spardeous

A comprehensive enchanting system with emergent options. If you're going to lock the economy down like you did in PoE, give us an enchanting system that makes money into an actual commodity. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to blow all my money tweaking a few items out to super-human levels. Tie enchanting into the magic/ability system - allow for more variety and more power.

In case the irony was lost in the discussion, let me remind you here that this game revolves around a small group of priests blowing up a god with a nuclear weapon.

Being someone who finds decking his entire team out in plate armor to be immersion breaking in a cookie cutter 'one size fits all' kind of way, I also dislike the current engagement system. As long as enemies continue to disregard the safety of their back lines and charge suicidally through the player's front lines, managing engagement will continue to be about limiting exposure, rather than combat tactics. In other words, hallway tanking. Tying up back lines combatants is supposed to be the role of ranged fighters, not melee. Knowingly allowing your support/retreat line to be cut off and giving your back to the enemy is suicidal, yet this is exactly what the AI does every time.

Yea, it looks like they fixed it in the 2.0 or 2.1 patch. It used to bug the hell out of me when comparing armor.

It was never bugged. It's fine in your screenshot too. I think he means the discrepancy between the listed DR of an item found with +DR enchantment vs one without it that is later enchanted by the player. It's only a label problem, but it's still a problem. When you find an item with a +DR enchantment on it, the enchant's +DR is factored into the item's 'total' DR. When you enchant an item with +DR that did not have it upon being obtained, it is not factored into the item's 'total' DR. Basically, it's factoring it in one case(items found with +DR) and not in the other(items found without it).

Seriously, an arena would be really cool. I could see Defiance Bay having one as a sort of underground cabal, or Twin Elms as an Engwithan tradition(blood sacrifice doesn't seem to bother them much). Maybe even develop a story and quest around it - I could see some factions of each respective location having problems with something like that, and others supporting it.

"Rocket boots wouldn't improve your reflex, they'd improve your movement speed." By framing your understanding of reflex through awareness of impending danger and ignoring the fact that humanoids are all working with a basic level of instinct/awareness(unless otherwise noted, such as blindness) you're essentially arguing that being able to move at the speed of light wouldn't improve the reaction time of a normal human, which is completely ridiculous. Reflex is not solely measuring your ability to instantaneously COMPREHEND danger; in other words, it's not specifically measuring AWARENESS. I can be aware of impending doom and still not be able to get out of the way. It's measuring your ability to instantaneously REACT to PREVENT danger, which is an aggregate of the two. If I'm trying to dodge a 20 foot-wide fireball moving at me from 10 feet away, what do you think would be more helpful? My ability to sense the fireball(which should be pretty obvious) or my ability to gtfo of it's path and trajectory? The fault in your argument is in assuming that characters are working with an effective 0 awareness. Most sentient creatures and certainly all sentient humanoids in PoE are working with an average level of awareness. "None of this is to say that they couldn't *make* rocket boots that increase your reflex. It's a game, they can do what they want. What I'm saying is that saying the "Boots of Reflex +2" is just good treading doesn't fly, not when you hold it up to the internal logic of the game world (where it's very clearly supposed to be a minor magical item, not just a good shoe) and not when you examine what reflex actually means or how reflex is used in the game." The standard that the game has set for minor magical items is far superior to what an item like 'Boots of Evasion' represent. If you stop making the faulty assumption that reflex is solely a measure of danger comprehension, then the tread argument makes more sense than the boots being a piss-poor representation of hobo-level enchanting.

Eder having a baby as a pet would be pretty funny. Imagine the banter between him and Grieving Mother, lol. If it were an option, after his epic comment, I would probably give it to him.

After stealing the baby and being confronted by Lliras outside, I told him I was keeping the baby. Eder chimes in with: lol

I don't find them to be immersion enhancing. If they were going for immersive, why is body armor the only thing that affects DR? Why not helm/gloves? Speaking of faulty logic and this thread: "X" doesn't increase my immersion, therefor "Y" Is not a particularly compelling argument. Yes, helms and gloves not giving DR might sacrifice some immersion for the sake of gameplay balance. But, sorry, you don't get that as an excuse to discount having anything add immersion to the game. The point was that adding a handful of useless items to the game does not add to immersion. There are already enough useless items(such as gloves/helmets and the 20 million normal weapons/armor you find throughout the game). Supplementing a lower tier enchant system with borderline useless magical items is far less immersive than having a comprehensive enchanting system because it yoinks freedom away from the player and forces them to adhere to the RNG. Your argument about gloves and helms not giving DR or even emulating basic properties of the genuine articles has nothing to do with 'sacrificing for gameplay balance' - infact, it's pure laziness on the part of the devs. You're telling me helmets and gloves being magical is somehow more balanced than giving them the properties of, uh, *actual* helmets and gloves? Why is this even being argued as a trade-off? Why not both, like every other RPG/D20 game on the market? Why replace a good working system with something vastly inferior?

Uh...no....they increase your reflex, man. You see that +2 to reflex? It makes you move just slight faster when reacting on reflex. The best tread in the world won't do that, that's minor magic. I usually get this item and socket it on somebody while I wait for something better to come along. It's not great, but it's not supposed to be great, it's a lowbie item. Everybody forget that NWN has Boots of Reflex +1? I think you need to stop and consider what saves are actually measuring. instinct is only a small part of it, and there's no guarantee that boosts are even referring to instinct alone. By the logic you're purporting here, rocket skates would not affect your reflex score even though they would most likely cut reaction time in half. By the same logic, having a sheet of tempered metal between your head and a club moving at 80 MPH doesn't amount to any meaningful difference. Shoes? "Naw man, they just keep your feet warm." Yea, it's hard to imagine why athletes and soldiers wear helmets, gloves, and shoes. I mean, what are they trying to prove?

I don't find them to be immersion enhancing. If they were going for immersive, why is body armor the only thing that affects DR? Why not helm/gloves? Why can't we enchant items? Why is enchanting so poorly implemented that PCs can't compete with bum wizards? "Honestly, I'd rather see boatloads more of this kind of thing and less of the OP insta-best-in-slot items." It's sad that this sort of thing is a problem in a game that claims to promote class diversity - my level 14 party on POTD doesn't have a single class-restricted item equipped, it's pretty much the same build on every character. In fact, the only thing stopping me from replicating the same build on every character is item availability. In terms of equipment, what is best for the goose is best for every other goose in the world.

Why are they even considered magical? They're about 1/8th as effective as a minor magical item, marginally boosting your ability to react by *gasp* providing slightly better traction than a bare foot! Jokes aside, they're basically just boots.

This is quite literally the worst item and the biggest waste of a slot I've come across so far in Pillars.

Actually, I think the Accuracy label is somehow bugged. It's not changing when I switch weapons.

Re

You're right about Int scaling, I didn't realize that it doesn't show up with base 10 Int. My Eder has 73 accuracy at level 13 with Tidefall, no buffs aside from Defender and +3 Perc from rest. I don't know where you're getting these higher numbers from.

You need to Buff with Durance/ Priest. My 9th level dps fighter is routinely at 100 and even Eder is in the high 80s with that + 20 buff. This is one of the problems with the fighter discussion, is without knowing how characters have been built/ equipped, it's difficult to understand where the complaints are coming from. Personally, I think knockdown is currently on of the best fighter abilities along with Confident Aim...the fact that you get it at level one says a lot about the issues with the class. I've landed Knock Down on the Adra Dragon when Eder is fully buffed, but that's entirely besides the point. It's not about what can be done buffed - my Wizard can land Slicken against anything most of the time without a single buff. Knock Down w/ Eder? Not so much. You'd think a class ability would be a bit stronger than an entry level spell.

Uh, sure. I don't really think you need an output log though. Savegame was too big, so I uploaded it below: http://www.speedyshare.com/gkSaV/ef43318c5f504cc5b2d05928c6a619f8-23820848-HearthsongMarket.savegame If you want to reproduce it, talk to Alarhi and sell all your Sapphires, then buy them back. You'll net around 2k profit per go. output_log.txt

I don't think you understand what deflection represents. It's your character's ability to deflect blows, generally through your shield or armor. I understand it fine - it's you who doesn't understand it. Armor has no effect on deflection, whether you're wearing plate or nothing at all. Shield does, but most of your deflection score is inherent - these issues run contrary to your theory on what deflection represents. Hence, it's an ambiguous term that needs to be expanded upon to be less stupid.

"Another non-PotD theorycrafter endeavoring to retort my PotD theorycrafting. You kids really need to work on your reading comprehension." To relieve your concerns that I am not playing it on PoTD difficulty, I've included a picture of this toaster. I hope that helps.

A deeper and more comprehensive enchanting system, good god. Enchanting in PoE is so flat and straightforward that it's a bore. Give us an enchanting system with emergent properties, where we can actually put our minds to work schemeing and devising. Allow for a greater level of spell/enchant interactions, allow us greater control over the conditionals of when an effect fires off. I think this could add greatly to enhancing class diversity. A synthetic spell system with the ability to layer spells and effects. More contingency options, such as delayed effects, conditionals, and reactives. Greater party control. Give us the option to record AI macros, such as a chain of spells or abilities to fire off at the beginning of a fight. A better combat system - deflection(damage avoidance) being the only viable tank stat is ridiculous. Instead of the flat DR system, give us armor, talents, and stats that soak up a flat percentage of damage. Specializing in soaking up damage should be viable alternative to dodging 20 mobs at once like you're Neo. Tabula rasa character design. I honestly think that a blank slate approach to character design is a better option than a class system with poorly-implemented muliclassing. Instead of class determining advancement, give us points that we can apply to specific aspects. An example - putting a point into a 'combat adept' skill could give us 2 points to spend on branched combat adept skills(such as melee aptitudes like deflection and damage absorption, or weapons such as sword/flail). Having a system like this would allow for both highly-specialized characters and skilled generalists, which is, for the most part, more than the current game allows. It would also alleviate some of the tension regarding class balance(since you would only need to balance schools, rather than fully fleshed out completed products). An improved event system. I'd like to see a real time and random event system implemented. I can't think of a single reason why this type of system never made it into PoE, the world and timeline are almost completely fleshed out aside from the player. Not having something like this makes it seem like the world revolves around the player, which to an extent, it does, but too much so in the case of PoE. You don't want your game to feel like a hallway. I have way more ideas on how to improve PoE, this is just a few.

Just give it up, man - his numbers were accurate, he gave numerous examples to prove them. Even if your point were true about 'def>=acc', what self-respecting tank would call himself a tank if he's being outclassed regularly by normal mobs? There's like 2 or 3 mobs in THE ENTIRE GAME with accuracy better than my best tank(and only marginally so) - the only one I can even think of is the Adra Dragon. If you were making the point that Critical Defense is better taken as an offense-focused Fighter, then the greater point can be made that an offense-focused Monk outperforms Fighter on BOTH FRONTS. Even if there were a situation where Critical Defense vastly outperformed 3-4 points of Deflection, that situation would be the result of player ignorance(enemies piling on buffs/debuffs and player just standing there on auto-attack) rather than being a consequence of game balance. To the person saying Fighter CC is good, good luck landing Knock Down on PoTD - it's vs Fortitude. My Eder has 73 accuracy wielding Tidefall and routinely misses with it. My Wizard with his 1st-level 4-per-encounter Slicken hits more enemies, with a higher accuracy(85), an easier contest(Reflex), and a better duration(Slicken scales off Int, Knock Down does not).

I beat it after several tries on POTD without Dragonslayer. My party consisted of PC(Wizard) Aloth Eder Pellegrina Kana Durance. I started the battle in the top right corner, picking off the adradragons, there's a spot there where the dragon won't pursue you unless it spots you. A single xaurip priest runs up and engages you, I killed it without incident and had my main run down the right wall and pull the rest of the xaurips. Once the xaurips are taken care of, I had my wizards cast essential phantom and buffed the holy hell out of both of them. Had Durance start with the +INT AoE to maximize their spells and just buffed all of them together at once. Summoned a few creatures to act as sacrificial lambs and moved to engage him after the first breath. After all the buffing, saves, accuracy and deflection were all very high - Deep Slumber + Gaze of the Adragon and they just wrecked it. I think Pellegrina had around 170 Will, lol.

Eliminating pre-buffing was a poor design choice, since all it basically did was add a line of unnecessary hoops for the player to jump through to buy themselves enough time for buffing. It takes away from players who like to take their time setting themselves up for combat. Instead of buffing and running into battle, I now pull with rolling flame, set a chill fog to slow them down, and have my party run the opposite direction. There's nothing amazing or unique about this, it's pointless and unnecessary. Instead of being able to play a mage-tank(which is a viable build in any other game including PnP), I'm forced to play a battlefield controller, nevermind how absurdly easy it is for enemies to land /anything/ on you on POTD, even fully buffed.