Jarmo

And what if he finds that holy avenger sword before you do? No, what he gets is some of the gear, the part I approve him having. And even then, I might take it back later... --- Hmmm.. maybe a slave market would be a better place to get companions than adventurers lodge?

Lamellar was used a lot by byzantines and east from there (nicely in PE timeframe). Vulnerable to upwards or downwards strokes, mail is better there. But a better protection against arrows (no holes, though a tight mail would serve as well) and just as good against normal slashes and thrusts. Scale armor has the scales attached to cloth or leather underlay, lamellar is when the scales are tied to each other, not to any superstructure. There'd be padding worn underneath anyway, same as mail. I'm not really sure how lamellar is better or worse than scale armor, can't see immediate advantage from one or the other. Brigandine (with cloth-armor plates/scales-cloth, -or leather in place of cloth - build) is supposedly the best of such armors.

I'd be fine with XP only for doing stuff for poor people. It's substantial enough.

I think that's Lamellar, even more overlooked armor. And yea. I'd like to see both lamellar and scale.

Compelled to push an old thought again. I'd like to see body size as an attribute. Preferably not a purchaseable attribute either, but one you could select freely. Affecting either stuff like HP and damage output directly, or affecting Strength. Maybe inversely affecting agility? So a dwarf could maybe have as big strength score as a big strong human, but still wouldn't have leverage to do quite as much damage. Basically you'd be choosing a big hulking brute, or a smaller more agile creature.

Something to the tune of your example would be fine for me. Maybe add level and amount of HP to the mix? So a high level char or a dragon would almost certainly not die, but would still suffer ill effects.

Because that's the easiest way to implement them. Not necessarily because it's the best way. Of these though, in a perfect world where no effort is spared: Speech check. Definitely shouldn't be pass or fail. Try to convince someone of something, shouldn't lead to that someone to either not believing you at all or being completely convinced, with nothing in between. Most likely you'd end up in somewhere half convinced, not sure territory. Maybe there'd be that one point where he'll do as you say, but with some doubts. Call that a success. Trap disarming. This almost should be a pass or fail. I was pretty happy with this in NWN, don't have skill enough -> have skill enough to disarm - > have skill enough to recover the trap. But even further, maybe a faster disarm on higher levels. Add springing the trap safely or semi-safely? Still pretty much pass or fail. Lock picking. Either or, but with a twist. So you'll either succeed or fail. Maybe a higher roll would give a faster success? A lower roll still a success but would leave marks on the lock and take longer? A high skill with a high roll and a passerby wouldn't notice you didn't open that door with a key. Summoning. Why strictly pass or fail? Maybe a higher skill+roll gives better creatures? Instead of failing, maybe you'll get a lesser creature or a good one that's not in your control, or your control level is between 1-100, low low scores and the creature would attack you, a bit higher and it'd attack everybody, then only attack enemies but without taking orders, up to complete immediate control. Now maybe making nothing pass or fail wouldn't make for a better game. It would surely make things more complex and less binary and I think I'd like that. But it might be the game wouldn't be more playable. Can't be sure.

Ok, simply enabling to play through the game again with the same character.. wouldn't take much resources, wouldn't seem to have a point either, breezing through everything. Replay the game with the same character, all the fights are new, different and more challenging. Maybe completely new quests, at lest reworked ones. I can see how this could be appealing, wouldn't appeal to me, but i could understand this. This would also require a lot of effort, remaking every encounter wouldn't double the task, but it'd be a significant thing. At least assuming everything would still need to be balanced out for the new level range. Replay the game and everything autoscales to your new level. According to some system, which would need to be developed just for the replaying bit, if there's no scaling otherwise. But if there's a scaling system already, this wouldn't take a huge amount of effort. I wouldn't see the appeal, but if it didn't take much development effort, I wouldn't mind either.

That's saying "if they had unlimited amounts of time, money and manpower". If they did, I'd be fine with the feature being there, still wouldn't use it, but I wouldn't mind it either. But they don't have unlimited resources. 4 million budget is not even 40 million. There'll be lots of questions to the tune of "this would be a kind of a neat feature, but is it worth the effort?" Stuff will be cut no matter what.

I friend supposedly had great fun with heart of fury mode. So I guess the stuff has value for some. Me. I see it a a frivolous waste of resources that'd be much better spent to fine tune the first playthrough, so I voted against. But if it's something the devs would really like to do, I'm not going to cry over it. Mostly I just don't care. If the choice is there I'll surely ignore it, wouldn't try it on my 10th playthrough even.

I think I'd like retainers better in open sandbox type of a game. Hiring fee is one thing and that's all reasonable and fine. But if you want to go all realistic, then it's about getting a percentage cut. And I know I'd bee too stingy to agree. Guess maybe a mercenary would agree to.. 50GP + 5 GP per week. But if you start hauling in a dragons hoard.. well maybe he'd try to renegotiate? Temple of Elemental Evil had mercenary companions who'd want stuff like half of all gold or all the scrolls, or something like that. Understandable and all, but I never took them because that was just too much. And if a large percentage of players skip an important companion because of the hiring cost, that just doesn't work out well with having fewer companions with more story behind them.

I'd like increasing attributes. Not JRPG style Strength goes from 14 to 2330, but I would still like to see high level characters going near or superhuman levels. A high level fighter being able to withstand several direct crossbow bolt hits, or call up enough adrenaline to hit with the strength of many men. A high level rogue skilled and agile enough to run on water or jump over an ogre.

If I got this right and if I remember correctly, ES Oblivion had a system like this. Learn skills by doing, on levelup you get to put points on attributes (or skills related to) you've been practicing. While I kind of liked it, it did lead to nasty side effects, like players hopping everywhere instead of running, to better improve acrobatics and agility. Or jumping down the cliff for combined acrobatics - first aid workout. Spending a few hours sneaking beside some sleeping guards. Realistically... yeah, if you sneak and jump around all the time you should get better doing those. And if you practice magic all the time, you should get better at doing magic, gain better concentration and maybe intelligence if you keep several illusions around you constantly. Turns out though, it doesn't make for as fun gameplay as one might think. I hated how Skyrim dumbed the system down, removing classes and attributes. But I have to admit the gameplay did actually improve for it.

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Without knowing, I'd assume agility to be the stat governing attack accuracy and strength the damage output. So "weapon finesse"as in D&D wouldn't come into play at all. Further assumption, heavier weapons have slower attack speed. Dual weapon fighting... well I'd like to know about this as well.

Can't see the meaning. Fighters in ToEE are pure distilled awesomeness! Or did you mean bards and such?

Though on the other hand, bench press world record is over 700LB's. I can't do 200 and.. well I don't know what average human is, but I'm sure 100 LB's is way too much for many.

Yeah. Barbarian-rogue says Conan to me. Totally awesome. Battleaxe sneak-attacks for everybody. Then dip into ranger a bit to complete the build...

One thing about meaningful stats. A quick glance at http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Carrying_Capacity Going from str 1 to str 2 doubles the carrying capacity, doesn't anything like double the damage output, adds 10 LB's to max carry weight. Going from 15 to 20 also doubles the carry capacity from 200 to 400 LB's, about 40 LB's per step. Now would the system really be worse and less understandable if: STR 10 meant you can carry 10 LB's (D&D STR1) STR 600 meant you can carry 600 LB's (D&D STR 23) If one could live with that, would it be also fine if a guy capable of carrying 600 LB's (D&D STR23) also did 6x the damage of a guy capable of carrying 100 LB's (D&D STR 10), because he's 6x stronger?

It would. Should have made it clear when I'm talking of possible PE implementation and when just rambling about in general terms. One that still applies though, would be the (mis)balancing of companions. I'd like to meet... say bob the flunked guardsman. A nice guy and all, decent fighter but not good enough to not get kicked out from imperial guard. And then I'd meet Musashi the swordmaster. A brilliant fighter and a super smart guy. Now if it's a recent Bioware, then it doesn't really matter which one I'm taking with me. Their combat worth will be roughly equal. But I'd rather the other was just simply plain better than the other. ... and now I'm answering by switching the subject. Yeah.

Someone dying at some point is fine, or several someones at several sharp points. But a tough boss battle where you're pretty much expected to lose the whole party, several times, before figuring out the tactic to beat him? Well my tabletop sessions weren't like that at all, we didn't even get to reload like ever never. And yay for centaur reincarnation!

Probably mostly this, yes. But I'd take it a bit further. For me it's enough all classes provide utility, doesn't need to be roughly equal. For one, I'd separate combat and general utility. Like picking between a professor and a weaponmaster. One can help you get into the institute, while the other is way better if a fight happens. Just as long as you're not choosing from a weaponmaster vs a regular fighter, where the weaponmastar can do everything the fighter does, only better. But this seems to be better for games where you choose helpers for each mission from a worker pool. Like NWN2 or any of the Biowares recent offerings. Less suited for likes of Icewind Dale or BG where you basically want a dream team for combat and don't go swapping all too often. And the thinking arises from ME2. DA2 frustration. Yea, choose the party, only it doesn't matter who you choose because they're all equally useful in any given situation. (especially in DA2 where every given situation was you being rushed by a mob)

3. Trying to exactly balance out everything is IMO bad design coming from competitive gaming. The worst examples being the already mentioned, giving fighter a fighter AOE attacks that do exactly the same damage as wizards fireball, while giving wizard a magical weave armor that protects exactly the same as warriors plate. On the other hand, not paying any attention at all to balance is also bad. Like giving a wizard all the fighters fighting abilities and also spells, so there's nothing at all that'd make a fighter a good choice. But small differences and balances are sufficient. They don't need to even out exactly. What if rogue magic is completely outlawed in some parts of the world? With magic wards in all the important locations, making sure a mage has a real hard time, being cut off from many quests and allies. Now that doesn't really sound like something that'd work in PE, but in some other game and setting it might. Or take the already mentioned start with a beggar wearing rags or start with a noble wearing plate and helped along by a squire and a manservant? Now yeah, the pauper has some benefits. Being able to travel incognito, more likely to get into thieves guild, easier to hide, being already covered in manure. Such stuff. On the other hand, the noble also has benefits. Loads of money, easy access to all important locations, better pay from all quests and being offered better quests. While both have some advantages, it's immediately obvious the noble would have way more of them and he'd have easier time all the way. But given how a beggar offers a whole different playthrough, I'd see myself playing that one as well. Obviously. More challenge as well, sweet. But yea. Not something I'd expect or desire to see in PE. Just that it's not necessary to spend inordinate amounts of time to make sure all classes are created equal.

Ok. This here is a fence. You're on that side, I'm on this side. Neither is sitting on the fence, not even leaning on it either. Which is fine by me, I believe I do see a bit clearer why someone would like a game filled with deathspells. Thanks for clarifying. A shame PE seems to be more in your side and less on mine, but such is life. I'll live and enjoy the game as it is.

I'm not sure if I see the point. I see the difference and that it's more frustrating to die in tabletop. But are you suggesting a gameplay relying on constant reloading is desirable in CRPG, or just that it's not so bad. Is it just instant death or death in general? Myself, I'd like to see "normal difficulty" to be about the same as a playthrough in normal tabletop gaming, ie. you're supposed to be able to survive a first blind playthrough without dying or reloading once.