Shadenuat

Why? Because feelings? It made no sense that everyone in party was OK with Durance and what he said in PoE, for example. And character who could throw tantrums like that wouldn't fit into every party either.

- AI customisation from Dragon Age Origins - Engagement and AOO's only for specific classes like Fighters - Allow non-casters to pick a few or even just one spell as per-encounter ability respectable to their class (paladins pick from priest's spellbook, rangers from druids, etc.) - Give classes specific paths or roles to follow. Instead of forcing Ranger to have companion, let him choose between a companion, dual wielding, stealth in combat, some sort of frenzy, master archery or summon elementals in combat. Kinda like kits in BG2. - Cut on the amount of levels, but make getting level and new talent more exciting. BG1 did with just 8-9, 12 with expansion, PoE has 16 already. - Play through Durlag's Tower & Watcher's Keep for inspiration how to make good IE-like dungeons, with traps and puzzles and characters inhabiting them. Get inspiration for dungeon life from games like Arx Fatalis. - Get Sawyer or someone who played D&D to go through combat encounters in the game and retouche them if necessary. They seem to lack that right touch of someone with experience in pnp. - Expand on giving player equipment that can change the way classes play early, that can be upgraded later (it's a pain to respec 3-5 times per game after finding new item); balance artifacts through different ways how you aquire them (do not put 3-4-5 uber items into one location like in WM) - some could be upgraded, some reforged from parts, some soulbound, etc. Make equipment matter more, 80% of it is still **** in PoE. - Do something with magic in game, both in terms of gameplay (less brainless nuking, more "wizard duels") and writing. It's poorly designed and explained ("because Souls", "Souls did it"), do it right, i.e. put a stronger emphasis on what magic can't do instead of what it can do. If there are animancers, allow player to dabble into animacy; not just for a +1 bonus to Might, but for roleplaying purposes. Add non-combat rituals or something. - Make companions less of passive observers. They had conflicts, friends, and rivals and left you and fought each other in game from 1998. Obsidian is a studio that made bloody Mask of Betrayer, after all.

I use Pause after ability aka Turn-based Sawyers of Eternity mode in boss fights like dragons, but it's improbable people would use it all the time through game cause of trash mobs. Playing last patch, after decking Pallegina with Self Immolation & fire perks and speccing Eder for damage, most fights turned into waltzing in with feathered murder-goddess of flaming death and then Eder teleporting in and out with Charge. Add something like a Ninagauth's shadowflame soulfist soulfist! aka No Paralyze Scrolls Required and my slow pet and ranger turned out to be just unnecessary in most fights in such meta. I think tank-ranger with shield with tank-pet might be more interesting character to play.

I otoh wouldn't count on pet beating master in damage just because of how stupid the thing is. It does anything but what you want it to, often eats first volley and likes to kill Aloth while running around confused or charmed. In a smaller party or solo, you could work around this, but in a big party I found playing melee ranger one of the most frustrating characters ever. No matter how many mobility options you add on ranger (I had boots of speed & Escape and stuff) the pet can't get any faster and the only ability that adds mobility to him is per-rest. I'd give a lot for a simple +3 speed for pet & +defence against engagement perk. Still it's kinda fun when you run through log in last combat to check who killed that dragon an hey, Itumaak crits dragon for 70 dmg wtf.

Uhuh. On average, how much damage do you think animal companions do per game on PoTD with most perks for damage and sometimes making use of positioning and DOTs?

That never was a problem, not to mention PoE's main path is easy as cake and it has huwrdadurp story mode. The problem is making game as big but also make quality content for it. Replayability&choice give content more quality - more options for roleplaying, more choice, more ways for characters to have diverse playthroughs; but game might end up shorter. PoE, really, could have been cut by at least 20% and that's not talking MegaDungeon that was and continues to be primitive and boring grind through same hordes of mobs.

Is there a way to know how much damage animal companion did per game?

Oh no Codex can't be Borg. Borg can work together efficiently and agree on something.

I love how Codex breaks every forum it manages to root into. People do everything but the most logical thing of just going into the forum itself and facing the person that made them butthurt who is always and permanently avaible at there.

It's always like that in a group with hired companions, especially if your PC is a DPS machine: 1) You pay more attention to managing your PC 2) PC spent more time in group 3) Obsidian characters are crappily built even after all the patches compared to what you can do with hirelings 4) Rogues, lel Here's mine for example at Act 2: Barbarian tank: 17k, Wizard tank 12k, Druid DPS 16k, Rogue DPS 24k.

I prefer my Fighters to be killing machines crying "I am new god of murder" when they Whirlwind dragons into oblivion, so I understand why people don't like them in PoE much (fighters), but people also kinda give up and run cookie cutter builds, 1 tank, 5 girls guns, whereas you can safely give Eder and Estoc or something and he will do ~70k damage per playthrough easily while still facetanking 5 mobs at a time by packing an average of 90 deflection and 100 in all defences. It is pretty powerful, even if not flashy. Which can be said about many classes in the game really, like Rangers or even Wizards.

In theory. In practice you can have a tank with 2 str 2 dex and uber deflection and he will be unkillable and won't do any damage, maybe he'll do 2000 damage per *whole game* (I had a tank like that, a Monk who FoA'd everything but didn't do any damage). And you can have a barb who will do 100k damage behind him wearing rags and pocking stuff with a spear. Or you could have two characters doing 50k damage each. What's "optimal"? 90% of encounters in PoE are trash mobs, and the quicker you clean them the more optimal you are in my opinion. If a tank can help with that and hold mobs long enough he is optimal. And if that's not enough, equip Hatchet, largest shield and drink Llengrath's potion - bam, you're optimal for everything but Adra dragon. People make mistake assuming stats, especially tanking ones, matter much in PoE. They're BanalCed. Those +10-20 extra deflection or 20% extra endurance you get by dumping everything else are not like 18/00 str in IE or even +4 extra hp per level. You can safely run hybrid and "suboptimal" characters on PoTD and still be relatively safe.

What the hell do you people even want? A character who has both 150 deflection AND does 150 damage per hit? Even on PoTD you can send a fighter with 2-hander into an encounter and he will kill it all by himself and if not he'll rise from the dead with even more defence and kill them all over again. I agree that fighter's talents for damage are kinda banal (nothing like Whirlwind or Critical Hit HLAs). If focused barrage (+10 accuracy, much interesting, so strong, right) gave like +40 or a 100% crit chance for next hit, and had upgrades, it would be better. And there are just too many passives and specializations that can be summed up as "same **** same ****". But it doesn't mean fighters can't do damage. Some classes were supposed to be autopilot and some people did argue that it is how it should be since you can't manage everybody in RTwP like you can in TB combat. Either way if you dislike fighters as tanks - don't take them in party. And I'm not saying it like "kek don't like it don't buy it", I'm saying Fighters are not the only option for a tank in party. Make a barbarian tank with OSA, Monk or even a wizard tank. Sure you'll have rougher start before you find your first plate mail and hoard some feats but as long as you carry heavy armor, Second Chance item and hit enough deflection - you're a tank in PoE. Best tanks in IE games were also spellcasters.

Stop following guides on the internet and making 2 str orlan fighters ffs.

I want to rush full party of devs to their doom like one 'dex admin did in her Wizardry letsplay. But they have to be fully VOed and blame each other when somebody dies.

kek Can be useful in a party with barbarian the human bomb who does full damage on death though.

Yeah I was wondering if Jason would consider opening a patreon account for these kind of works.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/portraits-for-poe-thread.98127/page-3 http://www.jasonseow.com/poeportraits

Register on 'dex and find out for yourself. I promise it would be a wonderful and unforgettable journey.

It's true, even the 25% damage difference is not that high and you can do well even on high difficulties with party of poorly created Obsidian companions. But it doesn't mean that PoE's system actually and actively supports roleplaying either. Most people are drawn to min-maxing through 2 simple builds (one that dishes out damage and one that tanks it) because that's what they assume is the best way to build their characters right. Player can roleplay a thief with high Per or a Wizard with high Res, but he will always feel that he is playing suboptimal character. It doesn't help that PoE's system is also reversed and biased towards the most unintuitive stat distribution possible - where tanks max mental stats and casters often max physical stats, so you want to play an intelligent spellcaster with strong spells but end up having dialogue options that don't feel like they suit you.

I guess your comment just kinda melted together in my head with your opinion on banning and ignoring all FPS "tards and their stupid games" on 'dex. It was hard to make of that part of your post as a neutral observation (or defending 'dex on a basis that it's not actually pretentious etc.), concidering the whole rant part about action games just before it too.

What do you mean? That player has to forego character effectiveness in combat in a combat oriented game in favor of flavour options in dialogue? By casting spells from scrolls, that's Lore's combat advantage.

I understand you can judge something to be old school by the age of the genre, but I don't understand why you would lay judgement on people's taste because they liked a game in another genre that worked instead of something like a broken, bugged and not even really old-school (it's third person action with some abilities) KOTOR2, for example.

Well IWD forgot to add loading screen with "Don't forget to buff your party before fight, Player!", and look what happened.

That's the point - that it is all they do. They never reach a complexity of a even a simpliest text adventure. There is no more depth in them than in main dialogue system, so what you get is just same options but with cool pictures. Space Rangers, for example, implemented text quests into main gameplay where these scripted interactions did change what happened to you going from system to system - for example, getting jailed for breaking the law and escaping was done via a scripted interaction aka text adventure. The recent Expeditions Conquistador made player engage in scripted interactions that were tied to game's main resource system and you could gain or lose stuff, search/use/lose quest items, pass multiple checks and could even permanently lose companions in them.