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J.E. Sawyer

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Everything posted by J.E. Sawyer

  1. J.E. Sawyer
    1. Wands/rods/sceptres do pierce/crush, slash/crush, and crush/slash damage, respectively. What this means is that when a wand (for example) hits a target, it will do either pierce or crush damage depending on which DT on the target is weaker. Spells do a wide variety of damage, occasionally physical, but usually "elemental". 2. Other than wands, rods, and sceptres, ranged weapons only do pierce damage (assuming they are not enchanted). We decided not to implement bodkin/broadhead arrow types. Cloth has, overall, the worst DT. It's not especially vulnerable to pierce damage, but it has the worst DT overall. 3. You can add an enchantment of any damage type to any weapon. This can be the traditional flaming sword or adding crush damage to a stiletto if you really wanted to. 4. Raw damage bypasses all armor. It is very infrequently used and usually has a low damage value. Poison effects often use the raw damage type -- though many poison effects are often a secondary attack that is only made if the initial attack lands.
  2. J.E. Sawyer
    This is a very low-priority feature and it's very unlikely we would implement it at this stage. Sorry.
  3. J.E. Sawyer
    Yeah, the way we display the non-verbose final roll is always relative to the standard ranges: Miss on =96. Defense is subtracted from Accuracy and then applied as a modifier to the roll itself. E.g. the attacker has 52 Accuracy and the defender has 30 Defense. The difference is 22. Three attacks happen in sequence. The actual rolls are 65, 43, and 84. Those are modified to 85 (Hit), 65 (Hit), and 106 (Crit). There are two exceptions to this: a natural roll of =96 can never be worse than a Hit, no matter how much the table gets skewed.
  4. J.E. Sawyer
    The most obvious are Horrid Wilting and Teleport Field in BG2.
  5. J.E. Sawyer
    I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but the IE games had plenty of foe-only AoEs. More recently, NWN, NWN2, and ToEE all had Whirlwind Attack, Cleave, etc. which were "selective fire" as well.
  6. J.E. Sawyer
    Yes, the fighter's skill bonuses are all minor. Abilities like the fighter's Critical Defense are applied passively to each incoming attack. In the combat log, it doesn't display anything special unless a conversion occurred. If Sassy attacks Squorzel and Squorzel has Critical Defense but the conversion roll didn't succeed, it would just display this way: Sassy Crits Squorzel for 48 Slash damage. If the conversion does succeed, it displays something like this: Sassy Crits Squorzel... but Critical Defense converts it to a Hit for 32 Slash damage! That's not the exact text or format, but it's something like that.
  7. J.E. Sawyer
    You can play any class as male or female. Our character creation screens briefly describe the different roles men and women play in various societies of Eora, but they do not inherently differ in stats or capability.
  8. J.E. Sawyer
    Weapons "roll" damage between their min and max before applying other modifiers. The upper end of the damage ranges is higher than it is in A/D&D but not by a huge factor. The lower end of the ranges is much higher, typically a little over half of the max. E.g. pollaxes do 18-28. A fighter with Confident Aim would do 20.5-28 damage with the same weapon (we do track fractions). A fighter with Confident Aim who is specialized in that weapon would do 20.5-28 base +15% (23.6-32.2). Hobbled reduces the target's Dexterity, movement speed, and Reflexes defense. Many attacks that inflict Hobbled will attack the Fortitude defense as a secondary attack. The fighter's Crippling Guard automatically inflicts Hobbled if the Disengagement Attack (vs. Deflection) hits. Disengagement Attacks are inherently more accurate than standard attacks and fighters have the highest melee Accuracy, so they tend to land those hits very regularly. If they Graze and have Confident Aim, 20% of those Grazes are converted to full Hits.
  9. J.E. Sawyer
    Accuracy progresses linearly and Miss/Graze/Hit/Crit windows are static.
  10. J.E. Sawyer
    Remember, even Arnold's Conan used a shield and heavier armor when he and Subotai had their final stand against Thulsa Doom's elite henchmen. Also, Frazetta did a few paintings of Conan with a shield, so it's not out of place, IMO. http://www.rehupa.com/OLDWEB/images/lancers_conan_conqueror_painting.jpg
  11. J.E. Sawyer
    Fighters will almost always outlive barbarians in any one-on-one situation. Barbarians are supposed to be better at dealing damage to groups. The reason they have the better conversion rate for Stamina:Health is because they generally wind up taking a lot more damage than fighters. Fighters also have other abilities I've mentioned before, like Armored Grace, which gives them increased DT from armor. I don't think I've mentioned Into the Fray, but that ability allows them to attack Reflexes to yank someone into melee from a (short but worthwhile) distance away. Keep in mind that Carnage only applies when the barbarian's melee attack actually hits. Because they have lower Accuracy, they're less likely to land that initial hit. Staying in the fight and reliably dealing damage are the two things that fighters are best at. They're much better at both than the barbarian is. We used the portrait for Calisca in our demo, but it's a standard PC human female portrait.
  12. J.E. Sawyer
    Anyone can dual-wield. Here are the relative trade-offs of fighting in any given "style": * Dual Weapon - Fastest attack rate and highest overall damage output vs. relatively light armor. * Two-Handed - Standard attack rate. Highest per-hit damage output vs. relatively heavy armor. * Weapon & Shield - Standard attack rate. Highest Deflection of any style. Heavier shields grant more Deflection, reduce Accuracy proportionally. * Single Weapon - Standard attack rate, all attacks made with +15 Accuracy.
  13. J.E. Sawyer
    Yes, there are currently six categories. The D&D standard is that characters are equally skilled with all weapons in which they have proficiency, so I don't think it's that odd to have thematically-grouped weapon specializations. Mechanically, the thematic groupings allow characters to gain bonuses with a set of one-handed and two-handed melee weapons as well as with ranged weapons It gives the player more circumstantial flexibility.
  14. J.E. Sawyer
    Carnage is a passive ability, so it "goes off" every time a melee attack hits. Targets who are hit by Carnage will play hit VFX and Interrupts (when appropriate). Active-use weapon-based attacks (e.g. the fighter's Knockdown, rogue's Finishing Blow, etc.) will have a "gleam" that plays on the weapon(s) after it is targeted.
  15. J.E. Sawyer
    There's nothing mechanically wrong with equipping a barbarian with a shield. You're just trading overall damage output for Deflection bonus. Is that a change from minus Accuracy? or do shields also slow down your recovery time as well as heavier ones reducing accuracy? All shields increase Deflection and slow down Recovery Time. Small shields have no Accuracy penalty. Medium and heavy shields have proportionally higher Deflection bonuses and Accuracy penalties.
  16. J.E. Sawyer
    We do not currently have "style" specializations, but it's something we'd like to do if there's time. If so, it would be implemented as a Talent that a variety of characters could take. Shields don't inherently have special abilities beyond boosting the wielder's Deflection and slowing their overall weapon attack rate.
  17. J.E. Sawyer
    Attributes are purely additive, so you can't get a 0/negative area, but you could certainly have circumstances where the same group of enemies could be Carnage'd by an 18 Int barbarian but not by a 6 Int barbarian.
  18. J.E. Sawyer
    Yes, Critical Defense would still apply. Carnage doesn't use special animations, just the standard attacks. It would be too expensive to animate special Carnage variants for all weapon types. The number of enemies that can be affected by Carnage depends on how close together they are and how high the barbarian's Int is. Carnage hits can cause Interrupts, yes. However, because barbarians have a lower base Accuracy than other melee classes, and Interrupt chance is influenced by Grazes and Crits, they will tend to cause Interrupts less often per hit compared to a fighter, rogue, or paladin with equivalent gear/attributes/level.
  19. J.E. Sawyer
    Yes, all attacks, though Carnage attacks are reduced damage to begin with.
  20. J.E. Sawyer
    No.
  21. J.E. Sawyer
    No, it's manually activated when the player chooses. Depending on the circumstances, you may not want the fighter to immediately stand back up after going down.
  22. J.E. Sawyer
    A few comments to various questions and concerns: * Treasure/unique item distribution will be IWD1/BG2-ish overall. * Treasure is sometimes randomly selected from a list, but no items are created randomly. * Weapons/shields/armor have a general bonus value generated by their quality (Standard/Fine/Exceptional/Superb) and by magical properties they may have. This value roughly correlates to where we place them in the game relative to the expected level for characters in that area. There is no other "player-facing" stratification of items like you might find in Diablo II/III or World of Warcraft. * The crit path is not the most difficult content in the game, so the most powerful items of any given type are generally not on the crit path. * We have a few "quest-made" items. * We have class-specific items. However, class-specific items are not weapons because, in my experience, players tend to have very strong feelings on what weapons they want their specific character to use most of the time. If the "best" class-specific item for them is a weapon that goes against that concept, it can generate Bad Feels™. A minor concern, but worth considering. * Several companions have unique items that come with them (e.g. Pallegina's breastplate). The player is not prevented from taking those items and/or enchanting/modifying them. * You can add enchantments to unique items that you find.
  23. J.E. Sawyer
    Baldur's Gate without TotSC was pretty limited, level-wise. 89k XP in 2nd Ed. only gets you to 7th or 8th level, depending on class.
  24. J.E. Sawyer
    Jumping puzzles would not be fitting in PoE, IMO. However, we do have classic dungeon-delving puzzles.
  25. J.E. Sawyer
    It should feel like BG + ToSC or maybe IWD minus a few levels. It's not as high-powered as BG2.
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