CornyCarrot

Quit to Main Menu and loading a save game works as well.

Except they do, it's just not called magic explicitly. If memory serves, most "mundane" classes at some point get a skill that allows for superhuman feats through "sheer force of will", "intense focus" or some other silliness, but it's still magic. Take something as simple as Rogue's Evasion which allows to avoid full damage from AoE attacks, like dragon breath. Realistically speaking, there is no way in hell to avoid what basically amounts to magical carpet bombing, in open area, because you jump behind a rock and are street-smart. And yet, Evasion is a thing, both in DnD and PoE. Or Hide in Plain Sight. Or the ""You a demi-lich? That's cute" BG Rogue who could set Time Traps and make himself immune to Death Magic. Even what you suggested a couple pages back, about turning the Escape ability to a roll or flip, instead of straight up teleport it is now. You think it would be more mundane? How often do you see professional martial artist (boxing, UFC) doing flips to escape form hairy situations? You don't, because the speed and strength required to do so, without getting demolished in the process, would be superhuman. Not to mention that better options would be available to someone with such physical prowess. And that's just sports, let alone actual combat, with weapons and armour involved. So even if you'd had your way and they changed it, it would still be superhuman, hence magical, in this setting. What I'm getting at, is that you're arguing semantics.

No of course not. But we are talking about a game here not real life, and companion relationships aren't the most important part of the game, hence simplification. Honestly I am okay with the system. I miss the time when I don't have to worry about what I pick in conversation unless I want to murder someone, but if this type of disposition is what requires me to have more conversations/romances/flirts/etc., I am good with that. At least its not DAI where the options are so not transparent that your character comes of as borderline psychotic. Costs of simplifying something that is incredibly complex, I guess. Just like @Slotharingia described in his last post, it completely changed my perception of Aloth. It is never fun to realize that all of it was just your silly headcanon, hence me being a bit salty. Agreed on the DAI 100%.

I had that when I took him and Tekehu to the Wild Mare for the first time. There is a humorous conversation between the godlike and the innkeeper, in which I participated, with Aloth rolling his eyes the whole time. I assumed it was at Tekehu's party animal antics, but apparently, me joking about it was just as bad. Went from 0 to -1,5 after that one encounter, triggering the "get your s... together, you're not treating this whole Eothas business seriously" lecture. The relationship system is a nice concept, but it is executed so badly that I would prefer it to just not be there at all. I don't think a joke can be irresponsible unless it's practical. For instance, I have a friend who is a physician, jokes about his work all the time, with friends and patients alike, sometimes (rarely) in bad taste even. Most responsible guy I know.

I actually tried doing that in the first game but because of how bare-bones notes are, I just gave up half-way through. IIRC, you can't even move the cursor to correct a typo... and I make LOTS of typos. Infuriating. Some basic notepad functionality would do just fine, really. Also, a few nice fonts so you can have different handwriting for different chars. And a drawing tool while we're at it. For puzzles and stuff. Ok, I'll shut up now. I suppose you could use pen and paper to do that sort of thing, but having an actual in-game journal is so much more immersive.

It would be awesome if this idea was incorporated into the Fighter profile in PoE2. They would just need to be extra careful so it does not overlap with Paladins too much - perhaps by making the Fighter's abilities more visceral/physical? Pally seems to be more "supernatural" in nature, but that's neither here nor there, since all classes use a form of magic. Like for instance, an ability that allows the Fighter to jump to a targeted ally and actively shield him from blows. The ally would use Fighters deflection and reflex in defensive rolls, but they both would suffer a sever attack speed debuff (possibly, attacks that miss the protected ally, still have a chance to graze the Fighter). Or an offensive version of them same concept - Fighter's abilities can be used as "Co-ordinated attack" under the right circumstances. For instance, when fighting 1-one-1 Knockdown is your regular ol' Knockdown, but when you have another martial class flanking, it deals bonus damage, cannot miss and gives a free attack to the contributing ally. Sort of like a lite version of Tyranny's combo moves. And so, where a Paladin is a master and commander, shouting out orders and supporting the entire team with buffs, a Fighter is at their best when forming a tag team with a buddy.

Are there "correct" rest bonuses though? Take Perception for instance, the highest resting bonus is +4 from Caed Nua which amounts to +4 Accuracy. Now, Blessing, the 1st level Priest spell gives you +5 on top of 10% damage bonus. And then there is stuff like Devotion of the Faithful (+20 Acc, +4 Might, while also debuffing enemies in the area). My point here being that from minmaxing perspective a buffing Priest is your first, second, third and fourth concern. Resting bonuses are somewhere near the bottom of the list in my personal experience. I play PotD, no custom mercs, lowest stat is 9 on my Watcher, so no ultra minmax builds, and the only reason I use resting bonus is for scripted interaction and dialogue checks, pretty much. I think that scare enchanting resources and focus on uniques is a design choice. Then again, I don't enchant that much anyway so I have never run out of them. One thing I can agree with is that I'm not a fan of lashes - I'd much prefer if the was a consumable alternative like resins from Dark Souls games. From what I gather, Stealth is getting a complete overhaul - there are gonna be view-cones and noise-levels, actually allowing you to get close and remain undetected. So while the view distance might not change, you will still be able to scout just fine.

I don't know, the need to be ready for anything is part of the charm in this type of a game. That's the reason you have 6 (5 in Deadfire) characters forming an adventuring party - to cover every possibility. On top of that there are classes like Wizards who can completely adjust to the enemies on the fly (i.e. different grimoires). Because of that, the comparison with the Witcher is rather weak both thematically and mechanically. Geralt is just one guy and monster killing is a job for him. Huge part of that setting is poking fun at high fantasy tropes - instead of a knight in shinning armour on a noble quest to slay monsters and save virgins, you get a fantasy version of pest control with wicked haggling skills. The whole "ask around town, prepare right oil and elixir, try to squeeze out a down payment, hit on the local girl" is meant to show that there is a certain professional routine - not every contract is some epic struggle (most aren't in fact). Now this would just feel wrong in Pillars due the completely different vibe, i.e. "the grand adventure." I agree with map scouting though. Thing is, I'd much rather do it myself to be honest, and luckily the new stealth system is being developed with that in mind (among other things). That being said, I see no reason not to have "area scouting" as a service from a local hunter, for players who don't want to be bothered with stealth. Interestingly enough, most of the things you ask for are already in the game. There is a Bestiary, which I found to be no less handy that the one in the Witcher, if not more so due to different flavours for same type of monster. Talking to the locals will give you some hints, sometimes subtle and sometimes not so subtle, about monsters you will be facing ("I need this thing that's from a drake's lair, yo", "Damn ogre, killing my pigs!", "Dunno, that girl got kidnapped by this ogre, bro"). Take Durgan's Battery for instance - how many times is the player told that the place has been sealed for centuries and is haunted. Don't know about you but for me it screams vessel and spirit, and sure enough, the Battery is chock-full of them. Pillars already has that preparation element to it, it's just handled differently.

Interesting, I don't think I read about something like this before. I don't know how feasible it would be for the devs (since its a whole new layer to class balance) but its worth a look, at the least. Well I can't take any credit, it's not exactly a new concept. Pre-Skyrim, the TES games had this division between magic schools - some were dependent on Willpower, while others on Intelligence (with plausible lore reasons behind it). This created more build choices since it was not an all-or-nothing deal with magic - you could ignore will/intelligence and still excel in magic powered by your preferred attribute. I believe stretching it over more than two attributes would fit PoE's design philosophy pretty well. As for the difficulty in implementation, it depends on how far they would want to go with it. If we're talking full-blown schools that are made autonomous thanks to having a high score in the relevant stat then it is a nightmare to balance. However, I was thinking more in line of putting emphasis on what kind of a Wizard you are - your spells of choice would simply have an edge unattainable by others, making them that much better, but it would not detract from the inherent versatility of the class. Hell, it can even adopt the way current Paladin Orders work. You get to chose an additional Talent at level 1 and BAM!, all your spells work with Intelligence now, at the cost of martial spells being wholly unaffected by any stats. My original proposal is more organic I think, and using a Talent for it seems less elegant, but it would simplify things quite a bit.

About the Might(y) controversy - while I personally didn't mind the joint stat (I even like the concept of soul-strength being more tangible that in your average fantasy setting) I do think it was a bit of a lousy execution. Truth be told, I don't recall a single scripted interaction where Might would be used in a context different than physical, whereas it it supposed to represent both spirit and body. As for the more combat/mechanics perspective, I think that it felt off to some, due to the fact that spells did little to reflect the more versatile stats. Taking Wizards example specifically, they could make a bunch of (un)official schools/spheres/aspects/lores/whatever of magic that benefit heavily from a certain stat but others have little impact on them. For instance, all the "martial" spells (weapon summons, magic armour and the like) could have a mostly fixed duration that is only slightly affected by Int, but a magnitude that benefits, or suffers, greatly form a high, or low, Might score. Makes a lot of sense for a beefy mage to be sort of a arcane knight type who focuses on those spells. Similarly, there can be spells where high Might adds negligible dmg, but Int has a dramatic effect on duration or area of effect (possibly even turning a single target nuke into a small AoE, or adding a Foe Jump effect), allowing to create the "fragile but powerful" archetype enjoyed by so many. You can even extend the concept to encompass more than just dmg, radius and duration - you can have illusion spells that benefit from high Resolve - things like Mirrored Image are defensive in nature and Res is THE defence stat, it makes perfect sense. Moreover, it also makes sense that someone already charismatic has a greater aptitude for creating illusions (i.e. some kind of bonus to spells that apply the Terrified affliction?). IMHO this creates a kind of natural way for your character to specialize - a high Res Wizard is likely to be a guy who prefers persuading (or enforcing his will on) others anyway, so he uses his magic to supplement that, hence illusions. On the other hand the broscience Wizard with high Might goes for the more straightforward approach - just summon a magic stick and beat them to death with it. Of course where I see a "natural way to specialize", someone else might see "limiting the number of useful spells". However, there is going to be this Empower mechanic. So maybe it could, in my rough design, allow a illusionist to occasionally cast a fireball worthy of a savant battlemage, and vice versa? Food for thought.

I think the Ghost Heart can offer a opportunity to have your cake and eat it too. At least for the people who want a more "Strider" type Ranger, but also like the pet concept (e.g. me). As far as I know from the lore, the souls of Ranger and his/her Companion share a symbiotic bond. Perhaps that's why the Companion can still be summoned by the Ranger, as it cannot truly "move on" while its master is still alive? Anyway, you can easily justify, based on the existing lore, that the pair can utilize this bond even after one of them dies (hence the summoning mechanic). But then it can also be used in reverse - instead of allowing the Companion to help directly, the Ranger can draw upon its soul power to strengthen himself. Such Ranger would be considerably more powerful than his peers who haven't lost their animal friends, but would naturally lose this edge if he decides to summon his ghostly pet (because all that soulpower is spend on maintaining the summon). From mechanics perspective this would translate into additional effects for the Companion upgrade talents/abilities. These would improve both the Ranger and the Companion, with Companion side being a bit weaker than its living counterpart. The catch is that the Ranger buffs would be suppressed while the ghostly Companion is up ad about. Additionally, the Ranger part of the talents would not just mirror the Companion's, but be their own thing with emphasis on more active effects (hopefully). The end result would be a flexible Ranger that is much more powerful on their own, but has the option to summon his Companion when the situation requires less raw power and more numbers. The latter however, would not be on par with vanilla Ranger and his permanent ally, for obvious balance reasons (hence why slightly reduced buffs for the ghost pet). As a side note, this also solves a minor inconsistency regarding the petless Ranger's power source (i.e. why is it called Bond if there is no pet, alive or otherwise). Anyway, they can take this subclass in many different directions, which is awesome.