Tigranes

The former.

That's why AI scripts would be a good option for players who want to just control one player... like I've said three times now.

In a way, didn't IE games have the same problem? Sure, you could use health potions and healing spells, but you would run out of memorised healing spells, and potions were also finite (I suppose you could just buy and carry dozens of them in late game with the late game cash, though). So wouldn't you still have to either rest once in a while, or to make sure you very rarely get damaged? Is the problem you're running into that you can't heal health, or that it's too hard to find ways of avoiding damage? I mean you're presenting a weird catch-22. If you can heal or avoid damage too well, then that's too easy. But if you can't heal or avoid damage easily, then you have to rest.

Well yeah, I did fear as soon as they announced their intentions that the desire to create a game that's a cross between Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale (going by what was in the early promo material) might result in an awkward situation like this where the parts don't fit too well. Having said that, if you regard the old IE games as ones that were primarily tactical combat rather than role-playing (or even as games where the tactical combat was as important an aspect as the role-playing), that's fine and all, but I daresay it's not the definitive way to characterize those games. Torment, for instance - it had a nominal amount of combat by necessity, but if I were to call it a "squad-based tactical combat game with elements of role-playing" I'd just sound silly. It's kind of sort of true for Icewind Dale and it sequel (though even then I know quite a few people who breezed through on easy mode because they didn't really care about the combat and just liked the quests and writing). It's... not an awkward situation where parts don't fit too well. This is exactly how it worked in even PS:T with its extremely personal story; Icewind Dale; Baldur's Gate.. this is how it works. Nobody would say "this game is an IE successor" if you don't have the option of controlling a party. Nobody would say POE ever stopped describing itself with tactical squad combat at its heart. Look, it's OK to say, "to me these games are all about a personal story and I would like some way to not control all party members so much". As I say, it'd be nice if Obs could make AI scripts in the future. But if you're trying to argue the IE legacy as a whole & POE don't have tactical squad combat at its core, you have to ignore a lot of the facts. Why not just make the much more reasonable case that you'd like to be able to play the game your way, too? (People who play on easy or god mode to 'enjoy the story' exist even for almost every type of RPG, and the minority who played IWD that way doesn't change what that game was primarily about.)

-When you remove NPCs from your party, all their biographical stats (kills, damage) reset - making those records absolutely pointless. Please fix. -Blunderbuss strikes have 6 floating damage numbers overlap, making them unreadable, and combat log shows "3 Hit 3 Graze". We need real numbers. -As dirigible says, real numbers for attack speeds should be there, just like everything else in that page.

Pillars of Eternity is a squad-based tactical combat game. That was a defining characteristic of the Infinity Engine games, what was prominently pitched for the Kickstarter, and what Obsidian has advertised the game as. Of course, it is also a role-playing game with a personal story. Many of us are very happy that a good story is combined with carefully written party NPCs and squad-based tactical combat. It may be 'consistent' in a specific sense of realism to deprive players of party control, but it sure would result in much less interesting and much less tactical combat. And that would infuriate the many many people who bought the game for that. Now, it has been requested that POE feature AI scripts, possibly customisable, as to reduce the micromanagement if the player wants it. I think the official word was they wanted to do it but couldn't fit it in for the release version. I would never use it, but that would be a reasonable solution.

You can run away from most non-critical path encounters, can't you? I haven't tried running out of a map, though, so maybe that's a factor. Still, ironman wouldn't be very fun for me if the game told me "THIS ENCOUNTER MAY BE TOO HARD FOR YOU". It would just encourage monotonous and thoughtless play where I just run around looking for encounters I know I can win.

Well, I'd assume, like other KS's, it was tough to find someone who would do what is a pretty low print run for a competitive price, competitive enough that Obsidian wouldn't lose a lot of money preparing the physical rewards. That's why you see a lot of KSers packing the physical rewards into boxes themselves, for example. The postcard and seal is OK. The t-shirt I haven't even unwrapped, I wouldn't be caught dead wearing a shirt with a logo on it. (Anybody want it? PM me and just pay for shipping, it's small and I'm in the US.)

Just got my collector's edition. Yeah, it kind of sucks. So blurry you can barely read some of the text. I'm not too fussed since I paid to support Obsidian and just to have a big box around, but yeah, these KS physical goods are rarely worth the money (and rarely worth the bother for the devs, too).

You can manually turn on every Expert Mode option and just leave the spell effect visuals...

Yeah, stealth works fine as one person. I'm planning to try solo at some point, it should be doable on Normal or Hard, though ToI might be a bit much. After all, BG1/2 were eventually soloable on Insane Ironman if you knew the ins and outs...

Or, you know, you reload (which takes ten seconds or less), you learn that this game isn't going to scale to your level, and you walk away with a newfound appreciation for the dangers of the gameworld. (Or even, try multiple strategies to pull off an improbable victory, which teaches you more about the game mechanics and helps you not jsut do the same thing every battle.)

I think the pacificist / trickster route was ultimately given less time in POE1, given the lack of resources (KS was awesome but it's very different from having tens of millions of dollars to work off for NWN2 or whatnot). I think Stealth, Mechanics, Perception and Dexterity are often checked in conversations and text adventures for relevant things, and in combat, you could focus on paralysing, charming, hobbling and otherwise confounding enemies in terms of ability selection.

That's rest spamming though. I did it in two (which I also considered rest spamming) but I couldn't find a way to get it down to one. No matter what I have to rest twice in there. I expect to be able to do the ENTIRE dungeon resting only once. That's how little I would rest in IE. Its a HUGE DEAL. How can I enjoy strategically using my spells when I know I should just spam them out? I could maybe be cheesy with CC but that's really unfun too. I would prefer doing the entire hold without resting considering it's size. Resting once near the end would be acceptable. Ah, I see. If you want to do, say, the Eothas Temple in its entirety resting only once, then that's pretty tough. Usually my rule in IE was to rest once per level at most, after clearing it, and in POE once every 1.5 levels, since they tend to be smaller. But if you're aiming for that, then you're already resting far less than the game is designed for - and, really, that would only be possible if you lose very little health or zero health in every battle. I'm sure that's possible, but it might mean some strenuously evasive tactics and even cheesy ones like summons in doorways. I'm not sure how you'd change it, though. If you made healing easier then it would make the game too easy, and if you reduced the per-rest abilities mages and priests can access, it would make them even less competitive compared to other classes. (Frankly, I think most abilities should be per-rest...)

I don't think that happens with Gaun's Pledge, though. And as far as I know there are no endurance healing abilities that affect foes.

You can set traps out of combat, but I think just one?

Hold-Wall has my level 5 cipher crit for 70 damage, yes. Much better than an enchanted blunderbuss.

I don't know abotu the other issues, but let me just quip that I've found several flails, at least one magical flail with a special name, before or in Caed Nua. Sorry I can't be more specific.

Obsidian's rationale was that a traditional spread often makes certain stats 'dumpy' for certain classes/builds, so that if you want to build a mage, then nobody would ever want more than 8 Might, and so on. That's why might affects all damage and INT affects all AOE, primarily. I'm fine with that - of course, currently the balance of each attrib is wonky so that instead everybody just takes Might, Dex and Int. It'd be good to rejiggle those in the upcoming patch.

Question answered. Hope that helps!

Moved, since we're starting to get into spoilerish territory, by the way.

There are many ways out of engagement. You can take talents that raise deflection when you disengage. Someone like Eder is tough enough to just walk out of engagements without taking too much of a hit. Grimoire Slam lets Alroth disengage. Knock enemies down, paralyse them, charm them, to disengage safely. Cipher has abilities pushing people back. Rogues have escape. Ogres are obviously tough and they are exactly the kind of enemy you really don't want getting close to your squishier guys. It should be punishing to disengage from a huge ogre. Try summoning your skeletons not in the middle of all the ogres.

I'm planning to not use Eder at all next playthrough.

For example, I cleared levels 3 and 4 of Od Nua last night with a level 6 party (Cipher, Eder, Durance, Sagani), and I rested three times (finding one campinig supply within the dungeon). I could have made it with two rests, if I didn't screw up and get Eder and Durance smashed to low health in one fight. So there's an example where it is not an easy dungeon, and I guess that makes it about 5-6 fights per rest. (Certainly, when I had Alroth in the party, that meant I was sometimes resting with quite a few per-rest spells still in the bank. But that's not a big deal - what matters is I rarely need to exit the dungeon midway and go back to town.) And I don't have any of the health-healing talents. Eder is invested with all defensive equipment and Defender mode so he lasts long enough. Durance backs up with the healing and buffing spells every now and then, so that characters don't get stuck at low endurance and start getting their health hammered. Cipher and Sagani generally stay out of the way. Almost every conventional party will have a wealth of paralysis, charm and knockdown abilities, as well as summon items and abilities, and combined with use of chokepoints, my core characters are rarely getting pummeled by more than two or three enemies at any given time. Not to mention in cases where you only face 2-3 enemies, you can keep them paralysed or otherwise disabled for most of the fight. If you find yourself losing huge chunks of health every battle, without knowing the specifics, one might guess that you are getting into fights that are too tough for you. That might mean lowering difficulty; that might mean investing in some equpiment and tactical changes to protect your characters more.

There's nothing wrong with supporting Beamdog, but I have no reason to recommend a product that is twice as expensive when it doesn't add much of value. When it was released, BG1 EE even subtracted value with an ugly UI and mod incompatibility, though I think the latter has now been partially mitigated.