MortyTheGobbo

I agree that weapon styles shouldn't be the fighters' "thing". Treating them as "the weapon-using class" is why they're so unbelievably dreadful in most editions of D&D. Pillars should do better. I don't think weapon focus and weapon style talents/abilities should exist at all and I've explained why. If they do exist, they should be available to all the five "martial" classes at minimum. Fighters are supposedly defence and interrupt specialists in Deadfire, so they should get things that help with that.

I may not be a fan of this particular change, but I agree. The RPG genre badly needs people willing to look at the old, tried and true methods and ask "Okay, but do we really need it? Can't we do better?".

There's still gonna be that one attribute that people will want to pump to the max depending on class. Why not make it more logical at least? Yes, but in the current (as of Josh's announcement) setup, a primary spellcaster has a choice of focusing more on resolve for damage/healing or intelligence for duration and size. Doing what you suggest would cut even that choice.

That would make wizards and ciphers focus on intelligence to the exclusion of all else, barring some specific (probably multi-classed) builds.

people did complain during poe development 'bout the ubiquitous quality o' might damage enhancements. complained often. *shrug* were some developer presentations which explained the thought process behind the ability scores. were never 'posed to be a reality simulator. even so, is curious why so many salient and subtle game abstractions is overlooked while others is so curiously important. HA! Good Fun! I know it's not supposed to be a simulator and I'm fine with that. Or, well... was. I was just pointing out the double standard, and a barrage of excuses was brought out to illustrate it. People might have complained about it back during the original development, but ever since I joined this forum after Deadfire's announcement, it's always been about Might to magic damage.

Why is it always the use of Might for magic that's the problem? No one seems to have any problems with archers, crossbow-users, gunners or rapier-wielders getting damage from Might, even though it makes equally little sense from a non-mechanical standpoint.

Except if, like now, you have a poor choice. If its a single class and I MUST take a talent that I don't like (or that I take "by default", the "best" of remaining abilities...)... = bad system. How does adding boring number-adders solve this problem? Taking something that'll make me slightly better at what I already to isn't much different from not taking anything.

Well, it could be worse. At least ranged weapon damage will remain with Strength. It's now a dump stat for casters (just as resolve will be a dump stat for most non-casters) and we're basically back to a painfully generic RPG attribute spread, but it could be worse.

If weapon styles remain as proficiencies then yes, but if they become passive abilities instead then, so long as there are other good abilities, it becomes a choice. For example suppose Wizards get access to weapon styles as passive abilities. The Wizard is forced to choose between taking a weapon style or choosing a spell each time they get a new ability point. Most Wizards are going to choose a spell, but a Wizard who wants to specialise in using summoned weapons might sacrifice a spell choice in exchange for Two-Handed Style. I'd say that's a choice. True. If they're part of the ability pool, it does become a real choice of whether to shore up your basic weapon style or take other abilities. I'm still not sure if they should exist at all, as even passive abilities can be more interesting than that.

That's incredibly disappointing, but I guess Resolve had to get something. I guess we're back to the good ol' days of casters having no use for Strength whatsoever. At least ranged weapons still use it, so it's not so bad.

That's kind of my whole point. Specializing in a particular fighting style already comes with a lot of choices to that end. Stacking a talent of passive ability on top of that is just a tax.

I'm honestly not sure if weapon styles are any different than weapon focus here. They don't do anything new, they just double down at what a given style already does. A shield protects, a two-handed weapon deals strong damage, a single one-hander is accurate and a ranged weapon, well, stays at range. So if they're universal, they become no-brainers just like weapon focus.

I'm not sure about the mechanics, but I feel like Resolve needs an identity. It already did in Pillars. It does a little bit of everything, but nothing concrete. Priests and paladins have it recommended, but it doesn't do anything particularly special for them. I don't know how reducing condition duration or being the "ability power" attribute would work, but at least they'd be something immediately recognizable as useful.

Xaurip priests had staves in PoE1, but I don't think they used elemental attacks with them. Unless they were and I just forgot.

I'm really not seeing how being able to increase your accuracy in a fairly specific way is a requirement for a character to be considered a trained combatant. Does a paladin have abilities that enable them to fight enemies in close combat and support their allies? If yes, then that's all it should take. If no, then a +6 to accuracy isn't going to change much.

Are we still suggesting rangers get two-weapon fighting if they're not archers? Even Wizards of the Coast figured out that's a bad idea by now. As for favoured enemies, I don't think those should be a thing, and giving them to a particular class is doubly questionable. Those talents are entirely useless if you're not fighting that type of enemy - which is something entirely beyond your control. There's no GM to take pity on you and throw some orcs in because you took Favoured Enemy (Orc). If we want to give rangers the option to specialize against particular quarry, it's better to make talents that are themed around different enemies but have less situational benefits. Like a giant-slayer getting bonuses to single, isolated enemies (which you can control), a spirit-slayer getting elemental resistance, or whatever.

I mean, Balthazar is arguably what an epic-level, demigod martial artist should be like. I'm just pointing out that the intricacy of mage duels covered up a lot of simplicity elsewhere.

I'd like to point out that Balthazar cheated even more than enemy mages, since otherwise a high-level monk's abilities were... hit, then hit again and hit some more. So he'd be a larger version of Gromnir Il-Khan, where the real threat were his mage cohorts.

As a matter of fact, wizards were vastly underpowered in Baldur's Gate 2, in comparison with : - themselves in BG1 (lower hp pools, resistances, and save rolls) - the Forgotten Realms lore (as in, the books) Read yourself some War of the Spider Queen trilogy and see how Pharaun Mizzrym, Gromph Baenre or Lord Dyrr are instrumental in major battles. And we're not talking only brute damage either, we're talking control, we're talking divination (if I remember correctly, Gromph is an especially skilled diviner), we're talking utility such as flying or leaping. Even wands were instruments of devastation in the books; wands, not rods or scepters, mere wands... The Forgotten Realms novels engage in some hardcore mage fanboyism, yes. I mean, the whole setting started out with Ed Greenwood's cool mage character. But it's not something games should emulate. Also, I feel like I should point out that enemy mages in BG2 cheat. They regularly use multiple contingencies and spell triggers, which shouldn't be possible. And it isn't, for our own mages.

The mage duels were nice and all, but an aspect of how there wasn't much tactics or depth to anything except magic. There's a lot of classes in this game other than wizards and I like that Pillars doesn't put them on a pedestal and fawn over them, the way Baldur's Gate, and AD&D in general, did. Or... at least not quite as much.

Dragon Age 2 has virtually the same combat system as Dragon Age: Origins, only with more options and unfortunately a problem with health bloat. Can we focus on ability ideas and not elitism about old games?

I like the idea of D&D 4E-style "taunts". It's more organic than just forcing enemies to attack a particular target, while still protecting the squishies. It also works much better when it's enemy fighters (or whichever class would get it) that use it.

This is an oft-overlooked point. In a game like Pillars, where many enemies use the same abilities as the PCs, per-rest spells favour them immensely. Apart from that, I'll add my voice to what everyone else has been saying. Per-rest spells are impossible to balance and completely wreck pacing. It was possible, in Pillars, to have your spellcasters consistently and strongly contribute with their passive and per-encounter abilities. Which, of course, is a problem, because then they contribute closely to the other classes while still sitting on spells that can decide an encounter. I don't know what problems spellcasting has in the beta right now, but per-rest spells belong six feet under.

If people liked NWN2, that's their prerogative. But when they try to present it as an example of a balanced and varied system Deadfire should emulate, well, we run into problems. NWN2 is very unbalanced, like D&D 3E in general. And like 3E D&D, the variety available is hugely dependent on whether or not you use magic. The way it adapts the rules into a RTWP computer game is also problematic. Transplanting tabletop rules into video games is difficult at best in general, which is why I appreciate games like Pillars or Shadowrun Returns that focus on giving us the spirit of a game without all the rules.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/neverwinter-nights-2 82 %. A unmitigated disaster, indeed. Are we really going with an appeal to popularity? There's plenty of very popular things that I consider bad. Does Twilight ring any bells? I consider the mechanical side of NWN2 to be very poor, not that the plot of the main campaign is any better.