Lamppost in Winter

The (newer) thread about afflictions and their severity. And my older one, 'cause why not.

Barbs have lower base deflection and growth than anybody else? Definitely something funky going on with the base stats. Would lowering the casters' base deflection be an adequate solution for you? Also I think it needs to be said that not all casters are going to pump Resolve for damage. My Wizard/Druid certainly doesn't.

I've definitely seen that NPC walking from the beach. Dunno about to. I've seen some cool stuff happen, like people running inside when it rains, or one NPC leaving his post and going fishing if you complete a quest a certain way. There's still some stuff that's not great, like the interrogator standing in front of the prisoner all night, or merchants being available all the time. Hopefully this is just alpha roughness. There's also an absolutely awful line some villagers spout randomly; "Priests are very respected in our society". I really hope that one's just a placeholder.

Your idea seems good, though I think I'd just give the straight bonus, e.g., "+X% duration when inflicting Y Affliction", rather than "+1 Int". Less confusing that way. Bonuses to inflicting certain afflictions could be good, like +duration or accuracy to inflicting Might afflictions, for example. Situational combat bonuses in general like the elemental scions I would like. Perhaps they could be made stronger and mutually exclusive, or come with maluses to the opposing element to balance things out. I've talked about this a lot, but mainly I want utility stuff like Field Triage, or even non-combat talents. I think the Divinity: Original Sin and Fallout Talents/Perks list would be the main inspiration. I know this might be a problem because Deadfire takes the philosophy of separating combat and non-combat stuff, but given the suggested rate for talent acquisition is fairly slow and the non-combat gameplay has been expanded, I think it could work. This could still run into the problem of these Talents being strictly better than taking weapon proficiencies, especially for classes that don't rely on weapons. I suppose if the modals are broadly useful enough, it would encourage taking weapons more and make it a harder choice, but perhaps Talents could just be separate. Wouldn't be too much bloat since Proficiencies are only active when using that weapon and you only get these every 4 levels.

Yeah, maybe it would be too old school? Still, it could be a minor way to stop the deepest stat dumps for stuff like STR and RES. "Nope, no battle axe for you if you pick STR 3." Maybe instead of restricting heavy weapons based on STR, you just have a really dumb wet noodle swing animation (kind of like Dark Souls).

See? Sounds kinda iffy that rogues will be much more squishier than wizard nerds, no? Yeah, though I think it could be solved by bumping down Wizard's base deflection, as well as bonuses from levelling. I don't hugely prefer either system, though I think the new thing does hurt the universality of the stat system. Back on topic to the OP, I don't think things should be attribute restricted since attributes already affect so many effects from using those weapons and casting those spells, we don't need to also restrict them. Not to mention attributes are largely static, so it'd feel pretty bad if you made your character on Res short of being able to cast a certain spell or something like that.

So what exactly would be the point of giving melee higher deflection to begin with if you're going to negate it through required stats? I mean not all casters are going to be damage focused (mine tend to be duration + accuracy types). Don't look solely at fighter. Take other melee classes into account, a rogue for example. I actually just checked and Rogues do indeed have the same base deflection as Wizards. Odd because I know Josh said rogues would be sturdier in Deadfire, but apparently that also meant bumping up Wizards.

I find it hard to explain, but I think of damage as being raw "force" from a spell, and Resolve seems to me like willpower and force of personality, which matches that more than Intellect. Duration of effects feels to me like a more "subtle" effect than damage, and therefore more fitting to Intellect. Bit of a sidenote, really, since the stats seem to have verisimilitude as a secondary concern.

I still don't understand the concern about deflection. Even at 20 Res, the bonus to deflection doesn't cover the inherent difference in base deflection between Fighters and Wizards, doesn't it? And they'd still have lower health than the martial classes which limits their tanking ability.

Flavour wise, I like the change because Might as "spiritual strength" was a cool concept, but never seemed to be reflected that way, whereas Resolve on at least one occasion (Adra Dragon 18 Res check "Your soul does burn bright") was linked to that. Mental force determining the raw force behind spells also makes sense for me. Mechanics wise, I could go either way. Kind of wished they just kept it as Might for old times' sake, but I guess it might be confusing to returning players who don't know that it changed. Since there's precedent for splitting some stats up logically, perhaps next game they can implement a fix to my actual pet peeve of the attributes; Accuracy vs. everything, and have stuff like Str vs. Fort, or Res vs. Will. Hell, it might be possible in this game if we did something like Strength gives a bonus to Accuracy vs. Fortitude, rather than just a straight stat contest.

I'm not sure why we're concerned about deflection? Resolve's deflection bonus is relatively small, and even if you pumped it to 20 you'd still not meet the Fighter's base deflection (in PoE that is, don't know off the top of my head the Deadfire values). What if we put the suggested Affliction duration modifier into Con?

On that note, Unconscious is also now simply a 10 second Prone until they take damage, whereas in PoE it was equivalent to Paralyze. I feel Unconscious should be pretty severe, maybe even more so than Paralyze, but with the caveat that damage will wake them up? The Sleep effect in Dragon Age: Origins also had interesting combos with Fear effects, so that might be something to consider, too (but I'm just spitballing at this point).

I wouldn't necessarily want them to look like this, but yes, I would like more of these general sort of passives/talents.

He's also been active on the subreddit (well, two posts). The feedback thread has slowed down and he only responded to one question, but perhaps after the patch there'll be another one I could post in.

I actually made a topic about this a while ago, but it didn't gain much traction. And I am in agreement; hard CCs feel like they should severely reduce enemy defences. Hell, Afflictions could probably even more severe since they're also more easily cured now. Perhaps the update will shed more light on this, but as of now, it seems ludicrous that hitting a paralyzed foe is only slightly easier than one who's up and about, and that's only with Reflex attacks; Deflection isn't affected at all. Prone, as discussed in the other topic, has been reworked from an affliction to a stronger interrupt that's recovered from almost instantly.

So I don't know if anybody else has noticed, but a couple of enemies in the beta, the Xaurip High Priest and the Engwithan Saint, have staves with a ranged elemental auto-attack. Quarterstaves appear, for now, to remain as melee weapons for players.

Prone as an Interrupt rather than a CC with a duration makes sense, I suppose (and it was quite annoying seeing your dudes just lying on their asses for upwards of 14 seconds), but it leaves the abilities that were previously hard CCs with Prone like Slicken or Pillar of Faith in a weird place, and causing a dearth of hard CCs in the early game where we used to rely on Prones.

How do you feel about Fighters, both in PoE and Deadfire? I've seen that where a lot of people see an appropriately low-maintenance class, others feel like they're pigeonholed into being a "boring" class compared to Rogues or Wizards, who have a lot of stuff to do. If you want Fighters to have more cool things to do in a given fight, what would these look like? Personally I thought Fighters were in a good place, actives wise, by TWM2. Probably more actives that I used on a regular basis than my Rogue, which was mainly active in the sense that they needed to be managed so they didn't get squished, and could exploit Sneak Attack opportunities. I don't think it's a bad thing that the martial classes aren't "doing" as many things as a caster is; what are the weapons for if not for simply hitting people sometimes? Besides, I like having some classes (Fighters, Rogues) that feel more mundane than the casters. I wouldn't be opposed to something like Dragon Age: Origins' weapon-style specific abilities, though perhaps not as many, to avoid some of the redundancy those trees had. And since we've seen there's at least a Pommel Strike in the game, perhaps something like this is already on the way. I'd be wary of going too far and bloating them with too many abilities so they just feel like a different flavour of caster. What are your thoughts?

I definitely feel like Mechanics should add a bonus to detection, if only for traps and mechanisms (maybe we can have something like a Survival bonus for detecting stashes, or Arcana for detecting magical traps).

My suggestion is to add Deep Pockets, Arms Bearer, Quick Switch, and Field Triage (have it remove one injury from one character or maybe even all?) to the Weapon Proficiency choices starting at level four. All of these add flavor but no real power creep issues arise from this. I'd also change Island Aumaua back to what they had before with the extra weapon slot. Seems reasonable to me. If this were the system, I would hope that Obsidian could come up with more niche/flavour talents like these to have an adequate variety for the 6 times we take would make these choices. Assuming Field Triage is still even in the game (josh pls) Not saying the PoE Talents were a "masterpiece" (though I did like them), but I can't think of any talents I felt were a must-have, even on POTD, except maybe Weapon Focuses. There were powerful synergies, but nothing that made you inherently gimped if you didn't take them. As for Proficiencies, they have come out better than I had expected. Still some weird arbitrary stuff (like the implements - why is Blast purely a Rod thing, and Dangerous Implement a Scepter thing?), but most of them seem logical. Seems like part of the effort to get players to switch up weapons more often.

To be honest, Weapon Focus aside, I can't really see why the general talents and amount of class passives from PoE staying more or less the same would be incompatible with the new multiclass system. Maybe there was a lot of power creep in PoE I hadn't noticed; I don't know. The stated reason for previously general talents being moved into classes was because people felt the general talents were a bit generic and uninspiring. From the general response, it seems like it only succeeded in making people feel like classes were stuffed with generic passives. Some of them fit; Bloody Slaughter for Barbarians? Sure. Shot on the Run for Rangers? Kind of sucks for other classes who use ranged weapons, but it does fit. Same with weapon styles. Weapon Focus is also something I can live with being stuck in Fighter (it's currently in Barbarian I believe? Which is weird) The problem, I think, is a lot of the general talents that were turned into class passives weren't modified to make them fit the class, so they still feel generic, and in some cases are available to other classes too. So you have a situation where classes are more strictly defined, but some of the things they choose don't feel like "cool thing only X class can do". Some of that is probably because we had those passives as generics in PoE, but the point stands is that they were written as generic talents for PoE and so they still feel that way. My solutions are still one of a) having more "out-there" generic talents (my preference), b) having more of the generics (but not necessarily the weapon styles, and almost definitely not the weapon focus) available for more classes and/or c) making new passives that feel more unique to each class. I still don't know what to do with Weapon Proficiencies, though. I feel like most people will definitely hit an excess of proficiencies and it would be nice to have something cool to pick as an alternative without making it a no-brainer if you don't need any more proficiencies.

Next patch is going to have a Cyclopedia entry for the Inspirations/Afflictions.

This seems to appear on a few buff spells and items. Also whenever you use a buff or other friendly ability it'll display the dreaded "No Pen!"

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)