J.E. Sawyer

I'd like a sincere answer to this question, though I know not all of you are of the same mind: what do you want to spend (in-game) money on? I worked on IWD, HoW, TotL, and IWD2. In virtually all of these games, I heard these two complaints over and over and over: When unique items were in stores: * I don't want to buy unique items in stores. When unique items were in dungeons: * I have nothing to spend my money on. In all of these games, items you found on adventures were almost always one of the following: a) directly usable (i.e. gear or consumables) b) wealth items or c) quest items. If something wasn't usable, it was usually a wealth item (gold, gem, etc.). A wealth item only existed to give you gold, but for gold to have some sort of value, there needs to be something you want that costs x gold. If high-value items aren't what you spend your gold on, what do you spend your gold on? In PE, you may spend gold on your stronghold, but there's no guarantee of that. And according to a lot of you, you don't use consumables, so if consumables aren't used, they're just wealth items -- not something you would want to spend gold on. Part of the reason for having a crafting system was to make consumables less common in the world. Only people who want to make/use them would see a relatively large quantity of them. Since crafting ingredients are stored and sorted separately from other items, their presence subtracts nothing from the carrying capabilities of players who ignore the system entirely. There are recurring trends I'm seeing: * Don't like crafting. * Don't like durability. * Don't like consumables. Combining those with with the two points at the top, it's hard for me to figure out where the gold is going to go. There is also the possibility that players don't actually want a long-term gold economy in a SP game, that gold in the mid- and late-game is ultimately something to accumulate and that most/all forms of gear upgrading simply happens through quests and exploration. That's not an invalid way to go, but I'd like to hear thoughts on it if you have the time.

I answer questions in both locations. I can't log to OEI at home and these updates almost always go up after I've left for tutoring on Tuesdays.

Yes, that is the intended meaning. I've also explained the intended meaning previously. I don't think I've ever used "degenerate" as a description of players, but of gameplay. I don't believe players are ever at "fault" for using whatever tools designers provide for them, including features like save/reload or rest spamming. It's the designers' responsibility to design systems and individual sub-systems that work well together and promote enjoyable gameplay. BTW, in my own tabletop gaming scenarios, I've heard plenty of players (and DMs) deride other players for "abusing" clear rule loopholes. I don't think this is helpful for anyone and, unless you're in a tournament environment, I don't know why any DM/GM wouldn't simply talk to the players about adjusting the rules for the long-term health of the game. With PE, the rules we give to you are ours to write. If a player "abuses" any rule we put in, we are the people to blame, not the players. I.e, we, the designers, create degenerate gameplay opportunities. Players simply recognize the opportunity and take advantage of it to win the game, which is usually one of their major goals. But because those opportunities often become the de facto tactic or strategy for overcoming an obstacle, what could have been a dynamic element of gameplay becomes static -- generally undesirable.

Not all creatures drop good loot. Some creatures don't drop any loot. That can be a determining factor in what encounters you choose to engage or circumvent.

In "dungeon" (or equivalent) environments, stealth can be used to circumvent encounters or it can be used to set up good positions from which to start a fight. The specifics will depend heavily on the individual dungeons, encounters, and characters doing the sneaking. Conversations are less common in dungeon environments than in cities, but you will still have deep dialogues in dungeons when it makes sense.

That's not what Chris wrote.

There is no procedural bloom or blur on any of our assets.

Glanfathan elves have none of the biases against orlans that other cultures do. Orlans are well-regarded in Glanfathan tribes. Aumaua are a minority in all of the "core" nations/cultures around the Dyrwood. The aumaua-dominated cultures to the (far) north and (slightly closer) south are about as technologically-advanced as the Aedyr Empire. I.e., generally pretty advanced but exceeded in some ways by the Vailians (generally the tech "leaders").

Yeah, the Engwythans were good at three things: soul manipulation, mathematics, and growing big crazy structures. Their metallurgy was generally garbage and they weren't particularly advanced in any other fields. Glanfathans have surpassed them in mathematical discoveries and astronomy. The other "big" cultures have also discovered an enormous amount of knowledge about souls that the Engwythans never did -- though there are still aspects of Engwythan technology that contemporary animancers don't fully understand. As a side note, while Glanfathans are dominantly elves and orlans, Engwythans apparently had a strong representation of every race in their society.

As a note, those are all work-in-progress shots that were intended for (small) use in print. None of those are finished areas. Even the "original" area is still having work done on it.

Enchantments take a number of different forms, but steel is by far the most common metal used for making armor and weapons. Skein steel doesn't actually bind the soul to the metal, but uses copper as a temporary element of the forging process to slowly draw a burning soul over the weapon. By the time the process is complete, there's very little copper left in the weapon, but there are trace amounts that can reveal the macabre process used to create it.

The dominant human ethnicity among Vailians is Calbandra (Ocean Folk). They are originally from the "warm ring" (equator) but migrated thousands of years ago. Old Vailia is actually even farther south than the Vailian Republics. The Dyrwood is warm compared to Old Valia and cool compared to Aedyr.

You could. Their targeted commands have decent range, so it should be possible to "lead from behind" if you want to.

Last-hitting is also used in 4E for some abilities. Inspiring Triumph provides a passive bonus and is unlikely to be something you hang your hat on. There's no need to micro just for that benefit.

All Zealous auras apply to paladins as well as the people around them. That said, scattering the party is playing against the benefits of the paladin just as having a barbarian solo a singular powerful enemy is playing against the barbarian's benefits (specifically, Carnage AoE melee damage) and having a wizard try to dump low-damage AoEs on one or two targets is playing against the wizard's benefits. Positioning is often an important element of IE combat and we believe it should be in PE as well. Fighters works well as islands. You can plant them in the middle of a hallway (even a wide one) and they can lock down melee combatants running through the area. They work less well (or rather, provide less benefit) in immediate proximity to their allies because they can't force anyone to engage them over someone else. They also have trouble when enemies are primarily ranged-based and spread out. Paladins do not work well as islands. They work well with one or more allies around them. They don't have to be holding hands, but they can't be on opposite sites of a battlefield. Yes, a wizard, ranger, and rogue in the party could spread far out from the paladin (I don't really think most of them need to), but in many cases, a full party will likely have two more melee-oriented characters in the party (most IE parties have 2 or 3). A paladin standing 10' in front of a ranger and wizard can provide the same Zealous Barrage benefits to shooters and casters that he or she would if he or she ran up alongside a monk and a barbarian. Even if a ranger or wizard are on the other side of the battlefield, if they are the closest ally attacking the paladin's current target, they'll gain the benefit of Coordinated Attacks. Paladin Talents will unlock more offensive capabilities for them, but the bog-standard paladins won't hit like wet noodles just because they don't have Abilities specifically dedicated to smashing in faces. It makes sense that in a tabletop game like D&D, a "buff beacon" character should be avoided because the player experience can be boring. That's why 4E buff abilities are often minor actions or they are side effects of attacks (e.g. Healing Strike). In a party-based CRPG where the player is controlling up to six characters, every class doesn't need to be a self-contained murder machine with the same number of active use (or even offensive) abilities.

Because the renders are from untextured Zbrush models, you can't see the mottled skin patterns that hearth orlans have. This is also why some people are interpreting the wild orlans' body/facial hair as "wrinkles". The "wrinkles" are actually their hair.

i'm not that huge of a fan of the fact that your class is tied to a specific single order, and that you will probably get associated with it even if you don't like it. I think the same for monks... Paladins and monks are not tied to the foundation orders.

It did, but most Romance articles and prepositions tend to be short (and often abbreviated/contracted as in consiglio dell'assedio), so don't know if they would wind up actually feeling that much different if I switched a few consonants and vowels around. Vailian is the only language we have that's based on widespread Earth languages, so I thought it was more important to more significantly shift it away from their Earth counterparts. Changing the articles and prepositions to fictional ones doesn't really solve the "problem" of fictional grammar because neither approach is attempting to actually be correct Italian/French/Occitan, just to have the flavor of those languages. Consiglio frezz'assedio is arguably as "wrong" as Darcozzi Paladini.

In the case of the Darcozzi Paladini, that would never make sense in any of the source romance languages because it's exhibiting characteristics of a cased language. Vailian, unlike Italian, French, or Occitan, is cased. If we used prepositions and articles to represent those relationships (especially to the extent that Italian does), it actually comes across as too Earth-like, IMO. Consuagli asegia seems "Romance-y", but consiglio dell'assedio looks unmistakably Italian.

We are currently experimenting with cloaks. We know people like them!

True. Vailian probably runs the biggest risk of this, especially since it's a cased language (most contemporary Romance languages are not). I already had a native Italian speaker call me out on the Darcozzi Paladini (an ancient order of palace guards from the Grand Empire of Vailia). "Hey buddy, who named that, some backwater farmer?!"

Quantity-wise, more in the realm of the BG games.

Yeah. You probably wouldn't notice that unless you heard a Dyrwoodan (or Aedyran) pronounce it and then a Glanfathan pronounce it. Individual personal names may be spelled differently, especially among Dyrwoodans, who may borrow the sound of Glanfathan names transcribed into their own orthography -- or vice-versa. This is very common in Earth languages. Durnisc used for a Glanfathan name may be spelled Dúirnis, with the "i' after "ú" being a silent glide vowel added to satisfy the "slender to slender, broad to broad" vowel rule and to maintain the "r" and "sh" sounds from the source name.

To be clear, our conlangs won't dramatically veer away from their inspiration languages, but sometimes deviating from the source can actually avoid some stumbling blocks/issues (e.g. "bean" as the Irish word for woman).

1. Not tremendously, but a little. Due to the number of cultures and languages, I'm not going to delve deep into each language. Engwythan and Glanfathan are from the same part of the world and are loosely related (as Cornish and Irish are). Eld Aedyran and Hylspeak (similar to Scots) are essentially older versions of the "common" contemporary Aedyran which is, for all practical purposes, English. Vailian doesn't have any branched or ancestral languages represented in the game, but Dyrwoodans have appropriated some of their words (e.g. "duc"). 2. The languages spoken in Ixamitl, Naasitaq (boreal dwarf-dominated), and Rauatai (northern aumaua-dominated) are all non-Indo-Euro in inspiration. They will be developed with less depth because they aren't as commonly spoken in this part of the world and frankly, I'm much more familiar with Indo-Euro languages.