merciless Gaze to crit more often (because crits always interrupt) or take the Interrupting Blows feat. Dexterity is much more useful, but suffers from diminishing returns to the point that while some DEX is advisable, it's usually better to maximize your INT and MIG instead (for all but a few builds.) I'm just left with the opinion that people who think Pillars' system is at all better than the D&D systems it was built from (3E and beyond, I don't think anyone will argue that 2E is better than what Pillars does) just don't really know that much about it. Like virtually everything else in Obsidian games, it's a solid idea but badly balanced/executed. I think with some love and polish, the Pillars system could be pretty great. But as it stands in Pillars 1, it's pretty lousy. Obviously Obsidian agrees, since it sounds like they have some substantial changes on the docket for Deadfire. I'm interesting to see how they apply lessons learned.

This is an illusion, though. Wizards pump INT here just as they do in D&D. Look at the build lists and look at how many Wizard builds involve maxed or at least strong INT scores. Look at how many Fighter builds involve maxed or at least strong MIG scores. if anything, Pillars' system has a severe balance issue in that there are two god stats (INT and MIG), and two (nearly) worthless stats (RES and CON.) And two stats you maybe put points into if you haven't maxed out your MIG or INT yet. Of course, a character with 10 in every stat will perform fairly well even in comparison to someone with 18 in every stat, by design, but this doesn't mean that Pillars doesn't have problems at least as severe's as D&D's, Pathfinder's, etc. The only difference is that stats are more meaningful in d20 systems. Yes, every class has at least one attribute they're dependent on, but so what? How is that any different from Pillars, where Might and Intelligence basically fill the same holes?

Skills are the solution to dump stats. Additionally, there should be dump stats for given classes because this is a team based game - you want a team of specialists, not a team of generalists. The Fighter has no use for Resolve if someone else is going to be the party's "face," although tying skills like Intimidate to Resolve can make it useful and valued even for a non-"face" Fighter. Feat requirements or changes to armor, items, etc also reinforce the value of stats. Part of the reason stats feel so unimportant and "weak" in Pillars is because they affect almost nothing outside of their MMO-like minor stat adjustments. There are no talents which require certain minimum attributes, skills are independent of attributes, certain weapons don't rely on certain attributes, etc.

Yeah, the reach weapons would only be to help keep the melee wizard out of immediate danger in the early stages of the game. I'd probably transition her to a single saber once I get Resolution. Any suggestions on how to tackle those ****ing ogre druids early in the game? **** have way too much damn HP for the level of spells they can cast :-/

I'm making a Hard playthrough (because PotD is more annoying than fun) with a specific party makeup: the returning NPCs of Deadfire (Eder, Aloth, and Pallegina), as well as two characters my friends want - a ranged cipher and a melee wizard. I'm trying to decide how best to assign functions and roles to this party. My player character will be a tank Paladin. I'm expecting to have a party with three melee and three ranged characters, but I could maybe run four and two at the risk of having some spacing issues in corridors and other narrow areas. My basic idea is to give Eder Defender and a two-handed weapon, eventually focusing on Overbearing Guard since even with heavy armor (a requirement from my friend) I'm expecting enemies to prefer the Wizard's terrible Deflection over my Paladin and Eder's decent Deflection. I'll probably arrange for the melee Wizard to primarily use Pikes and Quarterstaves to attack from behind the safety of the Paladin and Eder - I can see fitting in a fourth melee character (Pallegina) into this equation here. The alternative would be to use the Wizard similarly to a Rogue, using a single one-handed weapon and focusing on flanking after the initial draw-up of enemies has stabilized a bit - the ACC bonus for using a single one-handed weapon will certainly help compensate for the Wizard's terrible base ACC. The PC Paladin will probably be a Shieldbearer with the Shielding Flames talent for the Deflection boost, but because my party won't have a Priest for emergencies (mostly for Withdraw, since healing besides Consecrated Ground tends to be a waste of an action), I'm wondering if it might not make more sense to take a different order and just take Lay on Hands instead, for the emergency spot heal. Since I plan on the PC Paladin being mostly a support role, taking Darcozzi for the ACC boost on Liberating Exhortation is attractive as well. I'm not quite sure what kind of weapon to focus on eventually. I don't like building characters around specific equipment, but I do like having a general idea of where I want them heading. Disorienting and Marking seem like high value choices - both increase my allies' ACC versus a target in different ways. Unless Marking applies to all allies attacking that target (the wiki is vague), Disorienting seems a bit better. Notable weapons include: Cladhailath (Marking, Coordinating or Reliable), Shame or Glory (Marking), and Strike Hard (Disorienting.) The shield will obviously be Outworn Buckler, eventually replaced with Little Savior late in the game. This Paladin will probably take Zealous Endurance for the hit->graze coverage. A wand or other fast ranged weapon with an Accuracy enchant will probably be the secondary weapon, to be used with the Paladin's ability to instantly break Dominate etc on allies. Eder, as mentioned, I'm planning on using Defender to increase his engagement limit and then focus on massive Overbearing Guard hits. Strategic positioning of squishy party members should work as enticement to get enemies to try and risk breaking engagement. Once again the wiki is vague, so I'm not sure if Disengagement attacks are considered full attacks (attack with both weapons) or not. If they're considered to be full attacks, he has a lot more equipment options. Otherwise, it'll probably be a typical "futz around until 10 Mechanics, go get Tidefall" deal. Possibly switching to Blade of the Endless Paths late in the game to take advantage of Marking. The melee Wizard should be the most interesting. I imagine I'll need to go high on INT to increase self-buff durations. DEX and MIG seem like the next two stats to focus on; PER's bonus to ACC is pretty lacking, and Spirit Shield removes my need to worry about RES for Concentration bonuses. Leftover points may go into CON to buffer the WIzard's terrible base HP, though abusing the "health potion" trick (drink one of those +50 END/HP potions just before combat ends and the health recovery is permanent) should help extend the times between resting. Jena's Lance seems like an ideal early game item, with its Reliable quality and the useful +1 CON. Greenstone Staff is a potential late game choice, although I'm sure I could do better. Honestly, switching to a single one-handed weapon seems more attractive the more I think about it - Bittercut seems absolutely perfect for this character, since I'll probably want to take Spirit of Decay to maximize the END-draining Concelhaut spells anyhow. Whispers of Yenwood with a Fine enhancement would probably make for an excellent early game weapon, with its Reliable quality. Grimoire Slam might actually be usable with this character! I know people like to take Arcane Veil for melee Wizards, but I seriously hate relying on per rest abilities to make character builds work, and I already have spells that give me massive Deflection bonuses (and more)... or potions that give the same. Grimoire Slam would be a useful way of breaking engagement as needed. Pallegina, as mentioned, I'm kind of not sure what to do with. Her stats are just all over the place, and I'm not sure whether to make her another melee character or put her as a ranged character. Maybe giving her a reach weapon would make the most sense, or I can give her a two-handed weapon and a blunderbuss or pistol for use if she can't fit into melee. I'd steal Durance's staff and give it to her (since she wants Scion of Flame for all of the usual reasons plus her special Sworn Enemy feat) if I didn't think that would completely override fluff (why would Durance give his staff away, and why would it have its special "all damage as Burn" function in anyone else's hands?) The Cipher won't be anything unusual. Typical ranged Cipher focusing on bows. Probably make an early jaunt to Endless Paths IV for Persistence (as well as Resolution) and use that until the obligatory Stormcaller. Yawn. Aloth is... Aloth. Probably focus mostly on control spells since damage Wizards are a little lacking (and he lacks the Might for that role, anyhow), give him the scepter whose name I can never spell, and so on. Since I've never really focused on it before, how exactly does swapping in NPCs for side quests work? Their side quests are lost forever if you fail to complete them before a specific point, right (can't do Eder's or Aloth's if Defiance Bay is burning and you didn't advance the quests past that point, right?) What about, say, killing Gabbros in the Endless Paths without Kana being present? Can I still take him down there and he'll have his moment of existential crisis, or is that lost forever? I plan on this being my last playthrough of Pillars and I'd like to have a save where I've done everything to import into Deadfire

kinda missing the point on shibboleth. first, obsidian never said it, but more important, as we keep repeating, it means nothing to say "spiritual successor." in the bit kat21 left out o' his quote, there were mention o' iwd and planescape as well. so, if the "magic" bit is indeed akin to "spiritual successor," then poe were intended to be the spiritual successor o' three different games. use Gromnir's quote from kickstarter and poe becomes spiritual successor o' all the old roleplay games obsidian developers liked to play? perhaps somebody has claimed the new mummy movie is the spiritual successor o' all the old-timey horror and monster films folks like. uh, ok. what exact is the point o' being the spiritual successor o' multiple games. oh, and bg already had a spiritual successor: bg2. am thinking you don't know what is shibboleth, but suggesting there is some kinda fundamental quality o' a "spiritual successor" is silly and revealing something 'bout those who use the phrase as 'posed to having any meaningful use in game development discussions. kat 21 accurate likens the use o' phrase to the inclusion o' hot girls in beer commercials. he/she is correct. the girls don't reveal anything 'bout the qualities o' the beer. even the dumbest purchasers is not gonna expect hot girls to sudden become attracted to a purchaser o' beer. so, you are the guy actual buying the beer for the hot girls? the shibboleth in question is, at best, nostalgia inducing puffery when it is utilized... not that obsidian did use. furthermore, what is the qualities o' a spiritual successor? do you know? is it possible for anybody hearing you says "spiritual successor" to know what essential qualities you is referencing? no? then is not a particular useful descriptor. you, like others, has globbed onto a meaningless turn o' phrase that obsidian never even used. congrats on dragging out and proving shibboleth. as for the second half o' your post, you gotta recognize you is marginalizing self, yes? Gromnir were in fact responding to your complaint 'bout surfeit o' tactical depth. fine. you not see poe or or the ie games or wasteland 2 as particular good examples o' squad-based tactical combat in rpgs. again, fine. given such low opinion o' poe tactical combat, why are you so fixated on a graze mechanic in potd? makes no sense to us whatsoever. the potd feature is an extreme cheap way for obsidian to give the hardcore player a bit o' a challenge. is not 'posed to be balanced. your complaint is becoming increasing nonsensical. again, am in agreement that 'cause o' potd increased mobs and bloated foe accuracy, a handful o' encounters involving enemies which confer debilitating status effects become significant more difficult than other trash mobs. for reasons stated ad nauseum in previous posts, your solutions to an extreme limited problem strike us as impractical and excessive. am doubting we are gonna reach agreement. if you ask ten different potd players how they deal with stuns, you are likely to get at least five different answers. one o' the good things 'bout poe is the wide range o' player options. the game has many abilities and synergies. assuming a solution is narrow is a mistake. HA! Good Fun! But only one or two of those answers will actually be seen as viable. "I just let my one dude take half his health in damage while I spam spells to keep him alive" is certainly a viable way of dealing with stunlocking but it's not exactly the most efficient or effective. Pillars' tactical options become increasingly narrow the harder you make the game.

Because it just makes sense? Wizards hone their craft through study and experimentation, which would be tied to Intelligence. Intelligence, together with Wisdom, function as a value of both the character's overall ingenuity and intelligence, as well as their mental fortitude and strength. The objections come from Obsidian trying to fix something that wasn't broken to begin with. The reason the six stats thing has endured for so long, in the way it has (since 3E), is because it just works. Don't fix what isn't broken.

So somehow or another physical strength in the Pillars of Eternity universe seems to stand for muscles and spiritual strength. There could be a handwave to this (something like a body-soul interface that requires physical strength to channel the full magical spiritual strength safely or something while mental strength allows one to channel for longer whatever amount of energy ones strength allows to be funneled through the body) but I'm not sure one is ever made in the game. The way i see it is that the power of a person's soul can be channelled as both magic or physical strength. There are differences in muscular physical strength between individuals, but they are minimal in comparison to the differences that channeling your soul power can generate. So the power of the soul overrides physical laws, or does Eora has physical laws that are different from our own? Jam it into the back of its knee or ankle. Evade the swing, jab it into the wrist or elbow. Get in close and go for the deep veins and arteries in the inner leg (assuming ogre anatomy is roughly analogous to human.) Stats are just abstractions. Do we have actual confirmation of the "soul power" thing, or is this just us trying to fix the plot hole the game left us with? No, that's literally from the guidebook. And that's also the definition of the "hobble" effect, btw. Right, but that's how a man-sized creature would fight a creature many times their size. You have to bring it down to a level where you can reach its vital organs (or an agile class might instead choose to climb onto it and seek out vital organs that way.) Disabling it by attacking joints would be a primary means of doing this.

Gromnir, you're just wrong about the spiritual successor thing, man. Just give it up. You might see it as a shibboleh or nonsense, but there's no way you can deny that Obsidian banked on nostalgia and explicitly played to perceived demand for a successor to the Infinity Engine games... much like inXile did with Wasteland 2, and then Torment: Tides of Numenera. In regards to a squad based tactical game, none of the Infinity Engine games (or Pillars, or even inXile's Wasteland 2 really) have been any good at it, but that's never really been the focus. Pillars definitely has more tactical complexity than BG1, but is about on par with BG2 (and BG2 honestly didn't have much outside of a byzantine spell system.) Again, that's part of why I think PotD is so pointless and why it seems like Obsidian felt compelled to spam stuns and hard disables everywhere in the game (both from players and against players) to try and make combat more "exciting." The lack of terrain features, any sort of cover or concealment mechanics etc, removes a huge swathe of tactical considerations and features from the playbook and results in most fights being straight up brawls. This isn't really aided by Pillars, oddly, having virtually no way of talking your way out of a fight (unlike the games it was inspired by, though the Infinity Engine games were also rather combat-heavy and light on the non-combat stuff.)

Jam it into the back of its knee or ankle. Evade the swing, jab it into the wrist or elbow. Get in close and go for the deep veins and arteries in the inner leg (assuming ogre anatomy is roughly analogous to human.) Stats are just abstractions. Do we have actual confirmation of the "soul power" thing, or is this just us trying to fix the plot hole the game left us with?

Then why have it all? Why waste any effort on a mode few players will use and even fewer will actually enjoy, when that effort could instead be redirected into polishing and fine-tuning the modes that players will play and which most players will enjoy? If you're going to half-ass something, it's better to not even do it at all. Those extremely few players who want an ultra hardcore experience and would find such a thing fun can play purpose-built games like Age of Decadence and Dungeon Rats. It's been too long since I played BG to say much about its tactics, but it was a 1st-7th level adventure in 2E rules - you're missing half your toolkit so of course your tactical options will be limited, on top of the Infinity Engine not supporting things like movement/difficult terrain, height differences, etc. Realistically, Pillars should be compared with BG2, NWN, and the many games that have come out long since BG since they're proof positive of improvements (and mistakes) made by previous adaptations of tabletop systems. I genuinely believe that Obsidian went way too far in the direction of simplifying things and, in some cases, fixing what wasn't broken. You have so few real tactical options in PoE because of both the game's design and the engine's limitations - battlefield alteration is a core element of tabletop play, and the cover mechanic etc is also a huge part (for example, someone firing a crossbow into a melee, past an ally, receives an immense -6 to their attack rating... which makes positioning super important and means melee characters need to pay attention to lines of fire for their ranged buddies), and absolutely none of it features anywhere in Pillars (or the IE games.) Maybe it was cut because it was determined to be more complex than it was worth, or maybe it was too much of a pain in the ass to get it into the game engine and working the way they wanted it to. Regardless of the reasons, it cuts enormous parts of potential tactical depth out of Pillars' system, and this is why comparisons to tabletop are necessary and relevant. Just because you feel they aren't, doesn't mean they aren't - maybe you don't play much tabletop and so don't "know what you're missing." You can call it a shibboleh all you'd like but the dev commentary itself and errata specifically mention the team wanting to address what they perceived as problems or issues with the tabletop systems that the Infinity Engine games were developed from, and Project Eternity was billed as a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate right from the outset. So comparisons to tabletop systems and the Infinity Engine games are both relevant and useful. The graze mechanic adds absolutely nothing to tactics because you either ignore them (simple debuffs like Dazed, Weakened, Sickened, etc) or you cast the appropriate immunity spell (Stuck, Stunned, Paralyzed, Charmed, Dominated, Confused, etc) without any thought. When I see an ogre druid, I toss out immunity to stuck and hobbled because I know they're gonna open with it - there's no thought there, no tactical depth. It's every bit as binary as "use Knock Down on the wizard to keep it from running away." When I know I'm going to be fighting Phantoms, I just cast my immunity to stuns at the start of combat, or whatever best substitutes I have (potions of recovery, scroll of protection, etc.) There's no thought that goes into it. Additionally, acting like Pillars doesn't have pre-buffing is nonsense. You send in one person to aggro the enemy group (typically with a high-damage ranged attack like an arbalest or arquebus) and while they're running back to the group, dragging the enemies with them, your Wizard is moving into position to drop Slicken on them, your Priest is buffing, your scrappers are drinking their buff potions, etc. Just because you can't cast those spells before combat has started doesn't mean you can't still effortlessly rig it so that your group has plenty of time to get buffs and hazard AOEs on the ground before enemies get into range to start attacking.

that were your observation, not Gromnir's. we observed that potd balance testing should not be a priority 'cause it would take development resources to do such testing. based on numerous threads 'bout how folks actual play poe, am not seeing a need for change for the vast majority o' players. have a few potd encounters play noticeable more difficult? why fix? is few actual potd players, and at least some % o' those appear to be ok with the current situation. that being said, removing the on-hit effects would drastic affect the balance o' any number o' encounters. the challenge o' numerous foes is largely dependent on their ability to punish via debilitating status effects. a phantom w/o stun has little point. the phantom don't teleport or daze as do shadows. what is the purpose o' phantoms in encounter design if you remove status effect? simple remove such capacity would reduce the variety, complexity, difficulty and fun o' many combat encounters in poe. at the very least the removal o' phantom stunning would necessitate new balance testing and likely would warrant phantom redesign to give your newly emasculated and boring monster type a replacement ability. am not certain what your point 'bout d&d is. is a different combat systems. there is no graze mechanic in d&d. there is indeed no-save status effects in d&d, but suggesting you know how such d&d stuff would be applied if d&d used a poe-style graze mechanic is a bit o' a stretch. HA! Good Fun! Phantoms already have Sneak Attack. it's clear their intention is to punish players for not defending against sneak attackers, much like there are any number of encounters with ranged Rogue NPCs that can drill your back line characters (or front liners, really) for 50+ damage per shot. It's something that demands a response and adjustment of tactics. Phantoms would still fulfill this function without their stun on hit, assuming they were allowed to teleport (removing teleport instead of stun is "fixing" the wrong problem.) Phantoms that are difficult to land a solid hit on, are frequently teleporting, and hitting for 30+ Freeze damage when even tanks rarely have above 100-120 END is pretty substantial and demands a specific response... but that response is "play better" not "hope you roll high" like it is vs stun spamming. Stun spamming isn't fun. It doesn't demand a change in tactics, because there are no special tactics or tools you can use at that stage of the game - immunity or even resistance to stuns is all very high level stuff and you're fighting Phantoms primarily in the first act. There is literally no downside whatsoever to actually balancing PotD. PotD lacks tactical depth because so many of its encounters are utterly binary - they save or die, or you save or die. Boring. Uninteresting. Pillars already has a severe issue with lack of tactical depth and complexity, and PotD exacerbates it through a series of questionable design choices. Sure, PotD is "difficult," but difficulty without depth is just a waste of time. I'm comparing Pillars to D&D because it's a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate, which was a AD&D 2E-based game. Pillars has numerous, obvious connections to turn-based tabletop systems to anyone that's played them, and comparing and contrasting their differences is pretty relevant, particularly if you want to discuss core gameplay mechanics. I don't think Obsidian iterated enough on their graze system. Introducing "weak hits" dramatically changes how combat works in the systems they built Pillars out of and I don't think they spent enough time really considering all the angles. Fair point to them, though, that it would take a lot of time to even work out the angles in the first place - we'll see what lessons were learned with Pillars 2, I imagine. Nope, but level 1 spells in Pillars are a lot stronger than they are in D&D. Spells in Pillars are, in general, a lot stronger than they are in D&D because spells can graze. Sometimes you don't really need to petrify them for the full duration - a couple seconds is all you need. In D&D, if they save or resist your spell, too bad. In Pillars, grazes can often get you by just fine, especially if it's a control spell and not a damage spell (hence why control wizards tend to be orders of magnitude more reliable and better, overall, than damage wizards.) Note that spell affects everyone in the area. Compare that to the Pillars 4th level spell Confusion, which simply applies confusion to all enemies in a large AOE with no worries about friendly fire. I'd take the Pillars spell over the D&D spell any day of the week.

nevertheless, many o' us has completed multiple potd runs, which should suggest there is tactics for dealing with the 'posed indefensible. heck, Gromnir ain't even a serious optimizer and potd hardly sent us to our metaphorical knees. am gonna guess there is extreme few folks who, having spent tens of hours on a normal or hard playthrough o' poe, were nevertheless unable to finish a potd run 'cause o' the graze mechanic. *shrug* potd is a blunt difficulty increase. mob sizes are increased. foe defenses and accuracy is increased. such methods is crude and effective. such methods also make the graze mechanic particular visible. if obsidian spends too much effort balancing potd, we would be disappointed. this board obvious attracts more hardcore players, so feedback here is not always meaningful and can be misleading. the folks who genuine had their poe purchase frustrated by the graze mechanic rearing its ugly head in a few potd encounters cannot be a large % o' total purchasers. of the potd enthusiasts posting in this thread, many will claim they saw no graze issue at all. some, such as Gromnir, will recognize the impact o' grazes making stuns/charms more lethal, but will deny it caused noteworthy frustration. the remainder o' folks describe some degree o' consternation with potd grazes. in all honesty, where would folks prioritize potd balancing o' the graze mechanic? game development is zero sum, so what do we sacrifice to ensure better graze balancing in potd? reduce mob sizes in a few o' those stun/charm-on-graze encounters would likely be an easy fix to the problem, but Gromnir actual likes the additional challenge. dunno. HA! Good Fun! Removal of the on hit effects from grazes would be enough. Maybe this would make easier difficulties too easy... but that just further illuminates why balancing around "the phantoms have to keep the party stunlocked or it's too easy" is sloppy design. A lot of people like to point to Ghouls in D&D and Pathfinder as an example of a monster that has a stun on hit effect (paralysis, but it's pretty similar) - but they're forgetting that Ghouls can't paralyze someone they can't hit. This is unlike Phantoms in Pillars, for example, who will still stun you (which makes you easier to hit) even if they "miss" you (a graze in Pillars would be an outright miss in D&D.) Note that even with removal of the on hit effects on grazes, it would still probably be problematic in PotD simply due to sheer numbers (you fight 3 phantoms and 2 shadows on Hard and it's 4 phantoms and 4 shadows on PotD, for example - weight of numbers alone would slant things heavily in the monsters' favor compared to the easier mode before even factoring in higher base ACC), but that just means that PotD would still be frustratingly hard as you like, but would result in better overall design/balance throughout the game. I don't think balancing PotD would have as negative a trickle-down effect on gameplay balance as you seem to think it would have. PotD is, overall, pretty much fine. The number of encounters that are basically binary bull**** are fairly uncommon, which is why they stick out so well. We don't really remember the encounters with like 8 xaurip skirmishers, 5 champions, and a pile of priests very much because while they can be difficult, it's manageable with tactics and knowledge of the game. The ones we remember are the ones that tend to not give two ****s about your knowledge, other than knowing exactly what scrolls or spells etc you need to immunize your party against its gimmick.

This doesn't really matter much for PotD because of how high monster base ACC is and because grazes still apply the effects.

You rolled a party that isn't just "20% less powerful at everything", you rolled a party that specifically leaves out a chunk of tools from the toolbox. Hence, stuns - which attacked that newfound weakness in your party - were more difficult. There's nothing strange or unbalanced about this. The game shouldn't "require a consistent effort from you on each difficulty" when you start running nonstandard parties. That's what makes nonstandard party runs interesting. That's when you discover that one party roflstomped the dragon but this party now has difficulty and has to come up with new solutions and tactics. There should be a certain consistency for standard parties, where the average joe running a normal full party doesn't discover level 3 skeletons are supermassively difficult relative to level 4 goblins, but in this context, what you're suggesting is a weird and improbable flattening of the experience that really seems to subtract from the fun and flavour of nonstandard parties. In my experience, the nonstandard parties just end up abusing one thing or another to compensate for whatever their inherent toolkit lacks. Scrolls of Paralysis are pretty much Pillars' great equalizer - get 8 Lore and a bunch of materials and just stun your way through the game. Pillars just doesn't offer much in terms of tactical depth. While I haven't played any gimmick based groups like Doppelschwert talks about, I've played enough permutations of "standard party" that I don't see tactics changing much, especially once you get into the middle levels of the game where my warriors are probably opening combats with scrolls and potions anyhow. I think the game's difficulty should be relatively consistent throughout, especially for non-optional areas and encounters. Instead, the difficulty tends to be all over the place with some areas being quite clearly a great deal more difficult than others (though, again, Scrolls of Paralysis tend to make everything easy.) This is a problem Tyranny also has, so I'm thinking it might be an Obsidian thing, not specific to a single game. Encounters with lots of save or suck mechanics or abilities are likely going to be both much harder than ones with lesser amounts, and also harder to balance. If a fight is largely based around a gimmick like spirits that stun on every hit and then start hitting huge numbers with sneak attack damage on the people they stunned, if those people get a series of lucky rolls you could end up with the encounter being rather easier than planned. Or vice versa. Hence the point of my rant - excessive reliance on hard control just makes the game annoying and frustrating, not interesting.

An easy solution would be to impose a cumulative Deflection penalty for each opponent beyond the first who have engaged you in melee. In addition to flanking. That would also make hordes of low level minions a relevant threat for high level characters. Especially those in light armor. Most RPGs face the problem of low level foes becoming completely irrelevant later in the game and high level PCs have to be challenged with lore-stretching amounts of powerful monsters where giants become as common as goblins. A system where low level monsters in large numbers can be threatening for high level PCs would be better. The problem there, though, is that these low level creatures still have low level stats. You can throw 40 goblins at a high level Wizard, but they're still all going to melt when he flings a Fireball at them or the Barbarian starts cleaving through them.

The simplest way to deal with this would be to implement a Pathfinder-like system of touch AC, and have certain spells and attacks target touch AC rather than total AC. (Well, it'd be Deflection here, but you get the idea.) This is a balancing factor for a lot of things, though it can be silly at times (a pistol resolves against a great wyrm dragon's godawful touch AC rather than its formidable total AC.) Because touch AC is derived from, among other things, a character's Dexterity bonus to AC, this tends to mean that light and nimble characters have a relatively high touch AC while the Fighter stomping around in full plate probably has a rather low touch AC. This just ties into Pillars being perhaps a little too simplified, though. I'm not intimately familiar with 5E, but maybe they did something there as well. I know 5E is said to be a lot more accessible than other editions.