J.E. Sawyer

Wizards are easily among the most popular character classes for IE fans. When we went through our spell lists, we identified spell concepts/mechanics that seemed too integral to the feeling of a traditional class for us to ignore. We have invented a bunch of off-the-wall stuff for them to use, but I think it would be a mistake for us to conspicuously not have a fireball-ish spell at 3rd level or not have a magic missile-ish spell at 1st level. If we omitted those from our lists, the classes would still have big lists of fun spells, but I think they would lose a good chunk of the *~ classic feels ~*. From a balance perspective, I do want to avoid the "quadratic wizard" (and druid), but I think we can do that and still keep the spirit of the classes alive.

Currently, wizards, druids, and priests are all heavily casting-oriented classes. None of them are particularly great at weapon-based combat on their own and they aren't too durable, either. The major differences between them in terms of spellcasting come down to what their spells emphasize. Druids and wizards both have good AoE attacks, with druids having more affliction-based effects and wizards emphasizing damage more. Wizards have quite a few personal buffs and oddball spells (like Minor Grimoire Imprint, Arcane Reflection, etc.), druids have "HoTs" (heal over time) and some support. Priests heavily emphasize support and fast healing with a small number of personal buffs and select AoEs.

Druids don't get priest spells. They do get some healing and support spells, but they are not the same ones that priests get.

Our current design for wizards allows them to learn a new spell every time they gain a level, so if there's one that you REALLY want, the system allows you to take it when you advance. E: This doesn't apply to unique spells, but there will probably be very few of them.

That is not currently planned. Sorry.

1. Yes. 2. Shifting lasts for the duration of combat or until you choose to shift back. 3. Yes. 4. All spiritshift forms have unique passive abilities that complement some aspect of fighting in melee. 5. Currently, they are all melee-oriented. In the future, we are more likely to branch out into "weirder" spiritshift forms.

This is correct. If you want your wizard to be able to hop into the front lines and hang with fighters, barbarians, rogues, etc., there should be some cost to doing so. In our design, the trade-off is the opportunity cost of casting in combat. Individually, the wizard's personal buffs are pretty powerful. Casting one or two should really ramp the character's capabilities up. If you sit out half the battle loading up on buffs while other characters hold the line, you can become really deadly -- but you're sitting out half the combat. If you want to give yourself more time, use something to slow down or paralyze enemies first, then capitalize on that delay to layer buffs. Alternately, coordinate with a paladin or priest who can buff the wizard along with the rest of the party.

Ligature support usually requires OpenType, but our fonts are looking a lot better these days. I don't want to promise any specific features, but we've made scaling, smoothing, and kerning a priority. I think you will like the results.

I like the cinematic idea of Sharpe's Eagle-style smacking or stabbing folks with rifles but there are a lot of interface/implementation problems with it. Sorry.

They do not.

Pistols can be primary weapons. They are the fastest-reloading but least damaging firearms.

Fulfillment/distribution of physical goods has been on our radar from the beginning of the Kickstarter campaign. As game developers, we'd rather not be a fulfillment house. We've seen other companies nobly struggle with order fulfillment and practically drown in their own success, so we've been talking to other companies about that for a while. Even if we could technically handle it ourselves, it would be an inefficient use of money. We assume our backers want us fixing bugs and polishing content instead of packing boxes and printing out shipping labels.

Fairly accurate. They have modal close-range buff auras and a targeted commands to give powerful short-term boosts to individual targets.

I'm sure I have but it's been a while. Themed categories contain groups of weapons, like Cowboy in Fallout: New Vegas. E.g. specializing in Soldier weapons gives a % damage bonus with great swords, pikes, war hammers, arbalests, and arquebuses. Most of the weapons in each category are exclusive to that category, but some (like the war bow and crossbow) appear in multiple lists.

We don't make reputation checks to see what personality options are available to you. Personality options are what give you your disposition reputations. NPCs react to those reputations after you build them. If there's an option to be a jerk in a node of dialogue, your previous disposition options don't gate that at all. If you spend half of the game being really benevolent and the second half stomping on kids' toys, you'll develop reputations for being sort of benevolent and sort of cruel. The former doesn't limit your ability to select choices that influence the latter. Choosing to remain silent is always blank-slate conscious lack of response unless we specifically state you're doing something else as part of the selection. If you're glaring or folding your arms we wouldn't roll that in with a [Remain silent] option. When attached to a personality type, it's usually Stoic (when being directly addressed and you choose to not respond) or Diplomatic (when two people are arguing and you choose to not interject).

It shouldn't be as big of an issue in PoE because you don't pre-assign spell slots. Druids effectively cast like sorcerers in PoE. So you might temporarily lose a per-rest casting when you transform but you would regain it when you switch back (the items remembers if it's been used already). Nothing's "assigned" to that slot so there's nothing to lose.

We're doing some RP-related bonuses for paladins and priests but I'd rather wait to go into detail with them. They're not as in-depth as custom abilities for each order/deity. That's just too much work for us along with all of the other classes/races. Weapon specializations are grouped together by themed category: e.g. Knight, Noble, Soldier, Ruffian, etc. Only fighters gain access to WS.

Just for the attacker.

The weapon balancing is still very rough. In general, fast weapons do a small amount of damage per hit but the most damage over time (though this can be heavily blunted by armor). Slower weapons do much more damage per hit and the least damage over time, but are much less affected by armor. Each type of weapon has its own special (though not necessarily unique) bonus as well. E.g. sabres inflict a short-duration damage over time effect, estocs and stilettos lower the target's armor by a flat amount, morning stars do either pierce of crush damage depending on what the target is more susceptible to (automatically), etc. Magical implements are the fastest of the ranged weapons, but also do pretty mild damage. The rest of the ranged weapons tend to scale in this order of decreasing speed and increasing damage: hunting bow, war bow, crossbow, arbalest, pistol, blunderbuss/arquebus.

Paladins occupy the middle space between fighters and priests in terms of raw combat power and support. Fighters have more consistent damage output and long-term survivability, but paladins can spike their damage with abilities like Flames of Devotion and Sworn Enemy. Those are limited-use abilities but they are nice for giving someone an extra smacking. Priests do not have an inherent talent in melee combat but they have the best AoE support abilities in the game (and can benefit from them on their own). They don't have a huge array of offensive spells, but the ones they have are potent, if small in overall area.

Including firearms and magical implements, there are 28 base weapon types with two unique (mid power and high power) versions for each base type. Additionally there are "ordinary" Fine and Exceptional quality variants for each base type. The uniques and base types have all been designed and (mostly) implemented, though we've only placed a few of them in the world so far.

I should have said before that there's a separate asset for the HUD portrait. I don't remember the dimensions/aspect but they are not the same as the character sheet portrait. We do manually crop them in to make the faces as prominent as possible.

When we increment reputations, we use a weighting based on how big of a deal that specific interaction/action is. If you save the king from being assassinated, that would count as the highest weighting of rep bump. If you save Joe Dirtfarmer from the wolves in the middle of nowhere, it will a) probably be small and b) if it's a regional rep, will likely be only for that region.

1. Being rich and successful. Vailian Republics place a high value on success and don't care much about what your family did two generations+ ago. 2. They don't really discriminate whom they enslave, but they are more involved in trafficking than actually running slaving operations. 3. Can you narrow your question? What specific aspect are you interested in? 4. Yes, there are sabres in PoE.

Interrupts don't queue and an Interrupt always has a fixed (tiny) duration. If someone actually gets hit by six attacks concurrently, they probably have to worry more about their Stamina than being interrupted.