MortyTheGobbo

And that's not a good thing. Being able to mop up weaker enemies with per-encounter spells and sitting on tactical nukes for harder fights is hopelessly imbalanced. It might be different if every class had the same measure of per-rest and per-encounter abilities, but that wasn't the case.

I'm playing Pillars 1 right now as a druid, and I already can't wait for Deadfire to get rid of per-rest spells. Whatever issues Deadfire's system might have, per-rest spells are just the worst.

Inspired by this information and discussion, I settled on a female dwarf druid for my third Pillars playthrough.

Considering that Deadfire will be much larger than Pillars, which is already a pretty hefty game... padding is a fairly serious concern.

While we waste our time on frivolities, someone out there is asking the real questions.

Let me be absolutely clear here. I would much rather I had more of an incentive not to put my front-line characters into as heavy and armor as I can, or my back-liners into something heavier than clothing/padded. But it looks like Deadfire will follow Pillars in this matter. It's unfortunately pretty common for RPGs that remove arbitrary class-based restrictions.

Copying D&D mechanics is less "not reinventing the wheel" and more like attaching a horse to an automobile and insisting it's better than those newfangled petroleum engine things. It's also kind of irrelevant because D&D doesn't use armor as DR, but for some reason insists on folding every non-magical defensive measure into one value. I can see the reasoning behind changing the DR system to a more complicated one. It's not working out so well by the sounds of it, but neither did Pillars', to be honest. You still had little incentive not to put heavy armor on any character who wasn't sticking to the back line, but some attacks pumped out so much damage armor didn't stop them anyway.

I put my people in a variety of armor, even though it's suboptimal, because I like variety. I am wildly not a fan of Pillars' "full plate or go naked" tendency.

If I disapproved of the existence of redheads and didn't want them anywhere my fictional character in a video game, so I asked about a toggle to make them properly dark-haired instead, people would say I'm nuts. But wanting to switch off people who happen to prefer their own gender, or both genders, is apparently still a thing we're doing.

The unique items in Baldur's Gate were nice and all, but they basically meant some weapon categories were better by virtue of providing us with cooler pieces. The haphazard placement of those pieces also meant that you could be deprived of the best equipment in your chosen category if you weren't lucky. Crafting is a gigantic pain in the ass more often than not, but one good thing about it is that it gives us control over what we get, rather than leaving it to the whims of RNG or item placement.

This has always struck me as trying to justify D&D-style clerics in a world that portrays its deities way differently.

It's one of those things that sound fantastic until you consider all the angles. They've got a real conundrum with Resolve, and I hope they find a workable solution.

If Deadfire's anything like Pillars that's basically worthless. Money was never in short supply. This benefit from Resolve would also apply only to the party member with the highest value, as they would take care of all the shopping.

The problem is that other attributes aren't random. They affect random rolls like attacks, but they do so consistently. This idea introduces a new, purely random effect that's unique to Resolve. I don't like this idea either. It feels tacked on. Resolve does need something, but this feels like something most people will ignore. It honestly does feel like we might not need Resolve at all, and this is an exercise in desperately trying to make it relevant.

I'm not stoked about ship management, but I can respect that reasoning. If you have a vision you want to realize, go for it. Otherwise, you get something like the keep in Pillars 1, awkwardly trying to be a major thing while also being unobtrusive.

...why are they using muppets for those, again? I seem to have missed something.

ToEE was a buggy mess with a rambling, incoherent plot, riddled with imbalance. I honestly don't know what the appeal is, unless you really like 3.5 D&D rules and can't get enough of them. Tabletop rules just don't translate well into an environment where there's no GM, no players and anything that happens has to be scripted.

It doesn't look like they're copying the actual rules, though, which would indeed be hilariously terrible. What I've seen suggests they're trying to recreate Pathfinder's options and style in a cRPG. Which... is still potentially bad, because Pathfinder is Pathfinder, but at least they're not straight-up porting the rules.

I loathe Pathfinder and everything it stands for, but the screenshots and gifs don't look half bad. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean it'll avoid being an eyesore as magic items pile up. This game might be worth checking out if it doesn't stay faithful to PF rules. I'm playing DOS2 right now and my feelings are mixed. I was put off by it before getting it, then I decided to give it a shot. I was positively surprised at first, but by now the intense gear treadmill has got on my nerves. And it turns out that the intricate magic system and environmental effects can't keep up with the number bloat, which is best dealt with using overwhelming physical damage. It's also unfortunate that for game otherwise so creative, physical weapons are so restricted and without variety, in stark contrast to PIllars.

My first choice was a human fighter with a greatsword, so... guilty as charged. He's not white, though... more like brown? He's from Ixamitl. I do like playing dwarves, though, and I'd much sooner play one than an elf. Though I haven't played one in Pillars. My second character was an orlan, and my third playthrough never came to be. But if I do try it before Deadfire comes out, it may well be a dwarf. Perhaps a dwarven priest? Even more than humans, though, I like playing goblins and similar. Which isn't an option in Pillars, as orlan are more like fuzzy halflings. 'Course, it very rarely is an option, so I default to humans or dwarves.

Warrior types in Pillars frequently do things which shouldn't be possible in real life, especially as you reach higher levels. This doesn't necessarily imply a stylized and unrealistic aesthetic. And I like that Pillars doesn't fall into the trap of treating two-handed weapons as heavy, which is a misconception fantasy embraces way too often.

This thread frequently becomes concerned with a particular topic for several pages at a time, when Josh posts something people feel strongly about. I see nothing wrong with it. Weapon proficiencies do seem like an illusion of choice right now. Unless they become a budget for generic passives, you'll get every weapon you're ever likely to use around level 8 and then just pick things to get it out of the way.

I can't say I really have sympathy for your point of view. You are basically saying you want everything and all, without consequence. The plague of instant gratification. So I say, yes, the game should punish you. It would be pure luck in BG2 if you made a character that was able to wield Carsomyr +5 in your first playthrough. But even so, the game was kind of nice to you, in that you could recruit Keldorn to wield the weapon for you. But that meant of course you had to pick Keldorn as a companion instead of someone else (strategic choice). Point being; No, you can't have everything. That's what makes a game like this meaningful and interesting in the long run. How is it that when someone says "you are basically saying", what follows is some outlandish point of view that has nothing to do with what anyone else has said?

That's a very good point. It felt different because you could take those weaker or more situational spells anyway, due to how the three casting classes worked, and use them sometimes.

Wasn't it said at some point that the keep's caretaker sells all your crap to buy the ship?