Witness41920

I would love to see some block/parry animations as well and have to agree that the "clang!" sound effect that accompanied blocking in DA:O was super satisfying. If it is possible to include these animations in the Unity engine without causing animation/sound sync issues with the pace of the gaming engine then I would be fully in favor of this.

Nah, yer nae weird. We Dwarfkin be studs o' the highest order even without our beards but nae many o' us can sport the "Beardless Chin" look without lookin' silly, Varric be one o' the rare ones.

Now, that’s just racist. Cannae help it that beards be the master race.

Ye jus' cannae call yerself a proper Dwarf 'less ye 'ave a beard so grand in its splendor and girth that yer enemies cannae tell where it ends and ye begin!

I haven't gotten to play too much of the beta (sadly) but from what I've seen of the Paladin Orders, they seem pretty fitting. You get some interesting bonuses and some interesting penalties. You can see what effects are changed by your choice of Order on the level up (skills) page if you're curious.

A solution I've seen in other games that is a decent compromise is the ability to have companions or hirelings sell common grade equipment for you. This option auto-clears such items from your stash/inventory and returns to you the sell value of the items. You could have this option come with a cost for the transaction such as a hiring fee for the hireling or everything being sold at the lowest possible value so you don't get as much coin for your gear as you would if you did the legwork yourself.

I was genuinely pleased by the way religion is handled in Pillars of Eternity. On the one hand you have the positives of organized religion being demonstrated such as the strengthening of a sense of community and fellowship, faith found through hardship, strength in conviction and so on. You also have the negatives of organized religion being demonstrated such as fanatical interpretations and beliefs leading to great evils, outright hostility to different or opposing faiths and the kind of mental deterioration that comes when an individual or group of individuals fails to challenge their own beliefs and instead has them shattered by opposition. I would really like to see the series continue to treat religion with the respectful stroke it has kept so far while being willing to tackle some of the problems that can come from it.

what's wrong with muscle-bound mages? Nothing at all if that's what you're actually going for. The problem is that the game didn't view "might" as anything OTHER than a muscle-bound character. I don't see a problem with mages that are muscle-bound, especially if they're spellswords or steelcaster or some other combination of magic and melee but you can also just have a physically strong spellcaster. My issue isn't with the concept, it's with the game perceiving all mages as such because of how "might" was scripted into the game.

I actually prefer the balance between per-rest and per-encounter abilities, it adds to the strategy of the game when I have to balance my extremely powerful spells per day against my much less powerful abilities per encounter. I personally enjoy the focus on fewer spells that have a bigger impact, I've never enjoyed the machine-gun mage.

I much prefer the stat layout as it is right now when it comes to casters. I never much cared for the "Might" attribute because while it seemed to be "spiritual" strength in its definition it was used as physical strength in scripted conversations and ability checks. So the game gave the illusion of a muscle-bound mage using brute force to solve problems rather than finesse and spells. I like having the abilities set up with a more clear division between what each one represents.