Stun
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I'm using the D&D rule set. Yes. Because that's what was cited. Had someone come on here and said "Icewind dale shoe horned your Builds" or Planescape Torment Shoe horns your builds", my argument would have been totally different, assuming I bothered to respond. Not at all. We were discussing builds and the effects of the Attributes on them. There's nothing stopping a developer from accurately implementing all the uses for intelligence that are listed in the D&D player's handbook or the DM's guide. And if they did, it'd probably be the greatest cRPG ever made. And you'd see a lot less dump-statting being done by power gamers in that game. I thought we were discussing the value of stats for the purposes of combat? Survival, heal, spot, and listen don't have combat purposes? Sure they do. Again, maybe they didn't in, say, Icewind dale 2, but they were designed to in the D&D rule set. Your Spot skill can let you see where that enemy rogue is hiding his dagger or which of his pockets has that vial of poison he's coating his weapon with. Listen helps you get an awareness edge over an enemy group, so that they don't ambush you and gain all those potentially nasty initiative/surprise bonuses. Heal lets you stop a downed ally (or even yourself) from dying. Survival lets you know your terrain better (ie, the battle field; and what you can use in it that may give you an edge, or a disadvantage) I don't believe so. Rogues have a starting bonus but after that their skills in Mechanics and Stealth don't increase any faster than other classes. That may have been changed though. It hasn't changed. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3593502&userid=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=3#post424534478 What do you think that starting bonus is? It's exclusive to rogues, which means right from the start they'll be better than the other classes at it, and can continue to be better if they keep putting points in it. What we *don't* know yet is whether any of the Attributes will affect success/failure of something like Stealth. In D&D it did. -
And that's exactly how it is in PoE, as well. Josh flat out said that every class can sneak (for example) but none will excel at it as well as rogues. And spot checks, Listen Checks, Survival, Heal, Sense motive and probably a half dozen more I'm forgetting at the moment . For everyone. And then there's Monks. Wisdom increases the DC of their stunning blows and quivering palms, as well as improves their armor class. Wait a minute. Is it your contention that the attributes in PoE will be more useful (like, literally have more uses) than they do in D&D? Really? Do list us all the uses for Constitution in PoE. all 2 of them. Then lets discuss How it is in D&D. Boy, you sure are stating a ton of bizarre claims here. Either that or your D&D knowledge does not extend past its various lackluster computer game implementations. In my Pen and Paper days, stats like intelligence and wisdom were of primary importance to any class who wishes to solve any complex problem that arises in the wilds, or in a dungeon. Listen, I know it's cool and all to jump on the D&D sux band wagon. And I don't mind that in the slightest. But do me a favor. Get your facts straight.
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That's not even remotely true. In fact, PoE's system is very similar to D&D's. Its class roles are probably more Defined though. (which isn't necessarily a good thing at all) In D&D, if you dumped Wisdom on your Monk and put those points into Strength instead, you ended up with a high damage output Monk who's Quivering Palm and Stunning Blows were weak. And if you put those points into Dexterity, your monk did less damage, but the trade off was that he was a defensive beast who evades everything and can't be hit except very rarely. And if you made a high intelligence Fighter or Barbarian, they got more skill points on level up. And the sky's the limit on what that could produce. Sneak, lockpicking, trap disarming, and tumble are all skills in D&D, and thus, a huge chunk of the rogue skillset is available to the high intelligence Barbarian or Fighter if he wants it. In D&D, all classes benefit from Constitution.(health + Fortitude saves) And all classes benefit from Dexterity (Armor class + Attack score bonusses for missile weapons and finessed weapons.) And Wisdom (will saves). The only stat in D&D that the majority of classes can dump without any combat penalties is Charisma, and what a surprise, there's no charisma stat in POE. Lets see things as they are, now. The only significant difference between the two systems is that unlike PoE, D&D lets you multi-class. Which, interestingly enough, forces the stats to be more valuable. (ie. a mage who multi-classes to fighter will suddenly have more need for Strength; A Cleric who multi-classes to Mage, will have more need to pump intelligence etc.)
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Hmm... interesting. I didn't know this. So... 1 talent every 3 levels? That's it? So with an exp cap of 12th level, we'll only be able to choose 4 talents. Ok, unless these talents are super powerful, I don't quite see how a player can use them to make their characters much different from their base class roles. As for talents being handed out via quests... I'm ok with that, I suppose. Although it would be silly if such talents were feats of great human physical prowess. Like say...Whirlwind Attack or Weapon Finesse "hey, I just found and returned Bob's missing family heirloom. Now I can suddenly do a spinning move with my sword that hits 4 enemies at once! 3x a day! Sweet."
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Well, see, we originally went off topic by talking about class imbalance. But then that got derailed when someone said that the IE games are a cakewalk on the first playthrough. And now we're discussing lich killing tactics in Baldurs Gate 2.
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What weapon were you using? Edit: Actually the City Gate Lich's AI is set to Gate in a Pit Fiend when hurt. Did Your Kensai also fight a Pit Fiend?
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lol If you knew my history on these forums of defending and vocally (noisily) promoting the pre-buffing ritual whenever Josh proclaims it 'degenerate behavior', you wouldn't make such a grotesquely off-the-mark assumption. Stop tripping, now. No one abuses buffs more than me. I invented Buffing. But the thing with Clerics is that they've got their defense game covered already. They can wear any armor, and they can use all the fancy accessories. And while they can obviously pile Protection spells on top of that (especially when soloing), those spells are most useful when used on other party members. But that's called "support". It's not how I measure class over-poweredness in BG2. I measure class power by how much of a "foot print" they can make on the battle field - how much pure death and destruction they can inflict upon an encounter -- and how efficiently they can do away with something that's engaging them. And using that criteria, Clerics are only above average on the scale in BG2. They cannot objectively be grouped on the same level as Mages, Specialized Mages, Wild Mages, and Sorcerers. Period. Paladins are more powerful than clerics. They're better because they can use Carsomyr. To prove the accuracy of that claim, lets talk about.... Liches, again. Clerics can eventually insta-kill liches with their turn undead power, but that won't happen until well into Throne of Bhaal if you're running a party of 5 or 6. Until then, they have to be content with casting Sunray, which, contrary to your earlier claim, won't work on a spell-protected lich. Which means you've got to get up close, then you have to cast it FAST before the lich's Contingencies fire. A Paladin with Carsomyr, on the other hand, is under no such limitations. Carsomyr utterly dispels whatever it touches, and then the Paladin's natural melee skills take over. And this also applies to any mage encounter....of which there are MANY in BG2. But on to the important stuff! There you go again, pretending that you're one of the developers of the infinity engine games who knows, better than the rest of us, what developer design intentions are. In fact, the IE games are supposed to be played by a party size of the player's choice. From 1 to 6. Says so in each of the game manuals. And this comment from you, a self-proclaimed D&D veteran, is quite odd. Standard fare in D&D is 1) 1 fighter, 2) 1 Rogue, 3) 1 cleric 4) The mage. That's 4, not 6. The IE games claim to be adaptions of D&D, so...
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Liches are immune to breach.
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In BG2 I'd rank clerics below Kensai or Paladins. They only get 1 attack per round and their weapon choices are too limited. Their spell choices lack the *fire power* that make Sorcerers and mages so great. I'd rank Druids slightly above Clerics due to mage killing spells like Insect plague, and defensive spells like Iron skins but again, a decently built Berserker or Inquisitor will have an easier time in BG2.
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I'm pretty sure that, by that, he means "not supposed to beat." It's not really that complex. If you were supposed to beat everything the second you laid eyes upon it, then that would be the opposite of how it actually is. "Not supposed to" is not the same thing as "supposed to not," which is what you're arguing against. You're suggesting that he's saying taking stuff on "early" (relatively) is wrong, and waiting 'til later is right, when he's merely suggesting that neither is right or wrong. Huh?
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Not shocking, just incoherent. Are you saying that the vast majority of players are not supposed to kill all hostile enemies when they see them? Or are you saying that in the vast majority of RPGs, hostile enemies you encounter are optional? Yes, That's precisely what I'm saying. And you should probably get with the program, because PoE is being developed in "my strange universe". Josh Sawyer has stated that the toughest encounters WILL be optional. Alright. The Level cap for BG2 is 2,950,000. With the Throne of Bhaal Expansion, it is 8,000,000. This translates, for clerics, to 20th Level and 40th Level respectively. As for how long it takes a cleric, in a party of 6, to reach 14th level: I'd say about 30 f*cking hours... or more. Now, I don't know about you, but for me, that's too long to be without Daystar. Or the staff of the Magi. Animate dead? First off, Skeletons aren't magic resistant (didn't you say magic resistant summons?). Second, What can a lone Skeleton Warrior do to a lich....besides NOTHING AT ALL? Then you have made an erroneous claim. Beast Masters (a druid kit) are among the weakest classes in AD&D, and they most definitely are the most worthlessly underpowered class in BG2.
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It's *lich*, and I would think the answer to that is obvious: FOR THE CHALLENGE (not to mention the fact that the City Gates lich drops Daystar and a wand of cloudkill, and a ring of invisibility) What do you mean by "not supposed to beat"? BG2 is a minimally chapter-gated open world game. Where are you getting these make-believe developer intentions from? Your head? Your ass? No one can cast Sunray until they reach 14th level, or until they get a hold of Daystar (which you have to kill a lich for) So basically what you're saying here is that many of BG2's encounters are flat out HARD until you're pretty darn far into the game. Yes. That's true. That's also NOT AT ALL what you were saying just a couple of pages ago. Summons? Wait. Wait one stinkin minute. You ever actually fought a BG2 lich? There is no lich in BG2 that doesn't immediatly cast death spell the second he sees an enemy summon. And Death spell insta kills all summons, regardless of their magic resistance. ^^Standard definition of Cake walk right there! I have. 78 times. I was trying to make it easy on you, since mages are the most powerful class in BG2. Or at least that was your claim 3 pages ago, when you were ranting about how unbalanced the classes are in the IE games.
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Say what? Liches are standard Chapter 2 bestiary material. They're available for any character who just exited Chateau Irenicus to fight. And most first time BG2 players DO Run right into the Lich at the city gate tavern early. Your claim was that Combat in BG2 is a cake walk. So why are you now saying that common chapter 2 encounters in BG2 can ever be a challenge for someone with a D&D background? LOL <sigh> You are a disgustingly dishonest debater. And you have *twice* admitted, without even realizing it, that *even you* see BG2 as an unusually (even unfairly) difficult game for first playthrough gamers. And I'm going to prove it. Ok, The standard character level upon completion of Irenicus' dungeon is 8th level (9th if you imported from BG1, 10th if you imported and you soloed the dungeon). Lets use the last one. Suppose you're a 10th level Wizard (or sorcerer or cleric, or any spell caster). You gather equal level companions. Lets say, 2 more mages (Edwin and Nalia or Jan) Or any party of 6 or less you want. But they are 10th level. Now, lets say you rush to the tavern at the city gates to take on the Lich there. (liches are quite common in BG2. They're everywhere. So don't even try to peddle that moronic "rare occasion" nonsense on us again) Do tell me how you're going to defeat it, considering that Liches in Bg2 are immune all spells 6th level or lower, and no one in your party possesses spells beyond 5th level. Oh, and do make sure you can do it in 20 rounds or less and that you don't use any obvious metagaming knowledge that someone playing BG2 for the first time couldn't possibly have. After all, BG2 is a Cakewalk. Shouldn't take much effort for someone with a D&D background to dispose of a generic LICH in BG2. Should it? The podium is yours, my chain-buffing BG2 God.
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^Indeed. But the real punchline is in the fact that people expecting a tougher challenge than what we got in the IE games will be spectacularly disappointed. Josh Sawyer has already said that he's designing PoE to be easier than Icewind Dale 2.
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Rare circumstances? I just listed virtually half the boss battles in chapter 2/3. And Golems are Common. Kangaxx guards the ring of Gaxx and The Twisted Rune guard the Staff of the magi. And the Kayardi/Entu/Mogadish encounter is not even optional if one of your casters wishes to acquire the Mage stronghold. Moreover, you're lying to yourself and everyone here if you claim that any of them are cakewalks, especially when they're done straight out of Irenicus' dungeon on a first playthrough....which the game allows. This is what BG2's combat picture is about. You can't just brush these things off as "exceptions" or "rare circumstances". They define BG2. I don't *think* they're a threat. They are OBJECTIVELY a threat. Even to players on their 600th playthrough. They're a threat by definition. Durlag's tower, for example, has at least 2 traps that are total party insta-kills with no saving throw and a disarm requirement of 90. Also, there are dozens of lightning bolt traps placed in narrow, indoor areas. They also equate to instant kills for those not protected from electricity, due to the way Bioware has decided to implement the ricochet effect with lightning bolt. And BG2? BG2 has the spectrum. There are Imprisonment traps. (No saving throw and no MR resistance checks for those.) There are finger of death traps, disintegrate traps. Level drain traps. (Yaga Shura's temple has 2 level drain traps that cannot be disarmed) You can....LIE, again, and claim that, on your first playthrough, you managed find & disarm, or avoid, or resist them all with cakewalk ease. But you'd be doing just that: Lying....to a crowd of people who know better. Aah! and here come the caveats. Cakewalk, my ass. The game provides us a legit challenge from the outset. So lets (via meta gaming) hold off on doing those challenges until we're powerful enough, then lets come here and complain that the game is a cakewalk. I beg your pardon, sir, but isn't that the cost of using spell casters? That they're very ordinary early on, and only come to true power later? Well there you go. BG2 is not a cakewalk. You have to pay your dues to achieve such combat dominance. Straw man.
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Aside from Kangaxx, The Twisted Rune, and the various dragons? (kinda hard to spam spells early when you've been wing buffeted) Ok, how about....The Kayardi, Mogadish and co. Battle in the Planar Sphere. That battle challenged me immensely on my first BG2 playthough. So I have a question. How exactly did you "cakewalk" yourself to a victory in that one on your first playthough? (well, besides having one hand on your mouse and the other hand feverishly flipping through the strategy guide?) Did your Vast D&D knowledge tip you off that one of those halflings would have an unlimited range psyonic attack that only 1 spell in the entire game can defend against? And that another would be an 18th level arch mage? (Halfling arch mages. were those common in your pen and paper campaigns?) Lets talk about the first time you did BG1's Durlag's tower. Did your decades of D&D rule set experience help your casters spot and disarm every single trap in that dungeon? And if not, then how can you call something a cakewalk when it catches you unaware and wipes half your party out in a split second? Well, I'd say any high level Golem mob battle won't be a cakewalk on the first playthough of BG2, if you're using a party of mostly casters who spam spells as fast as they can. I'd also point to the dead magic zones in Watchers keep. And I'd remind you that BG2 took great liberties with the implementation of its spell effects. Knowing D&D will not automatically tip you off to just how useful any given spell is or isn't in bg2. Again, only metagaming will.
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Yep. Same. And there's a good reason for that. The only kind of edge that having years of familiarity with D&D will give you in the IE games is that you'll hit the ground running. There will be no learning curve. You'll know what spells are best; you'll know what class builds are optimal (ie. fighters need Strength, Clerics need wisdom etc); And you'll what kind of party composition to use to insure that you'll always have the bases covered. And that's all. Vast D&D experience will not fully prepare you for everything you'll be facing in BG2. Only meta-knowledge can do that. When you're in Kangaxx's tomb for the first time and he appears, your pen and paper experience of Tomb of Horrors will not make that fight easier. Chances are you'll still suffer a total party wipe your first time because you didn't know that you were about to face a Demi-lich, and on the off chance that you managed to guess correctly, your D&D knowledge still won't help you because Kangaxx breaks all the AD&D lore on Demiliches. He's NOT by the book. Baudolino05 is spouting nonsense.
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Balance is important for ALL kinds of games. Only through balance players can get a fair challenge during all their playthroughs. [/size] Let's say that a particular game allows players to build blatantly overpowered parties, like D&D games do, and you build your party that way, because of your deep understanding of the system or simply because you are lucky. What do you earn? A couple of hours of fun during your planning phase and dozens of hours of unchallenging (= boring) combats during the rest of your game. Great trade-off, umh? And with an underpowered party? Probably a frustrating experience, and certainly something that an additional difficulty level could do better. [/size] A decently balanced game (of course, perfect balance is out of reach in RPGs. It's damn hard to achieve even in games with no character development), with enough difficulty options, can provide a fair challenge to any kind of party/player. A blatantly unbalanced game simply can't... [/size] Let me guess: this is where you're going to come here and claim that Baldur's Gate 2 was a disappointingly easy cakewalk the first time you played it. Yeah, let me save you some time: Bullsh*t. You know as well as everyone else here that Class/Party Builds are not the only factor that determines difficulty. They're not even the main factor. Encounter design is. Gear design and placement are also factors, as are enemy AI and pacing. And then after all that, there's the meta knowledge that comes from Replaying the game several times. Sarex beat me to it: The IE games did not suffer from the flaw of being too easy, and documented historical fact proves that (Bioware explicitly made Throne of Bhaal easy because of the mass of fan complaints that the main game was too difficult.) Perhaps here in 2014, their combat suffers from the extreme meta knowledge gained from people replaying them for the 875th time....or more. But that's a commentary about how much the masses LOVED those games, not about how the lack of balance ruined them.
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Fine, I'll drop that aspect of the discussion. Lets go back to discussing Balance. Why is that, exactly? It's a single player party based game, remember? If your Thief isn't as powerful as your mage then what does it matter? You can have both in your party. Or double of both. Or none of either one. You can also form unlimited tactics and game plans around such un-even party makeup. You can have one be the support for the other. You can Challenge yourself to beat the game using nothing but under-powered characters. Or you can powergame by making a full party of nothing but the over-powered class. Balance does nothing in a single player, party-based game but LIMIT the player's freedom to do the above.
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False. This balance discussion hasn't changed or deviated one iota since that post of yours. You can't even claim that you were simply going on an off-topic tangent since, after your balance rant, you were asked for superior examples. Perhaps you could honestly answer the question posed to you now. You claimed the IE games were imbalanced messes. Can you name me a game you liked that had balanced combat? A false on the first claim, True on the second. lol. D&D is imbalanced by design because the classes are not supposed to be equal. Lore dictates that some professions be more powerful than others.....you know, like it is in real life. I wouldn't call that a mess. As for the second claim....I'll take your word for it. I'm not a dream interpreter True. But that's pointless to this discussion because the only reason you gave for their 'superiority' is that they were turn based. Which doesn't mean anything. Turn based doesn't suddenly make a combat system balanced.
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^Bullsh*t. You were discussing this: How's the contrary preferable? Does anyone really miss the "your wizard sucks at the beginning of the campaign and after few levels automatically kicks asses better than any other class" thing of the oldest D&D editions? [/size] As long as classes have specific strengths and weaknesses the overall balance HAS to be maintained, level after level, from the beginning to the end of the campaign. At least in a game that is about party-based "tactical-challenging combats". If PoE were a White Wolf like RPGs, I wouldn't mind about overall balance, but it's not the case...[/size] ^True or False: In ToEE, mages are standard D&D fare. They start off sucking and later become the most powerful class. True or false: In ToEE, Rogues are also standard D&D fare. They're like fighters but weaker. True or false: You cited old D&D ruleset imbalance as the reason why you didn't like the IE games' combat. Yet you praised ToEE's combat even though the old D&D rule set imbalance is just as glaringly prominent in it as it is in every single infinity engine game. Hypocrite.
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ToEE, [...} HA! Hypocrisy. ToEE not only uses the D&D rule set, but it 'suffers' from the exact same class balance issues that you cite as flaws in the IE games. Mages, for example, are utterly worthless early on and then become bar none the most powerful class in the game by the time they reach about 7th or 8th level. Rogues in ToEE are exactly the same as they are in BG1, IWD1 and IWD2 in that you have little choice but to use them in battle the same way you use a fighter. Consequently, you notice right off the bat that they're not as good. ToEE Also gives you the option to do away with the inherent weaknesses of any class.... by multiclassing. You have a mage. Mages suck in melee. But no problem. Simply take a few fighter levels and BOOM. Now you can cast mirror image and be unhittable, then rush into battle with your sword to take out the mooks that your fireball didn't already fry. Personally I see all of this as a huge win. But then again, it's what I loved about the IE games too. ToEE IS turn based though. Maybe that's the real reason why you think its combat is better? if so, then fair enough. But we were discussing balance - which doesn't have anything to do with whether a game is TB or RTwP.
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Why would you want to? I couldn't say. But why would *I* want to? Well, for one, Because Sometimes I'm a role player and optimal combat effectiveness does not factor into my decision to play a certain class, and second, because sometimes I'm a total competator who wants to stroke his own ego and see if he can beat the game on its highest setting with a class that everyone knows is underpowered. 10 years ago, I beat Ascension on Insane with a solo Beast Master. I still brag about that today. (And by the way, that may have been the most satisfying BG2 run I ever did) That's why.
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I disagree. The tanks in PoE are there to be damage soaks and to occupy people. That's why they have the ability to "lock down" 2-3 mooks. The Barb is simply melee AoE DPS. Karkarov is speaking in WoW/MMO terms, complete with the assumption of an aggro mechanic. And that's..... Exhibit A. MMO-minded folks measure a game's greatness by how rigidly balanced it is. Understandable, since nothing ruins an MMO faster than one class being more powerful than another. But don't bother reminding these people that PoE is a single player game and thus doesn't need to adhere to such fundamentals. Your reminders will fall on deaf ears.
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It worked great. BG1, BG2, IWD1, and IWD2 are all time classics who's party-based tactical combat was so timelessly good that their mere mention, more than a decade later, has spawned several Kickstarters with record-breaking funding totals. We've already been through this. "Different" and "equal" are not mutually excusive terms. They are not Opposites. One describes what a class *does*, the other describes the results. I'll give you a crude but effective example. Different You have a mage and a fighter. They're different. One uses spells to solve problems, the other uses his armor and weapons to solve problems. But Equal The mage's spells give him the same defensive values as the Fighter's armor and talents, and his spells do the same damage as the fighter's weapons and talents. ^Has to be that way, otherwise people like you will complain that the game is unbalanced, yes?
