Loren Tyr

Crits should only affect duration and damage though, not push distance. But as I recall the push distance of Pull of Eora is greater than its AOE, so it should certainly be possible for characters to be pushed out of it. I haven't used it much myself recently, but I certainly remember that happening.

Dual-wield only speeds up the dual-wielding, not the spell casting. Deleterious Alacrity does give you a big boost, of course (though in potion form, obviously anyone can use that).

Yes, the Vancian system is *supposed* to be good at that, it just isn't (except in P&P, but who cares). Hence the need to innovate. Are simple per-encounter cool-down or mana systems original, of course not. And they're hardly ideal either (neither is per rest), but that doesn't mean they can't be used as building blocks to make a system that does work well. The fact that they are staples of action RPG clickfests doesn't mean they cannot be adapted to a different kind of gameplay. One relatively straightforward approach would actually be just to replace per rest casting with long-term cooldown tied to playing time. This makes casting resources span across battles as well but without the magic "rest" refresh button. It also provides more flexibility, since you can for example vary the cooldown duration across spell levels. Not that I'd necessarily favour that as a generic change, seeing as Mages, Druids and Priests sorely need to diversify, but it'd be one option. It would be nice to see at least one of those three moved to a different model altogether, ie. away from the standard "spells organized into tiers of spell levels made available at regular intervals" approach, change it up a bit. Priests in particular could stand to have much more of a deity-specific vibe at the core of their class, rather than a couple of extra talents and a disposition-based radiance.

Actually, Two-weapon Fighting is additive with general Attack Speed modifiers, not multiplicative. Also keep in mind that Dexterity also affects the attack/casting duration itself, not just the recovery time, it's the only thing that does (well, technically it only affects the attack/casting duration, but the recovery time is a function of attack/casting duration so it comes down to the same thing). So an +X% Action Speed bonus from Dexterity speeds you up considerably more than the same +X% as Attack Speed bonus.

Simple cooldowns would be one way to go, for example through a slowly recharging mana system. Hardly original, but it works and can easily interact with other things. But I would say there are plenty of other avenues that could be taken. One possibility that would appeal to me for mages would be more of a reverse resource system; ie. as the mage casts spells he builds up casting fatigue, with higher level spells incurring greater fatigue than lower level ones, and Fatigue slowly dissipating again over time. You can cast as many spells as you like, but as Fatigue builds up they become less and less effective; the degree and manner in which they do so can also be varied across spell levels and individual spells, of course. Aside from allowing for mechanically interesting variations, this would also provide a natural incentive to mix higher and lower level spells. Anyway, that's just one possibility, I would think there is plenty of interesting design space to give Mage, Druid and Priest all their own distinctive mechanic. Which, frankly, they rather need anyway. In the current implementation they feel rather same-y, differing in their spells but not mechanically.

I don't hope they go as far as Tyranny for PoE2 or other future games, but that is mostly because apparently there you have no classes at all. But I do think the whole Vancian thing (and to some extent the "per rest" thing in general) is due for retirement. In part this is due to the issue of balancing. It is usually easy and cheap to rest, there isn't inherently much incentive to just unload all your spells in a big encounter and rest right after, making the Vancian casters generally more powerful than other classes. This used to work fine in the pen and paper days when there was a DM to keep things in check, but it never really translated well to cRPG. I'd much prefer they innovate and shift all Vancian casters to a resource-per-encounter system of their own; there was an extended discussion on this as well in another thread where there wa a variety of ideas on how to do that already, there is certainly enough design space for this. The other part of it is indeed the strategic element of it. In itself this can be a fun aspect as well, and the health system, other per rest abilities and consumables to some degree, are a factor in this as well. But the problem in PoE is that the game doesn't really reward you for it. Because this doesn't really apply. As a rule you don't *have* to start scrimping at all, you can just rest. Even in large dungeons or otherwise far removed from civilisation, it's at best an annoyance tax (having to go back to an inn to get some rest and new camping supplies). So yeah, I'd agree that the Vancian/per rest thing should either be dropped altogether or significantly reworked. Make resting less of a binary thing, make it more of a genuine cost. Or keep the Vancian thing but tie spell regeneration to playing time rather than in-game time / resting (ie. a long-term cooldown).

Hmm, yes... commercial success being a solid indicator of quality and all that. Not sure how you can reasonably call my view of DA unjustified (or otherwise), given that I have not shared my reasons for it. So how can you judge whether those reasons adequately support my conclusions, I wonder? Anyway, sarcasm isn't about need; at best, there is an occasional need to refrain from sarcasm. This is not such an occasion. Like the game or not, that's up to you; I don't care. But from your posts it is clear that what you are looking for in a game just doesn't match the type of game PoE was designed to be, the kind of focus it has. It seems strange to then suggest that this is somehow a lack of quality in the game, or even the genre as a whole; a flaw that apparently may have been somewhat excusable in the BG era but really should have been ironed out by now. Just because you strongly favour story and dialogue over tactical combat and complex gameplay, doesn't mean everyone else does, or that a game is flawed for catering to preferences other than your own. So yes, I am quite puzzled as to what you are doing here; especially since you apparently knew in advance that it was a game in the style of BG2, and should thus have known what to expect. I see no problem with expressing this puzzlement.

Right... because if it doesn't meet what you look for in a game, it must be lacking in quality. This isn't Dragon Age (thankfully; that series was a solid 'meh' all the way through), if that's the kind of game you're looking for I'd suggest you keep on looking. To be honest, I have no idea why you tried PoE in the first place if you knew it was a game in the style of BG.

It's one of the cross-class talents from White March, a slightly weaker version of Wounding Shot (80% of damage instead of 100%, only 1 per encounter rather than 2) that any non-ranger can take. The Wiki isn't up to date in all respects, so often the Gamebanshee PoE page is a good bet: http://www.gamebanshee.com/pillarsofeternity/talents/whitemarch.php (has some inaccuracies as well, but is generally more complete, albeit less conveniently structured).

It shouldn't in terms of installation in that sense, no (it theoretically still could, but that would be quite unlikely). But it could be in a more general sense, ie. a finnicky virus scanner interfering somehow (there have been some reports of a different kind of issue where something like that was probably the cause, strange interactions like that can happen sometimes). Again not very likely though, at face value that doesn't fit the symptoms, but it's possible.

Also, you don't necessarily *have* to have 13 mechanics, I'd say. There aren't that many things you need that high a skill level for, and for those you can use Gloves, Rite of Hidden Wonders, resting bonus, or just taking the hit.

Well, it's a segfault, which isn't surprising. It seems the game was trying to access memory not mapped to it, which is the kind of problem no program can really recover from. It's also not very surprising, since it was a data access issue to begin with. The error occurs in particular during deserialization which, paired to the earlier description of the issues when playing the game, to me again suggests that there is some kind of incompatibility between the old save game and the current installed game. Have you already tried whether the same issues occur when you start a new game with a new character? Knowing whether that is the case or not would be a strong clue as to whether the problem is indeed with the save game specifically or with your installation of the game in general.

I don't get this at all, I'd say it's exactly the reverse. The PoE system doesn't suffer from the sometimes quite counterintuitive way AD&D was set up (AC vs THAC0, the strange scaling of attribute score bonuses; ie. the stuff that was generally fixed in 3rd Edition already), but it has far more variables and is generally more complex. In part this is also due to being better balanced, you don't have obvious dump stats like charisma (or WIS/INT generally for non-magic users) so you have more genuine decisions to make. In combination with the... suboptimal documentation of mechanics in general and specific effects, I'd say it is rather harder to pick up than the IE games were. I also think that because of the greater mechanical complexity, diversity and better balance it is tactically far more complex and rewarding, compared to those older games. So where he is getting this from, I have no idea. As for combat becoming too fast... isn't that what the 'pause' function is for? I certainly would welcome additional auto-pause options, but I don't see how 'too fast' is a problem (or even could be, in a pause-and-play system). I also sincerely hope the deeply idiotic decision made for Tyranny to reduce the party size to four doesn't get applied to PoE2.

Definitely Runner's Wounding Shot, it's very good on Rogues with their plethora of +X% damage effects. Especially on Backstab, of course (though be careful of the 'ability' + Invisibility Backstab bug, that obviously affects Wounding Shot as well). Although it is computed after DR, with the high per-hit a rogue can do, especially with Backstab, you can punch through a lot of DR and still have a sizeable amount of net damage. So another 80% of that damage (or more, it gets modified by Might; at 18 Might RWS does (almost) 100% of damage) packs a real big punch. So if you're seeing the nice big numbers you get with a Sneak Attack/Deathblows/Backstab and think "hmm, I'd like to double that", Runner's Wounding Shot will do you nicely . Edit: just to give a nice illustration, a simple Fine Arquebus + Lash + Runner's Wounding Shot, with Backstab+Sneak+Crit hit against Plate Armour: 106 Pierce damage, 25.8 Burn damage and 100.1 Raw DOT... gotta love those numbers . A pity it can't work from Invisibility, I hope they implement the fix I proposed.

Summary: Removing the RemoveInvisibility call from the two GenericAbility.Apply functions would make official and known to the players the existing (and reasonable, in gameplay/flavour terms) status quo that using non-attacking abilities leaves you invisible, as well as fixing the Backstab+Strike ability+Invisibility bug. ---------- When using a (non-attacking) abilty while invisible, the invisibility is not removed properly. In the GenericAbility.Apply functions, the RemoveInvisibility function is called. If the GenericAbility is not passive, it will then clear all ModifiedStat.Invisible effects. However, abilities that grant Invisibility also set NonTargetable and NonEngageable ModifiedStats, which are not removed by this RemoveInvisibility function. For attacking abilities (ie. anything that contains an AttackBase (or derived) objects, so this is most of them) this doesn't matter much, since the three StatusEffects are all marked OneHitUse so are cleaned up after an attack anyway. But after non-attacking abilities (eg. activating a modal, drinking a potion, Rhymer's Summon) this doesn't happen, which means the character becomes visible but is still not targetable or engageable; effectively, the character is visible to the player but still invisible to other characters (including your own, by the way). An exception to this are Teleport abilities (eg. Escape), since these use Invisibilty themselves and explicitly make the character targetable and engageable again because of that. One possibility would be to change the RemoveInvisibility function and have it clear NonEngageable and NonTargetable as well. However, this would remove those even if they are caused by another (non-invisibility) effect, since there is no way to tell whether they originated from an Invisibility-type ability. Moreover, from a gameplay perspective you have to wonder whether fixing it is even desirable. After all, wouldn't it make more sense if activating a modal ability or drinking a potion *would* leave you invisible? And anything with an attack in it makes you visible again already anyway. Rhymer's summon (and other summoning, from figurines) might be a bit more borderline in this regard, but that's only a couple of them. I would therefore suggest removing the RemoveInvisibility call from the GenericAbility.Apply function instead. Firstly, this avoids the issue with fixing it above. Secondly, this clarifies the situation with regards to non-attacking abilities: as is, they effectively leave you invisible anyway, the player just doesn't know it because the character is rendered as visible again. Seems better to just make that official, by keeping the character visually invisible as well (for lack of a better description). Thirdly, this also fixes the bug with Backstab, where if you are Invisible and use a Strike ability you don't get the Backstab bonus, because the Strike ability will call the GenericAbility.Apply function before the actual attack occurs, which means that by the time the attack hits the character is visible again as far as the Backstab ability is concerned. If the RemoveInvisibility call is removed, I would also suggest changing the line "this.m_ownerStats.InvisibilityState--;" into "this.m_ownerStats.InvisibilityState = 0;" in the TeleportAbility.BecomeVisible function, since otherwise with eg. Escape while Invisible you could end up with the reverse situation (character is rendered as invisible for the player, but is targetable and engageable by other characters; in the present situation this wouldn't happen because activating Escape would call RemoveInvisibility and clear all other Invisible effects first).

I actually already did that during the 3.03 beta, though it didn't get picked up at the time. The thread is here: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/87456-303-backstab-from-shadowing-beyond/?hl=backstab. Might be a good idea to put a new thread in the main tech forum though, just to bring it back to the forefront and add further details. And indeed, putting some saves in so they can easily verify themselves could help speed things along. I'll also see if I this weekend can dig a bit into the code to locate the underlying causes.

Except that it isn't a limitation in some objective sense. You perceive it as such, others don't. Just like apparently there are people that for some inconceivable reason actually like Superman and Superman-related things, whereas I would be less bored watching paint dry. And sure, there will be other people who share your view, to the extent that they regretted buying the game and are less likely to play games from the sam developers? How many there are, who knows? Your claims about "a lot" notwithstanding, there's no reliable data on that (not that I'm aware of anyway, and given the effort required to obtain it I doubt it exists at all). In any case, it seems unlikely that many people are significantly swayed in either direction by one single facet. What makes people enjoy a game generally depends on a range of factors; if the 'level of epicness' factors into it at all, it's still just one element of it.

Yeah, Backstab + special attacks still has some issues. Doesn't work with Invisibility (I think the ability technically breaks the invisibility slightly before the attack occurs, so the character isn't invisible anymore by the time it lands) and only on the second attack of an ability when dual-wielding (something to do with the fact that the off-hand actually attacks first). On auto-attack it works fine now though, you get two backstabs from both stealth and invisibility (there were some issues with this on earlier versions), and you at least get one from a Strike ability from stealth. As far as I can tell that last one is actually the same issue as with Invisibility, you technically break stealth due to using the ability just before the actual attack. However, with stealth you still get one backstab if an attack was ordered while stealthed, even if you become visible before it actually lands. This works more generally: if you are stealthed, click to attack an enemy, become visible en route to that enemy, you do get a Backstab (but not a second one). So even if you don't have any stealth skill at all, you can still get at least one Backstab hit in. Note that this still works if you're the one ending the stealth mode. Anyway, one kind of build I rather like is a more thuggish, more defensive rogue. With heavy armour (I use Brigandine, Plate doesn't really fit a rogue I feel), Sabre + Shield, shield talent, etc. He's a bit slower and less emphasis on the DPS, but a lot sturdier as well so you can use him more in the frontline or to go deeper into the melee to take care of a priority target. Use him to open combat as well with a Backstab, though'd get a tank with good stealth nearby to and ready to go to keep thinks in check (or alternatively, close in with the high stealth tank and the rogue, and have the tank draw the first attention just before the rogue gets to work). Backstab and the other rogue +X% damage mean that even defensively build, he still has a good damage output. If you bump deflection enough you can also add in Riposte, but you'd really need potions to make that work properly which has no synergy with the Backstab opener, so I wouldn't go with both Backstab and Riposte. Deep Wounds does (base) 3 damage per three seconds (for 10 sec) by the way, so that's (base) 10 total (and more with good MIG and/or INT). Doesn't stack, though. @Boeroer: Backstab won't play nice with Novice's Suffering I'm afraid, no. The +X damage is just subject to Might, no other +X% damage modifiers at all.

Well no, that's progression how it should be made *according to you*. As far as I'm concerned, 'epic' generally just equates to 'unrealistically overpowered' (usually within an even more unrealistic time span as well) and 'poorly balanced' (more often than not, anyway). It rarely leads to particularly compelling storytelling either (more saving the world from some cackling evil and being the focal point destiny *yay*). It doesn't do much for the gameplay either. If the character becomes much more powerful, the enemies are just scaled up right along with them to maintain the challenge. The Fantasy genre tends to fall into the trap of aiming for too much of the 'epic', it tends not to work very well. The Superhero genre tends to have the same problem actually (that Mary Sue incarnate Superman being its spokesman). Thankfully, the PoE devs apparently agreed with that view. Let's hope they stick to that for PoE 2.

Variety of aspects, fine. But you seem to be wanting a character that is well-developed in all aspects, which is an entirely different matter. I generally wouldn't put 13 in every stat, but rather emphasize whatever stats are most relevant for the kind of character I'm going for. But either approach can yield a perfectly viable build with a number of strengths both in combat and outside it; the number of points you have to distribute is hardly an obstacle to building a well-rounded character in this sense. And if you want a character that excels at everything the answer is simple as well: cheat. That's what the console is for (well, sort of), it's a single player game so there's no inherent reason not to. I'd say the distribution of attribute and skill points is quite well-done and balanced in PoE. Sure, not every character is going to be able to access every option, but that's precisely the point. They're not supposed to, it is a further way of making different kinds of characters feel more different. And yeah, they could have given you an extra five or ten or twenty stat points to distribute, it wouldn't have mattered much. They would have had to rebalance the rest of the game around that anyway, and almost certainly would just have upped the conversation stat check values to go along with it. So no, I don't think they've been too skimpy; and it is a balanced number simply because this is the number they used when balancing the game. Which is also why giving you 4-6 more points to play around with would be detrimental: that's not the number the game is balanced around. For one thing, it would more easily allow you to much more easily access all conversation options, which I don't believe is the developer's intention (it certainly wouldn't be mine, in their place). And by the way, PoE is hardly the first game not to have permanent stat bonuses. BG2, the big daddy of the genre, didn't either; nor did IWD1, as I recall. BG1 did a bit with the tomes, but that was just a single point per stat (except Wisdom I think; one of them had two tomes). How is temporarily boosting scores such a pain in the ass? Some of them are going to be boosted a bit already anyway by items you're using. With some food you can quickly punch that up by two more points ("open inventory, select character, eat food"; yeah, real hassle), and with a fairly even stat spread to begin with that is easily enough to pass most conversation attribute checks.

True. Though I'm not sure it fits the character as I have conceived of her, a bubbly, curious and slightly clumsy scholar with a keen interest in the arcane and a burning desire to become a mage someday. A desire as well that led to a minor case of burning to the ground of the local mage's arcane laboratory when she may or may not have been snooping around for a bit, which is why she is now on a walking tour of the Dyrwood with her pet cat (it's a rather large cat, to be sure). Anyway, not really the type for venom . I noticed something interesting as well: Marked Prey + Prestidigitator's Missiles was doing a bit more damage than I expected, and as it turns out the +20% lash thing from Marked Prey with the missiles is stacking. That is to say, you get the regular +20% on the first missile, but +40% and +60% on the second and third. It's quite specific to the Prestidigitator's Missiles though, doesn't seem to work with other Missiles or Blunderbuss. Exception is Concussive Missiles, that did tend to get nice, big lashes (up to 100%), though not always. I guess they have to really hit at the same time for it to work. With the Concussive Missiles it actually seemed to work only if there wasn't another enemy in the missile AOE. Anyway, I'll probably swap out Marked Prey for Wounding Shot for now (was already planning to), but still... nice to know.

As just (again) noted by Insolentius in this thread: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/79763-bug-1060586-min-dmg-to-higher-level-oozes/?p=1836631, the minimum damage after DR dealt to various (higher level) Oozes is still unusually high, getting a flat +10 on top of the 20% of total (potentially increasing the damage beyond the amount before DR). This is cause by an unusual (and I would think unintended) setting of the DamageMinBonus parameter on those Oozes. Since the original thread is in the Beta patch forum, I thought I'd put a thread here as well; not sure the Beta forum is being monitored much at the moment.

I can tell you how it happens, that was fairly easy to track down. Though I'm unclear on the why of it, and whether it is deliberate or not. Anyway, in the CharacterStats.AdjustDamageByDTDR_Helper, which handles the adjusting of incoming damage by DR (obviously), calls the CalcMinDamage function which computes the minimum damage for a given damage amount (obviously redux). This takes the minimum damage percentage of 20% of the damage amount, but then adds the DamageMinBonus to this value. This DamageMinBonus is again a property of the character receiving the damage, in this case an Ooze of some description. Looking through the ingameglobal.unity3d file, I find that the CharacterStats object associated with for example the Swamp Slime (BES_Swamp_Slime) as well as the Greater Ooze (BES_Ooze_Greater) has this DamageMinBonus indeed set to 10; presumably some others have this as well. I checked some other creatures like the Skuldr and the Lesser Ooze, these just have it set to 0. So mechanically, it is quite clear where that +10 is coming from. Exactly *why* that value is set to 10 for those creatures in the first place is a bit mysterious though. I kind of get the impression that it is a holdover from earlier (pre v1.0) versions of the game, I don't think I've ever seen this mechanism referenced or used explicitly in the game (though then again, it doesn't really announce itself, clearly). There are certainly plenty of traces of that sort of thing in that area of the code. It might also be that it was intentionally set but that it's effect was misunderstood, the name of the parameter is quite ambiguous. 'Bonus' implies that it's a good thing to have; in particular, that positive values on it are a good thing to have. But in this case, a character having this 'bonus' (a positive value on it, anyway) will actually take more damage (potentially more than the unadjusted damage amount as well, which can hardly have been the intention). So perhaps the value was set with the understanding that the 10 would be subtracted rather than added, or that it was meant to be a change in the percentage (eg. going from 20% to 30%; or 10%). Or alternatively, it was understood to change the minimum damage *dealt by* the character, the name of the parameter could easily be read that way and there are after all effects that do that. Moreover, the DamageMinimum ModifiedStat which can change this DamageMinBonus value has as it's tooltip "Adds [VALUE] to the target's minimum damage" ('the target' in this context being the target of the effect that applies this DamageMinimum change). Again, it's ambiguous about whether this pertains to damage dealt or received. Either way, considering that this is specific to the more potent Oozes, I would think it was intended to make them tougher, not weaker. Edit: I put a thread linking back to this one in the main Tech forum, to make it more visible (there not being a Beta on at the moment).

Yeah, Brand primarily (with Driving Flight). Though I'd have to see whether I'd be auto-attacking enough at that point to make Predator's Sense worth taking, not sure yet.

It is starting to look like a rather fun build, I must say. Maybe I'll put my current playthrough on hold for a bit and give this one a whirl. Pondering the implement choices, does Combusting Wounds trigger Predator's Sense again these days?