Luckmann

Actually, it feels as though decision-making is meant to run on "gut feeling". I'm fairly detail-driven, but I have a lot of CBF as well so i tend to go for near-enough-is-good-enough options rather than hardcore optimisation. In the end it doesn't bother me so much. But there is a startling lack of clarity what the outcomes of equipping your character with a particular set of items is. It took me ages to work out that shield thing Hiro brought up -- i thought it was a bug for quite a while. It's very much a case of muddling through to gain a rough understanding of how stuff meshes together. I agree. It does feel like decision-making is meant to run on gut feelings, but that intent, as a design goal, has lead to an obtusive rules system where decisions doesn't really matter much at all. I, like you, do not mind going after near-enough-is-good-enough option, and I frequently play deliberately under-optimized characters. But I'd like to be able to figure things out regardless, with clarity of rules, and be forced to actually think of what I'm doing, especially if I'm playing something under-optimized. Intuitiveness may have been the intent of the design, but I don't think there's anything intuitive at all with "Combat Only" flags that artificially restrict me from doing things that are intuitive and reasonable, and oozes that can be blinded, skeletons that can be feared, or dragons that can be knocked down. The intent misses the mark completely, and furthermore, the intent have run counter to good design. Not really. Because "better" doesn't answer the question. If Eder is attacking with an Arbalest, and Durance is attacking with a mace, Eder's recovery speed will be slower, despite the fact that his recovery speed is 6% better. What you just said made no sense to me. I know you're right, because you're Stun, and I trust you, because you're you, but the fact is that the game has not equipped me with the knowledge needed to understand what you mean. Basic, fundamental mechanics. I can assume that it has to do with the reload speeds affected by the action/recovery speed bonus from Dexterity, and the relative speeds of the weapons, but the game doesn't actually explain the meaning of these things in any meaningful capacity. Which is, of course, part of the entire issue. And we keep constantly running into these arguments about mechanics based on people's understanding of the mechanics being wrong. How many people know that firearms (or rather, all weapons with reload) is affected by Action Speed more than other weapons? How many people know the actual speed of weapons? How many people keep bringing up detection, on the assumption that it's based on Perception - when it is in fact based on Mechanics, of all the things in the world. How many people keep bringing up Medium Armour as balanced because they have no idea how the Action Recovery Penalty actually affects them, or how DR (DT) actually works? Or how relative DR adjustments on individual armour types work (by percentage based on the modified base DR of the armour)? How many times have we had to tell people that no, the DR is the base DR for everything, the extra, listed values are the exceptions? And that's just on these boards. There's thousands of players that have never set their foot in here and goes through the entire game, bumbling like drunkards from encounter to encounter, without even knowing the most basic mechanical aspects. This is not a ****ing victory, people. It's a ****ing travesty of mechanical design. The "I don't care I just want to get through the story", well that's what Easy is for, you can do that in any game. On normal, you should be expected to learn the basics of the game to know when to push button A, B or C. And on Hard you should be expected to have an understanding of how everything ties together. But in PoE? Hurf durf I punch it with my hands until it dies. There was a guy in a thread that was talking about his rogue dressed in heavy armour, wondering what he was doing wrong, feeling that there was no point in lower-DR armour because he needed the armour to survive the encounters. Seriously, what the ****? Not only is the game clearly not intuitive if he feels that need, but the rules are clearly also not transparent enough for him to reach the conclusion that that is a really terrible decision. And before anyone calls me a PoE hater again; I don't. I like many parts of it. I think that it has a tremendous potential. I think a lot of the design goals were great. I love the modular nature of weapons and armour and attributes, that it's all "equal" in most regards, affecting all equally. There are really good things in the game. But it's got some serious issues that needs to be addressed and almost all of the serious issues are mysteriously centred around J.E. Sawyers pet crusades, and clearly not the result of playtesting or internal design arguments, or even open debate. I have the feeling that we're just running around the forum, putting out fires based on misconceptions about the rules, and repeatedly re-educating people on issues that they haven't realized yet, but that have been covered extensively fifteen times or more. The worst part being that I was one of these idiots when I came to the forum that was all like "I like Engagement, hurf durf, I think it sounds like a good idea and makes sense", even though it in practice worked out pretty terribly. God damn I should've been put down with a bullet. One of the biggest problems (and there are many) with this game is the rules system. The percentages, the decimals, the chaotic system of information. Here are some examples: 1. Action Speed Comparing Eder and Durance. Action Speed and Recovery Time - are they the same thing? Who knows. 2. Equipping Shield on Eder. -8 from Shield = -20 Accuracy. Also, having a sword and shield confers a +2 to accuracy than without any weapons or shields equipped - I don't even know how to explain that last one. 3. Items. And I'll only list two but this can be applied to hundreds of items in the game. Crossbow Rabbit Fur Gloves I only have one complaint; speeds should be conveyed to you in frames, not seconds. Seconds will vary, and in many cases it could end up showing you times (assuming meaningful displays of auto-calculations) in multiple decimals. It should tell you in frames, and then tell you on average how many frames there are per second. It would give you the chance to actually compare numbers in a meaningful manner, it would tell you exactly what changes happen and where, and with the simple knowledge of how many frames there are per second, you could easily work out the value yourself. It is like the numbers listed in the IE games. They really mean nothing. But they don't need to inform you exactly how fast a speed of "1" is in seconds, it just needs to inform you in a manner that allows you to meaningfully compare modifiers and stats. PoE doesn't do that at all. But even just informing you at a rounded number in seconds would be acceptable, as long as you could see the real number somewhere, I guess, and it would probably be easier for many to understand. Also, related to the post, I really hate the way Enchantments are basically called what they are. "Of Crit Multiplier Bonus +10%: +0.1 to Crit Damage multiplier"? What hell? Why not just call it "Minor Tearing: +10% to all Critical Damage"? Suddenly rules clarity became so important you're repeating it in the most thematically ridiculous way imaginabe? As for the issue with Edér and his shield, if it's a genuine question, it's because he's not getting the +12 Accuracy Bonus from wielding a single one-handed weapon anymore, and then gets a -8 to his Accuracy from the Shield, for a difference of -20 Accuracy in total. Where is this explained? Don't be silly. Nowhere, of course. It took me quite some time to realize what was going on, because in the pre-release version, One-Handed Accuracy Bonus was dropped to +8 from +10, but then in the release version, was upped again to +12.

That's not.. solved at all. What are you one about? It would lead to the exact issues everyone is trying to avoid. Buffs having a short duration isn't a problem at all. It is, in fact, a necessity for out-of-combat buffin to even be feasible.

I just thought it was because the dude looked like a lady (dim lights I guess), rather than it being a gender change. I thought it was because he wasn't told, which is pretty damn reprehensible. I wouldn't kill myself if it happened, but I can't leave any guarantees for the state of the other dude in the morning. Has nothing to do with "trans-misogony". Except, to just repeat what has been repeated probably a million times by now, it does nothing even close to that. It doesn't malign anyone, whether "historically-oppressed" or not, nor does it have a context to offend, or suggest that a real woman turned into a man is shameful. What you are doing is called a windmill. Except, to just repeat what has been repeated probably a billion times by now, the author himself stated it was offensive. I'm only forced do to a "windmill" because apparently there is a need for constant reminders. That doesn't actually, y'know, change it or suddenly make it offensive. It just means that the author has bought into the idiocy. And for reference, it is hilarious that you don't know what a windmill is in context. Sweet, even. I acknowledge physical truth and genetic reality. To social justice warriors everywhere, I am Satan, and unless I am accepting of every individual crazy person and mental issue's validity over science and reality, I'm being offensive, and should probably be murdered for not being tolerant enough. It's a religion of intolerance and cognitive dissonance is one of the sacraments. You're not going to dissuade them with your fancy logic. I bet you're one of those bigoted STEM CIS rapelords.

Do you think that intentionally ignoring the obvious context of remarks has value in a discussion? Because let's be clear - it does not, it merely serves to lower the tone. Obviously he is referring to gameplay stuff. There is no question about it from the context of his remarks. So yes, the game does "play better" with the EI gameplay changes not used. Aesthetic bits and bobs, which you are referring to, don't make it "play better", nor do they make it "play worse". They merely allow you to make it slightly more to your liking. That is very, very far off from what he said, though. If anyone was ignoring context, it's you. He specifically talked about other changes, after directly referencing Engagement as a separate point. If anything is lowering the tone, it's the fact that you felt the need to try to start fires where there essentially was none in a vain attempt to run to someone elses defence due to a perceived slight you cannot even relate in context. Run away, little person, I'm sure there's some rock for you to hide under or some bridge you can fish underneath of with your nets. Yeah, if someone was to use the download amount to "prove" stuff like 'people don't want engagement' they're just making stastics do their bidding. Personally if I were to download it it would be for the blue circles for NPC's. I would be really pissed if someone then went off and claimed I downloaded it for [other function here]. Also, out of interest since I wasn't around the nets back then, did people discussing BG (2) also used terms like DPS mage, Tank, Off-Tank and whatnot. I really hate those terms 0_o For reference, I'm not using it to disable Engagement either. I dislike Engagement, but the game is unfortunately built for it, and just flat-out removing it doesn't do it for me. It wouldn't solve any real issues, as Sensuki has said himself. Nope. The IE games were never locked into these hard dichotomies. It's an MMO-era system that weaseld it's way into PnP and RPG:s, as far as I'm concerned and it makes for pretty uninteresting gameplay, especially when you control all the strong variables. Partially, yes. I was saying this to get the point across that the group-only scouting mode isn't inherently broken by definition. It just requires some tweaking (like with almost any mechanic in the game the idea is good, it's just the execution that is imperfect). I'd also postulate a name change of the stealth attribute to scouting in general ... because that's basicly what it is: an attribute that makes scouting and preparation easier. Well then you failed, because group-only scouting mode is pretty damn broken by definition as long as it's tied to Scouting in any way, and if it's not, you might as well have individual scouting, too, even if you can activate it for everyone with a single button.

I think you might have OCD... I think you might not know what OCD is...

Make your mind up. If vessels can be terrified by holy light, they have some sort of survival instinct, period. What you seem to be missing with this example is that, unlike Dungeons and Dragons, in Pillars of Exile, both of these things have souls. Souls which can be targeted by magic - Cipher, Chanter, Priest, Wizard, etc. - doesn't matter which, they have souls. Those souls can be hit with magic, and thus they should not be completely immune to fear etc. Some of your other examples are valid, some aren't, most are a bit simplistic. No, there's a difference between a threat of physical harm, and banishment. A barbaric yell would do nothing vs. a vessel or spirit, but shattering their simple minds by a blinding flash of holy light is different. Terrify is not always just Terrify, just like Prone isn't always just Prone - for example, flying opponents should not be subject to terrain effects like Slicken, but they should still be able to be attacked with Knockdown. But you also call it Pillars of Exile, so.. eh, not sure of how serious I should take you.

First, racism. Saying that white people can't be subjected to racism or will casually dismiss it is racism in itself. In fact, no other countries in the world save white ones obsess nearly as much over racism and racial tolerance. Second, strawman. Nobody is ingoring that somebody can be transgendered (regardless as to whether that's an arguable point or not) by dismissing the twitter lunatic's claim of intolerance. Furthermore, suggesting that you cannot believe that people can be transgendered and also believe that the limerick is not offensive is a false dichotomy and patently false; there are transgendered persons that agree that the perpetually offended are being ridiculous. So, you're saying a fictional character in a fictional game isn't even fictionally free to prefer fictional women to fictional men. ... said absolutely no-one in the history of ever. Nice straw-man though. I'll just repeat what has been repeated probably a million times by now, it's trans-misogynistic because it unfairly maligns an already historically-oppressed group, because it has absolutely no context other than to offend, that somehow, a "genetic" woman turned into a man is somehow shameful. Except, to just repeat what has been repeated probably a million times by now, it does nothing even close to that. It doesn't malign anyone, whether "historically-oppressed" or not, nor does it have a context to offend, or suggest that a real woman turned into a man is shameful. What you are doing is called a windmill.

Damn, that's a lot of downloads ! How come only a handful of people posted on the mod thread to thank Bester for his work though? I believe the main reason he stopped working on his mod is that he didn't enjoy PoE that much... but it sure would have been nice for him to get a bit more support/thank you's. I mean, the modding thread was really slow on this forum. It's up to 21,523 downloads as of this post. Over 3,000 new unique downloads in the last 4 days (I'm one of them). I don't think it does much good to flood a comments section with 'Thank yous'. The modding threads on this forum are a bit scattered and suffering a bit I think from a lack dedicated forum for modders (yo moderators, give us a dedicated modding sub-forum please). Many people are likely unaware where that thread even is (I'm not even sure where the primary thread is, is it on these forums? RPGCodex's? Elsewhere?), not to mention many people don't come to the forum at all. As an aside, Nexus mods itself leaves a lot to be desired. I really wish a better mod hosting site like Curse was used. For what it's worth, I'm appreciative of the work that everyone who is behind the mod put into it. I have a clue how much work that is, and it's quite a lot. Thank you Bester, Sensuki, Karkarov, and Brandon Wallace. It's unfortunate that Bester and Sensuki are retiring, but I totally understand why. I certainly wouldn't put all those download as people that like changes. I for one only installed it to bump my difficulty up to potd, nothing else. I'm not touching engagements, and I'm not touching other changes that it introduces because I think game plays better without them. Yes, clearly the game "plays better" when neutral NPC:s have the same-coloured selection circles as allied NPC:s, and when the solid UI looks terrible, or when you can't modify the UI elements, or when everyone's buggy namebox (including your pet's) shows up at the touch of TAB.

I never thought of the fact that IWD2 had so much lower saves than the other IE games, but that does explain why I got such a consistent, crazy mileage out of Finger of Death. I played a hilarious game with a death/shadow-based party once (Demarch of Mask, Necromancer, etc) where I just sorta walked around and went "pew-pew" with my index finger and killed everything instantly. I wonder if Sawyer's irrational hatred of Save-or-Lose/Hard Counters predates or comes from this, because damn encounters in IWD2 could be trivialized with Save-or-Whatever spells. But on the other hand, same thing could be said about Mask of the Betrayer, although to be fair, the time I ran through all the endgame enemies and spammed Wail of the Banshee, I had actually built for it (Spell Focus, etc). I was so surprised that they could even be killed with that, considering that they were some kind of shadows or something (I honestly don't remember what they were; you run around some shadow-realm of Crossroad Keep, if memory serves).

C'mon, Gkathellar, there's a post right above you that has nothing to do with a knee-jerk hatred for DLC. Just because you think that there's too many VO:s (instead of less, higher-quality VO:s) doesn't mean that you don't want any VO:s at all.

You can get everyone into position for a ranged opening though, all in peace and quiet, even with 0 stealth. You just have to stay a little bit further back. Since the opening is usually ranged anyway I find this gives an unfair advantage. It doesn't apply to backstabs though, for that you'd definitely want to crank up stealth -- except that only being able to backstab once per encounter (since you can't re-stealth except with Shadowing Beyond) kind of makes the investment not really worth it. Yes, very much this. I have a suggestion for how to fix the "everyone opens with ranged weapons"-thing, though. Well, partial solution, anyway. When you start reading your weapon to shoot, that split second, it should come at a massive penalty to your Stealth, to the point where unless you have a lot of points into Stealth, you'll at least be discovered before you can start getting your shots off. Meaning that you'll at least have a hard time to shoot-and-retreat coming out of Stealth or open up with a full volley and then switch weapons before the enemies have reached you. With 5-6 points in Stealth, you'd still be able to shoot from Stealth, and you could avoid the whole 0-Stealth volley thing. Just a thought, might not be possible. Also, I fully support armour having a penalty to Stealth, so it'd be harder to do that whole stealthy-tank-routine. But I want more unique aspects to armours overall; the current flat scaling with small changes in DR doesn't do it for me at all. Leather Armour is always Leather Armour. I want there to be different kinds. Oiled Full Plates, Blackened Leather Armour, Padded Fur Armour; not a fan of how tightly they've tied all kinds of modifiers to such a strict Enchantment system. Fine/Exceptional/Etc shouldn't even count as Enchantments, they're base attributes that should be embedded in the base item itself at the point of creation. An iron dagger will always be an iron dagger, it's never going to be a steel dagger (Fine), and certainly not a tempered steel dagger (Exceptional), and absolutely not a mithril dagger (Superb). And so on. But now I'm drifting off the subject again. Are you being ironic here? Because.. that's pretty much exactly how it works right now. Stealth and Invisibility are different things, and Rogues get a class ability (Talent, actually) that allows them to go Invisible (2 Per Rest). The problem with Stealth isn't specifically a Rogue issue, it's a systemic issue. The rogue being able to go Invisible at will is a band-aid on a bad system, not a solution.

Because your math is completely made up and has no basis in reality? You wouldn't get people to pay $9,95 for the amount of quality voice content $10,000 would buy. Voice recording - quality voice recording - is incredibly expensive. Just look at the fact that you think that $10,000 would be enough for a meaningful amount of implemented voice content. Nevermind the fact that every time you record something, you've locked in that line of dialogue and you are unable to change it during the course of development or patching, or expand upon it in expansions. Say Galawain as a Deity for Priests is implemented in an expansion, and there's a recorded conversation in the base game that refers to your choice of Deity. Today, they'd just add another conversation branch, a few hours work at most, assuming we're talking writer's time and not just a quick fix, in which case we're talking minutes. For you, they'd pull in that specific voice actor again, pray to god that he or she is free, pay him or her the base cost, and then pay the people that puts it all together, mixes it to match the old voice files, and then code it into the game, attaching it to the relevant conversation tree. There are practical considerations relating to implementation, not just the cost vs. return calculation, even if it would be reasonable by any stretch of the imagination. I would say that it's not, but clearly your imagination inhabits a separate universe to mine. ^ This. The increased emphasis on voice-overs and cinematicism is one of the things directly responsible for the shallowing of the RPG medium. Until we have proper voice synthesization that rivals actual acting, it's going to be inflexible and prohibitatively expensive. Why would you pay money for portraits when there are tons of them for free on the internet? Because we enjoy art consistency? It's jarring enough that there's a few out-of-place portraits in the game already (placeholders that never were removed) and that Calisca's portrait never was replaced. I've yet to see portraits online that matches the style.

This actually sorta gets to me. There's a lot more VO:s in PoE than there were in the IE games, which I don't necessarily consider bad, but none of it feels memorable. Even the voices the player has to choose from feels sorta meh. The storyteller's voice in the first slide before you even make your character was pretty good, but past that, I haven't come across anything that compares to even the CNPC:s of BG1, save perhaps Edér, but that's possibly because he just feels appropriate, rather than awesome. I often harp on quantity being a quality all in it's own when it comes to CNPC:s, but when it comes to VO:s, the price tag is so high that I really feel that less is more. I'd rather have it very rarely, but when I have it, it's Irenicus, it's Xan, it's Annah, it's Dak'kon, it's Vhailor, and it's Sarevok. I won't mention Gaelan Bayle because that's a sad chapter.

This is really part of the probem. Not only is the system obtuse (I didn't even know this myself until this very day), but you don't even need to pay attention to it. You can just sorta bumble your way forward. Does the Cipher start with 100%, 50% or 33%? Doesn't matter, there's points, I'll do some stuff, oh look, success. Death to the Combat Only Flag! And in doing so, you've wasted the majority of the buff duration, and even moreso before you've positioned your characters (and positioning is extremely important in PoE, compared to almost everything else), as well as several of your spells that you may not even have needed to use for the battle. You've expended time, effort, and resources, and it may not even have been needed. If you'd play like this when the Combat Only flag was largely scrapped (except very specific cases) you'd be an idiot, and you'd deserve to be punished for it when your buffs run out mid-combat and you've expended all your resting supplies after two encounters. And important battles? Yeah, right, like I'm going to use one of my spells for juuuuust another buff that'll run out 5 seconds into the fight, when I could've saved it for just another well-placed Chill Fog.

You're grasping at straws, though. I would accept "blinding the soul" with certain Abilities or Spells, sure. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about things like the Rogue's Blinding Strike and the Wizard's Chill Fog. You throw sand into the eyes of an opponent, stab towards their eyes, cause an intense cold fog, or distort their vision with ice crystals and snow. Would I accept, say, the Cipher's Eyestrike ability arguably "blinding the soul", or just sorta blasting the senses of the enemy. I would rename it Blindstrike, just to be clear, and fluff it a bit, but I could accept that, and have it apply to enemies that do not have eyes. And knocking down an ooze? We're talking about an amorphous mass of slime. I'd be fine with saying "Hey, concussive effects like the Fighter's Knockdown ability causes double damage" or something like that, but actually making that thing go prone? No. It's just too silly. And knocking down an Ogre, as was clarified right after "other already say it", that's not even hard. You don't need good luck for that. There is nothing unique about an Ogre's Fortitude saves. They're lower than an Adra Beetle's, lower than a garden variety Troll's, lower than an Animal's, lower than some of the Oozes/puddings and just about any non-undead of 7th level or higher. In general, I agree; I would like to see a lot of "hard, but not impossible", but I still think that there should be quite a lot of immunities, in the cases where it makes sense. For example, I don't think an Ogre should be immune to Prone, but it should be damn hard to knock him down, and certainly not with a Graze, no matter if the Graze is for 1 second. And drakes shouldn't be immune to Prone either, not even a little, but certainly to Slicken (which should be made back into a Hazard AoE). And while Oozes obviously have some kind of sensory organs, blinding them makes no sense in the vast majority of cases. I will concede that it can make sense under certain circumstances, but they need to be specific, not just any kind of blinding attack, and they should certainly be immune to any and all Prone effects.

... I never liked Orlans and Elves anyway. And the filthy barbarian humans might as well die along with them. Now the question is what we do to turn the Aumauan islands into Godhammer Testing Grounds.

This is true. You do have to draw the line somewhere. But it just feels really odd to draw that line at two different items. Limited to one ring per hand? Sure, just to avoid the ridiculousness of 10 rings. But Cloak overlapping with Necklace? Eh.. can't see why. It's going to be arbitrary either way, there's no real "objective case" to be made here, but it doesn't sit well with a lot of us.

I can see why some Priest Deities, Paladin Orders, Cultures and such were specifically avoided to avoid the hairy situation where they should be very well-integrated into the storyline, but would require a disproportionate amount of work. For example, I would argue that Priests of Eothas are already quite shallow in regard to how well-integrated they should be, and all the Cultures available are specifically from outside the Dyrwoods and the colonies (The Free Palatinate of Dyrwood is originally Aedyran, but the player Aedyr Culture clearly relates to the Aedyr Empire itself, just like Old Vailia is not the same thing as the Vailian Republics). Imagine... The lack of Passionate deities may be annoying, but I think it's interesting that they still opted for interesting thematic consistency rather than equal balance in these regards. I especially like that Magran, a deity of fire, is actually Rational and dislikes Passion, as a deity of war, tactics and industry, rather than passionate red-headed-ness and wild flimsy flames. The only thing I think they dropped the ball on in these regards are Bleak Walkers, made into basic blackguards. They have the Favoured Behaviour of Aggressive and Cruel, and the Disfavoured Behaviours of Diplomatic and Benevolent. They were originally described as being motivated by quick resolutions to conflicts and essentially letting the hammer fall, no quarter given. But in practice, they're little more than blackguards, especially with the way the Cruel options tend to be implemented ("kick the puppy"). They should've had the Favoured Behaviour of Aggressive and Rational (or Stoic) and the Disfavoured Behaviours of Diplomacy and Passionate, to emphasize that they're dispassionate get-the-job-dones that believe that the fastest resolution to a conflict is swift and merciless warfare and making a point to discourage others from starting **** again. I would expect Galawain to Favour Aggressive/Passionate (maybe Passionate/Deceptive) and Disfavour Diplomatic/Rational (maybe Stoic/Diplomatic).

Cipher reminds me of the Barbarian in D3 but with a full globe of rage from the outset. Cipher already has maximum focus when entering combat, can cast spells straight away but then needs to use their standard attacks to increase their focus back up (just like Barbarian hitting to get their rage up) and then use abilities again. An unlimited amount of usage from their spells as long as they have enough focus. Small correction; the Cipher actually only has 50% Focus at the start of battle. I think that should be brought down to 33%, but /eh.

Just because you can easily outsmart something that wasn't a focus of the development doesn't mean that it's an exploit. Dice Poker in The Witcher 1 and 2 is incredibly easy, I win those almost every time, am I exploiting because I think I'm safe on three twos and I know the dumb AI will resign? I don't think so. Creating smart AI is pretty hard, so encounter design should take into account that the player will probably be able to control the situation quite easily, and make it more difficult in other ways. What? I don't deliberately gimp my character? I have stated that I do enjoy the challenge of stretching the adventuring day as far as possible but I can't really do that in Pillars of Eternity because there's not much resource management, and Major Fatigue is pretty harsh. Usually kicks in before I can even try. Don't worry bro, Pillars of Eternity barely has any resource management for you to rest spam and avoid, so it must be the game for you Pillars of Eternity has pretty much the same resource management the IE engine games have. The Spell progression is almost exactly the same and the battles where you only use your per encounter skills are the ones where you would click on the enemy to attack them until they die in the IE games (which is really most encounters in those games) That's not remotely true. While I don't necessarily disagree with all the changes, there are considerable differences. Per-Encounter Abilities didn't even exist in the IE games, there were no resting limitations whatsoever, your spells didn't become at-will at level 9, you couldn't carry an infinite amount of stuff, not be weight nor by amount, you practically had to use potions (at least healing, and definitely when not rest-spamming), there was no food to speak of and no resting bonuses, and the fatigue penalty was largely meaningless. This is not to say that all of these differences are bad. I like Per-Encounter Abilities (but hate the blanket-level Per-Encounter Spells), the resting limitations are good (but far from perfect, a more restrictive one would've been even better). And this is still all about the strategic resource management and relation to overall game mechanics. If we go into action economy and tactical restrictions (Engagement system and the war on movement, I'm looking at you) there's even more. You know I agree with most of these, but I'm not sure about status effect grazes-to-misses. They might just want to change the ranges on the spells so that it's hard for them to get grazes and crits at all, and mostly either hit or miss, but with the simple +/- on a 0-100 scale it might be hard to do that without making Accuracy crazy valuable for spellcasters, but it's worth considering. I'm also questioning the suggestion on Stealth. Even with quite a lot of ranks in it, certainly more than 3, I can definitely not sneak up on enemies to the point where I can hit them, even if I run headlong right into them while in Stealth (I know, because like most others, I have my tank sneak in as long as he can and then get swarmed). This presents a pretty big problem with undervaluing stealth for those that specifically want to do backstabbings, especially once we have individual combat stealth. Detection should be based on a formula where it's harder to sneak up on some than others, including Level, Perception and opposing ranks of Stealth. It should be possible for level 2-3 rogues with just a few ranks in Stealth to actually sneak up on enemies, have the tank initiate combat, and then bring him in to backstab them. With trolls, another design choice where there's no immunities for either you or the enemies and you can't fail at damaging and killing anything with any weapon. No trap choices with anything, even a weapon you pick up will do damage to anything in the game. It makes it rather bland. And with EI, it's supposed to be IE but we like spelling mistakes on this forum. (Mod's don't change the thread title) Oh god I hadn't even noticed.

Please don't. The costs are not worth the returns, by a long shot. Don't even think about it.

Well it did. It just didn't work against anything with any self-respect.

This as a Rogue with Reckless Assault should be amazing.

Fourth-wall backer ridiculousness. You can completely ignore it. It's mostly out of place and immersion-breaking stuff.

What is this.. "Dispel"? Don't you know that hard counters.. are boring? Edit: No, it's fully intentional. Honestly I'm surprised we got "suppress affliction"-mechanics at all, even.