J.E. Sawyer

Kaz is working on the inventory UI. The icons below the portrait are "mine" (i.e. just placeholders) and represent (top) Stamina, Health, Main Hand Accuracy, Off-Hand Accuracy and (bottom) the four defenses: Deflection, Fortitude, Reflexes, and Psyche. Of course, it's still a work in progress.

There's nothing final about Ability progression/selection. Right now we're implementing them as a fixed order progression. That may change for one or more classes depending on how it feels. There's nothing that necessitates gaining them in a strict order.

RE: Skills: PE's skill caps are more like Pathfinder's than 3E/3.5's. Regardless of how many skill points an individual rogue puts into Stealth or Mechanics, he or she will always have a bonus in those skills that other classes don't have (Pathfinder requires a rank in each class skill for the bonus, but it's similar otherwise). A rogue who neglects those skills may be running on par (or below, if neglected enough) with a fighter who specifically maxes them out, but a character who focuses on the skills their class gains bonuses to will always be ahead of a character of the same level from a class that does not gain bonuses in that skill. Probably an easier way to explain it: all characters have the same number of skill points per level and the same access to skills. However, every class has a few skills in which they receive a constant bonus -- always and forever.

Abilities are always granted by gaining levels in a class. I.e., they are ALWAYS class-specific and they are gained per-level. Talents are a more general pool of optional goodies (some of which are still class-restricted) that you gain (currently) every three levels. Edit: To use a D&D example, Wild Shape would be an Ability, Dodge would be a Talent. Only druids* gain Wild Shape, but any character class can take Dodge. * I'm sure there's some other class in a splat book that will prove this wrong.

We may still have two separate assets, but for our portraits we will be going for a "head and shoulders" (BG1/BG2) approach rather than the "knees-up" (IWD1/IWD2) style. The full body portraits are dramatically more time-consuming and much more limiting when it comes to player concepts. Our "paper dolls" are pretty detailed because they're using the same 3D models of the characters that you see in the game. The knees-up portraits create more visual discontinuity when you see them next to the game models.

I think most people don't know enough about the mechanics to make any accurate predictions but each person sees one part of the elephant and they extrapolate from that. I think a big part of the claim falls on the assumption that all the class mechanics allow the exact same options for talents and abilities (or effectively the same options, when you come down to brass-tacks and calculate each one out) across the board so that it really does play like a class-less system and that classes are just a hollow title to pacify those masses. The other part of the claim lies on the fact that we've heard a lot about how classes aren't distinguished like they were in IE games (rogues are skill-buffed characters, mages are OP nuke throwers, fighters are good low-level fighters and meat shields, etc), but we don't really understand much about how they are currently distinguished in game-play and when you take away what distinguished them, but don't replace the descriptions with new ways that they are distinguished, it's hard for posters to understand what's what. Edit: And then, of course, there are people who say things like this, but don't really mean it: "It should absolutely be possible to build a character who is bad at his class." Of course, this isn't for lack of trying. You've tried to answer these concerns in the past. But so many words is hard for the new generation to sit through. Ultimately I propose a video of the vertical slice to help players get a better idea of the way classes play, so that these silly claims can be put to rest once and for all. :D Classes don't currently share any Abilities at all. If you're not a fighter, you're never going to be able to take Defender. If you're not a monk, you're never going to be able to take Transcendent Suffering. Some Talents can be taken by any class (e.g. the weapon style Talents), but many of them are class-specific (e.g. Grimoire Slam). I disagree with your description of what we've said about the classes. We've repeatedly stated that fighters are extremely durable, reliable, and excel at holding positions, that rogues are the best single-target, single-hit damage dealers of any class (yes, significantly better than fighters), that monks are high-mobility melee status-infliction machines that use Wounds as an expendable resource, that wizards have high flexibility and, in addition to their traditional area-nuking abilities, have a variety of personal and single-target buffs. We've also said that if you try to play a class completely against role, you can run into trouble. There's an important distinction between what you can build and how you play. We don't allow characters to take Talents that are effectively dead-ends for their class. You also gain Talents at about 1/3 the rate that you gain Abilities, so they comprise much less of your character's makeup. In 3E/3.5, a fighter is practically made of feats and you can really botch a character even playing in the pool of combat feats. For comparison, in PE you can buy light magic Talents for your fighter that give the character some neat flexibility, but you can't completely redefine what the fighter fundamentally is. And if you buy a set of Talents, we aren't setting up long Talent chains like the feat chains that exist in 3/3.5 -- e.g. taking Whirwind Attack requires Combat Mobility, Dodge, Spring Attack, Dex 13, Int 13, and a +4 BAB. Our Talents have a flat layout with simple prereqs and are designed to be valuable on their own for any class that is allowed to take them. In 3E/3.5, it's really easy to build a low-efficiency fighter who isn't good at, well, fighting. A PE fighter can diversify a bit, but at his or her heart, he or she will still be great at doing the job that all fighters' Abilities prepare them to do: absorbing damage, hitting reliably, and holding ground. Similarly, if you want to gish it up with a wizard, there are spells and Talents that can lean you in that direction, but you can't outlast a fighter or hold ground like they can and you can't reliably spike damage in melee round after round like a rogue can. Now, there are things that you, the melee wizard, can do in melee that the fighter and rogue can't. You can surround yourself with a big fiery shield and make illusory duplicates of yourself. Those differences are cool and why you would want to play a gish wizard over a fighter or rogue even though you ultimately can't do their "jobs". But because grimoires are designed for flexibility (because wizards are designed for flexibility), if you get tired of being the glowing Daffy Duck gish hopping all over the place or if you're in a situation where you can't even stand next to the melee big kids, you can switch to an AoE damage grimoire and be a "traditional" wizard. There's no dead end in playing as a gish (even though you will be challenged in other ways) and more importantly, your gish-emphasizing build options don't dramatically impact your ability to do regular wizardly things. You shouldn't reach a point in the game where you go, "Wow, I regret taking these Talents because this character can't do anything well." In 3E/3.5, class roles are less well-defined and it's easy to build a character that is bad at any job -- whether it's their class' job or otherwise. In 4E, class roles are very well-defined almost to the point of being straight-jacketed. In building PE's classes, I found that trying to draw strictly within the lines of a class' role was limiting in a way that wasn't enjoyable -- and I didn't believe that players would find it enjoyable either. That's why I've tried to use the approach of making classes "role-ready" instead of "role-constrained". PE's characters of any class are always ready to fill their class role regardless of the Talents you've taken because their per-level class Abilities have a much more dominant influence on their overall capabilities. There are always efficiency gains to be made in how you build, but compared to 3E/3.5, the number of viable builds should be much higher. Play-wise, if you want to put a monk in a tanking position or run a wizard around in melee, the rules aren't structured around building restrictions to discourage you from doing that. In many fights, it will be totally viable even if it's inefficient. In some circumstances or at higher difficulty levels, it will be more difficult to play in this way, but if you find that you need to "fall back" to standard roles, you should be able to do so because your character can't be fundamentally built contrary to his or her class.

We want to support custom portraits and make it very easy for players to drop in whatever they want. We're still playing around with portrait sizes but right now they're around 660x850 on the character/inventory screen and get downsampled for use on other parts of the GUI.

What would the other two pillars be? Off the top of my mind, they are (dungeon) exploration and interactive dialogue choices, which personalize the story, but am I right here? Also, do you mean you cannot make a good tactical combat game with a skill-based system? Or it's another resource issue? Means, presuming I am right about the other pillars, while you could make something combat-focused such as classic Jagged Alliance series or something more interactive like old Fallouts, it's hard to make a game which excels at both areas. With the former, the players will get only one of the pillars while the latter offers them more or less a watered-down combat. I agree with your opinon about PnP rulesets but, here, I think you are desigining CRPG. So, I placed my quesions in such a way. The three pillars are environment exploration, interactive story/dialogue, and tactical combat. No, I don't mean that you cannot make a good tactical combat game with a skill-based system. As I wrote, if you have a classless system and you want a tactical focus, you really have to give a lot of attention to the combat mechanics/skills. JA2 clearly had a heavy focus on it and it worked very well. Of course, JA2's combat also had a pretty narrow focus. That's not a bad thing, but it's something to consider when things like magic, melee, and ranged combat are present.

None of the above.

It's not particularly hard to make a wide range of class concepts viable if you don't include build options that will make a terrible character. I've posted a lot about how the classes work (or don't work) and can be built (or can't be built). Rather than hunt around and guess at what leads people to believe that "all classes can be all things", I'd like to hear what the basis for that claim is.

I think classes can be easier for players to "get" than a sea of potential skills/abilities/etc. With a lot of classless systems (especially really rules-intensive ones like GURPS), you may have to hunt around to figure out if you can build a certain character concept. Classes present you with rough character archetypes up front so it's easier to just drop in for newer players (IMO). When I play, I prefer to use classless systems. However, in my experience with classless systems, I've still found that if tactical combat is "a thing" of the game, it needs to receive a lot of design attention so players can make use of it. GURPS pays a lot of attention to combat mechanics and leans more heavily on simulationism (albeit, sometimes in odd ways) so building a combat monster is not too difficult. However, a lot of the tactics for those combat monsters wind up looking pretty similar, so it doesn't necessarily encourage particularly diverse gameplay (again, IME, and GURPS is very large). In a game like Vampire, tactical combat really isn't "a thing" so having light rules doesn't matter that often IME.

Well, if you're five levels deep and we haven't provided you with a new rest location, we're terrible level designers -- in which case resting is probably a minor concern in the grand scheme of things. That said, the same issue exists in A/D&D and most A/D&D-based CRPGS. While I'm sure there's some exception that exists somewhere, in every edition of A/D&D, your ability to replenish HP is always bound by consumable (daily/per-rest) character abilities and consumable items. Prior to 3E, the character ability resources were extremely limited. Only clerics and druids had any worthwhile healing and they had to prepare slots specifically for that purpose. 3E/3.5/Pathfinder made it much less onerous for clerics and 4E made it easier for everyone, but outside of combat, 4E parties still have to rely on consumable Surges to maintain combat viability. Even healing potions in 4E still use Surges and it doesn't seem to be an issue, IME. So yes, Health is a strategic tether like other per-rest resources but it really is like other per-rest resources. IMO, spacing/pacing is the biggest concern and I think games like Knights of the Chalice have shown that it can be done well.

We use a 2D depth map render that is separate from the final/beauty render. The depth map has the same resolution as the final render and allows the in-game renderer to determine the depth each corresponding pixel has from the camera. Because it's an isometric render (no parallaxing), it simply does a per-pixel comparison to sort the scene.

Tactical party-based combat is one of the three stated pillars of PE which is one of the reasons we're using them.

1. Not correct. There are a variety of ways to heal Stamina. Recovering Health requires rest. 2. Correct, but characters can certainly die if you enable character death or Expert Mode (which flips it on automatically). If character death isn't enabled, characters who hit 0 Health are maimed (massive penalties to accuracy and defenses, drop if they take any Health damage at all) until they rest, which is a pretty bad condition to be in. 3. Given how our world map works and how we're designing our maps, lack of fast travel doesn't seem to be an issue. 6. Not correct at all.

For a single level. The number of levels in a dungeon isn't necessarily relevant, but the number of levels in the game is. This is going to be a large game with a lot of maps. That number does include all renders, btw (final, diffuse, specular, etc.).

If you're comparing it to D&D, this is a similar progression except for two differences: 1) we maintain differences between classes (given equal level) as an integer rather than as a proportion and 2) because we use a 100 point base scale instead of a 20 point base scale, we have finer control over per-level advancement. E.g. in Pathfinder, a fighter starts with +2 Fort, +0 Ref, +0 Will. They progress like this (Fort/Ref/Will) 5th +4 +1 +1 10th +7 +3 +3 15th +9 +5 +5 20th +12 +6 +6 A rogue starts with +0 Fort, +2 Ref, +0 Will. They progress like this (Fort/Ref/Will) 5th +1 +4 +1 10th +3 +7 +3 15th +5 +9 +5 20th +6 +12 +6 It's a regular progression: they start with an advantage in one (for some classes in D&D, two), and advance at regular intervals. Of course, at high levels this falls apart because the proportional gulf between good and bad saves becomes so wide that characters have to overcompensate or inure themselves to specific effects to avoid being sucker punched. At 1st level, the difference between the good and bad saves is (effectively) 10%. At 10th level, it's 20%. At 20th level, it's 30%. To make matters worse, typically the obvious "good" stats for a given class reinforce the better saves and neglect the worse saves. Fighters often have a high Con, which means they are likely to have an even higher total Fort than normal. They might have a decent Dex which can bolster their Reflex, but it's rare that they have a high Wis (and consequently, Will save). Because save DCs are often balanced around the "hard" targets, it means that the weakest saves of a class combined with the weakest (or least important) ability scores for that class make them really, really vulnerable. This is why Pathfinder has a special Bravery feature for fighters at higher levels -- otherwise they'd run or freeze in terror more than half the time a comparable caster chucked a Will-based fear effect their way. In PE, fighters start with the following defenses: 25 Deflect, 15 Fortitude, 10 Reflexes, 10 Psyche. Rogues start with the following defenses: 15 Deflect, 10 Fortitude, 30 Reflexes, 5 Psyche. Every level, every character gains +3 to all defenses. At 6th level, the fighter would have 40 Deflect, 30 Fortitude, 25 Reflexes, 25 Psyche. The rogue would have 30 Deflect, 25 Fortitude, 45 Reflexes, 20 Psyche. The fighter's worst defenses are still Reflexes and Psyche, but they're only "just as" bad (by the same margin) as they were at 1st level. The same applies to the rogue's Psyche and Fortitude. And while the rogue did "catch up" to where the fighter's Deflection was, the fighter maintains the same 10 point advantage over the rogue that he or she did at 1st level. Of course, Attributes, gear, Talents, Abilities, etc. also can all feed into your defenses, but those are much easier to switch around than your class and level. I.e., if you find yourself particularly vulnerable to a particular type of attack (meaning, what defense it targets), the cause is likely easier to remedy in PE than it would be in D&D (because class is such a large component of that value as levels rise).

In D&D, +3 is still +3 even when other bonuses from other sources enter the mix that makes up the aggregate. Even if it comprises a smaller proportion of the total, it's still valuable. All other things being equal, a class' starting defense bonuses will always shift their overall balance. A 5th level barbarian may find a number of ways (items, spells, etc.) to get his or her Deflection on par with a 5th level fighter's, but given access to the same methods, the fighter would still maintain his or her class advantage. In PE, for any standard attack, every 5 points of defense translates to a 5% shift to miss, graze, hit, and crit (sometimes negating the possibility entirely). In D&D terms, a 15 point defense advantage is similar to +3/-3. Shifting the odds always helps.

Our slightly-above-average dungeon levels contain ~1 gig of render data, uncompressed.

I didn't design the stronghold resources/systems in any of the previous games I've worked on. If a system gives out a resource periodically, it should either expire after a number of periods have elapsed or the periods should stop elapsing.

No, we really don't want to do that at all. I think it is better to occasionally say, "Of the ten ways you could attack this guy, these three are not good" than to say, "This is the one way out of ten that you can viably attack this guy." The former encourages you to examine other possibilities, but you can arrive at a number of solutions, some of which work better for your particular character/party. The latter can leave you in a situation where you're just SOL (or at a severe disadvantage).

It isn't an endless source.

I think physically splitting the house and the stronghold increases the likelihood that the player will choose to not visit one or the other (most likely, the house) over the course of the game.

Your player house is located within the boundaries of the stronghold, but it is its own building with its own upgrades/benefits.

We may have encounters like that. I think it's good to mix up encounters so they're not constantly balanced around maximal uses of resources or overly formulaic. Sometimes it's nice to just roll a bunch of scrubs in an otherwise difficult dungeon. Sometimes it's nice to see the balance of enemy types/resistances radically shifted. As long as it doesn't present an insurmountable roadblock, it becomes an opportunity to think/use your characters a little differently.