MortyTheGobbo

Weight limit wasn't implemented because it's a pain in the ass with no benefit whatsoever and possibly the worst way to give benefit to strength anyone has ever come up with. Characters with low strength won't suffer from it - their players will, as they have to shuffle equipment around to the stronger characters or stash. There's also no such thing as magic resistance in PIllars. How would it even work?

That is true. But if we go down that rabbit hole, we'll be left only with a subset of melee weapons being affected by strength, making it the common dump stat that it often is.

That seems like a pretty obvious answer to me. Hard CC was usually the trump card of Pillars.

Nothing I could possibly do would be nearly as pretentious as addressing half my points and then incorrectly using philosophical arguments to declare all my views as fundamentally false. - You haven't explained why D&D stats are a gold standard, you've simply asserted repeatedly that they are and ignored everyone pointing out why they're not. - Dumping your abilities isn't an easy problem to solve in a videogame without simply locking players away from it. Without a GM to enforce the consequences of barely-functional attributes, players can bypass them. If Pillars used D&D stats... dumping wizards' or rogues' might to 3 would be routine. If the game actually used an encumbrance system, they'd take enough strength to carry their equipment, then hand the rest off to stronger party members. This would also discourage martial characters with low strength, decreasing build diversity. Which, granted, is something D&D does frequently, so maybe it's desirable for you. Dumping Charisma would be safe for... everyone who's not the main character or uses it for their magic. Intelligence would be a safe dump stat for every non-magical character, unless you made it affect skills - which would require completely altering the way they work. If we want to discourage players from dumping stats, we need to make penalties for low values harsher and more universally-applicable. This can be done in a number of ways, none of which have anything to do with the way D&D uses attributes. Plenty of games, both tabletop and video, simply don't allow to lower them below a certain value. - The deep imbalance doesn't come from some attributes being more important for some concepts. That's just your misinterpretation of my argument. The imbalance is caused by some attributes being more important than others, period, for more character concepts. Dumping strength is safe for anyone who doesn't fight with strength-only weapons. Dumping charisma is safe for anyone not engaging with social skills. Intelligence was crucial in 3E for skill points, but in editions without skill points, it goes right back to being a dump stat for non-wizards. And even in 3E, some classes have so few skills a few points here and there make little difference - while others have a good selection without good intelligence. It's a secondary concern, and only wizards and some other arcane casters will focus on it. Not so much for dexterity, wisdom or constitution. - Why should willpower and perception go hand in hand? Even without getting hung up on representing reality exactly, there's plenty of people who are strong-willed but not very perceptive and vice versa. Which is why many systems treat them entirely separately... in fact, all non-D&D systems I can think of do that. Mechanically-speaking, both perception and willpower are strong enough concepts to stand on their own - "noticing things" and "being strong-willed" are both traits that every character will find useful to a degree. Wisdom doesn't represent reality and doesn't work as a mechanical portrayal of capability. - I never claimed there's no reason to root them in actual reality - that's a strawman. My point was that they're never going to be an exact representation of reality, so we should focus on how they work in the context of the game and its fiction. Their connection to reality will work out mostly the same regardless of what we do... because D&D attributes aren't somehow closer to reality than Pillars attributes, WH attributes, CoD attributes or GURPS attributes. The rest of your responses to that particular point are complete non-sequiturs intended only to insult me. And push your bizarre idea that your opponents in this discussion are... claiming everything is subjective. To which you've dedicated more words than actually refuting anyone's points, seeing as you've ignored KDubya's post entirely.

Those discussions would be far more productive if people didn't keep claiming D&D attributes are a gold standard that's not worth straying from. Dumping any attribute to 3 would make your character barely functional... which is why no one does it and why it's a ridiculous example with no basis in actual play. Do the rules even allow for it? What you can do is dump an attribute to 8. Or 6, if you've got a penalty. Doing it for strength will hinder you very little if you're not fighting with melee weapons. Doing it for charisma will hinder you very little if you don't invest any ranks/proficiency into social skills - whether or not you have a negative or zero modifier matters very little at that point. Doing it for the rest of the attributes is more difficult, but that just reveals the deep imbalance among them. That being said, in 4E or 5E, intelligence has little to no use for someone who doesn't rely on it for their spells or attacks. Constitution is everyone's second choice, as you don't want it to be low, but you don't need it to be high, either. Unless the game arbitrarily decides it's your main attack stat, like 4E sometimes does. And your main stat is hard-locked the moment you select your class. That, and when I think of vague attributes, Wisdom from D&D kind of takes the cake. Why is it both perception and willpower, again? Besides... GURPS does fine with four attributes and assorted derivatives. Storyreller games have nine of them, in various configurations. The Conan 2d20 system has 7, with a single Brawn stat governing both Strength and Constitution as traditionally understood. Warhammer RPGs have melee and ranged attacks governed by their own, entirely separate stats, which is a holdover from wargames but works surprisingly well. Why are we talking about it in terms of D&D or bust? The evolution of that franchise has rendered attributes largely vestigial, anyway. D&D 5E would function smoother without them. Moreover, attributes are always going to be vague approximations of abilities. Particularly so in a computer game, where the players and GMs can't interpret and fiddle with what they represent.

I'm starting to think Pillars' biggest mistake is not going all the way in the direction of non-standard attributes. They wanted something new, but still used a mostly vanilla spread, with all the problems it inherits. Then fixed one specific problem, that of Strength being useless or redundant for more than a half of character concepts, with a rather awkward stopgap measure. Then again, the only real problem with it was some awkward dialogue and scripted interactions. And in Deadfire, Resolve became less than useful before the update. Once again, attributes just don't matter as much as people seem to think they do, whether in Pillars or any other RPG.

Your wizard does self buffing so he/she isn't using pure physical power to lift tree trunks But riddle me this, Batman: How much physical power was he using to lift tree trunks? You can reasonably say "I don't care how much, I just care what he's doing and not how he's doing it," but you can't reasonably tell anyone the answer to that question, because there isn't one. If this were a math problem on a test, the answer would be "Not enough information." Might as well combine Intellect and Might into a single stat called Capability, then just say "Maybe the character is exerting enough power on the wall to destroy it in its current state, or maybe he's using elaborate scientific planning to dissolve the mortar between the bricks using his own concoction of acid by MacGuyvering readily available substances together... it doesn't matter, because he's getting past the obstacle, because he's capable!" "What is he capable of, specifically?" "... ACCOMPLISHING THINGS! GYAH! WHY DO PEOPLE NOT UNDERSTAND THIS STAT?!" Now, if you'd excuse me, I'm going to go slay some dragons with my high Defeatery stat. At best, abilities are always going to be a simplified abstraction that is useful for creating a coarse simulation. They are a compromise and a simplification of what is in actuality a highly complex set of bodily and mental capabilities. It is easy to find fault with them because they will never simulate the exact physical universe. But that is true of games in general -- they can only provide a rough verisimilitude of the real thing. In the end then, it comes down to what the designer wants to portray. Abilities only provide basic building blocks, an edifice upon which can be erected a slightly more refined simulation provided via features such as skills and feats. Yeah. There are better ways and worse ways to do attributes, and it varies wildly depending on context. But the way people get hung up on what they "mean" or "represent" or whatever is... they're just numbers. Whether or not dump stats are desirable is up to debate, but traditional RPG strength is the universal dump stat, in many if not most games. D&D protects it by making it prohibitively difficult to fight in melee without it... but you can do it with enough hoop-jumping and use of magic. So many melee-fighting builds are a minigame of "how do I use something other than strength to hit things?". Strength, as traditionally defined, is useless to concepts other than a big bruiser with heavy weapons and armour.

That is a shame. I was also looking forward to them. Oh well. Pillars is close enough to D&D that wizards must get the coolest toys.

I see. I don't know if other classes' trinkets will have as much an impact as grimoires... we don't know much in general. I seem to remember that the fighters' trinket would normally occupy the arms slot, but that's it.

Some time ago, the devs mentioned trinkets, which would be class-specific items. Grimoires would fill that slot for wizards. Have they made it in? If so, what are they for other classes?

Right, except melee fighters need Dexterity and Perception as well. Or benefit from it, at least. So it's in no way equivalent. Doing that would leave Strength in its typical place of being useful for a pretty narrow category of builds.

Isn't the rigid spell structure supposed to differentiate them from the other classes, who can spend their resources as they please?

I'm unsure about moving spell damage to resolve, but this particular demand makes no sense to me whatsoever. Why is intelligence increasing damage rather than duration/area better in any way? Why should resolve, a wobbly and poorly-defined stat at the best of times, modify duration/area rather than damage and healing? We're talking about magic here, so it works the way the game says it does. I think people are just getting really hung up on stat names and calling their knee-jerk reactions "role-playing". Most dedicated spell-casters are going to need both, either way. A caster who only cares about CC, buffs, debuffs etc. might be able to disregard Resolve (emphasis on might, I don't know), but even a blaster wants good durations and AoE.

Exactly. I'm not calling anybody lazy, not denigrating their work, not trying to criticize anybody. I know that building nine new passives for Fighters specifically would be extremely difficult and might not even be possible at this stage, with all the balancing that would ensue. But from my players perspective, what I'm seeing is good, nuanced, interesting builds for multitudes of solo classes being sacrificed for the sake of fluffing out certain talent trees (not just fighter) with general talents that vaguely fit that classes theme. I feel like it's a relatively easy way to go about it from a design and coding perspective, because you don't have to spend all the time creating, testing, and balancing new abilities, and I totally understand why that option would be taken, but I don't enjoy what it's done to the experience of building a character. They may have backed themselves into a corner with this one, yes. Giving those talents to fighter as passives was IMO a bad idea to begin with, even though it was easier to implement than new ones. Now that idea is bringing further consequences.

Whatever people think about the old system or new, could we not imply people hold different positions because of mental disorders?

I mean, it's easy for us armchair designers to say "just design nine new abilities that are balanced and properly fit the class!". But... I don't think there's another answer. The fact that it's always the fighter who always ends up on the chopping block when a class needs to be playable on autopilot is getting kind of old, too.

Does "occupying space" really make sense? It's not like there's a hard limit on the number of options in each class ability tree. I figure at some point near the end of beta they'll do a general UI revamp anyway. Hopefully by then fighters will have some *new* abilities in their tree as "replacements." Apparently, that's not their intent, if Josh indeed said that on SA. For all intents and purposes, those are still the passive abilities of the fighter and barbarian classes, except now everyone else can get them too.

Yep. I wanted to see the old universal talents become universal again but this solution is bad. There is essentially no cost to taking these passive talents. I don't know exactly how many proficiencies characters will get in Deadfire, but based on the beta I'd say it'll be at least six and more likely eight or more. Very few characters use more than two weapons (and given the way the new weapon proficiencies work you don't even need to take them to use a weapon) so that means almost every character will take at least four of the old generic talents (more likely six or more). For a lot of characters that'll be enough to get everything they want and, perhaps, more. If, on the other hand, you simply added those talents to all classes passive ability trees and made them spend a point on acquiring them then there would be a cost. Would a Wizard really want to sacrifice a spell pick to take two-handed style? Well if they intend to focus on using summoned weapons then maybe, but it won't be a no brainer pick anymore. And, as you say, Fighters are really hurt by this change. I'd be more in favour of outright removing such talents or restricting them to the five "martial" classes, myself. But that's beside the point, really. There are different ways to go about it and the one they picked for now is the worst of both worlds.

The more I think about it, the more it feels like the worst possible outcome. Originally, those abilities belonged to two classes and it rustled people's jimmies. Which I disagree with, but that's less important. So now those abilities are back and available to everyone, while still occupying space as passive class picks for fighters and barbarians. So how those picks are greatly devalued, since anyone can spend proficiencies on them, and they will, since otherwise there are more proficiencies than they'll need. Meaning that, like KDubya said, at one point fighters will be stuck picking either a devalued passive or an active they've already passed up on.

This bodes poorly. Let's hope they get feedback about it and change their minds before the beta is over.

The codex is an awful and horrifying place The fact that I used to agree with the people over at RPGCodex is a persistent source of mild shame for me.

Moving more damage bonuses to other attributes brings us perilously close to nickelling and diming Strength until it's only useful for a very narrow subset of characters. And even then it's not required. Which is a common trap that I know Obsidian are aware of.

With much less talents, POE1 is not better. There is always 20-30 % of choice in the pannel that is too specific/not very interresting. But I prefer 200 talents and 30 % of trash, than 60 talents and 30 % of trash. Are there any talents in POE1 that add 3 points of endurance to your character? Or work in highly-specific circumstances? Or are basically worse than another talent (like Combat Casting versus simply Skill Focus in Concentration).

Using the game that pretends Toughness and Power Attack are equally valuable feats for a 1st level fighter as an example is a risky proposition, friend. D&D 3E feats are the very definition of quantity over quality. Most of them are rubbish. Perhaps there need to be class-neutral talents, more class-related passives or both. But they should be real choices.

The number of talents is meaningless if all they do is give you some numbers here and there. Which... most of the talents we're discussing here did. If there were to be more talents that actually do something, like Field Triage, it'd be a different story.