Lamppost in Winter

So, I've been trawling the Divinity: Original Sin and Fallout wikis for passives to nick: Night Person: Bonus to Per and Stealth at night, penalty to same stats in daytime. Morning Person: Revive with more health. Environmental Affinity - probably suits a Druid best, but could also work as a generic: Choose one type of environment (desert, snow, etc.), and gain bonus to defense against spells with keywords that match it (e.g., fire for desert, ice for snow, plants for forest), faster cast speed when casting spells with matching keywords, and resistance to the corresponding terrain difficulty (like the slowing sand in the Poko Kohara desert). Know-it-all: Bonus to Metaphysics, Religion, History, etc., but malus to faction reputation. May be too punitive. Malus to faction reputation gain instead?

For what it's worth, here's what Josh has said: And I suppose Thaos was sort of an Arch-Priest (even though he couldn't even cast Minor Avatar)

This is what I mean, though. The attribute system supports more niche builds, but the fairly generic defense talents are currently arbitrarily class-locked. I'm OK with more high-level unique stuff like Rogue's Evasion or the Paladin's Divine Purpose being class-specific, but having some generic talents would help define those further outside of just picking the attribute spread. And of course, I would like more interesting non-class specific talents in general. Hell, they wouldn't even have to include the current generic defense talents, as long as they were interesting.

I would be fine with this, though I could see it bloating the passive space on some of the passive screens depending on how many generics you want. Right now, though, I do think that weapon proficiencies are facing a problem where most people feel that after a certain number they're just picking excess proficiencies. Adding things that are already passives to the Talents list seems like a band-aid solution for that - where, and not to sound like a broken record, I think the best solution would be more unique talents (apart from the generics people want access to). Edit: And since it's come up, I didn't say PoTD was easy (though many seem to hold this sentiment), and I certainly don't pick talents "willy nilly" - I just take RP stuff into consideration as well as mechanical benefit when levelling characters. This is probably making things harder for myself, but if you understand the mechanics, imperfect characters are still viable.

How about a brawler-type rogue (probably a Streetfighter)? Rogues need not be the standard dextrous, evasive type, yet the current system only allows for Snake's Reflexes. Having something like Bear's Fortitude would be more suitable for that character. Sure, you could multiclass to Fighter, but then it's not really a "brawler" rogue, because Fighters are themed around being disciplined and trained. I've played on PoTD and did fine picking things that weren't necessarily mechanically optimal, but appropriate for what I wanted my character for me; it really doesn't require a fully min-maxed combat monster, and I'm not very good at the game to start with.

Honestly I'm leaning towards having weapon styles just for Fighters again. I don't believe they've specified whether Weapon Focus will be part of the generics. Still in favour of defense talents being generic. My suggestions, from most to least preferred: Replace the old class passives with new more unique ones and/or, and I'm going to keep banging this particular drum, have some cool utility talents so picking between them is a more difficult choice. Could be a lot of work, yes. Roll some of the class passives into the same page as the generic talents (similar to how PoE handled it) so you have to choose between them. Dunno if they'd be on the same page as weapon profs as well. Put all those generic defense talents, and whatever additional generic talents there may or may not be on every class' passives, again, so you'd have to pick between a more unique class passive and the defense talent. Could really bloat the passive UI screen of course. Are you saying that RP reasons are not important, or just not important to your particular argument?

These are good points. Josh has emphasised the smarter AI, so I wonder if we'll ever have AI that uses abilities close to player efficiency. Or at least, don't fry their own dudes with friendly fire. Corpse Eater Barb's description say that they "kill the target permanently", so I wonder if enemies can use revives now. I do hope so, since again, I like players and (standard kith) enemies to be on relatively equal footing.

come monday i expect the discourse to be spicy, and the takes to be hot

The Fan of Flames visual: Instead of being a smooth jet of flame as in PoE, it's kind of a choppy series of orange puffs that aren't very contiguous, and move/dissipate way too quickly.

As much as I enjoyed block-and-slash (ting! whack!), I think it's too reactive for a game like Pillars. I'm not sure how I'd like Taunts to work in Pillars if they were implemented. A Will save sounds fine, as does Engagement bonuses, but my main problem with them is that if implemented, I should like to see enemy Fighters using them as well. And since taunts traditionally force enemies to fight your fighter, that could be annoying for players to have their dudes suddenly change targets. Dragon Age-wise, I'm fond of Crushing Prison. You probably wouldn't even have to edit it that much. I've also always wished Withdraw worked like Force Field in Dragon Age: Origins, where it can be a protective spell or a target lockdown depending on whom you use it. It was a little OP, but I like multi-use spells like that. Origins-style spell combos would also be cool.

There's an Inspiration (Tenacious) that specifically grants Penetration. I assume there'll be some buff spells that can also do this.

While we're having it out in the other Talent thread about Weapon Styles and Fighter passives, I wanted to talk about utility and non-combat talents. Aside from missing my Field Triage and elemental scions, I feel there's some untapped potential for non-combat or combat-adjacent talents, especially when looking at the Talents/Perks of lists of your Divinity: Original Sins or Fallouts. For example, something that helps with difficult terrain, or something like a night vision perk that adds Per during night (and perhaps subtracts it during the day). Some of the non-combat gameplay, like Stealth, resting and world map exploration, seems to have been expanded enough that there could conceivably be some purchasable perks to improve them. The implementation of the active Skills (Arcana, Stealth, etc.) also seems to be rather linear; they do one thing and putting points in it makes it better. I think 1-2 talents specific to each active Skill that adds some mechanical benefit that isn't just a straight number boost would be enough to add some interest to investing in skills without getting too bloated. For example, Second Wind applying an Inspiration, or being able to move silently in stealth. Perks for the passive skills like Bluff or Surivival in certain situations might also be interesting. The problems I can forsee are some of these being no-brainers or getting bloated with Talents. I would suggest getting access to them at roughly the same rate as Proficiencies, perhaps even competing for the same resource (though I know Obisidian seems to be going in the direction of keeping non-combat and combat levelling separate). With 20 levels and only getting a Talent every 4 levels, I don't feel there would be significant bloat. TL;DR: non-combat or combat-adjacent utility talents/perks are Cool and Good and I'd like to see them implemented

Rolled up a quick Ascetic and apparently, yes it does. As for the proposed solution, I'm a bit ambivalent. Seems like a band-aid for lack of class passives. I could go either way on the weapon styles. The generic defense talents I feel definitely should be generic, though perhaps leaving in the "Resistance to X Affliction" in the classes wouldn't be a bad idea. Mainly, I'd just like to see more Utility stuff. The idea seems to be "you can purchase this as a class passive OR as a Talent", so I doubt you could purchase them twice.

Would it be super unbalanced for Fighters to be able to take the Weapon talents twice, to make up for their "thing" being made available for everybody? 40% speed boost for dual wielding, +12 Deflection with Shields, +30% damage with two-handers, etc. Perhaps if there was a way for the Fighter to take the passive twice, but the second time provides a smaller bonus.

eyyy, we're walkin' here, we're walkin' here! ah, fuhgeddaboutit

Folks, https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/933123351370805248

Will second this. This has been a pet peeve of mine since the first game. Moreso now that enemies have more unique buffs, e.g., Luminous Essence, Sign of Pain. I dunno what the Bestiary looks like now, but I'd also like to see statblocks and description of unique enemy abilities, e.g., in PoE1, Ancient Death Guards had "Finger of Death" listed, but no description as to what it did.

Going through the PoE1 Talents and seeing what I miss and what I could do without. Only going by memory for the Deadfire stuff so I could well be forgetting some things. - I'm fairly ambivalent on weapon talents now. Since everybody gets Proficiencies now, the talents can just be the "Fighters are good with (melee) weapons thing". I still would prefer everybody getting access to the basic weapon styles, but Fighters getting access to a more advanced form. - Defensive talents definitely feel generic enough that their class restriction is arbitrary, especially since the Affliction system has changed and apparently these are quite a bit more attractive than they were in PoE? Need that Cyclopedia entry on Afflictions/Inspirations to fully understand. - X-Slayer/Bane I liked as generics for flavour. Not sure why Wilder Slayer is in Barb? I feel like these could also be in Ranger as a "favoured enemy" type thing. - Elemental Scion talents: definitely miss these, both mechanically and for flavour. - Dunno if the various ranged talents (Shot on the Run, Gunner, etc.) are still in the game as Ranger passives, but I think it would be nice to have these separate since Rangers already had loads of stuff that made them better with ranged weapons than other classes. - Most of all I miss the Utility stuff like Field Triage, though, looking back on it, I guess there weren't that many (nearly half the list is just the variations on the Elemental Scion stuff). I guess I could forgive most things if I had a nice big list of Utility talents, ala Fallout Perks. - The Priest passives that modified Interdiction and Holy Radiance are also very sorely missed as they went a long way to defining roles within the class. Don't know how these would work with Interdiction as a spell now. Perhaps some passives that modify certain schools or keywords of spells could be fun? - Wizard passives were mainly about Blast (now a universal weapon thing) and modifying Arcane Veil (now a spell), as well as the Invulnerability Spell Heuristics thing. I'd suggest passives that modify keywords of spells (since the broader "schools" are already covered by subclasses), but I'm still afraid this might step on the toes of subclassing a bit too much. - Same suggestions and caveats for Druid as Wizards and Priests. That's all I can think of for now, at least. TL;DR: Can live without generic weapon talents, defensive talents feel like they should be generic, I like Utility stuff and want more of it, don't know what to do with caster passives right now.

I remember a tumblr post from Josh saying some spells apply different status effects on a graze, e.g., Whisper of Treason grazes to a Confuse effect. Has anybody seen these happen?

This was my original idea, however given Obsidian have been moving away from per rest I'm not sure it's likely. There's still non-empower per-rest stuff in the game; like the Leap on the Bounding Boots. Besides, injury cure is tied to the rest system so a per-rest resource that cures injuries wouldn't be too far off.

Agreed on pretty much all of these. Katarack's idea for Scion talents is also good. Assuming they keep the current Injuries system, Field Triage could give one free injury cure per rest.

One thing that's been bugging me is that cancelling casting (e.g., by moving or choosing a different spell) eats that resource. Especially annoying when you want to retarget a spell but the new target is out of range. Dunno if this is intended or not, but having to start over the long casting animation is punitive enough for cancelling spells without having to also deal with losing a resource.

I've got the enemies hitting themself bug as well. Somebody on reddit also reported it, too; seems like it's very common. Screenshot from https://www.reddit.com/r/projecteternity/comments/7dywgr/sudoku_feelsbadman/ Some other weird things I got were Merc Rogue hitting herself constantly with her Blunderbuss, without being Charmed. Just recently I also got some enemies (only one I can remember right now is Engwithan Titan) just dropping dead when Near Death without any indication as to who killed it (the log just says "Engwithan Titan was killed"). The Titan also didn't look like it was hurt quite enough for a single hit from any of my characters to have one-shotted it. Neglected to get screenies but I might try again tomorrow.

I will say, flavour and role-playing are a major reason (though not the only one) I like having generic talents to take. I liked in PoE1 I could further define my Wizard with talents like Field Triage, Secrets of Rime, Envenomed Strike, etc., to speak to the background I had thought of. I don't necessarily need the PoE1 talents to come back as they were. Mainly what I want is a list of, say, Fallout style, universal feats that add utility and flavour to characters, and some of the passives to not be arbitrarily restricted by class (e.g., weapon talents, Superior [Defense], Deep Pockets).

It might be cool if you instead got those smaller pickups like crafting materials and food automatically based on your Survival score, upon disembarking from the overworld map to a standard map/scripted interatction. It would probably need some sort of limitation to avoid players just spamming exploration to hoover up all the goodies, though.