perilisk

What specific features of D&D 5e do you prefer to the PoE system?

No, John, you are the Gods. Don't be silly Bryy, you know turning yourself into a god isn't an ending option in Eternity. They are saving that for the Eternity 2 Expansion, Throne of Bha.... uh Eothas. Throne of Eothas. Well, if we're going to keep pissing gods off, it seems like a necessity. Otherwise, you'll end up facing one directly, and... PC: Woedica the Burned Queen? Good evening. As a duly-designated representative of the city of Defiance Bay, capital of the Free Palatinate of Dyrwood, I order you to cease any and all mythical activity and return forthwith to your place of origin, or to the next convenient divine realm. Woedica: Are you a god? PC: [Honest] Err... No. Woedica: Then.... Die! Eder: [playername], when someone asks you if you're a god, you say "YES!"

They're mute, so no. And that better not be a hint to Obs to add a Deekin.

I've noticed the same thing. I think you could cut the number of stats down to four (essentially dropping perception and resolve), and use each of those stats as the basis for a defense. You could then derive other secondary stats from pairing base stats-- resolve from int and con, perception from int and dex, move speed from might and dex, etc. It's a little GURPSy, but if you really want to punish dumping stats (whether or not that is a good idea...), base the derived stats on the lesser of the two contributing stats rather than the average.

Click the weapon swap button once, it brings up a list of weapon sets. Click it a second time while the list is up, it swaps sets. Keep doing that until you get unarmed.

There's also minimum damage to consider. DR can't reduce that 20 damage to less than 4, so DR level above 16 doesn't matter anymore. For the 17+3DR example, it can't reduce it to less than 3.4, so the cutoff is 16.6

There is a common theme, but it's about not failing to get answers, as much as it is about about the limitations of getting your answers and direction from somewhere and someone else. With Eder, it's his brother. With Aloth, it's his cult. With Kana, it's the document he seeks, and his hero-worship of the writer. With Durance, it's the trial he believes he is being subjected to by his goddess. Same thing with Hiravius, more or less. With Pallegina, it's a more straightforward case of whether to follow orders or follow your own sense of what is right. In each case, they have an opportunity to reject looking for answers/direction externally and create their own meaning. This obviously ties to the general question of society and the gods, who as it turns out don't represent pure, transcendant moral truth that is as much a part of the fabric of reality as gravity. GM's story provides a counterpoint about the dangers of looking only within yourself to the point of shutting reality out.

I got the sense that what happened with Sagani's quest was a bizarre fluke, and not something normal or expected. And anyway, it doesn't disprove anything. Give a critter a kith soul, get an intelligent, self-aware critter. Give a kith a critter soul, get a feral beast walking on two legs.

I feel like the approach that would work best with the lore would be to have quests reward "Memories" to the characters that participate, which could then be used to enchant items (ie, different Memories would provide different bonuses, rather than being a blank resource, and different quest resolutions would provide different Memories), via some sort of handwaved essence transfusion. I think the item backgrounds would work better as a Watcher-power-based soul reading, rather than a standard item history. You could get a little more impressionist about things. A less literal history would also make it feasible to generate procedural "readings" for player-enchanted items by referencing the Memories used to craft it, while still having them fit the style of unique items.

Yeah, but those are all relationships between characters. PCs (especially in games like PoE where there is so much variety in race, background, attitude, etc.) are almost never characterized strongly enough for a romance to feel very compelling as anything other than fanservice. Romance between CNPCs, that could possibly work. I'm not convinced by that argument. Surely if the PC can form other kinds of relationships (such as friends) with NPCs, they can form a romantic one if well written. Whatever some people might say of Bioware romances, some of them work very well. It's all a question of writing them accordingly. It's not impossible, but it's very difficult to do without undermining the characterization of CNPCs. The sort of person that a character falls in love with and under what circumstances says a lot about who they are. If the character is willing to get involved with anyone, from the hairiest wild orlan to the mightiest aumua, same or opposite sex, from the cruelest Bleak Walker to the kindest Wayfarer, then you're basically taking a big chunk of their character and dissolving it into bland mush, all to service a player fantasy of getting some elf strange or whatever. But on the other hand, if you give characters an actual sexual orientation, racial preferences, disposition preferences, a requirement for specific conversation choices, etc. etc., you're writing so many PCs off that it isn't worth the resources.

This is another case of a solution in search of a problem. That's a lot of work to do something that would likely make the game worse. Well, it's definitely not something they should undertake for PoE or the expansions, whether or not it's worthwhile design.

Yeah, but those are all relationships between characters. PCs (especially in games like PoE where there is so much variety in race, background, attitude, etc.) are almost never characterized strongly enough for a romance to feel very compelling as anything other than fanservice. Romance between CNPCs, that could possibly work.

Well, you could give the Cipher's mana resource to the Wizard, but have Wizards still start the battle out low and need to build up mana to power their spells. They could circumvent this slightly with a very limited number of per-rest slots that they could use to prepare (ooc) a specific known spell of any level, which could then be cast in combat without needing or using any mana. So, modern system, but with a little Vancian flavor. Of course, that would leave Ciphers without a unique thing. So, I'd suggest dropping Focus altogether, and reimagining them as soul hackers, with a sort of magical cyberpunk theme. Ciphers would establish soul links to one or more enemies. These soul links would "hack" the enemy over time (with the speed dependent on enemy Will), with the hack level acting as a sort of per-enemy mana pool. Depending on the Cipher's abilities, there would be a series of increasingly powerful debuffs or control conditions passively applied with increasing hack levels, but higher levels would also unlock active abilities that the Cipher could trigger on or through the enemy, at the cost of reducing or resetting the hack level. Some active abilities would be learned by leveling, but others would be associated with the enemy itself (representing using their own strengths against them, essentially), so for example a hacked blight might be used to deliver an elemental attack against its allies. I like the idea of the Cipher only directly targeting enemies with their at-will ability (though some of the active effects triggered from an enemy might buff allies in range), as it makes them sort of the opposite of the Chanter.

Seems to me that the best way to avoid dump stats is to have somewhat less in the way of up-front benefits for stats (possibly just defenses), but then for each class, add a class-specific bonus tied to each stat. Call the six bonuses for each class its "traits".

Well, for one thing, you lose out on the ability to have to two buffs active due to the ability of phrases to linger. If it's a high-level, long-lasting buff, it's also going to slow down your phrase counter, making it harder to get those ogre summons and whatnot.

If Valve is still interested in paid or even pay-what-you-want mods (clearly not for Skyrim, but I imagine the concept will be back), then modding tools might be a valuable addition (for Obsidian) in and of themselves. It would basically just be an expansion with a free-to-play business model.

Yeah, but you try convincing farmers to pay for love.

Agreed, at least when it comes to Afflictions. The fact that debuffs are packaged into very discreet sets which are limited in number already pretty well limits how much they can be stacked. So long as you can't stacked two of any Affliction, stacking debuffs should be allowed. Buffs, though, not so much.

I feel bad enough about manipulating my merry band of emotional cripples into following me toward what is likely a horrible demise. But in pursuing the main quest, you could at least make an argument for the greater good. Getting them into bed feels like pure sociopathy.

She'd get in trouble with the god of game design, who thinks that 6 races (with 2 to 4 subraces each) is a sufficient amount, and wouldn't be thrilled about having to come up with character models, portraits, stats, and racial talents for lots of half- and mix-races. Elder Scrolls rules, halfbreeds always take the race of their mother. Or, they're godlikes.

the developers clear wanted unique gameplay for different classes. give chanters different themed spells from wizards is not unique gameplay. cipher focus building is intended to play different from other casters. wizards got their grimoires, which adds different tactical concerns. if druid wildshape actual were useful beyond the early stages o' the game, that would also be creating a uniqueness to druidic play. what is out-o'-place, if anything, is that the casting mechanics for priests, druids and wizards is a bit too similar, but that is what the community wanted. for the familiar classes with ie analogues, the fan base insisted/inisits on making the poe versions play more like the ie/d&d versions. can't have a poe paladin that is relative weak on offense 'cause that ain't what bg2 did. weren't any different for the fighter when the beta were initial released. many beta testers wanted to know why the fighter couldn't dps better.... it were wrong that a poe fighter couldn't do damage and absorb damage with equal faculty, in spite o' the fact that many such complaints were coming from folks who had actual applauded the direction o' fighters announced in this thread... with the notable and almost singular exception o' karkarov. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66380-update-81-the-front-line-fighters-and-barbarians/?hl=front-liners ciphers and chanters and wizards, oh my. is all 'posed to play different. HA! Good Fun! Not disagreeing, exactly, but what benefit do wizards get for this restriction? Right now, wizard is "druid/priest, but with limited spell selection". I don't know that taking another class and then crippling it is exactly what people mean by "variety". And it's hard to even justify lorewise why Druid wouldn't just be another priest, given that the most druidy in-game culture also is very huge on the gods. You could easily roll the Druid and Priest spells into one superset, then parcel a different subset out for each deity, along with a key power. Galawain followers could get Spiritshape, Magran could get a beefed up Interdiction, others could get Holy Radiance (though it seems more like an Eothas thing), and you could add some new ones as needed. Bah.

You know, if there's one plot hole with inter-kith relations, it's that they're sterile in the first place. There's a goddess of motherhood. Wouldn't she have an interest in at least the occasional miracle birth? Parthenogenesis even? If all we're going to have is plain old secular nature, why bother with deities in the first place?

Pallegina and the ambassador are from the Vailian Republics. The player character, IIRC, can only choose Old Vailia as an option. You're from Rome, they're from Latin Americia, more or less.

So all she had to do was prevent her customers from sleeping with the very people they're most likely to find attractive (since presumably evolution is going to bias kith toward preferring non-sterile pairings)? That seems like a poor business strategy.

I see your point, though the four shrines don't really represent gods so much as they represent endgame choices. Technically you can ally with any living god, but some are part of a team of likeminded gods.