Infinitron

Some interviews: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/what-s-next-for-the-director-of-dragon-age-origins/1100-6425162/ (pre-announcement) http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/02/12/new-dungeons-and-dragons-game-sword-coast-legends-coming-in-2015

https://swordcoast.com Feargus' recent little rant about D&D suddenly takes on an entirely different light...

Yeah, you're not going to see an ability that makes you immune to damage in this game, certainly not at lower levels. The ability has been nerfed from its original concept. These things happen.

Cool new update: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/othersidegames/underworld-ascendant/posts/1132136

There is no actual link to SotA, it's just a lore thing.

u wot m8?

Man, this thread got dumb fast. Guess what other game got made with EA's blessing? That's right - Wasteland 2. Brian Fargo was just smart enough to keep the fact that Wasteland was an EA-owned intellectual property on the down-low. Anyway, here's a link to the actual Kickstarter and some videos: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/othersidegames/underworld-ascendant

Make yourself unhittable! http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/pillars-of-eternity-beta-release-thread.93694/page-334#post-3739983 Call the balance police!

OP, if that's a stealthy attempt to get more people to check out our Dragon Age review, then Source here: http://www.polygon.com/2015/2/4/7981193/as-pillars-of-eternity-nears-launch-dev-team-begins-work-on-sequel

nipsen: If you don't like the fact that beta testers provide feedback that causes changes in the developers' "original vision", then by all means say so, but I don't understand the point of making up random sh*t to basically libel those beta testers. Be honest with yourself: It's not like you would have felt happier if the changes introduced by the beta testers were provably GOOD, right? Because that's not the point. The point is that changes were made, and the original vision has been diluted. That's what it's always been about.

More info about this here: http://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/105467468041/combat-is-the-time-when-it-makes-the-most-sense

I think there are different awards for released and upcoming?

I wouldn't call Pillars of Eternity "indie" TBH, but you can vote for it here: http://www.indiedb.com/games/pillars-of-eternity BTW, somebody might want to update that release date.

Nonsense. You don't understand his philosophy. The mirror images can be torn down fairly swiftly with a variety of attacks (including mundane attacks), hence it is not a hard counter. The Mirror Image spell in PoE, all things being equal, is actually more powerful than its AD&D counterpart. Several images with the same poor AC versus one character with very high Deflection that goes down piecemeal with every hit - the former are easier to destroy.

You're overthinking it. It's a game mechanic for stopping circles from going past other circles

Movement is abstracted to some degree. I would say that when a character turns around and retreats in melee, we can imagine that he's actually walking backwards, face towards the enemy, at first.

Osvir: In Blackguards, engagement/attack of opportunity works in precisely the opposite way. You will not get a disengagement attack for retreating 180 degrees away from an opponent, but you will if you try to slide by/walk around an opponent. I would say that that probably makes more sense, since the stated goal of the engagement mechanic is to stop characters from walking past you. If they're retreating away from you, they're not getting past you!

+1 to WYSIWYG looting. -1000 to random breakage of loot, are you people out of your minds

Pre-order items revealed: http://steamcommunity.com/games/291650/announcements/detail/204115362624205025

This is an odd myth that I've seen many people repeat, and I don't understand where it came from. Most single player RPGs, both classic and modern, have been poorly balanced. If you want to understand what has changed in RPGs since 2002, look at the money. Streamlining an RPG to make it more suitable for a mass audience means more money. Balancing an RPG, on the other hand - who cares? It's not a high priority for anyone. Genres where balance is actually a serious concern are strategy games and MMOs, where good balancing is often praised. tl;dr "Evil balance" is a boogeyman. At worst, it's a marketing buzzword that AAA devs threw at you to justify simplifying and streamlining their mechanics. ("Oblivion will have less skills than Morrowind, but they'll be better balanced!" Yeah, no they weren't.)

There are actually plenty of classic/iconic D&D spells that comply quite nicely with the no-hard-counters philosophy. For example, the Mirror Image spell, a mainstay of low level mage combat in Baldur's Gate, is an archetypal "soft counter" - very powerful, but still defeatable by a variety of means.

Are you the same Archangel from the Wasteland 2 forums? If you are...are you starting to notice a pattern here, man?

Reposting this here because it's such a great idea

I'm pretty sure that when people complain about "desynchronized rounds" it's because they think they're pausing more because their characters don't finish doing everything at the same time - something that was never the case in the IE games. The spell duration descriptions in the IE games, which were given inconsistently in terms of rounds, turns, etc, were pretty bad.

The "desynchronized rounds" thing is a red herring. IE rounds were also desynchronized. Your party members were not synchronized dancers who slashed at enemies simultaneously in perfect unison. You're just not used to the different lengths of rounds in this game yet. Re: difficulty, I'd be okay with the Medreth battle being harder, I guess. In general, NPC party battles should be the centerpieces of difficulty in this game. Josh Sawyer himself has made statements to that effect.