J.E. Sawyer
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Everything posted by J.E. Sawyer
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Our artists are making a lot of the unique armors and outfits right now. Personally, I like the variety we've developed. JD Cerince is currently building the appearance for a unique suit of mail that has a silver tree and falling leaves wrapping around the torso built into the links. James Chea just finished all of our unique brigandine armors. I'm a big fan of brigandine in our game because its protection is just below plate, the speed reduction is better, and the canvas + rivet look is cool, IMO.
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We use "townsfolk" for reactivity and general chatter. In all communities there are a fair number of townsfolk going about their background activities (not like Ultima "scheduled" behavior, but idles like warming their hands by a fire, smoking a pipe, talking with someone, sitting in a chair and drinking, etc.). Also, every town/city map has a bunch of individual named NPCs, usually with quests, who are out and about as well. They aren't Assassin's Creed crowds but they're on par with (maybe a little higher than) the IE games.
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Guns and arbalests are both pretty slow. I'll be tuning the damage down a bit because their "alpha strike" capability is too dominant right now even with the low RoF. They'll still be pretty darn good weapons.
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I like developing currencies to help with world building but mechanically it can frustrate some people. I think our approach should work well because if you loot a dead Vailian you'll probably find some lusce or suole and a Glanfathan chest will be full of awlds but all standard transactions in stores are simply conducted in "cp" (copper pieces) represented as a single total value in your inventory (as in the IE games).
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We have a ToEE-style grid for customizing your party formations.
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It doesn't behave any differently, no. Until a rogue gets access to Deathblows (at fairly high level in PoE), it doesn't matter how many qualifying statuses are on a target. If the target is Blinded, Flanked, Hobbled, Stunned, and it's the first 2 seconds of combat, it's still an ordinary Sneak Attack. Deathblows increases Sneak Attack damage in cases where there are two or more qualifying statuses on the target (from any source).
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I have yet to see any characters stunlocked by standard damage-dealing attacks (i.e. by attacks other than those that cause the Prone, Paralyzed, Petrified, etc. Afflictions). Most attacks that have high Interrupt ratings also have slow attack rates. What a rogue can do is put an enemy in a variety of states that ensure Sneak Attack is continuously valid against them.
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The scouting state ends when the party enters combat, i.e. when a party member is being targeted by a hostile character. Using scouting to set up ambushes is extremely valuable even if you don't get right up in the eyeballs of enemies before you attack them. There are some practical gameplay limitations on how many traps you can put down, but scouting also allows you to do that, which can be very valuable for softening up a horde of attackers. One of the rogue's Sneak Attack conditions is "within the first two seconds of combat". It might not sound like much, but in most cases it's good for at least one really nasty shot, melee or ranged. If that first attack is paired with one of the rogue's Affliction attacks like Blinding Strike or Crippling Strike, they can immediately chain that into a series of Sneak Attacks.
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J.E. Sawyer replied to Infiltrator_SF's topic in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)Wealthy people in this world will try all sorts of things to extend their own lives or try to place their soul in someone else's body. Because animancy is highly experimental, many animancers believe the next revolution in animancy is just around the corner. All they need are wealthy patrons to fund their research. And all the wealthy patrons want to hear is how perfectly everything is going to work out for them. Many Dyrwoodans wish the state would regulate (or ban) animancy as most other nations do, but there is enough pressure from powerful/moneyed people that even wild research continues with little oversight.
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Any army/general may surrender after Bleak Walkers are unleashed, but the paladins explicitly do not ask for nor give mercy/surrender. If a warlord said, "Hey, Bleak Walkers, take out this town," and then halfway through the attack, the ruler of the city tried to surrender, the warlord would have a problem on his hands if he wanted to accept. Bleak Walkers won't call off an attack even if their "employer" asks them to or turns forces on them. The Bleak Walkers believe this behavior is necessary to make it clear what is going to happen when they get involved.
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Definitely custom portraits for your own characters and I think (but am not positive) that we have UI support for switching companion portraits. Not 100% sure on that. Chanters have a chant interface that allows you to place in all of your phrases to see how they will overlap/twist. When you pick a chant (which is a set of phrases you put together), you just click on it and it will automatically take effect when combat starts. You only need to switch if you want a completely different chant.
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Not to be overly dismissive, but this is one of the reasons I don't worry a whole lot about what names mean in other languages. I think almost every name that's been revealed has, at some point in time, revealed to be "dog's butt" or "stupid idiot" or "jolly prostitute" in Basque/Hungarian/Lombard/Vietnamese/Esperanto. Really long names can sometimes get around that, but they often wind up being really cumbersome, IMO.
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PoE's priests are designed for people who enjoy support characters. I've noticed a trend in support class design in recent years to load support characters with offensive abilities to rival other classes while retaining (or improving) all of their support abilities. I think it makes the classes less distinctive and in the end the people who want to pump out damage are still going to skip something that's an "off-striker" class. I don't think every class has to appeal to every player.
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Yeah, stuff like the toad is what's called canting arms, where the devices represent some play on the name of the family or kingdom. We plan to have major heraldry in the campaign almanac though we probably won't have full explanations for all of the devices and why families have them.
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Nice job, folks. I couldn't find a standard for describing it that way, but the estoiles are both supposed to be in the top/vert field with nothing in the argent field (which is practically unknown in Euro heraldry, I know). The difference between indented and dancetty is usually size/number of the peaks in the line. Indented typically has a lot more than dancetty. And yeah in addition to ignoring the general "metal on metal" rules, they also ignore natural color rules for animals, so the falcon is entirely gules (no special colors armed or langed).
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