aluminiumtrioxid

*glances at Val's last 10 posts in the thread* ...Oookkay... *slowly backs away before the tidal forces of the gigantic black hole in lieau of Val's self-awareness convert him into spaghetti*

Well, you make some valid points, but I think "having your body sold after you die" is not really in the same category as "being forced to spend an eternity in constant hunger, deprived of your higher cognitive functions" (Unless someone kills undead-you. Or not. Did they comment on what happens to the souls of slain undead?)

It's funny that you admit this is not really relevant to the discussion and yet feel compelled to give a retort. And if according to you, the other person has no points then that's okay to make personal attacks? Answer to what I've actually written, not selective quotes. Thank you. There. The fact that it a word is not included in official dictionaries doesn't mean that it does not see usage among people (see also: d***swizzle.) I was offering it as a possible explanation for you seemingly not understanding how "you do not know what you are talking about with your rambling" can be interpreted as rude and inflammatory. Read what I've written. Thank you. Yes. I was, however, never advocating for reducing the spell level enemies use in a fight depending on what you have used so far. Read what you've written back then. Thank you. When you can point out what parts of the definition I did not quote from the page I was directly linking to, you get to accuse me of selective quoting of definitions. Not until then. By the way, the definition you have written is "To take advantage of (person, situation, etc)... for one's own ends." Not "to take advantage of (sg) in a way that was not intended". Read your own definitions. Thank you. (I'm not going to open a different argument about the definition of "taking advantage".) Yes, it wouldn't. Your party also does not count as "a small army with tanks." Read the post I've quoted. Thank you. Also, I do not really see the difference between "the general would keep bodyguards with him", when said group of bodyguards would constitute of "a basic retinue because we're not expecting any real threat" and "the general would not have all the lieutenants and minions with him". As an aside, I really appreciate you consistently not taking the effort to even read the things I'm writing and linking, yet accusing me of lying based on information you missed when you did not read those things. It's really classy. Yes, please do explain to me how having lots of armed and armored people around in a small space with lots of important, yet extremely fragile things lying around (aka: a typical lab) is not inviting disaster. Or how much it helps to have huge threatening figures watch your guests' every move instill a feeling of comfort. I'm all ears. Which is, again, a circumstance I have never included in any of my examples, but thanks for reading my posts so carefully. Except for the fact that you have achieved this not through spending five minutes clicking around with no real cost or challenge but through spending extra effort on those lead-up encounters in which your hands were tied. Do I have to point out how the two are different? Shouldn't you be rewarded for the extra effort you have put in? Nice save. Sadly, no sane person would believe it. (Also, scolding my incompetent usage of the English language while writing down stuff like "various points that has no relevance" seems a bit ironic.) Edit: Anyways, I'm done wasting my time arguing with a person who quite apparently does not read a single thing my posts contain, and whose arguments are a wild mixture of baseless accusations and various logical fallacies alongside a few valid points sprinkled in once in a while. Enjoy your well-earned Internet Prize of Being Right.

Part 2 So why bring up TV shows, comics and all sorts of material in a crpg discussion if those things cannot be implemented in a satisfactory way. Just because something is shown in a movie doesn't mean you can do or even translate it in a crpg. This is what I'm talking about with you moving the goal posts and getting lost in verisimilitude. You're so lost in it that you forget what the discussion is all about and point to things like the Silmarillion. Just because it's written in a book doesn't mean it can work in a crpg. Just to reiterate: you were arguing that feigning weakness is the same as pre-buffing your party. I have retorted by saying that it is not really the same because a/ feigning weakness in this system would come with an associated opportunity cost, while pre-buffing costs nothing aside from the time of the player, and b/ it is a well-established trope used in all kinds of stories, while pre-buffing is purely an emergent feature of the game rules with no metafictional resonance. You have asked me to provide you with suitable examples in fiction. I have provided said examples, to which you reacted by starting a completely different argument about how it is not possible to translate fiction to a crpg and accusing me of goalpost moving, again. Not only has this has no bearing on the question of "is feigning weakness the same as pre-buffing?", but it's also another textbook example of goalpost moving, the same thing, ironically, that you were accusing me of in the same breath. One thing is hilarious is that you think crpgs are capable of doing the same things as in real life. Oh, you're one of the promancers are you not? I bet you think romances in crpgs are just like real life. This is not what I have said at all. Please do not put words in my mouth. (And do try to answer to the question I actually have asked.) Actually, I am not, and see no way how this could be relevant to the discussion at hand. So you bring up something, I then answer, you accuse me of putting words in your mouth and then decide all of a sudden it's not relevant to the discussion. Then why bring it up in the first place if it has no relevance to begin with? I may be an ignorant foreigner with a very limited grasp of the English language, but even I am able to tell the difference between "if it would make sense for a character to take an action in a given situation in order to solve a problem set by the game, and that action could be taken by any random person with the knowledge and abilities of the character, you should be provided with an option to take that action" and "crpgs are capable of doing the same things as in real life". I'm not accusing you of putting words in my mouth, I am pointing out the fact that you are putting words in my mouth. Also, basic reading comprehension, something which the breaking of your text into two paragraphs was intended to facilitate: the "Actually, I am not, and see no way how this could be relevant to the discussion at hand." sentence was intended to be the answer to your assumption of "Oh, you're one of the promancers are you not? I bet you think romances in crpgs are just like real life." You may have noticed that while this indeed has no relevance, I wasn't the one who brought it up.

Part 1 Things that are not exactly relevant to the discussion at hand. Ok, now I am starting to feel that there is a fundamental confusion around the meaning of the verb "exploit". Since - as we have already established - I am merely an ignorant foreigner, I will call upon the Oxford Dictionary webpage on the issue. (*tries to copypaste quote, fails miserably at formatting, decides to just copy the relevant parts*) 1. "Make full use of and derive benefit from (a resource)". In this sense, every possible tactic is exploiting something. Not very helpful, but undoubtedly supports my point. 2. "Make use of (a situation) in a way considered unfair or underhand". As I have already stated, I strongly believe that if there are costs and benefits associated with both engaging in deceit and not doing so, and these are appropriately balanced against each other, the benefits of using one over the other could hardly be considered unfair. So, "exploit"... (And you can of course anwer all of this with "but this is weakening the boss and that is horrible" or something to that effect, but the only way I can react to that is "so what?". As long as the overall difficulty of the quest - taking all encounters into account, not just the final confrontation with the boss - is more or less the same, I do not believe that a somewhat easier boss battle would break the game.) Your senses seem to be failing you, because I have acknowledged that certain enemies should be always prepared for an attack by a party of adventurers. Repeatedly. Now it is your turn to accept what I have said. Oh wait... You seem to be in full agreement with this statement, which is basically a rephrased version of what I have said earlier. Which doesn't make the other three examples I brought up where having a large number of armed and armored men around would be counter-productive (entertaining guests/negotiating with allies, experimenting in a lab with sensitive equipment, doing anything in a narrow space) any less valid. Way I see it, score's still 3:1. Which, as we have established, would only occur if he'd have no idea that you are lurking around. Yes, attacking someone while they are unprepared (and ideally while they are sleeping) tends to kill them pretty reliably. This is the point of sending a small squad into the heart of the enemy stronghold to assassinate their leader. If it makes you sleep any easier, I can include a clause that the aforementioned uber-paranoid bosses you seem to be so fond of would be exempt from this. Happy?

Now that is a sentiment I can fully get behind, even though it's more familiar to me from action games and their unavoidable cutscenes than RPGs

Nice try to drag the conversation away from actual arguments back into your home turf of flinging **** at each other, Val. Anything but successful, but still, I can offer points for trying. *pat pat*

Part 2 Again, the point I have repeatedly made but you seem to be unable or unwilling to engage with is that "if you make both 'deceiving' the AI and 'playing the game straight' come with certain boons and downsides, the decision to favor one over the another has strategic relevance". You can't 'deceive' the game without making the fights leading up to the boss fight harder for you. This is not exploiting the AI, this is trading difficulty in one area to make it easier for you in another. It even has more downsides than "do a sidequest to weaken the boss before the fight", for chrissakes. (Due to not granting extra XP while having an increased difficulty.) As for the thing you have quoted, I will bold the crucial parts which you seem to have a trouble understanding. "he doesn't have all his important minions and lieutenants with him and didn't put up buffs that provide protection against your favorite attacks" This neither implies that he shall have no minions at all, nor that he should have no generic buffs that provide more widespread bonii than "protection against damage/status effect type X". Misunderstandings like this are the very reason I strongly suspect that you were never engaging with the things I wrote beyond a superficial level. (Which is not a values judgment.) Please do point out where I seem to have done that. As I have explained in the previous paragraph, you have provided me with factual evidence that you were actually not paying attention to / did not understand / refused to engage with what I wrote. Statement of facts in values-neutral terms could hardly be considered as a form of engaging in personal attacks. Also, even when I have pointed out (again, in mostly values-neutral terms) that you seem to be interested more in winning the argument than engaging with my points, I always have provided you with an adequate reaction to all the other points you have raised (a courtesy that you did not reciprocate, by the way). I think this is pretty much the definition of arguing the points, not the person. Yet for all this, you seem to spend an inordinate amount of time and number of sentences on trying to prove that I am a hypocrite who engages in personal attacks, and has his arguments riddled with all sorts of logical fallacies, which assertions are not only patently untrue, but also seem to have no textual support whatsoever. It is kind of tiring to answer to your unfounded accusations of the trifecta of "logical fallacies, arguing in bad faith, and engaging in personal attacks instead of dismantling the arguments", especially in light of the fact that in the interest of keeping the focus of the discussion on the actual points being discussed, I am refraining from pointing out the very real fallacies in your arguments. Which, while arguable in itself, furthermore has no bearing at all on the original question of whether the concept of feigning weakness in order to gain the upper hand in a fight has metafictional resonance (aka "is something a guy who plays RPGs to experience similar stories as those in his preferred forms of fictional entertainment should expect to have his character be able to do"), or is a purely gamist construct like passing buffs around. Again, I'm being as values-neutral as possible, but you seem to have forgotten what we were talking about in the first place. This is not what I have said at all. Please do not put words in my mouth. (And do try to answer to the question I actually have asked.) Actually, I am not, and see no way how this could be relevant to the discussion at hand.

Too many quotes, even after heavy pruning. Have to post it in two parts. Sorry. Part 1 These are the relevant points I was trying to get across. Strangely enough, the point(s) you did end up communicating, however, were that "whenever a boss isn't running around fully buffed and with a full party, he is behaving like an idiot". (Also, that I am a bad, bad person, which, considering your earlier complaints about arguing people instead of points, sounds fairly ridiculous.) Also, "being totally unprotected" is a fairly ridiculous term to use when talking about a person who is a formidable warrior/magic-user with a full list of spells waiting to be unleashed. I mean, yes, you could probably make a boss out of "guy who is totally incompetent in a fight when alone", and in that case, yes, it would be fairly ridiculous if that guy wouldn't run around with quite a few bodyguards, no arguments about that. The "needing its own game" thing was also repeatedly brought up by me and is even in my first post about the matter, so again, I don't really understand why this should be considered a valid counterargument, or a point worthy of being brought up at all, assuming that you were reading what I wrote. Ah, the 'x but y' tactic used by people who really mean the opposite to what they say before the 'but'. Your true colours are showing. I don't really think tha question "what the hell are you talking about" can be considered especially insulting, but if it did come across as that, I apologize. I'm not putting words in your mouth when I quote your words. You want a boss to be unbuffed and not have his lieutenants or minions with him if you, in your words deceive the game, and in my words exploit the game. You're actually the very definition of the internet caricature of people trying to win debates on the internet and staying up all night/morning. Must win debate against internet person at 1.00am because... ??? I'd like you to actually quote where I have said that I want a boss to be unbuffed and not have his minions and lieutenants with him, and then refer to quoting my words, please. Something something arguing the person something something. ...it's summer, nights are hot, making it impossible to sleep, and I don't have a better idea of what to do with myself aside from surfing teh interwebz? But even with that, maybe I should be allowed to not like having to repeat myself completely unnecessarily. (How is this relevant, by the way?) Verisimilitude is not having a boss send away his minions and lieutenants and be unbuffed to face a party of 6 adventurers on his own. Also, if you're citing verisimilitude then Generals in the military don't have lieutenants and minions with him? Seems like a stupid thing for an army to do to have a General be all alone and not having any protection to protect one of the most important people in their army. Yep, if I go to a military base that's sending out spies to look for people that pose a threat to that base and the general in question, the general will think it's quite all right to be alone with no lieutenants or minions around him. Have you tried looking at NPCs from a standpoint where they are more intelligent than just plain dumb? I sense a fundamental unwillingness in you to actually react to things I wrote. I have just given you a fairly good reason why people who see no enemies around at all should not want to put up buff spells unnecessarily (bolded it for you now). Also, not really, I'm fairly sure that generals don't have a full cadre of lieutenants and minions with them when they are, say, at home, or at a meeting with Important People, or doing anything where having a full cadre of bodyguards and lieutenants would be fairly impractical (say, in a lab, experimenting - let's assume that our general also happens to be a mage who is interested in research, I'm sure that you can think of other examples where cramming people into a small space is not that beneficial). The critical point you seem to miss (yet again) is that these only apply when no spies or scrying show your presence (bolded it for you now). I did just that in the previous paragraph. I didn't especially feel a need to repeat myself in another, completely different paragraph where you are talking about small-scale enemy behavior and tactics, like, say, whether the usage of certain spells should prompt the boss to only use low-level spells against you. (Answer is still nope, by the way.)

I totally mean this in a non-insulting manner but what the hell are you talking about. I have repeatedly made all of my points abundantly clear before you started asking questions. It is not really my fault you didn't actually read my posts and react with total surprise when I reiterate points I have made earlier. Hell yes I don't want to accept the fact that you're not just putting words in my mouth, you are doing your damnedest to cram entire paragraphs down my throat. Reacting to things I actually wrote instead of strawmen you construct in your head would help immensely in the "not waste my time at 1:00 in the morning" department. So, verisimilitude is not a good enough reason for you. Good to know. Surprising as it may sound, buffs are generally not things you put up in the morning and then forget about. They come with time limits. An opponent who repeatedly uses scrying to no effect and has his spies reporting to him that they see no enemy around will not put up buffs for no reason when there are no enemies around, because they would expire and then his spell slots would be wasted - possibly hours before an actual attack commences. Keeping your lieutenants near you at all time, when you see no enemy approaching at all also seems counterintuitive, when they could both be spending their time usefully (say, training the troops on the courtyard, for example, just so you can easily reach them when they are needed) and not be underfoot while you are doing your best to entertain guests or do sensitive experiments or any other thing where having 6 feet tall guys in a plate mail around would not be helpful at all. I will repeat myself for the nth time, again: when the opponent has his spies reporting your activity to him, he would of course do something to deal with the problem you pose. This "doing something", however, would entail less severe countermeasures if he sees you as less of a threat. (Say, he sends a lieutenant towards you alongside a few minions if you've showed yourself to be a threat that can be dealt with by that, or call all the lieutenants and minions to him if you're calling down a small-sized magical apocalypse on his garden.) Have you tried looking at NPCs from a standpoint where they are more than a statblock running around, waiting to be slaughtered? Well what we can get from this is that you're changing the encounter and as a player, you're finding the easiest and most efficient way to get past it by exploiting the game to make it easier for you. And there is no logic why a boss in a boss fight wouldn't have his minions and lieutenants and is not buffed. "Start talking about something totally unrelated when the I point out that you have just argued vehemently both for and against something I've never even mentioned" is not a thing I will just let slide without commenting on it. I think you should feel a bit embarrassed. This kind of made you look like a fool, and that's really the nicest way I can phrase it. ...How exactly? Which is not necessarily a problem inherent in adaptive AI. You would get the same outcome by having a static encounter, seeing what kind of abilities the enemy uses, reloading, and purposefully using abilities that counter those used by your opponent. Yet this is called strategy, while basically playing Xanatos Speed Chess during the encounters that adapt to your strengths is somehow not. And for about the fifth time, this was never about PoE. Refer to the post in which I have laid out the basics of the system. Yes, controlling the circumstances of a fight in order to achieve optimal results is also something I would consider strategic. Players should be rewarded for efficiency, not for purposefully shooting themselves in the leg. Any system that incentivizes choosing a path that would be considered suboptimal by the characters for metagame reasons (say, one that has a transdimensional portal which spills forth an unlimited number of creatures that can be slain indefinitely for infinite XP, therefore rewarding the decision to not deal with the possibly world-threatening menace) is badly designed. At least if your goal is to reward players for actually roleplaying (a reasonable assumption in something called a role-playing game*). And, for the nth time, I repeat myself yet again, if you make your presence known and use low-level spells and abilities that means the boss will still be prepared, have his lieutenants and minions (or a fraction of them, depending on the characterisation of said boss) around him and some generic buffs up and running, while yes, he won't have specific protections against the big spells you didn't use. This would also mean that you'd have a really ****ing hard time surviving the encounters that lead up to the boss fight (including a fight with the lieutenant he just sent out to deal with you). Would you feel really insulted if I said that this is probably because you did not actually understand the context of what I wrote refused to engage with the text I wrote? If yes, I apologize, please disregard. Anyways, point is, tone is hard to convey through a written medium, I might have been snarkier while answering your not-exactly-nice assumption which I thought was purposefully inflammatory but apparently not. Let's leave it at that, because your generally antagonistic style and usage of words loaded with strongly negative connotations like "rambling" made it a reasonable assumption, and I refuse to apologize for things I'm not exactly responsible for. The message to take home is, in the end, is that if you don't want people to assume that you are being antagonistic, go out of your way to ensure that they will see you as polite and respectful. (An alternate explanation that I can think of is that you may be unaware of precise shades of meaning like the difference between "rambling" and "talking" about something, likely because you are not a native speaker. In this case, the message to take away is "work on your english". Aside from minor hiccups like this, it is fairly good, by the way.) What the hell are you even talking about. You have actually reached a point where I am simply unable to follow your logic. Being the generally polite sort of person I am, I will not voice my opinion that this is because you are not making even a modicum of sense, and will instead ask you to elaborate, please. (Also it is really late now and tearing apart your argument as it stands right now would take up my whole morning because it's so riddled with holes I could write pages about it and still only touch the surface.) I don't really see what could possibly be hilarious about the assumption that if it would make sense for a character to take an action in a given situation in order to solve a problem set by the game, and that action could be taken by any random person with the knowledge and abilities of the character, you should be provided with an option to take that action. Do enlighten me. *Yes, yes, I'm aware, you might want to play a suicidal or simply idiotic character because those offer unique opportunities to shut the **** up. Mod it in to let the player choose an appropriate trait that comes with specific downsides while also granting you extra XP for acting like a suicidal idiot instead of wasting developer time and resources on balancing a feature that holds little to no interest for the majority of your audience. Also, nice try to derail, hypothetical Internet person!

Patrick S has a few words about how wearing plate mail underground would kill you. Arnold K brings some really cool gonzo monsters to the table.

New Charm update! While my favorite is Subject-Hailing Ideology, Clever Bandit's Rook offers a lot of potential for wackiness. Guard: "Do these jewels belong to you?" Night Caste: "Yes." Guard: "You were bringing them out of that house." Night Caste: "It's my house." Guard: "Then why were you going out through the window?" Night Caste: "The front door is stuck."

Excellent points, Gromnir. I kinda hope that the designers will resist the urge to jump on the nowadays oh-so-popular grimdark bandwagon, and make it possible to do actual research without having to do the metaphysical equivalent of roasting newborn babies alive. I, for example, would totally have my character throw significant funds at people who are working on methods to restore fragmented souls, or something like that. Hopefully researching seemingly-beneficient things will also be possible.

...Mmm... depends on the goals of the animancer (immortality holds little interest for me), and how clean his experiments are.

So great to have you to help us decide the "winners", don't know what we would have done without you. Well, the thread did devolve into flinging insults at each other, so I guess either "everybody lost" or "Team Troll won" would be applicable.

Well, in the interest of newbie education, I feel I should point out that what happened here is kind of our friend Val's modus operandi. Step 1: find something utterly inconsequential to bitch about (including, but not limited to, developer updates - I still remember the hissy fits he threw when PE's "no xp for killing" feature was announced). Step 2: present an argument in the most insulting and condescending manner that is humanly possible. Step 3: offer no counterarguments when said arguments are proven wrong, start insulting those who offered said counterarguments. (Usually the ratio of flawed arguments to insults and increasingly hysterical assertions of supposed, but thus far unobserved intellectual superiority starts at 1:1 and steadily climbs into the 1:100-ish range.) Step 4: hope that the noise provided drowns out any attempts at intellectual discussion in the future. (???) Step 5: profit! So far no scientific explanations have emerged as to the whys of this behavior. Some theorize that he needs to do it in order to appease the dark gods he's sold his soul to, while others maintain the stance that it is necessary for his continued existence - while this seems like a weakness at first sight, it's speculated that given otherwise adequate living conditions, he could survive for years only on the attention his trolling attempts garner him, and the life energy he seemingly drains from the ruined husks of derailed conversations. Sadly, no theory could be proven until someone gets his hands to a live specimen and vivisects him (therefore making the world a more pleasant place for all to live in).

The fact that you have specifically memorized the exact topic said post has appeared in for future-use-in-discrediting may seem to you like something that magically makes it all extremely rational and not-creepy, but sadly, I must inform you that out there in real world that doesn't run on insane troll logic, it still looks pretty bad. Please accept my deepest condolences Well it kinda did turn into a cry for help with all the sulking and fairly sad attempts at trolling a few posts ago, but I'm pretty sure those cries for help are neither mine, nor PJ's. *pats head* Sadly though, this whole thing is really veering into off-topic territory, and while I'd like nothing more than help you work through all the traumas the cruel world has heaped on you by giving you the much-coveted attention you have probably never gotten from those closest to you, I'm kind of afraid that if this continues for much longer, the mods, who seem to be in a perpetual state of hybernation, finally take notice and close this thread, depriving you of a much-needed release valve through which you could spew your uniquely entertaining brand of insanity. And that would be an irreplaceable loss for the world at large indeed. Please do continue without me, don't mind the fact that no one's listening, though.

There, fixed it for you. As for the answer, I don't really know. I guess I'm just a generally charitable sort of person? As for PJ's cry for help, it's apparently so relevant and on-topic that you had to dig it forth from a different topic which, by the way, has been dead since four months. I can only admire your dedication for the mental health of the members of our little community Although if I were you, I'd worry more about my own. Digging through long-dead threads in a desperate scramble to find something to discredit those who engage you in a discussion is, after all, not only creepy, but also doesn't exactly sound like something a sane person would do

Val's just so cute when he's sulking, isn't he? I love how he totes wants to discuss on-topic subjects like PoE, and BG 1-2. Apparently he wants to do it so much that he will even insist on introducing his PM conversations about PJ's absolutely relevant self-torture issues to the topic! *pats on head* There there, you have gotten the attention you so crave, now go play with your friends.

Were you not for changing the encounter by "he doesn't have all his important minions and lieutenants with him and didn't put up buffs that provide protection against your favorite attacks".? That's a substantial change to the encounter. You've effectively scaled down the encounter by not having his lieutenants and minions with him. And when you change the encounter so much, especially with him not having any buffs, the encounter will not be the same as the same party who was using high level spells and abilities beforehand. It's a pretty big assumption to think he will use the same tactics against you as he would with a high level party. Even if he does use the same spells as he would against a party that did use high level spells and abilities beforehand, it's still an underpowered boss fight which he has no buffs and no help. That's not strategy or diversity at all, it's exploiting the game. Could we try not moving the goalposts? You were fighting against the idea that the opponent doesn't use his strongest spells, I've never advocated for him to do so. That is all there is to it. I was advocating for him not having important lieutenants and minions and buffs at all* if you manage to protect yourself against scrying and kill his spies, in which case it is fairly reasonable to assume that you do manage to catch him unprepared and with his pants down. Mind you, enemies who are extremely paranoid and walk everywhere fully buffed and with a full cadre of bodyguards should exist, but maybe they should not be the norm. By the way, this... In light of this... ...is sending a bit of mixed signals. No, not when you can exploit the system. You just don't want to accept that this system is highly exploitable. To you it's strategy and diversity when really it's just exploits. The system, paired with both ****ty character advancement and ****ty encounter design is indeed exploitable. I've never been clamoring for either ****ty character advancement, nor ****ty encounter design. In fact, I have even pointed out that you have to be careful when designing the advancement system and the encounters, you have to take the dynamic AI into account. That said, I believe that in order for a system to be exploitable in the pejorative sense you seem to use the word in, it needs to work in a manner that was unintended by its creator. If you "exploit" a system that is intended to model human error, that means the system is doing what it was designed for! Ah yes, the old name calling. I'm not playing the victim at all. Engaging in completely unnecessary and not at all helpful nitpicking, then when you are being called out on the fact that you were engaging in completely unnecessary and not at all helpful nitpicking, accusing the other party of changing the topic is apparently not playing victim. I'm not going to argue over that, but it does seem to me that you have a strange definition of 'playing a victim'. So apparently neither The Princess Bride, nor Michael Strogoff (which seems more than appropriate, considering the relatively 'modern' feel of PoE), nor The Silmarillion are valid examples. - The Princess Bride, "I am not left handed" scene. - in Michael Strogoff, the titular character pretends to be blind during about half of the book in order to reveal that he can see perfectly during the final battle - in The Silmarillion (again, large scale battle example) the whole of Nirnaeth Arnoedidad could be considered as such, from the whole setup of "luring the enemy to attack by showing them a less numerous force while our main army stands in waiting" to the "pull out the dragons at the climax of the battle" ending. - Anime/manga: almost every single battle in Bleach, but especially everything featuring Yumichika, who even has a half-released state of his zanpakutou. Naruto and the Rock Lee versus Garra fight with the leg weights. YuYu Hakusho has Karashu who leads his opponent to believe that his power is making things he touches explode, when in reality it is making invisible bombs anywhere (cue curbstomp). "This isn't even my final form." etc., more examples in the link. I fail to see how anybody could think that a fantasy game with heroes using soul magic could relegate said soul magic-using heroes to being capable of LESS than people in real life. (Also, "this is a fantasy RPG" pretty much comes with the assumption that it intends to emulate certain genre tropes, but that's not really relevant right now.)

They may have more powerful spells to access but because the enemy thinks you're a low level party they'll be using low level spells. Because you tricked the game into thinking you're a low level party. As soon as you can quote when I said this, I will engage you, but as things stand now, you are vehemently fighting an idea I've never advocated and have built every counterargument on this flawed premise. Edit: I've bolded the specific part I have a problem with. ...And a few other points, as an aside... Exploiting the game is now diversity. It was strategy a few pages back but now it's changed to diversity. I'm just waiting for the next word for you to come up with now for exploit. Creating a system where your opponents have access to the same information, and can interpret it differently based on their characterisation does seem to promote diversity to me. Way I see it, it's a fairly reasonable reaction to what amounts to basically "you have used the term 'I'M NOT SURE!' THIS MAKES ME AUTOMATICALLY RIGHT!!! 8D!!!", especially when said "I'm not sure" was obviously intended as a rhetorical device. But you are welcome to play victim if you wish. The burden is on you. Don't shift the burden onto me, considering you stated these so called stories. So it's you who should be pointing out what stories these are. Not to link some internet address and tell me to read it. The Princess Bride. Basically every thing that is about people beating up other people, ever (comic books, shounen manga/anime, to a lesser extent wuxia and chanbara). If we're accepting large-scale equivalents (doing the same thing with armies and whatnot, instead of a six-person group), even the Silmarillion has examples. Pulp stories, like Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne. I'm fairly sure there are a lot of examples rooted in greek and other mythologies, too. "Pretending that you are weak while you are really not" is a fairly widespread trick used by literary heroes.

Actually, since they didn't buff themselves, they have more powerful spells ready, because they didn't spend those spell slots on buffing. Didn't we already discuss this? I really don't get what is so hard to understand about "if Tactic A (holding back) comes with downsides - namely, more difficult lead-up fights - and Tactic B (not holding back) also comes with downsides - namely, a more prepared final boss -, and those downsides are adequately balanced against each other, the choice between Tactic A and Tactic B is a meaningful one". Aren't meaningful choices the basis of strategy? Which is totally something a prudent or paranoid boss would do in this system. Another who is characterized by arrogance or an overdeveloped sense of chivalry would not. Yay, diversity! Yay, NPC characterisation actually influencing their tactics! (Another point I've made earlier: the enemies can react to the fact of your presence, not just your observed tactics.) a) You're not really sure? So you don't know? Well that kind of confirms that you don't know what you're talking about with your rambling. I can understand that feeling the coveted prize of Having Won an Internet Argument dangling so close is tantalizing enough for you to throw everything to the wind and start viciously attacking any perceived weak points in my arguments with redoubled effort (whether that feeling has any basis in reality or not), but it would be kinda helpful if you took a moment to make sure you have actually understood what I wrote. Arguing over semantics and jumping to conclusions based on a turn of a phrase? Not helpful. I have included a link in my edit. Feel free to browse and pick out the examples that could be relevant and please do ignore those that are not. ...I could snark about how it's not an especially astute observation that "something is exploitable when it's exploitable", but instead I will just point out that the downsides in question belong to our hypothetical Tactic A (holding back), therefore pushing it out of the realm of "exploit" into "a tactic you use when you feel the benefits outweigh the costs". Won't be prepared for those specific spells (which is, incidentally, the exact same thing that would happen if said boss is a static encounter, assuming that there is enough variety in spells for it to be unfeasible to protect against all of them using a limited number of spell slots). Will probably still have generic buffs up and running as an answer to your presence. Assuming that indeed it will try to counter your party instead of tearing it apart with offensive spells. Now that's one hell of an assumption to make based on nothing I said or implied whatsoever.

Do you have any such mechanism in mind? Meh, any kind of shapeshifting opponent, or reinforcements arriving in the middle of a fight through a secret door, or, say, a dragon which fights you on land initially, then takes off to firebreath(e) you to oblivion from high ground where your bashies can't reach it would necessitate a change of tactics organically. That's not really an interesting question

So in effect, you're pre-buffing your own party. That's what it boils down to. I don't really see a paralell between "using strategic deception that comes with an increased difficulty and item usage in order to lure an enemy into a false sense of security" (a thing fictional heroes tend to use pretty often, by the way) and "spending 5 minutes before a fight to pass buffs around at no real cost, since I intended to put up those buffs from the beginning" (a thing I've never, ever seen any type of fantasy hero doing [granted, I may be reading the wrong kinds of fiction]). Ok, let's assume he always keeps those lieutenants around him, and when he notices you breaking in, he'll call the other lieutenants to him, too. ...This has changed exactly what? So now you're base lining the difficulty at players who will exploit the system because you've implemented a system that can be easily exploited. Here's a solution, don't implement a system that can be easily exploited and you won't have to base line the difficulty at the exploiters. a/ I'm not really sure "implementing a tactic that both resonates with the kinds of stories that inspired the game and has an associated opportunity cost" constitutes as "exploiting the system" (especially since I don't really think you can exploit something in the cheat-y sense if that something actually comes with hardcoded downsides). b/ If I'm designing a game around specific tactics (say, mages having special defenses that can only be penetrated with guns, or spellcasters being able to put up protection spells that have to be dispelled before they can be harmed), hell yes I will assume that people will use those tactics. This isn't bad design. Bad design would be making those tactics the only way you can win a fight. (Which, just to be on topic, is kinda what BG2 did with mages and protection spells...) If a tower is occupied by a cabal of rogues, and your party both intends to wipe those rogues out (a goal that is presumably at odds with the rogues' own goal of, say, "continuing to survive") and has a reputation for struggling with mage fights, yet the rogues don't use the undoubtedly fairly significant resources at their disposal to hire a few mage mercenaries to bolster their ranks, my respect for those rogues would plummet. (Y'know, in those five minutes intermittently between roflstomping them.)

Hah, forum limits the maximum number of quotes you can have in a post. How sad. No, you've missed the point of what I said. You want scaling based on what you do during the game. That's easily exploitable leading up to a boss fight and changing the encounter to make it easier. And using low level spells for the simple fact to gimp the boss fight is exploiting the A.I. and the system. They're not mutually exclusive. No, I have perfectly understood what you said. The power level of the enemies would not change based on what you do, only their level of preparedness - I don't really think that is a form of scaling in the strict sense. You couldn't gimp the boss fight by casting low-level spells, you could win a few rounds' worth of time while he puts up the buffs he neglected to based on what he saw - at the cost of an increased difficulty (and therefore possibly material resource-use) in the lead-up encounters. Sounds like a fair trade to me. Why would it be binary with a boss have only a few minions and lieutenants being a) with him or b) going out there and working towards his goals? How about a third option, c) he has minions and lieutenants doing both? That's a much, much better question, I think. Well, maybe because those lieutenants that are hanging around with him are still a very bad investment unless bloodthirsty adventuring parties regularly break into his compound? (In which case he has probably bigger concerns than scrying your progress...) But what you've done is changed the encounter from the boss putting up protections to having no protections at all. Yes, he can put them up during the fight, but you've changed the encounter to make it easier for you. That's gaming the system. ...Assuming, of course, that the boss having more attack spells at his disposal because he didn't use the spell slots for buffing did make the encounter easier for you. Also, if you balance the system with the assumption that this is something players will regularly do, and the baseline difficulty is the "non-buffed", it would hardly cause problems. Wouldn't be more "gaming the system" than "using True Sight to get rid of his Mislead clone instead of hacking away its health" is gaming the system.