Jarmo

Ok, I like the post and suggestions except for this pair which I really *hate* in all RPG's. It's a crutch for designers who want to give the players huge rewards, but in the same time want to keep the rewards meaningless. A silly game economy where a sword costs a 1000 gp, but is only worth 1 gp when you sell it. As if nobody would just buy the swords from adventurers for 50 GP and sell them to other adventurers for 200 GP, thus bankrupting the damn greedy swordsmith. And no. We're not talking about purchasing masterwork items and selling bumpy orc swords. We're talking about the masterwork items that were just used to full effect a minute ago by the evil knights.

Also will one kind of weapons and armor be more prone to wear than some other kind? Say, you have two weapons, a razor sharp scimitar and a solid steel bar. If you hack metal objects and skeletons with them, will both lose effectiveness at the same rate? Is there a reason to rather use a maul to break down a door than to use a bastard sword? I've gathered one downside to scale armor (compared to mail) was how it'd break down pretty fast when hit (but would give similar good protection when new and maintained).

Flasé That'd make sense if you were aiming with a bow, but I don't think things work that way in cose combat. I'm willing to be corrected if you or someone else is an expert in broadsword fighting.

Durability in itself sounds ok. Why shouldn't that happen. But raises the question of artifact and legendary items and such, will they wear out, can you repair them? Take a few swings with Narsil and it's halfway down to breaking? Will it then break in two after a few more swings?* And then I'll reforge it back to full glory with my 2 skill points and a village forge? Also, the notion that crafting skill prevents item wear is just bad. Clearly comes from "lets balance stuff and invent uses for skills" instead of figuring out how things should work. Putting a feature in that improves gameplay but doesn't make sense, gets thumbs down from me. * doesn't matter if it's 6 swings or 600, the same principle applies

Don't know if I saw the original or revised ending for ME3 but I liked it a lot anyway. FO:NV didn't have a good ending, huge battle and then choose from a couple of choices none of which appeal much. Red Dead Redemption had a good ending and endgame. The Witcher had abysmally horrible grind-through-masses lead to the end, which in itself was pretty ok. PS:T much like the witcher, though the final ending was better and lead to it maybe even worse. Largely, I'd like to see the big-huge-long-end-battle-thing go away already. Or at least skip the hour long pre-battle leading up to the main event.

When speaking of byzantines all the time, I'd love to see Greek Fire flamethrowers. Total War image: And not half bad looking armors either. I love the faceplate style of the first image. -- Yeah TW series is not a golden benchmark for historical accuracy, but I gather these things existed and at least could exist, which should be good enough for a CRPG. A firearm, costs something, ammo costs plenty something. Casts an equivalent of burning hands.

Which brings to mind. I'd love to see naptha filled firebombs and greek fire flamethrowers.

In the equation you have bows, proper longbows, composite bows, crossbows and firearms. Bows, being self bows or shortbows or hunting bows or whatever you call them, simply made things, were the first to disappear from battlefield, being replaced by crossbows. It's easy to make a bow and pretty easy to learn to shoot with it with some small accuracy, but it's hard to make a bow with high pull strength that lobs the arrow with good force. Weak self bows had very limited armor penetration and being ineffective against armored (even if only leather or padded armor) opponents. Better to use a crossbow. English type longbows were rather special and it took a heck of a long time to learn to use it. Mostly because it's pretty darn hard to make a 100lb pull with a couple of fingers, repeatedly, while maintaining the aim. And in many battle situations, the faster rate of fire compared to a crossbow doesnt matter much. If you can loose your 100 arrows in 10 minutes, then what do you do the rest of the day and is the crossbowman much worse off if it takes 30 mins for him to do the same? By my reconing, firearms were seen to be kind of better crossbows with some drawbacks. Not by such a huge margin better they'd have obsoleted either crossbows or longbows any time soon. And the difference may have been mostly a kind of moral superiority kind of a thing. Composite bows then, were limited the same way as longbows. Lots of time and effort to learn to wield a powerful one. And they had the drawback of breaking apart in wet environment, a dry climate weapon.

There's different ways about it. The classic RPG evil, a guy who seeks to release all the demons of hell and end the world in flames. He'll do dark rites and sacrifice virgins. Because he was bullied in childhood and there's so much suffering in the world. Greedy evil. Someone wo wants money and/or power and is willing to go to great lengths to gain these. He'll steal and murder and lie and cheat and stab everybody in the back. But doing evil is not the object, it's just means to an end. He might just stop doing evil if he got all the power and money there is. Cruel evil. Someone who just enjoys seeing people get hurt, burning villages, killing the men and being very impolite to the ladies. He might enjoy a life of luxyry and might even seek it, but just seeing people injured is it's own reward. This one could easily be a lawful character who keeps his word, maybe a top henchman for the two above evils. Uninhibited unrestrained violence evil, aka short nerves. Likes money and doesn't mind seeing suffering at all, but those are beside the point. He could be a nobleman or a hero. The main thing is, if he's insulted or slighted in the least, or if he thinks he is, he'll flip out, total uncontrollable rage where he'd smash the offenders head to the ground and stab him hundred times in the face with a dull spoon or whatever happens to be at hand. Smartass evil. aka not really evil at all. Someone who makes and impolite conversationist, makes inconsiderate points and is generally just gets in the nerves of everyone. Maybe he's just an **** or maybe he has a twisted sense of humor. Probably doesn't really do much evil at all. Or maybe does, if there's a chance to push some cow down the cliff and it'd be just too fun to see and hear to not do. I'd be happy to see the last four as player choices, but wouldn't see the need to accommodate the first one. Personally I probably wouldn't pick the evil choices, but I feel all the better about my "good" choices if I saw there's an option. And it'd make me all the more noble if the "evil" choices, or some of them, actually had some benefit to them. Except I might give smartass answers from time to time...

Mass increases pretty fast, being cubic-system-thingical. A bull can weigh 5 times as much as a pony and I'd still consider them to be in the ballpark. 10 ton elephant compared to a 40 ton dinosaur would obviously be smaller, but not by a huge margin. 20 times more... well that I'd already call a lot lot, 10 times more even. Maybe double the height and length and width and it's what I'd call a big major difference.

Were we on different physics then when Argentinosaurus roamed the earth? I'll rephrase that to a lot lot bigger than elephants.. But really, mostly even the biggest dinosaurs are not that much bigger, a longer neck and a fatter tail for sure. A quick google says Argentinosaurus is a couple of bones and a lot of speculation, might pan out or not.

Or maybe there'd be realistic dragons. Giant crocodiles or something. Real world physics don't allow for much bigger creatures than elephants anyway. T-Rex sized opponent would be a tough nut to crack, you just wouldn't be able to hack it to death with a sword, any more than you could beat an attacking rhino with a sword.

To be fair, his origins are explained in game pretty thoroughly. Motivation is left a bit ambiguous, whether he was evil to begin with is left unresolved.

Well I agree if the stat scores represent potential, then they probably should remain largely what they are. That's not how I see it though. But as for the other arguments, no. And yes, if we take D&D scores and 18 is the most dexterous anyone can naturally be, then I'd still be all happy to see the score go higher with XP or other things. Maybe someone learns a new way to train acrobatics and gains up to 20 and maybe you can do it just by adventuring. I'd be willing to accept a cap of some kind, if necessary. Say... 20 (or 24) is the highest anyone can ever be. But that'd not be necessary for me, I'm happy to see adventurers go beyond normal abilities, so a characters in the teen levels would be above everybody else. Now depending on how the world is built, there might or might not be other people of similar levels and stat levels. Maybe the kings champions or high priests would be higher still, completely outclassing all common people. There now, I think I've stated my position now as well as I can. I understand the position of those who want lesser and those who want higher stat progression. There's no winning where it's all down to opinions, even if my opinion is clearly the most correct one.

Besides, don't remember if BG, but at least Icewind Dale had Oil of Fiery Burning and NWN had Firebombs. Any peasant with couple of thousand GP's could get a load of those and burn those same knights. And all weapons are going to be balanced and likely have low damage. You could take a knight out with a single crossbow bolt, but that's not how RPG's play it out.

I'd suggest explosives and shrapnel shouldn't be very effective against armor. In game terms, rather than say.. damaga of 6d6, they'd do 6 instances of 1x6.

Yea! This definitely. And also yea! for intuitive management of character saves.

Not going very far into fantasy myself, but silver bullets? Holy silver bullets? And to unnecessarily tie things into old economics/currency discussions, will a silver bullet cost the extra work of forging a silver coin into a bullet? So maybe not 10 bullets for 1GP but maybe 5 for 1GP?

BTW, it was just the other day when playing M&B:Fire&Sword I realized the "nose-piece" in these kinds of helmets is movable (not in game though). So you can rise it out of the way to a kind of a decorative plume in normal use and lower to give slashing protection when going into combat. Seriously simple and clever thing, yet it took about a 2000 years of helmet use to be invented.

To my knowledge RuneQuest system has never transferred to a CRPG (King of Dragon Pass is awesome but doesn't count). That'd have a ready system for somewhat realistic combat. The downside is you'd be dying a lot. What I'd really like to see is a Jagged Alliance type of adventurer company management game in a fantasy setting. Then losing your best wizard to a random crossbow bolt would suck, but it'd be par for the course.

Good non-linear design in many of Fallout 3 and NV locations. As much so you hardly think of them as levels. There's this prison compound, you have gate entrance, but after that its several buildings you can enter in any order and the buildings themselves have many routes to take. Some of the old vaults are pretty linear, but many are not. There's a bunch of city-based modules for Neverwinter Nights, those are mostly non-linear, you just have some place you need to go but many ways to get there. It's pretty much immediately when you move from a city or castle or vault or such to a more "dungeonish" location, that developer goes from I'm developing a location mindset to I'm creating a level mindset, which is a bit of a shame.

In theory the answer would be: Because you went through turbulations nobody else in the entire world has experienced. You were pulled into a magical vortex of events that thoroughly changed what you are down to the core level of your being. .. if it's that kind of story. In practice though, I agree. One point per level sounds a bit much, at least if we're talking D&D point scale. But if the base stats were 3d12 instead of standard 3d6, then a point per level wouldn't be too much. Or if it was a choice between a new ability or a stat point, then maybe that'd be fine as well, because it just wouldn't be feasible to go all strength and skip all new abilities.

Well it's going to be abstracted hell and back anyway, gaining abilities and skills when adventuring. But basically... why not? You're getting better all the time, why not get better statswise as well? If you're a fighter, we'd pretty much expect you to gain new skills during the course. You'd hit three times when you used to hit once, you do more damage with each hit. Makes sense to me you'd have gained some strength or dexterity alongside the skill points. Or if you're a rogue and learn new leaps and bounds, get a lot better at picking locks and all rogue things, Why not gain some dexterity, or charisma from doing charismatic things. Or if you're a mage and do a lot of research and apply the research and generally you're being clever all the time. Maybe you not only learn new knowledge, but you also learn to be better at learning? More int or more wis. Now the system could of course either track what you do and only allow you to spend the points on stats you've been using. Or the system could be rigid and only give fighters STR, DEX or CON, while rogues could choose from DEX, INT or CHA. But why go there. Better the player gets to make the choice. It's not like an average player of crazy barbarian would go putting points in WIZ or CHA. Most likely they'd go appropriately into STR or CON.

It's not like I'd remember Elanees stats, but I very much disagree with the whole sentiment anyway. Going on a hunch, Elanee would have pretty bad wisdom for a druid, somewhat good dexterity and charisma, other stats mediocre? Or that's what I'd think looking at her and considering her actions. Nothing bad in giving companions like an intelligent charismatic fighter with completely mediocre combat stats, that'd just be the way he'd be. It's much more important to me the stats comply with the image and feel I get from the character, instead of being well built for the classes central role.

That is, but that's still something that's humanly possible, so I was just using it as a benchmark to something after which you're definitely moving to fantasy. Or to put it in another way, if a normal pretty strong guy (say STR 10) can lift 100 kg, I'm sure he can lift 200 kg (STR 20) after a couple of years of weightlifting practice. But I'd be all ok if he'd put all possible stats into STR during the game and took strong back and impressive physique feats or whatever, he'd be lifting 500 kg by the game end. Now if PE is going to be low fantasy game, I'm fine with the party and characters remaining within the same limits as other members of society, so by the game end, the protagonist would still get kicked all over the place by the kings champion knight. But if it's a high fantasy OMG the demon lord is attacking the capitol hill, you have to stop it ... then I'd rather not hear them continuing with ... or else we'll have to send in town militia, because they're all way more powerful and skilled than your ragtag bunch of meatshields.