MortyTheGobbo

I always try to keep in mind that nostalgia is a helluva drug. I'd play Baldur's Gate today, but I've really fallen out of love with the old Fallout, and a lot of it is simply due to my being less emotionally invested in the latter.

I've never got into either of the Icewind Dale games. They have no plot to speak of, only endless grind through combat encounters... and their combat systems are both very poor. Having to constantly rest because your team is taking a beating isn't particularly fun. In IWD2, I made the mistake of making my divine caster a druid, rather than a cleric, as well. As far as Irenicu vs. Thaos go... Irenicus is far more typical, to be certain, but he just has a certain charisma Thaos lacks. This is, of course, entirely subjective and very likely coloured by nostalgia. I freely admit I consider the Baldur's Gate games to be better than they actually are.

By the Emperor, the quote function on this forum is bad. Well, here goes. With all due respect, I'm failing to see your reasoning behind being unconcerned with with attributes representing human capabilities. What would you have them do, instead? Also, when you ask "How many of these do you see in fiction and gaming," is that supposed to be part of the reasoning? "We shouldn't allow for these characters on the basis that no one ever allows for these characters"? That's a bit of an infinite loop. The state of things justifies the reason to make the state of things how it currently is. I don't like trying to do this purely with talents or class features. Unless you make a talent group that's like "Endurance 1, Endurance 2, Endurance 3," etc., you just wind up with 2 options: You're character is equally as tough as everyone else who's of average toughness, or your character is exceptionally tough (just like all other above-average toughness people). That's not very exciting in an otherwise robust world. And having a spectrum of each talent like that would just be redundant, when your attribute system was already allowing for that. You can tune it all you like, but without a gradient, you just create binary options. The people with the different value, and the people with the base value. Attributes are a tool. Nothing more and nothing less. In case of Pillars, they're only one of several ways to customize your character. In another game, they might be more important, but in Pillars they're just one of several moving pieces. It's different in systems that make them the primary source of math, but there's different ways to do that, too. And no matter what we do, a bunch of numbers can't portray the broad spectrum of human (or human-with-funny-ears) capability. Also, I'm not sure where you're getting an infinite loop from. Those characters are allowed. Games allow them by splitting strength and constitution. Fiction allows them because, well, it has no stats to begin with. And yet, most of the time the disparity between someone's strength and endurance isn't very significant. If someone relies on strength, chances are they want good constitution anyway. If someone doesn't, they can get away with mediocre constitution too. Class features and talents are sufficient because it's just not a very important distinction. If you want someone who's tough but doesn't have much "aggressive" strength... a fighter focusing on defensive abilities fits the bill, even if strength and constitution are the same thing. Right, and I'm also speaking about practical design goals. I don't see any real utility in keeping them separate, as opposed to merging them. The possibility of someone who is strong but not tough, or vice versa, isn't enough. There are functional differences - and making them the same attribute works better. Compare strength with any other attribute in regards to how many concepts it's useful for. Someone who dumps dexterity will be easier to hit, have a hard time escaping danger and be slow. This is largely system-agnostic, assuming they use a traditional attribute spread. Dumping perception means being less aware of danger. But strength? A magician or archer who dumps strength will only be worse at the sort of tasks they won't be participating in anyway. Constitution remains the forever secondary choice even if there are no classes. No one wants it to be low, because it's dangerous, but no one will focus on it, because you can't do anything with it. Even strength has more utility, because constitution is purely passive. Constitution just makes it harder to hurt you. And sometimes lets you power through obstacles in a challenge, but you could make a case for strength here as well.

I'm not suggesting that they introduce it in PoE. That wouldn't work without a severe overhaul, and besides PoE doesn't use attribute minimums (nor should it). As for being a god-stat, combining strength and constitution would let them compete with others. Strength is too narrow and easily discarded. Constitution is everyone's second choice - you don't want it too low, but you won't focus on it, either. Constitution can make sense, in a way, but it's more your Endurance that's affected by the weight of the armor. In other words, anyone with an appropriate amount of strength could wear the armor, but someone with 3 Constitution would simply run out of stamina before someone with 20 Constitution. The attributes are abstract, to a degree. Would someone in real life have 20 Strength and only 4 Constitution? Probably not. But, there are people who are very strong but don't have a lot of endurance, and vice versa. So, it doesn't really make sense to measure them both in one stat. I get what you're saying, though. If you're mega strong, you're probably in pretty good shape as well, so you probably have MORE Endurance, on average, than someone who isn't strong at all. However, that's more fitness. Attributes are more measured as sort of your core, slightly-abstracted qualities. Honestly, I almost feel like Fitness level or whatever you'd call it should be a separate thing, because person A can be generally stronger than person B, such that, if they're both out of shape, person A is still way stronger. If person B gets super fit/buff, they could become stronger than person A, but if person A did the same, he'd be equally as far above person B as he was when they were both out of shape. Honestly a lot of this is just a coding mentality applied to much-more-complex measurements. But, the vast majority of the reality of the measurement is covered by the numbers, if you do it right. You can always supplement the attribute system with secondary attributes/modifiers, if you need to. It's all about "what would this affect, and what WOULDN'T this affect?". The goal is to get as close to perfect as possible, with an attribute affecting all the relevant things it would affect, and not affecting anything it wouldn't affect. That's not usually very easy to hit, though. I'm not terribly concerned with the attributes representing real human (or almost-human) capabilities. Yes, there can be people who are strong, but not tough, or vice versa. How many of those do you see in fiction and gaming? How many of those have enough of a discrepancy for it to matter? In a way that can't be represented with other elements, like talents or class features? Like I said above, merging constitution and strength makes sense because neither of them is good enough to stand on its own, if we're talking about traditional ability spreads. Edge of the Empire by Fantasy Flight Games uses a general Brawn attribute and it work well enough. Traditional strength is of very limited use to people who don't rely on brute strength. Constitution is everyone's second choice. Combine them and you've got an attribute that competes with more versatile ones.

If I had to introduce attribute minimums on heavy armour, Constitution makes a great deal more sense. Simply putting metal armour on and moving around in it isn't hard. But running, dodging, fighting and jumping in it for a while will test your endurance. In the context of Dragon Age: Origins, it would also let tank warriors invest in the attribute that actually lets them do their job - standing in the front while the mages do all the actual work by nuking everything into oblivion. But then, DA never needed attributes to begin with. And of course, it loops us right back to traditional Strength and Constitution having very little business being separate attributes.

I'm not going to play a character with 3 in might, so I fail to see how that's relevant. Furthermore, if I did play a character with 3 in Might, their damage with the greatsword would be pitiful, so once again, I'm not sure I see the problem. Come to think of it, Dragon Age: Origins had Strength requirements on armor. The result was very poor for tank warriors - they needed strength to wear the heaviest sets, which meant they couldn't get the constitution and dexterity they needed to survive.

No one is forcing you to play class/attribute/equipment combinations that are insufficiency traditional. So there's no reason to prevent everyone else from being creative. If I want to play a fighter/rogue with light armour and a greatsword and more dexterity than might, which is precisely what I'll do when Deadfire comes out, I'd like it if the game didn't get in my way.

Every class will have a trinket, that has a separate slot. So far the only confirmed one are grimoires for wizards, as far as I know. Chanters could have some musical instruments there, but they won't replace weapons.

I can see why it would be confusing, after you've gone to so much trouble to ridicule it and bring it to the point of absurdity. If that's how you see the arguments I've been making, I see no point in arguing further. Man, the quote function on this forum sucks royally. In order: I underestimate nothing. I simply realize that if weapons and armour require an attribute people won't otherwise see much use for, they simply won't use them. Or take the bare minimum for some light-weight but decent. Thus reinforcing the age-old stereotype that only dedicated warriors wear anything with metal in it. Of course, many hand-to-hand fighters will also be content to wear light armour, thus making strength even more niche. A wizard might not be able to stay out of melee completely, but if Strength does nothing whatsoever for them other than allow them to wear armour, they'll still be better served investing more in intelligence and magical strength and disable or destroy the enemies quicker while the more durable party members try to protect them. Besides, while Pillars tries to encourage non-traditional gear setups, a robed wizard with a magic stick is still supposed to be a viable option. As for the D&D wizard... this again? A wizard with 14 strength has a +2 to hit and +2 or +3 to damage with their stick. Which doesn't begin to make up for their d4 hit dice, lack of armour, lack of weapons that aren't stick or knives and 1/2 BAB. Investing resources in it detracts from their actual job, which is casting spells, and risks getting their d4 hit point selves killed.

It's a great question. Spellcasters with increased Strength = able to wear better armor and wield better weapons, thus being able to fight in melee instead of having to flee or always start casting defensive spells when engaged Fighters with increased mental attribute = qualifying for talents and special moves e.g. "Focused Precision" or "Keen Defender" that increase their accuracy or deflection for a duration, and/or getting more uses of special moves. A mentally more capable warrior would be more flexible and "peak" more at the time of your choosing. A super strong but mentally lacking warrior would be more of a workhorse damage dealer with less choice for special moves or self buffs. I'm fairly sure the first one has never worked, since if a wizard doesn't want to wade into melee, they won't. So it's a dump stat. The second one seems functionally identical to intelligence. Unless you're proposing separate attributes for auto-attack damage and ability damage, in which case, which one does an archer/gunner use? Or magical implements? Or knives and rapiers? Strength as RPGs traditionally define is just shouldn't be a thing. It's too narrow and only really useful for a narrow subset of characters. It has to be either folded together with constitution or something else, like Pillars does it.

The others still matter though. Just not as much as the main ones for that class. That's not the attributes' faults. That's the fault of the specific way in which the classes are set up. In DnD, they've typically affected a great deal of things. Just overbearingly is that PoE was an attempt to get away from that, yes, but I feel that the pendulum swung a bit far to the opposite end of the spectrum, where it feels like the effects of attributes are struggling to justify the existence of the attributes. As it stands, you just have a couple of attributes that are globally uber useful then the rest "don't matter" (as much). Instead of per-class now, it's just across the board, but the problem remains. It's not the classes, it's the way the whole math is set up. Which makes attributes the most "disposable" source of numbers, much more so than classes and skills. People talk about how dumping Charisma shouldn't be consequence-free for a fighter or wizard... but really, if the fighter or wizard in question doesn't have ranks/proficiency in social skills, then whether they've got 8, 10 or 12 charisma doesn't matter a whole lot. Their contribution to social checks will be based on luck. That PoE attributes have minor effects and that some of them are just a lot more useful than others are both valid points, and I hope Deadfire rectifies the situation. But I don't think moving back towards more traditional attributes will solve it.

They also make attributes an illusion of choice, like they have been in D&D for a while now... for ever, really. Attributes in modern D&D are mostly vestigial, and I've seen very elegant solution for excising them altogether from 5E. Pillars' system is an attempt to make them a choice beyond "18 here, 16 here... the rest doesn't really matter". In the end, attributes are just one source of numbers among several. They're really not as big a deal as people make them out to be.

No attribute system in a video game has ever managed to actually do any of that. Which is part of why I find it hard to give a good gorram about this controversy. Incremental number increases will never properly represent your character, and that's all attributes are ever going to be. It's just that people vastly overstate how important they are.

Last we knew that was Discipline. Not sure why it would change to Stride, of all things.

I'm kind of wondering what "Stride" means. Is it just movement speed? That would be a weird way of phrasing it. So it might be a new thing.

Or... it could stay as Intellect and any offence over the subject will remain as self-inflicted as it has always been. I guess Pillars could use different attribute names, since it's moving away from their traditional definitions... but I doubt that would stop the complaining.

People get really offended over breaking genre conventions.

Pretty much everything about this one sidekick hasn't been so much a tempest in a teacup as a hurricane in a shot glass.

I can get behind this, if it's at all possible.

The character of Geralt and the world Sapkowski created appeal to me less nowadays. Much less than when I first read the books so many years ago. That said, Witcher 3 is a fantastically-made game. It won't appeal to everyone, obviously, but I think the level of polish, fine-tuning and skill that went into it should be acknowledged. ...well, except for the inventory and crafting, there's no ****ing excuse for that.

There have been vague mentions of confusion working entirely differently now, in connection with the Berserker subclass of Barbarian. Its side-effect of hitting allies with Carnage was referred to as "confused". But that's not something to base anything off on. I'd like confusion to be less of a binary "screw you" effect, but if it stays as is, I can definitely get behind clearing it up. Confusing enemies in PoE 1 got... well, confusing.

We do get more skills in Deadfire, so it's entirely possible we'll see less attribute checks and more skill checks.

Without the pet, rangers would need some other feature to set them apart from rogues or fighters who happen to hang out in the wilderness a lot.

Honestly, if I were to design a system with a traditional stat spread, I'd fold Strength and Constitution together. Neither has legs to stand on separately. Strength, in particular, is very narrow in most systems that use it. Which is precisely why Pillars uses Might. Folding Strength and Constitution wouldn't work with its approach of every stat applying to the same thing regardless of "power source", as it were, either.

Possibly a case of putting the cart before the horse here. Did they decide to reduce the party size after these changes... or before? Does it matter? The changes go together and supplement each other.