Madscientist

Sorry, but you say: "they are based on % total weapon damage" and then you say: " this is why woedica spiritual weapon is best spiritual weapon because their lash is raw, so even if the enemy you're up against is immune to your fist damage, you will still be doing full lash damage to them." If your weapon damage is zero because the enemy is immun, x% damage of it should still be zero. If the enemy has very high AR, the full lash damage of a very small weapon damage should still be very small. Thats a problem with % calculations. A high % value of a very small effect is still a very small effect.

I have not seen this so far, but I would like to know this as well.

Do lashes stack? Are there limits or exceptions? The default rule is that passives stack (equipment or right side of skill tree) and actives do not (left side of skill tree or things that can be used). I am not sure about elemental damage. Lets say we have a paladin/monk in a full party. You have: - A weapon with additional fire damage (passive) - eternal devotion (active) - the monk ability that adds fire damage for each wound you have (active) - A friendly chanter with the fire lash chant (active) - maybe there can be other sources of fire damage Are all these effects added to become one big lash? Is it x% of total physical weapon damage done, or what is the base value? (So no elemental damage if the target is immun to your physical damage) Does elemental damage use its own penetration/AR and if yes, what is it based on? (e.g. the penetration of your weapon?) I cannot remember if this has been discussed before. There are just too many game machanics to remember. PS: Why is it called "lash"? According to the dictionary a lash is an attack with a whip.

On GoG Galaxy you get achievements for Deadfire. Its the same stuff as the points for Beraths Blessing. When playing GoG games there is no pop up message when playing the game. I like this and I think those achievement messages are more disturbing than helpful. PS: Can you deactivate in game achievement messages on steam? If I really care about this stuff I can still look in my library.

When I fight on my ship deck the companions/sidekicks who are not in my party act dumb as hell. I play in turn based mode. some examples: Konstaten summons skeletons directly next to him while he stands far away from enemies. They disappear before reaching an enemy and they block each others path while trying to walk down the stairs. Meanwhile Takehu throws harmful spells at my party (melee enemies stand close to my melee chars) and Ydwin uses only her weapon and never a spell. Do companions follow my AI setting when they are not part of my party and does it matter if it is turn based or rtwp? So far I have not created my own AI settings because I play turn based and I select all actions of all party members myself.

I play the game again after a long time. I think I played it shortly after release and a second time after all DLC came out, but I did not follow the patch notes. Now I can get straight to deck combat and I can ignore ship combat completely. Before that, either you moved forward all the time and started deck combat or you got in the right range and shot the right and left cannons until the ship sank. All of this while praying to the god of random numbers that your crew does not get injured. I think this was not interesting or fun at all and it would have been better not to make ship to ship combat at all and use the time and manpower for something else.

I play on PC. For detailed information I just right click an ability. It would be really bad if you cannot look at this on a console.

What would you chose as race and stats if you use it as player character?

Crap, I messed up PoE and Dragon Age. In DA:O there is the fade (world of spirits) and the material world. Spirits who enter the material world and cause harm are called demons. Some demons manifest as shadows or ghosts, others posess corpses and become undead, more powerful demons can posess living creatures ( this gets really bad when the host is a powerful mage) or they manifest as demons in the classical sense, like DnD creatures. So my idea was that many souls cannot enter the beyond and so they posess corpses or objects or they manifest as something physical, maybe something like One of Many from NWN2. Yes, souls in PoE do not posess things on their own, only through animancy. I thought that maybe if lots of souls cannot enter the beyond, some of them could posess things. But I am not sure if this is consistent with PoE lore.

I did not read everything above, but I had an idea for PoE3: Zombie apocalypse: After Eothas destroys the wheel the world is in chaos. The cycle of souls is damaged and many souls cannot return to the beyond. Many of them rise as undead and cause tons of trouble. Evil forces try to use this for their benefit. By the destruction of the wheel the gods are weakened and they are forced to live as material creatures in the world. Some try to stay hidden, others walk around and act openly, most of them try to gather followers. Each one has a different goal and you can try to find them and try to help or stop them. The being that supports the zombie apocalypse tries to become a god itself. possible endings: - Restore the old order. The gods rule again and control the cycle of souls. - Establish a natural order. Souls are reborn without the work of supernatural beings. - A world of horror and chaos. Its better to rule in hell then to serve in heavens. Or you yust mess up while trying to get the things above. - Become a god yourself. Either with the help of the other gods or the evil entety or by killing them and using their power for yourself. features: - new race: undead Some undead remained intelligent creatures. They build their own society or they try to live hidden among the living people. pro: bonus to con, immunity to poison and disease attacks. con: penalty to int (rotten brain), you need to eat kith flesh regulary or you get a debuff that gets worse as time passes and it will kill you in the end. In later stages of the debuff you are permanently confused by hunger and randomly attack enemies, party members or neutral NPC. - new item: vial of endless blood This amulet produces constantly human blood when worn. It has no effect on living creatures but undead do not need to eat kith flesh. But it has downsides: addiction, you drink blood all the time so your stomache is full. You cannot profit from food or drinks while wearing it. withraw effect: when you remove it you get an advanced stage of the rotten debuff and you need to eat kith flesh to remove the debuff. Plus it occupies the neck slot without giving a bonus.

OK, once again the 2 examples from above: - frenzy 2 round duration: round 1: you activate it, round 2: at the beginning of your turn (before you can do something) the duration is reduced by one, round 3: The effect will remain until your turn starts, when you are able to do something the effect has ended. - blind 2 round duration: you hit the enemy with blind. first enemy turn after you hit he is blind, at the beginning of the next turn the duration is reduced by 1 and he remains blind, next turn he stops being blind when his turn starts and he can act without being blind. Here I am not 100% sure if I understand this correctly. If duration is reduced by 1 every time a turn starts and the duration is 2 rounds than the enemy would only be blind during one time he can act because my effect hits him before his next turn starts. some notes: - As far as I know this is the first computer game where a system that was designed for real time has been transformed to turn based. Usually it goes the other way around ( e.g. IE games and almost every other computer game that is based on PnP and is not turn based) or the system was designed for this type (TB, rtwp) from the beginning. - This is the first RPG that added another game mode later. I know no other RPG where you can chose to play rtwp or TB. Thanks devs. - In the past games came together with a huge manual that explained most game mechanics plus some lore. I still have the books for BG1+2, arcanum, realms of arcadia and I bought the guide book for PoE1 and some other newer games. Today many games get patches after release and I totally support that companies try to improve their products after release. While some items or abilities may change, the fundamental game mechanics usually stay the same. My first RPG was BG2. I started playing and had lots of problems. Then I read the whole book and I understood everything good enough to finish the game ( with lots of reloads). - In every game I have played this is not explained at all. I have never seen a text that shows if the effect ends at the end of my turn, at the end of the global round, at the beginning of my next turn or something else. - Once again, I have never played PnP. So I have no idea how players can keep track of all rules, effects, durations and so on at all.

Thanks, now I get it. So under normal conditions (no god challenges, no mega bosses) every priest can become immortal once he gets lv6 spells and a way to trigger brilliant. So you get brilliant, cast BDD and then you recast SOT all the time and add whatever buffs you want. You just need to attack between casting SOT and do more damage than the enemy regenerates. Well, enemies that cause interrupt, dispell or debuffs that prevent you from casting could still kill you, plus maybe some other things I guess. I watched a video a bit, but a) you try to avoid combat as much as possible so it was hard to find a scene with combat and b) you play so fast that a noob like me has problems to see whats going on. Anyway, you can learn a lot of things when you look how the experts face the biggest challenges.

Thanks How can you get brilliant? You still need lots of planning with the timing so you have all buffs the moment SoT hits you.

OK, I think I start to understand First about the terms: A "turn" is when you can give commands to a character. It starts when you you are able to give this char commands and it ends when you press the end button. Each char has one turn per round. A "round" is the time in which each char has a turn. (To add confusion, some DnD games called 10 rounds a turn. Later they improved it by calling this a minute (1 round = 6 sec, 10 rounds = 60 sec). Some examples. I will call the current round where the char cast a buff as round 1, then comes round 2 and so on. - You buff yourself with a buff that lasts 2 rounds, for example frenzy. Round 1: You select frenzy, you attack with the effect on, you press end and the duration is reduced by 1. Round2: You attack with the effect on and the effect ends when you press end. Should you activate frenzy after you attack in the first round it will still end at the end of your turn in round 2 and you have only 1 attack with the effect on. In the example with the 1 round deflection buff, it would only be active when I walk around (disengagement) or attack (retaliation) during this turn and it would never be active when an enemy attacks me on its own turn. - I cast blind on an enemy and the effect last 2 rounds. The enemy is blind when he can act next time, no matter if it is this round or next round. When he ends his turn the duration is reduced by 1. The next time the enemy has a turn he will still be blind and the blindness will end once he ends his turn. - I cast damage over time on an enemy and the effect has a duration of 2 rounds. When the enemy has his next turn (no matter this round or the next one) he takes damage before he can do anything and the duration is reduced by 1. The enemy does something and end his turn. The next round he will take damage again before he can act and the effect ends. This means if an enemy has only 1 HP left and my DoT hits him directly before his turn he has no chance to do anything unless he already has a buff that prevents him from taking such kind of damage or from dying at all. I am not sure what happens if the target has damage over time and healing over time at the same time. HoT is also done at the beginning of a turn. Example: A char has 10HP left, he suffers under a DoT that causes 20 damage per round and he has a HoT that heals 30HP per round. Do you die or do you have 20HP left?

I have never played DnD4. You said " Buffs are tracked based on start/end of turn, similar to 4th edition D&D ", so I guessed it means the effect ends when a round ends. (You can see when a round ends in the turn order). Since I never player DnD4 (or PnP at all, but I played computer games based on DnD2, DnD3.5, Pathfinder and DSA) I can only think of 2 ways to determine the duration of effects: a) the effect lasts until the end of the global round or b) the effect lasts until your char can act again. In case a) if you act last and you increase your deflection for one round the effect is wasted because no enemy can attack you in this round any more (unless you provoke disengagement attack) and the effect is gone in the next round which starts directly after your action. In case b it would protect from every next enemy attack unless the enemy somehow manages to get behind you in the turn order. Thanks for clarifying that low initiative means you act first.

Thanks a few more questions: - Monk is good because fists do not degenerate, they are fast and they scale with power level so they can be better than mystic. But they do not have barring deaths door (BDD) and salvation of time (SOT) and according to the wiki there are no scrolls for these spells. - Monks and blood mages get back resouces when taking damage. Does this also work when BDD (or mayby other stuff?) prevents you from being damaged? - BDD has a base duration of 8sec, SOT has a base duration of 10 sec, withdraw has a base duration of 20sec, you can use empower and duration goes up with int and some items and you have to look at recovery time and you cannot pause and there are much more things to consider. Just looking at this is enough to prevent me from trying. Looks like you have to defeat enemies really fast and bosses have lots of HP and high defenses. Do you have things that help you with timing? I as a normal player (compared to experts like you) have to pause often just to look what buffs/debuffs I have and how long they last.

OK, so the DF system is a mix of DnD (global rounds, initiative is rolled at the beginning of combat) and FFX ( your speed and the type of your action determined when you can act again). I really liked the FFX system. You could finish the enemy before they can act by using very fast abilities or pushing them back in the attack order, but the enemy could do the same to you and some enemies would destroy you before you can act (try the optional bosses when your level is low). Main problem is to guess the duration of some effects (if I cast reflect now, how many "rounds" will it last?), but this was also the case in earlier FF with the ATB system.

Thanks - So abilities with a full diamond are done at once, those with empty diamond have a casting time. - So high initiative means you act first and low initiative means you act later, right? The descriptions look exactly like rtwp mode, where a weapon or spell has a number and armor, passive abilities and some buffs have a % modifier. But in rtwp the unit is seconds, so a lower number would be better. In turn based the unit is initiative, so a higher number should be better, right? This is the confusing thing for me. But it was already confusing in rtwp where some things influenced duration ( lower is better) and others influence speed ( higher is better). - You say that buffs/debuffs work from the beginning to the end of a round. So for buffs that last one round, it makes no sense to cast them on somebody who has already acted this round and it makes no sense to use a defensive buff after the enemy has acted. - Outside of combat, one round is 6 seconds? You can use some buffs before combat, you can start combat with an ability that has a duration and some effects continue after combat.

I play turn based mode for the first time, but the tutorials show nothing turn based related so I ask here. - Are there global rounds? Can each char act once per round? Or do the chars act in the order of the duration of their actions, similar to Final Fantasy X or the Trials series? - Is initiative a roll or is it a fixed value? If it is rolled, is it done every round or only at the beginning of combat? - I was confused when looking at the numbers. Is stuff with high initiative or stuff that increases initiative good or bad? Low initiative would be the opposite. - Some active abilities have a full square, some have a square that is empty inside and some have the infinity symbol. Infinity means you can use them as often as you want during your turn. What is the difference between the full and the empty square? - Looks like every char has a move action and an attack action each turn. Just to be sure: You cannot move twice as much if you do not attack and you cannot make a special attack if you do not move? (I needed lots of reading for the different types of actions when playing P:K) - Anything else I should know about turn based stuff? I have not played for a long time so I started in classic difficulty. I have the feeling turn based is easier than rtwp for me. In rtwp I had to pause all the time and check if each char is doing something at all and if they do the thing they should do. With pausing all the time and also pressing pause every time you selected an ability it was not much faster than turn based unless it was trash and you just let them fight automatically. I used AI to keep up some standart buffs and auto attack if nothing else is commanded, but I did not let them use abilities that require a different target than themselves (except healing). PS: Are crew members injured or permanently gone when they die during fights on deck? One of my crew died in the first battle after I woke up. I think in the past I killed some of them myself with (un)friendly fire, when I cast a spell at the enemy and they ran to this enemy during casting time.

About quests: Once again I post this great video every dev should watchhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJJaGSV75y0&list=PLF4UOVu5UKgiDCxJrZE7hydqaKNwd37bh . The other videos of this guy are also good. Its OK if you fail some quests. TW3 or DE are good examples. The game reacts to your failure and it has consequences but the game goes on. The problem that some quests have massive negative consequences but the players cannot possibly predict this without meta gaming. some examples: - PoE1: Durance and GM: You do something during normal gameplay and you see the result only when resting. When I talk to someone, I do not expect to have dreams/visions about them when I sleep and I do not expect that they can permanently leave the party if I do something wrong during this vision. - BG2: You cannot expect that a party member will leave when starting a quest by finding a body and you can only get her back when fighting a group of enemies. I think she can even leave you permanently under some conditions, but this never happened to me so I am not sure. The quest were she gets cursed is OK for me, in case you mean this.

I agree. Full voice over is not needed an not having a translation is bettet than having a bad translation. Disco Elysium is a great example. It has fantastic writing, only one language and the little bit of VO it has is also great. When you translate something you need somebody who checks the result, knows this language well and is not a member of the translation company. Looks like Obsidian did not have this. PoE1 and DF were translated by the same company. The german version of DF had exactly the same errors as PoE, plus many new ones. Sometimes stretch goals can be a curse. Especially when devs feel that they need to add a goal, they think of something and then this goal turns out to require more work than expected.

This might be a reason. PoE is a new IP and they tried to make some things different that the usual RPGs ( the gods, the wheel, everything with souls in general) and some of this stuff is hard to understand. If you miss some stuff you are supposed to know then it is easy to get confused by lots of stuff the game throws at you. DnD has the advantage that many people know it and it is standart fantasy, so you just have to explain things that are different in your game. The default way to deal with this is that your char has amnesia (PST, DE) so (s)he asks the same questions you would ask. But you cannot start every RPG with your char waking up without memory. While I liked PoE I really hated on thing: Durance quest. The stuff he says is interesting in principle, but you have to explore ALL options, you can only ask a few things each day and new sub options appear over time so its really hard to find which line you are missing. The fact that you see if you succeeded only when you rest makes it even worse.

For me it is hard to tell what kind of games are a niche because I am in the middle of that niece. I like games with a good mix of story, exploration or combat and I do not care if they are categorized as classic RPG (IE games, PoE1+2), JRPG (old Final Fantasy, Trails series) or action adventure (Zelda, Okami). And I really like crazy stuff like PST, Undertale or Disco Elysium ( playing a drunk and stoned communist brute who thinks he is a superstar and a magnesium based lifeform at the moment). So you should not ask me if you want to know which games to make in order to maximize profit. I do not know what kind of games sell best and I do not care if they release Call of Duty part 99, assuming such games sell well. But games like DOS1+2 and TW3 prove that you can make lots of money with RPGs. OK, I admit that the number of RPGs that sell millions of copies is rather low.

some questions: - Did MS buy Obsidian before or after the sale numbers for DF were known? - Did DF make enough money to cover the production costs? - Is Obsidian making a new game at the moment, after making TOW? - Does Obsidian make any money with the PnP game? It´s just a rule set. Or was it just a hobby of Josh to invent new PnP stuff. - Is any big RPG in developement at the moment except BG3? I hope there will be a PoE3 or another game in tis universe. PoE1+2 had good reviews and they released a console version 2 years after PC release even though sales were not as good as expected. They just need to find out what was the problem (this thread has tons of ideas but no answer so far) and stick to the stuff that people liked.

Looks like everyone was a multi classed skean priest. Whats the great thing about them: priest buffs + invisibility to escape combat? blood mage: you can get spells back at the cost of HP. Just to be sure: This does only restore mage spells, not priest spells? tactician: It is beyond my understanding how players can manage that all enemies are flanked, and you are not flanked even in normal gameplay. (not solo, no god challenges). It is even more unbelieveble how your target can also be the target of another friendly char when you play solo. But brilliant inspiration is great for sure. No idea whats so great about hellwalker. Your might is higher but you take much more damage.