Valorian

I can also live with non-humanoid melees having unlimited knockdowns. I was thinking about the kith (humanoids) having, for example, unlimited knockdowns; the same knockdown that a PC fighter uses. That's as problematic as unlimited spells.

I agree with this. I find it odd that people who are trained to cast spells are worse at casting spells from scrolls than spellcasting newbies. Otherwise, it's good that there are differences between classes regarding accuracy, defenses and endurance/health.

Also, are you sure this applies only to spells? After all, spells are just a subset of abilities. Maybe enemy kith can dish out an endless stream of active abilities and talents too. Yes, that's regrettable as well. It also penalizes them as they can't be resurrected by allies.

Enemy spellcasters (not talking about monsters with innate spellcasting capabilities) have infinite spells? And I was praising PoE for having a symmetrical ruleset. Perhaps it's not working as intended.

I'll make a wish too. I'd like Obsidian to continue to not have any level scaling in PoE and its expansion packs/DLC. All Fallout:NV add-ons were level scaled and it was awful. I particularly enjoyed the end boss encounter in PoE. Has someone tested the final encounter at different levels to see if their stats change, i.e. if it's level scaled? I suppose it's not as I've read in an interview that they haven't used any, but I'd like to know for sure. A simple "no, the stats don't change" would be enough (to avoid spoilers for those who haven't finished the game yet).

Yes, you fail to see the flaws within the luring system. I already explained some problems with it here: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/76990-to-lure-or-not-to-lure-combat-ai-and-stuff/ A group of enemies should act as a group of enemies. Cheesy tactics are not god-given or universe-given rights, it's up to design. Design can change and often should, but I disagree that this game has "many crap design decisions" (as OP proclaimed). All the ingredients are there, it just needs some tweaks.

That's not how it works. The presence of cheese affects how people play the game and their enjoyment of the game. I don't enjoy making ad hoc rules to counter a game's balance flaws, but I don't enjoy exploiting these flaws either. It's a nuisance unless developers address it. Would you tell someone who finds armor and shields overly powerful in PoE to simply not use them? If yes, that would be as stupid as urging them not to use a tactic that overshadows all other tactics. Ignoring problematic (100% win) elements doesn't improve the game. I commend Obsidian for making balance changes in patches. "IMMEDIATELY!!!" was unnecessary though.

I knew I should've inserted that's not how it was done in the IE games :ragey disappointment: somewhere in the title!

True, and as you noted it's not very practical. While discussing resting is important (because strategic decisions should matter), it doesn't affect combat more than armor DR, shield deflection, AoE disables, summons, billionaire simulator and AI not working in certain situations. I know I mentioned it in the first place, but it has taken a life of its own and monopolized the topic.

Drath, indeed, it would be nice if they functioned as a group without abandoning pursuit, but what happens is they often stop moving altogether at a certain point while returning to their original spot and only react if you hit them (not if they see you). I had to cease doing it after a few times to preserve some resemblance of challenge. I imagine that I'll sometimes need to lure enemies to choke points if I decide to have a solo playthrough and I really don't want AI to implode like that while doing so. 1. Basically, expensive resting would make it easily possible to create a complete fail state, where you have to restart 30 hours of game because you bought a new sword or rested one too many times. 3. Since resting in the wilderness confers no bonuses, it always better if you are maximizing player resources to go back and get free rest. 5. The only reason resting is not limited to very specific zones is to avoid tedium. Yes campfire resting is powerful, but it is almost always less powerful than easily obtainable inn-resting. It would and should be possible. The player should be able to fail, at least on "Expert" or "Hard". That's what harder difficulty levels are for; to provide challenging decisions. You know, I don't think that resting (in the form of "replenish everything") for free should be a thing. Camping supplies should be the cheapest option (doesn't mean they have to be trivially cheap, on the contrary). I'd like something relatively cheap to remove fatigue, something expensive to replenish health, and something more expensive to restore per rest abilities/items. These three things don't have to be lumped together. That would make per encounter abilities more powerful, yes, but they could be balanced accordingly. Nobody mentioned specific zones to rest in this topic. The current resting system incentivizes tedium, though it's not a game-breaking sort of tedium by any means.

Pulling is a skill when it's challenging; if it requires, for instance, real time management of several characters. In PoE, it's not a skill. It's a cheap way to decimate an AI that's already extremely weak. Therefore, enemies in a group should chase as a group once a member of the encounter sees you and they shouldn't stop. Chanter abilities being positively affected by pulling is a different problem inherent to chanting mechanics. I disagree. The player shouldn't be required to choose between his time and strategic resources in the game (like money). The question before resting should be: "do I spend this resource (money) or not?", not "do I wait through a couple of loading screens or not?"

But the point was that you don't have to fight while the chanter chants for 12 seconds. I'm not tanking with summons. I rarely used summons. It would have been utter overkill. That's not a meaningful decision within the context of the game. Player's time vs in-game money.

You don't agree that limiting the number of summons that can be active simultaneously would increase challenge, Volourn? Summon spam dumbs down combat. 20% is negligible (in between all the misses). You can regenerate that damage in an instant through various means. An action speed penalty on your damage sponge is meaningless because you have 5 people behind that person who can fight in commoner clothes. My stance on resting is that I would like significant prices for regenerating per rest abilities and health, in the context of bathing in coins. How is it not a problem, anameforobsidian, when AI breaks and sends 1 creature to chase you while everyone else goes back? You need just 1 character with enough movement speed.

-Incapacitating AoE spells Scrolls, spells and even invocations that can paralyze, induce sleep, petrify, dominate, confuse etc. Halve base duration or make it single target. Especially the scroll of paralysis ("slightly weaker" isn't enough). It trivializes combat encounters. -Economy Triple all prices in shops, inns and for enchanting/crafting. Also, items shouldn't "respawn" in shops, especially items such as scroll of paralysis. Being able to buy magical items like potatoes isn't good for balance nor for feels. Some prices are way off (only 6 cp for 2 DR, +4/6 total to attributes after resting for 100-200 cp, 750 cp for auto win etc.) My party is bathing in a pool of coins without killing blue/green circles, stealing or selling items. -Summons Maximum of 1 summon total per party at a time would increase combat quality. Drowning enemies in summons does not challenge produce. The chanter's phantom stunlock is too strong, especially so early in the game. Replace his phantom with 2 shadows perhaps? Or downgrade the secondary attack (crit->hit, hit->graze, graze->miss or a flat -25 to accuracy) if the primary is a graze. ***** I like that the bestiary is pretty large and I love the mechanical symmetry; everyone functions within the same set of rules and on the same scale. Unlike some other relatively known rpgs from recent years where enemies seem to be transplanted from another parallel universe. I think that more could have been done with differentiation though, further expanding bestiary. For example, in addition to darguls, why not have "ravenous darguls" with improved stats, reusing the same model with a few different colors. Passive properties, such as vessels being resistant to mind affecting spells or spirits being resistant to paralyze, prone, stun and so on would be nice. Resistant, not immune, mirroring various priest prayers. As of patch 1.05, 8 classes have the same base Endurance. Each time a base class difference is erased, it takes away from the uniqueness of each role.

Thanks Lephys. Engagement could have a status icon like other status effects, specifying engaged parties. Or an auto-pause option when a party member disengages. Also, finished! Now I have the whole picture and I shall deepen my input. -Armor DR A couple of solutions for the problem of armor making the player almost invulnerable. In addition to the recovery penalty: a) A base 33% chance (slightly different for each class and monster type perhaps), modified by the difference in levels between the attacker and defender * 2, to reduce the DR for that attack to 25%. I'd suggest to make it work only with melee weapons, including creatures' natural weapons. In practice: A melee level 6 attacks a level 3. Level_6 has 39% chance to penetrate Level_3's armor. Level_3 has 20 DR against Level_6's damage type, but when armor penetration happens (39%), the DR is reduced from 20 to 5. A 10 damage graze that would normally do 2 damage (MIN) instead does 5 damage. A level 3 attacking a level 6 would have a 27% chance to penetrate armor etc. b) You could make DR a roll instead. E.g. 20 DR would become 1-20 (d20) DR, meaning the person or monster would block a different amount of damage each time. Less predictability = excitement. c) Add a deflection and reflex penalty to armor; from -20 on heavy armor to -5 on light armor and -10 or -15 for everything in between. The tank doesn't care about the recovery penalty. This could be combined with a) or b). -Shields The other half of the invulnerability problem is, of course, high deflection. A superb heavy shield provides more deflection than 9 level-ups. More than any base class deflection. To make the player slightly less untouchable*, I propose to transform the deflection of shields into a chance to convert a crit into a hit, a hit into a graze and a graze into a miss. A shield that previously had 16 deflection would instead have a 24% chance (16 x 1.5) to convert incoming attacks. This percentage wouldn't stack additively with abilities that use the same mechanic and would be checked separately (if one fails the other can still trigger). *MISS MISS MISS (MIN). Good luck going through 1000 health, monsters. 2nd part incoming...

Pillars of Eternity is a great game and everybody should play it. That said, these are some of my observations regarding combat on hard/expert (with self-imposed rules such as no kiting, limited resting and reloading): 1. Luring enemies to choke points is a wise thing to do. Sadly, AI gets confused, splits its encounter group and sends one foe at a time if you lure them far enough (if the choke point is not near e.g.). This process doesn't involve any challenge at all. I've stopped doing it after a few times because, obviously, it makes combat encounters so easy that it feels like cheating. I don't want to be forced to choose between a) throwing Charname and companions to enemies as is and b) breaking the AI. Can you please instruct the AI, at least on hard, path of the damned and expert to chase the party as a group; everywhere and forever? 1.2. Chanter's invocations. Classes like monks and ciphers, which I haven't played yet, fuel their main powers by being hit or hitting. Invocations are strong, particularly certain summons, and the 12 or more seconds timer before you can use them is supposed to keep them in check. The chanter doesn't need to be anywhere near an enemy for the timer to tick down though. This means that you can send your group, chanter included, at a choke point ~12+ seconds away and by the time one of your party members gets there followed by an enemy, the perma-stunning phantom will be ready, circumventing the purpose of the timer. You can, of course, also run with the entire group to the choke point and when you arrive the invocation will be ready. I'd like the invocation timer to tick down only when a) an enemy is in range of the chant and b) when the chanter is not moving. 2. Two-stage passive and active attacks. I love those, for enemies and allies, because it adds variety to combat. However, I think that if the primary attack is a graze, then the secondary attack should be executed with halved accuracy. I remember Josh mentioning, many months ago, that two-stage attacks would take this into account. It would reduce a chanter's invoked phantom capability to permastun things, for instance. (In addition to this, but not as important, attacks targeting fort./will/refl. could have 0/-75%/standard/+75% damage/duration to increase the value of these 3 defenses.) 3. With a full party I'm deleting and obliterating things left and right without using per rest abilities, and hardly losing any health. I decided to recruit as many people as possible because I am curious about their stories, but for the 2nd playthrough I plan to let 2 join at most to retain a bit of challenge hopefully. Everyone is able to dish out copious amount of damage with auto-attacks and per-encounter abilities and it's also pretty easy to equip people who are taking point with ridiculously high DR*. Sagani counts almost as 2 companions because of her animal and so does Kana with his summon spamming. I hope it is understood how powerful is to summon/have a thing that both deals decent damage and soaks damage. Each additional party member makes combat exponentially easier, not to mention that you get to explore their personal quests. Expand XP from bestiary, per kill and total, for each empty party member slot. The highest number of people that you used to defeat a certain monster at any point would always count as the maximum potential XP amount for that particular bestiary entry. Example: you defeat your first skeleton solo; +200 XP -> 200/4000 XP. Then you defeat a 2nd skeleton with a full party; +100 XP -> 300/1000 XP (maximum permanently reduced for skeletons, but you can't lose XP). Also proportional for 2, 3, 4 or 5 people. *To alleviate the DR problem, all melee attacks could have a base 50% chance to halve the DR for that particular attack, representing the attacker hitting a weak spot on the armor. 4. Resting. I like resting restrictions, but wouldn't it be better to restrict resting by drastically increasing the price of camping supplies and having to use one (the healing herbs and whatnot that are part of it), even in 0-coin-resting zones, to be able to heal health? You'd be able to remove fatigue and restore per rest resources as usual, but restoring health would always require supplies. Also, instead of having 2 camping supplies slots, have 4, but increase the price 4 times or more for higher difficulties. After all, those camping supplies are very valuable if they can heal wounds and restore health. It could be a decent coin sink and would be more in line with the purpose of the stash (not going back and forth); deciding whether to use something expensive rather than deciding if you want to bother to travel to the nearest village to buy it for a couple of coins. Minor: I thought the purpose of 4 quick slots is to have 4 items in total that you can use during combat, not 20. ***** That's that on a macro level, for now, avoiding the feels tangent. Regarding feels, I would love fighters to get to pick a combat style at level 1 as a mandatory choice, for example. I would like to make him a dual-wielding "expert", but there were things to pick that I found more essential than an attack speed bonus and since everyone is able to dual-wield just fine without any talents (bad feels)... Maybe at higher levels? PoE's combat is very good. Among other things, I like how the variety of afflictions and effects that some monsters apply on-hit add to combat complexity and diversity, I like that there's no level scaling, I like the engagement mechanics etc. I avoided the beta, videos, and all topics that could contain information about main and side content, including "balance" topics and I will continue to do so until I finish the game. I plan to avoid even my own topic till then. See you in a week or 2.

+5% XP is a sad sad bonus VS 1/6 of your party's strength.

Most of that time, the "something else" is just damage. Is it really such a loss to sacrifice the damage on your tank in exchange for invulnerability? Depends on whether the AI is good enough to not exclusively target the closest character.

Everything is fine except (large) shields; they give too much deflection. Also, W&S style is a passive net benefit to deflection and is more powerful than the other listed abilities, which are modal, that grant deflection at the expense of something else.

Sentience or not, the spiritual strength or whatever you choose to call it is fused and is proportional to physical strength in Might's description. This alteration allows more RP options.

I don't like this fusion either, but I think it won't be changed. Right, people would be able to play a character who's spiritually strong, but physically weak and vice versa without the character sheet telling them they're wrong.

This topic is not about changing attribute mechanics. "Might represents a character's physical and spiritual strength, brute force as well as their ability to channel powerful magic." From an RP perspective, judging by the description, this is the alpha attribute. It measures both your inner spiritual power and muscular strength. The collateral effect of this is that creatures that are barely sentient are considered "spiritually stronger" than your entire party just because of their sheer physical strength. There are classes and creatures that don't channel powerful magic or use magic at all. I'd say fighters, rogues, barbarians, rangers and monks(?) fall into this category. For these classes, I propose to change the description to: "Might primarily represents your character's physical strength, (channeling powerful magic cut)..." And it really does. Mechanically and from a lore standpoint, we can abstract it's their physical strength that contributes to damage in combat. This way, if you invest only a few points into might, you won't feel like your character is both physically and spiritually crippled, as the current description implies. For classes that do use magic the description is fine ("Might represents your character's physical and spiritual strength.."), because their magical and physical strength are undeniably connected.

Regarding on-hit effects on weapons and creatures' natural weapons: Hopefully, for two-stage attacks (deflection --> defense #2) like most on-hit effects should work I believe, a graze on deflection should drastically weaken the secondary attack roll (against fortitude or will).

Reaching higher levels sooner makes obstacles easier to overcome.

Yes, it could be somewhat emulated, though 15% bonus is still a small amount in comparison to split XP: 5%: 6 people - 1000 xp vs solo - 1250 xp 15%: 6 people - 1000 xp vs solo - 1750 xp split: 6 people - 1000 xp vs solo - 6000 xp