Elerond

Video of study made in University of Leeds limitations imposed by full plate And here is study it self http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2011/07/15/rspb.2011.0816.full

Some logic will help usually when you think which claims have basis in reality and which are probably fiction. For example, why people would use armour that don't really protect against one of common weapons on battlefield and which causes them lose much of their ability to fight and which is also most expensive armour in market? And one thing what people also should remember about full plates is that there were battle, ceremonial and jousting version of them. Jousting version of full plates were much heavier and they didn't had same agility as battle and ceremonial versions. Example about jousting armour Example of battlefield version of full plate

When every class in the game has magic, so I don't see why one class should have special restrictions what to wear so that it can cast spells. And removing equipment restrictions don't make wizard as fighter, because even if you can wield sword, it don't mean that you know how to use it. And wearing heavy armour don't make you immortal even if you are wizard. And those who say that wiards should not have armours, because of their protective magic, you should probably read what Josh said about that in his update. Wizards magic is not effective against bullets, which is reason why some wizards in PE's world wear plate armour. And in melee wizard with plate armour will probably lose to fighter who has more skill with sword and can magically enchant his speed and strength. And rogue who can make him or her self to be invisible and insubstantial has great advantage against wizard who focus more to combat than his or her spells. So removing equipment restrictions don't destroy balance between classes when classes are different from what you have seen in D&D.

Here not so good video that show how well stanard 15th century crossbow penetrates armour

That's not how I understood it, do you have a source please? In Health and stamina systems update's thread Josh gives this example http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61533-update-24-less-than-30-hours-to-go-life-and-death-and-audio-cd-soundtrack/page__st__20?do=findComment&comment=1241994

Or not impregnate her and die hero's death as one should. This ending is especially good when you have slaughterd all companions on the way except Morrigan and of course you have destroyed elves in forrest and city, drive dwarfs in civil war, let undead kill most of the Redcliff and killed jarl's son and wife. So you were absolute true hero

Character takes damage to health and stamina from every hit. Stamina don't protect character from health lose.

Long-sword meant any sword with long cutting blade Bastard sword refered to irregular swords or swords of uncertain origin Great Sword is modern term that which don't has any historical preference. But Scottish Claymore in it's Gaelic form (claidheamh mor) means literally great sword, but it was hand and half sword. German's had Zweihänder which literally means two-hander and is sword type what people usually mean when they speak about great swords. So dividing swords to these three types can be very difficult time to time, as there is no specific specs what sword should have that it could be put in one.

Maybe definition what Greeks used is bit too wide "whoever is not Greek is a Barbarian"

Mail is quite easy and cheap to make. Because you only need long and thick enough iron or steel wire, which you circle around rod which has diameter which you want for your links it is long enough to have enough rounds to make links that mail need, then make cut parallel to rod on wire one sidedly. And now you have all links you need to make mail, then you only need to weave them as shirt. I would say that expert weaver can weave at least shirt a day. And then if smith will bother he or she will close all links and that can take another day. And you don't need any real experts to do mails (because I did one and I am very poor smith) Here a video how to make chain mail using steel wire Of course making mail will take much longer if you forge all links invidiually.

This quite morbid video shows why i think Two handed sword shoud have greater damage.Its not best fencing weapon but when it goes dow to choping head of troll its your weapon of choice. You dont want to fance with rapier with him for 10 minutes. You just try to chop as much meat of that m**herf***er as fast and as much as possible In fight one should very rarelly use any sword as meat cleaver, because such blows are easy to anticipate and block especially if blocker is much stronger than wielder. And futhermore heavy blows will tire wielder very quickly. So fighter with two handed sword should use caution and finesse, against bigger and badder opponents. Same goes for single handed sword wielders. So tactics, like hit troll on knee, hope that you broke it and decapitated troll or pierce troll's head when it's down, would be preferable.

What you think about this part and that George Ziets is also a member of PE team? And then back to topic, interview was great, especially that refenrence to scrum and how that will give them good estimate what they can and can't do.

Great information about rapiers and how they developed during in their history and why they came to be obsolete http://www.historynet.com/weaponry-the-rapier.htm And another great article where writer explain how longsword fencing differs from modern fencing.

Yes, I so want to see that Cipher’s lair now. So much so that I almost start to demanding romance to be in PE instead of only preferring it be included

To me most of the fun parts in IE games were "realistic" feeling parts of the game, like how areas were designed so that they looked functional, how most of the equipments had functional look in them, how relationships evolved, how some people had hidden agendas, etc. Most unfun parts of the game for me were those where there was problems with inner logic of the game, like why I can't take Gorion's body to cleric to be resurrected, or why my warrior hit's with quarterstaff like it is baseball bat, why nobody in market place has any money with them, etc. things that broke my suspension of disbelief. Most important thing is not that things follow rules scientific realism, but that they look like they function realistically. It's like magic show if trick looks like that it wasn't real, it is rarely fun to watch, but when it looks like that person really flows in air or is sawed to pieces or takes dove from thin air then it's very entertaining to watch. And here fatastic three bladed sword which shoot blades. What you think is this such weapon which you want to swing in PE?

Some culture specific materials, which other cultures see as inferior like chinese paper armour, in armours could be nice addiyion. Paper armour actually works quite well as MythBusters season 9 episode 12 tells us

High beauty opened some unexpected doors (for example dialog with dark elf leader was quite different with high beaty character ) in the game so I would not say that it is worthless. And pickpocketing was really not worthless skill in high level as you could steal armours npcs weared from them and it also gave some nice short cuts.

I writed down some of my thoughts about fatigue system earlier in this thread

One situation which I can think where this should happen is when party goes against enemies who have numerous ammount of gunpowder weapons as light armours don't give nearly any protection against them, so it would probably be better if most of the character in party have armour that can withstand punishment from oppening volley. This also means that I think that characters should not be able to dodge (at least very weakly) bullets. So best options against gunpowder weapons are heavy armours and invisibility. But as gunpowder weapons are rare, so players should be able to get infromation before hand where they probably will meet many enemies with them and so they can prepare their party accordingly against such threat.

I think mix of different naming types could be best way to approach this subject. Hide armours for example could be named after animal/s which lose their hide in making of the said armour, for example there could be wolf hide, boar hide and bear hide armours and this character same protection as what those animals have in the game. And viable hide armour could come from exotic beast like yeti. But I don't see any bad in that if wrought leather armour is better in end game than armour which is stich from hide without additional protective prosessing. If style will cost in protectiveness, then it will cost. But when it comes to naming wrought armours, in my opinon cultural naming is nice way to do that. Common versions of the armours should have common name, as most of the armourers can do them, but if armour uses special wrought technique, for example similar what was used in Damascus steel weapons, armour should have cultural name that tells orgin place of technique, or where traders buy most of the stuff that is made by using that technique (case of Damascus steel). Or name could came from art styles what are used in armour, like gothic plate. I like cultural names for things because they give setting more life and make armours and weapons sound unique from other systems. And one thing which I like lot is that if it is difficult to say for sure which of the armours is best as they all have things where they excel but they also have things where they don't have such fine performance.

I had to put this commercial here as it shows cutting and thrusting capacities, but you can also see its weaknesses and probably could deduce why it sometime better use finesse instead of raw power. End of the video you can see that great sword is also good throwing weapon

I loved in Overlord how your treasure chamber showed how much room that million gold coins really need Poor Overlord Rich Overlord

I think this depends how über other magic weapons in the game are. So in my opinion magic should improve muskets and other gunpowder weapons with same amount as it improves other weapons.

Fixed or slow increasing. In fixed sytem there could always be some methods to increase your attributes like manuals in BG, or perks and medical procedures in fallout, but increase should be very limited. In slow increasing system you could maybe get one attribute point per level or per multiple levels, character should never be able to double his, her or its orginal attribute value. In my opinion systems that uses either of this systems it's much easier to keep on balance and game designer don't have any need for such comical level scalings what you can see for example in TES IV: Oblivion, and this is because character will not chage god-like creature so easily (health points increase on every level can of course make you somewhat immortal in high levels as we are seen in Fallout 2).

Agree about armor, damage types and skills affecting fight. But how you make same fighting style for 2H sword and for rapier? You mean you will swing rapier same as you would do with 2H sword? not going to happend and its going agains your own philosophy. And again you just cant put out different damages on different weapons. A lot of people in cRPGs love to gather more powerfull weapons. If ''power'' of weapong doesnt exist it will be boring to finding still same stat sword only with different skin. You guys would be great at designing something like Demon Soul but this is old skool cRPG (mostly based on P&P) Rapier with 2H style, character probably will get mostly negative bonuses from that as rapiers are not usually designed to be used with two hands, but if character wants to be stupid then why not? And of course there can be better weapons, for example steel sword would give more bonus to armor penetration than iron sword. So good sword don't make character become a swordmaster, but makes swordmaster work much easier. There are P&P systems that have more complex and realistic combat systems than that which I designed in 5 minutes (so it's far from perfect). And in my opinion old school don't mean that you must follow in D&D footsteps, in my opinion when you design entirely new rpg system you should probably take account what things you love in old systems and what things in your opinion are ridiculous or could been done better and then try to do fix them.