frapillo80

Sorry for double posting, I seem to have messed up in quoting Gromnir: I am fine with the diminishing xp concept, however, it was not very well implemented in IWD2, which led to all sorts of frustrations or, worse, exploits. By the way, as far as I remember I always hit the 0 xp for some mobs not that late into the game, and I always play a 6 member party. I always saw that as punishing the player for playing well, which did not make much sense to me. Or it was simply a shortcut to balancing difficulty and level progression: you set a dynamic, invisible wall for xp and you save a lot of time that otherwise you should have spent balancing things. I am actually fine with PoE quest xp, as I have said: it's the non-quest combat that is pointless, demotivating and resource-consuming, and it seems to make stealth a mandatory skill.

true. in point o' fact, unlike the imagined "spiritual successor" nonsense we have seen tossed 'bout recently, obsidian did makes the following claim on the kickstarter page for project eternity. "Project Eternity will take the central hero, memorable companions and the epic exploration of Baldur’s Gate, add in the fun, intense combat and dungeon diving of Icewind Dale, and tie it all together with the emotional writing and mature thematic exploration of Planescape: Torment." two years ago, folks happily paid obsidian to give'em iwd-style combat. complaining that combat is not fun is always a valid point, but anybody who complains that combat "will be like IWDs" were clear not paying attention when they handed over their euros or greenbacks or yen to obsidian. "All this reminds me of IWD2's issue with "0 xp for you if you are X levels above the mobs you are fighting"." I always played a 6 member party in IWD2 and, as far as I remember, I always hit the 0 xp barrier from some mobs from 2/3 of the game on. The concept is not wrong, but the implementation in IWD2 was in my opinion dreadful, and it led to all kinds of frustrations or, worse, exploits. In the end, as I said a few times, I'm fine with the quest xp. It's the non-quest fights that currently sound like a demotivating and resource consuming drag, and appear to make stealth a mandatory skill. am not likely to give bis/obsidian a break, but what you were complaining about were a d&d mechanic. bis attempted to design challenging and fun encounters, but due to d&d d20 cr, particular monsters might not result in xp for a party, particular a smaller party that had level'd quicker. cr is a mechanic for a pnp system with a living and breathing dm. it obviously were not ideal for a crpg, but bis were stuck with it. neverthless, am thinking they were more concerned with getting players to face challenging and fun encounters as 'posed to making sure that every critter death resulted in xp. after all, developers could always adjust Quest rewards to make certain that folks were getting xp. HA! Good Fun!

That sounds great to me. But is it limited to poison/petrify special mechanics? My doubt is: if I enter combat with 100 health and 100 stamina, will I need an attack worth 400 'normal' damage (after DT and resistences) in order to actually die? And if it is merely 396 damage, I will just fall down with 0 stamina and 1 health left and be invulnerable until the end of combat?

All this reminds me of IWD2's issue with "0 xp for you if you are X levels above the mobs you are fighting". Why make me fight them, then? Especially in a rail-roaded game like IWD2, where you met monsters in a fixed sequence. And it let to awful things like the temptation to delay leveling up in order to keep getting some xp for your efforts, which really defeats the concept of character progression as the base of most RPG's. Not to speak of the fact that wading through 0 xp mobs (which were still annoying/dangerous/resource consuming) hoping to get to even stronger mobs which will grant you the privilege of a bit of xp in exchange for even more fighting felt like the worst part of MMORPG's, that is, grinding in order to have the privilege of finally going questing. Maybe all this was in order to promote stealthing past the 0 xp mobs, and I never realized that until now, who knows. Ok, I am digressing, and I know the situation of PoE is not exactly the same, but still...

I'm not sure I got things right: if I didn't, please, mods, just grant this topic a painless and merciful death. So, even with permadeath activated, I fear we are going to face this kind of scenario: Our Fighter, we'll call him Rocky, has, let's say, 100 stamina and 100 health. Rocky is currently facing the Draconic Dragon of Dragonness, who hits our poor fighter straight in his handsomely symnetrical mug with the full force of its Nefariously Bad Breath of Fiery Fire. Now, in BG2, at least from core difficulty on, that would mean a discrete tear for late Rocky (or a snigger "Rotten luck, he was barely 96 hp away from surviving that one"). If I got things right, in PoE, as long as Rocky has full health, he gets a maximum of 100 stamina and 25 health damage, he keels over, and, as long as his companions can finish the fight, he'll be perfectly fine, minus the 25 health (because once you go down you cannot be targeted and you cannot take damage, am I right?). If things turned out this way, well, that would remove an important element of tension from BG2 and so on, which came from the risk of losing permanently a character in combat even if he/she entered combat with full health (like when a thief appeared suddenly behind Viconia). That would make permadeath more an exercise in managing bedrolls and inn reservations, since if I have care to enter combat with full health the actual chances of permadeath are practically zero: instead of the risk of chunking, 0 stamina practically earns you a free Sphere of Oitluke until the end of combat. Would it be feasible to add the option of having downed characters still targettable by enemies and taking damage from area of effect spells? Or, failing that, the option of having 0 stamina equal permadeath? Health would still play an important role in representing the Iimpossibility of taking bumps fight after fight without long term repercussions. Unless I got it all wrong, that is.

Captain Shrek: But I agree that having all those which are currently trash mobs be tied to story/quest would be fantastic. And that would solve the combat xp, since every single combat would be part of a quest and therefore net you xp. But, honestly, do you realistically see it happening? Especially with the Spectre of Quest Staggering constantly rearing its ugly head...

I don't like trash mobs either, and I am not advocating combat xp at all costs (although in the end it would probably be the least harmful solution). But I do think that the problem concerning the fact that the non-quest combat is pointless and demotivating (and stealth is the only option that makes sense right now) needs to be solved, one way or another. Deus Ex was awesome, but what kind of compelling story can you reasonably tie to a pride of lions in the wilderness or to a bunch of beetles?

Exactly. Right now, it boils down to this: fighting any hostiles that are not tied to a quest or carry especially valuable loot is a self-damaging chore. You see the pride of lions, you can: 1) stealth past them: gain nothing, lose nothing 2) fight: gain nothing, lose health, consumables, camping supplies, money and time for the inn. And in PoE health costs, you cannot heal or rest for free, so you waste time both fighting for nothing and going to the inn (or money for camping supplies). Right now stealth for everybody seems a no-brainer (and you'll end up just as good in combat for when you really have to fight, thanks to quest xp). So why put non quest related hostiles at all, if the decision on how to deal with them is a no brainer? All this simply seems to have flipped the old "I have to fight, else I'll lose xp" into the new "I have to stealth, else I'll lose resources". A lot in RPGs is balancing risks against rewards: right now, in the specific cases I've mentioned, we have the no-risk, no reward choice pitted against the significant risk, no reward one. Again, a no-brainer. All of which would be fine if most of PoE mechanics were geared towards stealth, but... The problem with the old system was not that it rewarded the combat solution, but that it did not reward the stealthy/alternative ones. As far as I see it, better try and find a way to reward stealthing, rather than punish fighting.

That would be best, yes. I am not thrilled with the bestiary either, and I proposed the decreasing xp just as an attempt to avoid the 'I got to kill everything least I don't get any more chances to complete the bestiary entry' compulsion. Actually, to me the bestiary concept would make more sense as a reward for stealthing: either you get kill xp, or you get bestiary xp by stealthing/searching close to the lions (I mean the circle that makes them go and investigate) for a number of seconds. Although this wouldn't be perfect by a long shot either.

Or maybe the bestiary could give decreasing xp rewards. I mean, the first lion you meet (by stealthing) or fight gives you a certain amount, and every one after gives you less and less, until you complete the entry, and you get no more xp (you learnt everything there was to learn). The bestiary progression could also provide some small bonus in the use of the components you get from animals, to keep things interesting.

The main problem is that non-combat character progression and combat character progression use two separate pools of resources, that is, skill points and talents (mostly combat related). Which leads, as it has been noticed already, to avoiding combat, getting quest xp and leveling up in order to receive a bunch of mostly combat related abilities, which you will use as little as possible since combat almost only offers disadvantages (waste of health, consumables, camping supplies, and the player's time) compared to avoiding it. Which would be fine in Thief or another stealth simulator, but in a IE-style game you shouldn't be punished so for failing to creep past a pride of lions while exploring. So the stealth party waltzes past them, the non-stealth party has a fight, which costs health/potions/camping supplies, and has the player in a worse situation than if he just reloaded the game to the point before meeting the lions. That is, the non-stealth player has either wasted precious game resources for nothing at all, or 10/20/whatever minuts of playing. I don't see it as a need for grinding: it's just that even token kill-xp would go a long way in mitigating that kind of frustrations: yes, those lions costed me 500 bucks of potions and half of my health, but at least I made a tiny step forward in my character progression. Of course, all this wouldn't be a problem if combat were its own reward, but from what I see and read (I am not a backer), it doesn't sound like the tenth beetle you fight makes for the same thrilling experience of the first (that is, assuming that fighting your first beetle is not a drag as well).

A noobish question: currently, is there any way a downed character (who still has health) can lose further health either from area of effect spells or from being targeted by enemies?

I personally am fine with Fighters being low maintenance. But I would like them getting an offensive modal ability, mutually exclusive to Defender, that of course cannot overlap with Rogue/Barbarian dps. Some modal ability like 'bonus to attack speed and critical chance, penalty to defense values and stamina regeneration'. For when you want to take risks while in the fray: right now, the Fighter is a totally no-risk class, which dulls the things (all the offensive bonus are passive). An offensive modal ability would also allow for a ranged fighter to have a modicum of sense.

I think it's 50% less damage. My reasoning was that Fighters, having usually higher deflection, would suffer in proportion to other classes more grazes than hits or criticals, and having them shrugging off grazes' health damage (but not stamina damage) would help with having to rest too often. Didn't do any maths though, I could very well be wrong. It could be something like "Resilience: the Fighter has learnt to shrug off the long term effect of lesser hits". Just a thought.

Right now the main health problem of Fighters seems to come from attrition damage (i.e. grazes) that is covered in real time by stamina recovery in conbat, so that the fighter is not knocked out and thus keeps losing health but not stamina (in practice). Since Fighters in Obsidian's concept should be able to shrugh off this kind of attrition, what about giving them an ability (or make it a selectable talent) so that grazes affect stamina (thus still being a tactical challenge) but not health? It would be different from Barbarians' iron-skin, and reduce the need for extra rest because of worn out fighters.

Not sure if it's been suggested already (it's a long topic), but what about making Perception more appealing by having it shify by a little the miss/graze/hit/critical? Let's say 0.3% per point of perception, so that 18 Perception gives a 4.5% shift, which especially in fights against high deflection enemies can make a difference (but it's just an example, the 0.x% would just depend on balance etc.). This way, we'd have Perception influencing search, interrupts but also indirectly influencing accuracy (let's say the 'quality' of your hits) while staying separate from the influence on defense that dexterity has. And I guess influence on the quality of the hits would work also lore-wise (and it could even influence the graze/hit/critical part, leaving the difference between miss and graze to dexterity, or the hit/critical part only). This, and having Resolve also influence the duration of negative effects (as already suggested by several) would take some steps forwards for the no-dump-stats goal, I guess. Maybe. I don't know, really.