FlintlockJazz

As Merlkir has pointed out, your statements about plate armour are incorrect: the belief that knights needed a crane to get on a horse is pure hollywoodism and the only historical reference that exists that it could ever be based on is that of a French king who needed to be lifted onto his horse not because of his armour but because he himself was too fat. If armour was that immobile you would never ever wear it, as people would just walk over to you once you fell off your horse, lift up your visor and stab you in the face. And as for the arrows bit, if that was even remotely true then it flies in the face of how the use of shields was reduced with the introduction of full plate as they were no longer essential to protect themselves from arrows. Oh, and firearms were first introduced around the same time as full plate was, which was late middle ages and the two technologies developed alongside each other.

I realize you want to keep the thread focused on something else, but what you're saying is simply not true. Easily demonstrated by tests with real (as you call them "combat") arrows and riveted mail. Handily documented by written historical accounts. So, no, mail is pretty good protection against arrows. Here's an excellent article about mail in general, which also talks about arrow resistance. http://www.myarmoury...ature_mail.html Is that the same Dan Howard who writes for GURPS? Read some of his stuff if so, always find it very informative!

Changing gear does not count as respeccing and never has, and actually it shows how respeccing can ruin the impact of gear has upon an encounter: if you can respec yourself to fit an encounter then picking the right equipment for the task at hand is no longer as important. Why take along that mace that kills undead when you can respec yourself to have that anti-undead power that lets you take along that more powerful sword and then imbue it with anti-undead with your respecced powers that you wouldn't normally take because they are so situational?

Why would you go for it just because it had tags? If it's not an 'I win' button any more then you have to think if it will work here, and if you are trying to avoid your character from coming across that way then knowing what your character would consider a smart answer is important, especially if you are playing a character very different to your own personality, plus guessing what the writer intended with a dialogue option is often as haphazard as 'guess the logic' issues you had in many adventure games of old, where what seemed obvious to the designer isn't obvious to the player, and that is not 'skill' or 'roleplaying' since you're just trying to work out where the designer was going with that. If you think that maybe some characters wouldn't know when they are talking smugly or not then you may have a point, in which case the tags could be shown or hidden depending on what social skills the character has invested in, allowing the player to create a character that knows how to alter his speech and present himself as different things. Actually I didn't and I never said I did, I felt both of them were more intimidatory than lying. It only works in most games because most games don't have the subtlety of writing to go with dialogue that has double meanings. Take most Bioware games: you know when a character is stating something that it is 'the truth' because their writers assume their players are too dumb to not have it spelt out for them.

I'm not a fan of respeccing, but some minor respeccing is okay as long as it is prohibitively expensive and can only be done a couple of times in the game. You should only be allowed to respec one or two things at a time, rather like how in NWN2 you could change some of your sorcerer spells at level up but only a couple and only after you could cast vastly higher spells. If you want to be able to respec your sword and board character into a dual wielder then you can feck right off, as it should only be used for when you have made a mistake not to essentially create a whole new character. You may be thinking "Waah whats it to you what I do with my character??!1" well if you can completely respec your character like that then it means that the game can no longer be written with the assumption that you will always be that same 'character', that storylines can no longer be constructed for particular builds because now you can suddenly change what you are half way through the game. I've always wanted a game that takes into account how I've built my character, I'm not being deprieved of it so that some twinks want to min/max their gibbons! Also, respecs were created for MMOs, in order to allow players who were being cut out of portions of the game because they weren't 'the right spec' to get places in raids and suchlike. And with full respecs you end up with things like 'leveling builds' to get you to max level so you can then respec to a 'final build' that would be gimped to level up as but which is overpowered at full level, destroy the content in the game, and then come crying to the forums complaining that the game isn't hard enough and demanding that it be made harder for their leet builds, screwing everyone else over.

Both can be intimidate. Intimidation doesn't require you to be all shouty and angry, on the contrary, the best intimidation is when you present it calmly, with others around them perhaps not even picking up on the fact that you have just threatened their friend, perhaps even making them think you're actually being really friendly! Bluffing can be done easily by pretending to be all angry and flustered but also calmly if the person is good at it. So both can be both in short.

No doubt this post will be picked apart but let me put my oar in! I think the real problem isn't that the tags make the game easier, it's that choices given to you by skills and stats are usually 'I win' choices instead! I don't think there is actually any 'skill' involved in trying to pick the 'right' option without tags, it's taking the right approach. Let me explain: if your character has an high IQ then he gets a high intelligence response. The issue isn't whether it is tagged or not as INT but whether or not it's an 'I win' button because of it. It should not automatically let you win the conversation, it should just give you an extra response that may or may not be helpful to the conversation. Yes, it might get your character's 'point' across better, but if he's talking to a bunch of street thugs their response might actually be negative, as they may have 'issues' with 'smart people'. Likewise, skills shouldn't be 'I win' buttons either: trying to intimidate someone who freaks out and attacks people whenever they feel threatened for instance should be bad, there are people in real life who when threatened go off the handle even when they know they have no chance, and others who detest being manipulated or can tell when people are lying. You're no doubt thinking that this makes the skills and attribute choices irrelevant, but that's not the case: they give you extra options that can be useful in the right situation! You may also get skills that instead of giving you options, instead let you assess how they will be taken by the subject, as suggest by Avellone in one of his interviews recently. I think dialogue shouldn't be about guessing which dialogue choice 'is the right one to use a skill' but rather learning your target and how they will respond to things. As to the bluff issue, I see no issue with bluff being used in such situations as to try to convince someone you're going to hurt them when you really won't, though I may suggest requiring both skills in order to do so. This is the problem with splitting up bluff, diplomacy and intimidate into separate skills, as all three really need the use of the other two to really be good at them. I'm not suggesting having just one social skill but rather that the skills should be split up along other lines maybe? Another approach would be to allow all three skills to be used in most situations like they would be, but then have the side effects differ: a bluffer will be playing with a House of Cards as the moment someone picks up that he's lying then everything can come crashing down, while an intimidater gets what he wants but the people he deals with end up hating his guts and a diplomat gets everyone happy but only by compromising on things. Of course, this is just random musings on my part, take from it what you will.

Similar but not quite: GURPS only lets you use one active defense (block, parry or dodge) per attack, and shield adds to active defense not reduce damage, but other than that he is suggesting a similar system and its one I would quite like, but then I like GURPS so I'm biased. :D Yes, I'm aware of the details. But it depends critically on how long a game round lasts. If PE uses the 6 second rounds of D&D 3X, then those limitations will most likely need to be glossed over. The use of rounds at all is the most important thing I'd like to see over everything else. I liked how in the IE games I could pause the game, assign all my party members their actions, and then unpause to see them all take their actions before pausing it again for the next turn, since while it occured 'real-time' it was still actually turn-based in the way it resolved actions! DAO on the other hand I hated: it was all cooldowns and you couldn't queue up actions so you couldn't pause and assign all actions at once, you had to keep pausing and checking to see if you could spam attack with a character's abilities again yet... I apologies for going off on a tangent like this, but your mentioning of turns just made me realise just how important how that is done is!

Thank you for an awesomely informative post!

I like it. Doesn't have to be a pirate, just like a fighter doesn't have to be a knight, but I like the concept and style. Perhaps call it a pistoleer or something?

Similar but not quite: GURPS only lets you use one active defense (block, parry or dodge) per attack, and shield adds to active defense not reduce damage, but other than that he is suggesting a similar system and its one I would quite like, but then I like GURPS so I'm biased. :D

Sir, I like the cut of your jib sir! And I'm not just saying that because of your username and it's reference to the importance of tea from the planet Didcot...

I fully agree and endorse this post with the full backing of white rabbitness.

I think the key word here is consistency: game worlds should follow their own internal logic. When it does not is when things cease making sense to the player and I start having problems. Now I would love for a game that tried for the more realistic medieval world look because I think the actual historical look is more interesting in both looks and culture than the one built on misconceptions and romanticism most people think of and want to play in, but I realise I'm somewhat in a minority, due hopefully just because people don't know any better but I doubt it. What irritates me though is when a game or film does something that is actually historically correct but you then get people, thinking themselves experts because they have played so many RPGs, declare it wrong and attack it for not being right (and when you point out that they are actually wrong they immediately start on the "well its a fantasy world it doesn't matter!" when it was them who were claiming realism in the first place) and who refuse to ever learn any differently or to look into it themselves.

You might want to do some research before you spread misconceptions around as valid reasons. Guns are as medieval as full plate, as both were developed and utilised concurrently, which is that they both arose in the late middle ages (mainly around 1400s).

I was going to say, looks like the OP has been playing Dishonored! :D While I am not normally all for a tinker class, I like them but they only fit certain settings like Steampunk, a more mundane version that makes things like gunpowder greanades (similar sort of things did exist) may not be too out of place.

In which case the answer has already been posted - play BG in multiplayer mode. No guarantee Obsidian would implement it that way, especially if the companions are more interactive. Maybe Obsidian will want to try a new way.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I think the OP is more asking the question of how the game will treat such mixed groups of companion and AH created: will the game treat the mercs as not being there at all? Will the game treat them as actual mercs or henchmen and not as actual members of the party (in dialogue that is, naturally they count towards party limits and the like)? When an NPC lists off the 'Heroes who saved the babe' will they be counted or be considered nothing more than hired thugs accompanying the heroes? I guess the essential question is what will the game consider AH characters as.

I'm with AGX-17, stamina is better and vitality indicates health to me. If you absolutely can't go with Stamina then use Endurance or Fatigue instead instead.

In the Mordin: Old Blood quest, after resolving things peacefully with Maelon, if you do not immediately go to the Normandy when it asks you, you are forever trapped there and cannot leave that area. They still have never fixed this. Did they ever bother to fix dex not adding to dagger damage bug either? I remember a few times in ME2 my character suddenly floating my Shepherd to the ceiling and just trapping me there forcing me to reload, AP's bugs were more noticeable but less game ending I found.

Going to try to find a target for you Is the offer valid outside the US? I'm British so I'm already outside the US anyway. As long as you pay for the flight (first clas I ain't that cheap!) and hotel rooms I'll go anywhere...

But he is. The player may move the whole party, but characters you find in the game (i.e. not created by you in the adventures guild) have their own personalities and voices. Apart from the lines that don't fit the character you have the problem that companion x might be scripted to intervene into your conversation. If you put companion x as speaker, he would interrupt himself. Sure, even that can be handled, but it gets more and more complicated. This is just the wrong RPG for this type of system. And yet you usually have total control of your party members in every other facet of the game, enabling you to make that holier than thou paladin to kill innocent children. I see nothing wrong with getting party members to talk for you, it's like asking the party bard to go over and seduce someone for you.

But it doesn't matter which race is the baseline, if you plan to make the races balanced. You can make the elf race be the base line with no bonuses and then humans with +2 con and -2 dex and it's still going to be the same result as using the humans as base and giving elfs +2 dex and -2 con (just a simple example.) The reason humans are used as base line is because it's easier for new players to understand the world they are brought in, not because it's some arrogance thing. Unless you are suggesting that some races should have better bonuses than others, then that's a different story. While you are wrong with how changing the baseline would affect the races (it would at the very least alter which build uses which race) you seem to have missed the main point I was making. But then you seem to have only taken a part of my post and put it out of context to make it look like I'm arguing for something I'm not and then attacked that, so I really can't be bothered to argue it with you.

Three years to do it right with all the extra features in.

And yet here we both are, I guess we're just glutton for punishment. While they haven't changed the name on many of the classes, they have made a change to how the classes themselves work: they now all use powers achieved through their souls. Even Fighters get to use their souls to power attacks and such like, which means that they have been reworked to fit the setting. If anything, it seems like the monk has not been altered at all to fit the setting, despite his defining feature (spiritual enlightenment leading to combat abilities) being pretty much passed to all the other classes, which raises the question: what is the point of the monk's spiritual enlightenment if others can also achieve it? What is it about the monk that separates itself from a FIghter whose trained himself to fight with fists and has created a lifestyle around it? Samurai and Jedi are both quite popular, yet people don't expect them to be in every game. A lot of people, myself included, just don't want a class shoehorned in just to appease those who want to play a certain class regardless of the setting. I will go into this later in this post. I disagree that is what people are doing, some are just very passionate about this, however it is probably best we leave this topic alone to be honest. It's not intended to change the other aspects, it's merely a background change. Those who like the monk for the way it operates will still get the class they want, and many of the people complaining about the monk not fitting in will be satisfied that it now fits with the lore of the game. The only people who will be unhappy are those who insist on the monk to be exactly like he is in other games, and therein lies the problem people have with monks: they seem to be shoehorned into every game over the years whether they fit or not, usually with little to no adaptation to explain how they fit into the world or their impact upon it, and this is what people who dislike the monk are most worried about, that it is yet again being shoehorned in. People may want to play it, but then people often want to play Jedi in a MechWarrior game or a sword wielding samurai in a modern day realistic military game, if it doesn't fit then it either needs to be adapted or they need to understand that you don't always get what you want, and I see no reason why the monk should not be put under this same expectation. The standard Monks are fine in an Eastern setting with samurai and the like, and I would not expect to see the option to play as a Western Knight in such a setting except as a cop out by the developers and would mark it down for it. I know, we don't actually know much of the lore of the game yet, but as I mentioned earlier we know that it is a world in which all classes can access their souls to gain powers and that plate and guns are in while Forton looks like your stereotypical Oriental monk, which is setting off alarm bells in people's heads that there has been no attempt to modify the class to fit the setting. Anyway, I need to go start up X-Com so I can dissect some aliens...