Shadenuat

In 5th edition D&D they added a p. cool feature, allowing to cast lower level spells by expending high level slots. Like to cast 5d4+5 magic missile you need to spend 5th level spell slot. There aren't enough to say "all spells are just copies of themselves from 1st level", but some spells seem to repeat themselves through levels just to keep up with increasing numbers. Minoletta's missiles get an improved version once or twice where in IE one was sufficient, druid has two almost same sun spells at level 1&2 (and Sunlance at level 6 or around that), there are 3 Blight Summons (one can only hope creatures would get new abilities), cleric gets three sigils with some difference in them (knockback... that I think doesn't work; fire; shock). It also seems lots of work has been done to "check" every damage type; while only ~2 should be sufficient; Druid, for example, gets damaging spells from fire, corrosion, piercing, slashing & cold at level 1 alone. What's up with that. Some of them follow the general principle of course (we are used to have various healing spells avaible through levels), but sometimes you look at a spell and think "well, that's just same as that one I had level before it".

Some of them seem to do same thing though, like increasing Deflection proprotionally to spell level, unlike IE versions. Seems like it's easier to just pop Arcane Veil since it's same thing but with higher number. I also feel discouraged to spend 3+ rounds on prebuffing during combat while I could use dd or cc spells instead.

Is there a muscle wizard in game though? Having more Might doesn't make your character actually feel a strong athlete or a combat mage. Everyone who wants do damage in combat should have 15-18 Might, so there is no difference between a wizard in robe who stands at the back or a wizard in front lines. Technically they are one build, the difference is maybe in armor they wear and positioning, not in nature of character built.

I was thinking you would go hand picking most emblematic abilities and archetypes and, instead of creating a class around just one of them (sneak attacking), there would be a few that could be developed during the game. It's not hard to pick, it's easy to predict that one player might want to play a swashbuckling kinda rogue, while another a skill monkey or an ever popular assassin. These archetypes are ever present in CRPGs and even tabletop. Of course it would mean creating more mechanics than you have - creating a bunch of skills that add already existing afflictions to wounds is probably easy, but creating a placeable trap that shoots arrows at enemies is more difficult. Knowing what players want is not hard, there are already general class thread and talent threads, where players want more combat oriented clerics and ranged fighters. It seems that core classes, mainly fighter, rogue and cleric are in priority for talents, because other classes have new and interesting mechanics or just play more flexible (like Barbarian who is tough, has positioning skill and Rage - that's more interesting than level 5 Fighter has).

When people bring up BG classes more often than not they are talking about BG2, and overall feeling of class in BGT (Trilogy), not vanilla BG. In that sense when we look at PoE rogues we compare him with BGT thieves, including kits, utility skills - picking pockets, disarming and setting traps, detecting illusions, and ability to go into stealth during combat, supported by powerful BG2 itemization, HLAs in ToB and, of course, dual and multi classing. Compared to that PoE thief with a per-encounter evade ability and a set of press button for more DPS abilities can pale to our experiences we had with Thieves in BGT.

70-100 dmg crits with guns, 50 dmg sneak attacks with arbalests, no positioning required, no ammo required. Bows do some crappy grazes. At least give us poisoned arrows for bows or somethin.

Try drawing group to the right with kamikaze to cave entrance while spreading group around a lot not to get AoE'd, then deal with northern one.

I remember beetles being even nastier in IWD where the spit acid into your face, aoe'ing whole group. These are just like more heavily armored spiders from wyvern forest. Hey Josh, make them also spit acid on release every few rounds nuking everything around them for massive damage.

I wanted to see core classes start as a general concept with many melee, ranged and utility capabilities, with specialization as an option. Instead when I pick Fighter it feels like I picked Fighter with Defender kit. I am mostly butthurt about rogues though. I don't want damage modifiers apply automatically whenever I click mouse; I want to play a stealthy trickster when I play rogue. I don't want moba assasin, I want dude like Garrett. I want stealth and positional backstabbing and kiting with boots of speed, skill to create and apply poison to weapons, gas bombs and caltrops, traps that stun and maze enemies. I want pick pocket people of valuables. I want to be unique when I pick class and know that noone can do stuff that I can do. I don't want sneak attack with a gun. That's just dull. Where's challenge in landing strike that would chunk enemies into little bits with a gun. And I want GM in weapon take my damage to stratosphere! And a new special attack for that weapon.

1 feat/2 levels

Wizards can be tough with right buffs applied, but without pre-buffing those spells would be last thing on players list to do in combat.

For some reason plate armor created by Limited Wish made character walk slower in BG2. In D&D carrying capacity affected speed I think. I remember a rule for dwarves that they always moved same speed no matter how much they carried (20 ft).

Maps could be a little bigger but I like the density. I'd like to see maps that you have to travel through to get from one hub to another, like roads between cities in BG1. And some random encounters. That would be a nice change of pace from here-be-wolves-and-here-be-beetles encounter-sliced maps.

Druid needs single target heal on level 1, otherwise his heals are fine.

Robe with DR4 and +15% speed&Superfine Leather armor with DR10 and -20% speed, or plate mail with DR12 that halves your speed and all actions. whichisbetterandwhydiscuss hint: light/no armor +priest buffs for win imo.

It just didn't seem to do anything before 278 at least, and numbers were all crazy (500% wildstrike, 10000% paladin's flaming strike)

Perhaps every character could have a special part of UI dedicated to tracking his attack and casting speed, if there's no such thing already.

This system is why it can be so hard sometimes to synchronize what characters are doing in beta, everyone does stuff at their own pace, makes me use slow-mo very often to know who recovered from what. Maybe idle animations could help with that. Also some spells seem to cast faster than others, although it feels like all spells could use a slower cast rate to make them stand out more like in BG. Perhaps casting time can be slower, with spells more powerful, with spare seconds added to cast recovery without touching balance of speeds, but making spellcasting stand out more. But I'm not sure. Tweaking all this to make game run at smoother pace would require time I guess.

Let's begin editing romances in, I'll start with BB Thief, I like her ears. Before Obsi would finish their game we would have one of our own.

No she was supposed to be a cleric of fire goddess, so they don't overlap with Pallegina. Although two female "holy" characters might feel that way.

I am not sure how a mauretanian italian inspired female aasimar knight can sound, but there was at least one holy character in Obsi games who had a... special voice so I was expecting something of a quality

What about our Cadegund find? Would she really not make it into final game?

The real problem with Wizard is that half of schools we were used to have in IE games are missing and everything is focused around damage, CC and a few +deflection spells.

All that you say is what is expected of class and perfectly fits it's design.

Barb has that. Makes an interesting although strange choice in tanking - Fighter loses more health but he can stand on his own for long, but Barb actually can go through more encounters but needs constant babysitting with a Cleric. A bit counter intuitive since they're supposed to be opposite - Fighter lasts longer, while Barb is a one hit berserker. It doesn't really work that way. You can switch roles like putting heavy armor on a Wizard and popping Arcane Veil, for example. That was what I did when after a few encounters my Fighter wasn't healthy enough to engage into another one. And even losing a quarter of health doesn't turn Fighter obsolete. It's more about active abilities and other things like stamina gain and defensive buffs. You can tank even wil 30% of health if you combine all your abilities right. The traps are also mostly AoE and seem to do more stamina dmg than health. They're weird and bugged for now.