Daemonjax

All the interesting enchantments can be found on unique items throughout the game. The enchantments you have are the ones that you can use to make those items slightly better. It's not like Path of Exile, where you can take a trash white item and turn it into a death stick of destruction.

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IE Mod 4.11 (windows): hex changes at offsets: 2D97B and 2D98B IE Mod 4.12 (windows): hex changes at offsets: 2E01B and 2E02B

Just completed Act I (completionist style) on hard, modded with +50% exp per level requirement: Main character has 10380 experience. I'd need 15000 exp for 5th level. So, currently, I'm one level behind where I'd normally be. That'll be 2 levels behind when I reach level 10 (would normally be 12). On hard I'd normally just rush through to pick up all the companions early, ignoring all side quests, but I didn't do that this playthrough because it felt wrong trying to clear caed nua at level 2. I needed to save/reload too much for my liking (the fight in the great hall required some luck and I only won 1/3 of the time). Normally I'd hit level 3 in the courtyard, even without sidequests, which made caed nua a breeze. So far, I'd say it's a better game modded this way.

Either of those changes would create an incentive to artificially extend combat in order to power-up your cipher for the next battle. While that may sound interesting at first, it would become very annoying in practice.

It always is curious to see how the devs thought the line should be read or understood. It can be hit or miss, although I've understood the reasoning behind everything I've seen so far. I like the fact that we have actual dialogue instead of a wheel or something that doesn't even write out the lines. I looked into that the other day, and all of that is totally moddable. We can even change the whole might thing to provide different options depending on the class (high might on wizard class? You force choke them like darth vader. High might on cipher class? You peer into their soul and intimidate them with knowledge. etc.)

That's surprisingly decent. I prefer it to what we got. I'd probably recolor the background area, but I can do that myself.

Yes. There's a console command: AdvanceTimeByHour int http://rien-ici.com/iemod/console I don't know if it requires IE mod or not.

You'd pretty much be forced into using multple blunderbusses. Right now doing that is at least optional. Chanters are pretty weak unless you're running away to cheese the timer (which, coincidentally, seems to be the tactic their class feature is build around). Monk's wound system is pretty terrible. I wouldn't wish that design on any class.

If they started with 0 focus they'd be a garbage teir class. Imagine what monks would be like if they started with 0... oh wait. Agreed. Mental Binding should be level 3, and tenuous grasp should be level 2. The blunderbuss just wreaks havoc with the game system because it's multi-hit and so interacts in weird ways with some abilities/talents. I think the above can be fixed with mods, though.

At first I was leery with using that feature as well, but since I started using it I encountered no problems (the remove/add abilities/talents commands, not the relevel command). @Epsilon Rose: It was a rhetorical question.

I played it. Dawn of War 2. That whole franchise is grade A in the RTS genre.

You can respec characters using console commands and the IE mod. If you don't want to do that because it's not "official", then you're just being your own worst enemy. Why do you feel like you need the developer's permission to play a single-player game whichever way you feel like? Rhetorical question.

Everything works well enough on Normal even for first runs. You'll be fine.

A per character guard position toggle would be appreciated. It's more of a quality of life thing, though.

Yeah, I'd wait for player created mods that re-tune difficulty for more added challenge. In a difficulty mod, I'd be looking for: Party experience reduction (which I mod in myself now @ -33%) Spell immunities (don't know if we could do this exactly, but we should be able to do something similar) Increased cost of resting in towns (you really shouldn't be able to sleep for free at any inn. 75 gold minimum.) Remove camping supplies from all stores (they should be limited resources, right now they just have the illusion of being limited. Either that or prevent shop keepers from restocking them -- ever) Monsters respawn on dungeon levels that you don't fully clear if you leave the dungeon and x amount of time passes (this would be difficult to do intelligently. And it will probably not be possible without the game engine being upgraded to Unity 5.0 due to the availability of the free personal edition) Hard is cooler than normal because it adds more and varied enemies. Potd doesn't actually bring anything new to the table for me -- just inflated numbers.

Good stuff. Yeah, there's animation frame delays, which make things more difficult. You might get more accurate results by queuing the casts up using the shift key and getting the average total frames between the recovery bar becoming empty.

This. Just for the wizard, though. I've said it multiple times so I can't agree more -- except I'd have the spells per encounter progression start at level 2, and you have to pick which single spell every other level became once per encounter. Every even level you can pick one 1st to 2nd level spell you know, and that becomes a once per encounter ability -- so at level 12, you'd have 6 different spells that are per encounter. That would be a lot closer to new D&D edition cantrips. Either that or design a whole cantrip section of spells.

I've read that the Grimrock series of games plays a lot like the Eye of the Beholder games -- which are surprisingly very playable to this day in dosbox, there are even mods for them! Eye of the Beholder 1 has a lot of charm. Eye of the Beholder 2 is technically better, but has less charm (imo). There's a mod that fixes some of the engine issues with EOB 3, but I never got that far in the series. I never played the Grimrock series.

Cheese is decent at low levels.

You find spellbooks during the game and you can hire mercs and use their spellbooks as well, so I wouldn't worry about choosing the right spells on your first playthrough -- although some are more useful than others.

Anyone else can make some input? It's hard to nail down the numbers for attack_frames and recovery_frames due to the animation transition delays. At least some different attack animations (many weapons have two, one of which is randomly chosen each swing) also have different timings. I would use total attack time instead (attack_frame + recovery_frames + attack_delay + recovery_delay). If you do that, then: 1 + ((Dexterity - 10) * 0.0225) would be closer to what we observe in the game. Not sure if the attack speed mod should just be added to the dexterity mod or not, but I'd be a little surprised if it didn't seem to work this way in practice: 1 + ((Dexterity - 10) * 0.0225) + (0.75 * attackSpeedIncrease) I don't know if there's a reload_delay. Note: 2.25 / 3 = .75 I've grown bored with trying to nail down the dps formula exactly. The mechanics are too opaque and my free time is too valuable to me.

Yeah, that would bring might in line with dex if it was 2.25% per point of might instead of 3%. You make some really good points how the existing combat system just breaks down at higher levels (where everyone has at least 100 accuracy). They'll need to redesign a lot of stuff to make it work well. At the very least there needs to be a distinction between the keywords for increased damage (additive) and more damage (multiplicative) -- like in POE (Path of Exile). D&D 5th edition has a much more compressed progression (level 20 characters get a +6 to hit), which works really well in practice. off-topic: I'd really prefer that just had unique attributes (some classes would have a strength stat, but others wouldn't, etc.) for each class in pillars 2. I know, I know... it sounds crazy.

Math can be more complicated than it seems at first glance. +3 might is 9% additional damage only for characters that have a natural 10 strength and have no other damage modifiers (sneak attacks, weapon masteries, weapon enchantments, etc.). I'd put those +3 might gloves on a spellcaster with the lowest might (or maybe a moon godlike), and the +10% crit multiplier (.5 crit damage modifier becomes a .6 which is pretty insignificant considering every other damage modifier that character has) on whoever has the highest accuracy and no other gloves to wear.

I guess it comes down to: Are there at least some fights where it's better to have a fighter + paladin + priest than a fighter + two priests. I don't know. As far as Paladins in games go, Pallegina is an interesting enough character to find a slot in my party at least some of the time.