Alweth

I've had situations where two auto-pauses follow right on each other, so my attempt to repause it actually re-unpauses it.

No, that's simply not true. There's a maximum limit to the speed that a human can react to something. Even the fastest human is incredibly slow compared to computers and could easily fall into this. Any decent UI needs to take that into consideration.

I agree that immunities in D&D were really overdone. Especially egregious in BG1&2 were the new enemies that had the same or very similar sprite as something common with an obscure name that meant nothing to me and that were immune to a host of random damage types that the basic enemy wasn't immune to. PoE should have a few obvious immunities though, like Fire Elementals (whatever they're called) to fire, slimes to prone/blind. I don't mind if dragons can be hurt by fire, as long as they have a high DR. It should also be consistent. All slimes should be immune to prone and blind. They definitely shouldn't throw random immunities around like they did with D&D. I don't know if this really makes things more tactical, but it forces you to switch things up, which can lead to tactics, or allow different characters/builds/strategies to shine. That's a good thing.

This doesn't need a mod, it needs a fix.

+1 for separate modding forum.

There's another way to fix that: make stats come with negatives that matter. This can be hard to do in a way that makes intuitive sense, but if strength, for example, comes with a little expense to speed, then a lot of strength comes with a significant expense to speed. Eventually the negatives will make your character so weak in one area, you'll question whether you really need to be that strong if everything's just outrunning you. It makes being balanced more attractive, without forcing you into it. It's also more realistic in the sense that in real life almost everything comes with a corresponding downside.

@PrimeJunta I've heard that all tanks with healing auras works really well. You can also do a tank + off-tank strategy (which is what I use) where my off-tank is my main-character Paladin who's tanky enough (due to tanky stats) that he can afford to melee one or two guys with his two-handed sword while wearing almost anything from light to heavy armor (currently wearing light). When he's wearing lighter armor he relies on his increased DPS to increase his survivability. Typically he's tanking the creature my DPSers are targeting anyway, so he doesn't take that many hits. Is this strategy as good as a straight-up tank/DPSers strategy? I don't think so, but this is my first time playing and I kind of forced my character into this role because I didn't know what I was doing, and it's working fine on Hard.

I generally agree with the OP. Here are a few thoughts though... - Regarding armor: I'm not sure it's as bad as you make it out to be. If you're going with a complete tank/DPSer strategy, which makes perfect sense, and probably is the best strategy, why wouldn't you have an armor setup like you described? If your strategy is to not get hit, why would you wear armor? For people who use other strategies, though, this system helps enable them. Also, in my experience, it's not always possible to keep all your characters from getting hit, unless you know everything about the fight ahead of time, or reload fights a lot. In those cases it's nice to have some medium armor in there somewhere, to keep your characters alive long enough for help or something. I like to have Kana wearing heavyish armor so that he can run interference when enemies slip by, since I don't think it affects chant speed. Having said that, I think this could be fixed by tweaking the attribute system. The BB system for armor does sound better than what they have now. Too bad they changed it. - Regarding talents and abilites, I agree. I also think more options would have helped. Often times it doesn't feel like you have more than one or two good talent options. Some talents need to be made better, but I also think more interesting talents would have been nice. - Weapons: Generally agree, but (maybe I don't have enough high-might characters) in my game only slow, hard-hitting weapons seem to do a significant amount of damage. Everything else seems to hit in the single-digits most of the time. I would think this is the direct result of the DR system. - Stats: Again I agree, although I actually think the armor issue and stat issue could be solved in one blow by tweaking the stat system. Here's the stat system I'm currently favoring: Strength: +Melee Damage, +Bow Damage (not crossbows), +Fortitude, -Armor Penalty* Constitution: +Health, +Endurance, +Fortitude, +Deflection, +Duration of Abilities, +Heal Dexterity: +Melee Accuracy, +Non-Spell Action Speed, +Reflexes, +Deflection, +Disengagement Defense Perception: +Ranged Accuracy, +Spell Accuracy, +Reflexes, +Buff AoE, +Max Ranged Attack Range Intelligence: +Spell Speed, +Offensive AoE, +Duration of Abilities, +Will, +Interrupt, +Crit Damage** Resolve: +Spell Damage, +Wand Damage, +Concentration, +Will, +Endurance as a percentage of Health, +Max Ranged Spell Range *Armor Penalty: based on the heaviness of the armor: -Combat Movement Speed, -Non-Spell Action Speed, -Reflexes, +Combat Fatigue Rate, -Sneaking (not Searching) Armor penalty would be structured so that people with average strength would be able to wear light armor with no penalty at all. **Crit Damage is a flat bonus to damage rather than a percentage Another option for stats that I think would be good would be a talent-like system at character creations where you would have a number of points to spend on character attributes which would have mechanical and roleplay impact, with the basics like "Weak, Muscular, Very Muscular", and normal ones like "Skinny, Fat", "Ugly, Good-looking", "Big, Petite", "Tall, Short", "Unfit, Fit", "Sickly, Healthy", and exotic ones like "Gentle Soul, Forceful Soul" (a Might parallel). Most of these would have both positive and negative effects. For example, being Very Muscular would make you strong, but you would have a lower Reflex Defense due to muscle binding. If you wanted to be someone who hits hard and was flexible, you could take the Very Fit attribute, but that wouldn't come with as high of a Fortitude bonus as Very Muscular. You could also offset the Reflex penalty of Very Muscular by adding Very Agile, but then you're running out of attribute points or you might have to take a mostly negative one like Stupid. Everyone who didn't have an attribute affecting something would be assumed to be average in that category.

I agree that supply limits don't quite accomplish their purpose as they currently are. However, adding random encounters won't really solve the problem as they turn the tedium of backtracking into the tedium of saving, then backtracking, then either fighting a weak enemy that just wastes your time or a strong enemy that maybe kills you in which case you reload and then backtrack again... I guess it would be meaningful in Trial of Iron, but that could suck pretty bad too, if you get an unlucky encounter at the wrong time.

This is actually not a problem as long as the system is not also counterintuitive, or if good rules of thumb are provided. Not everyone wants or needs to exactly figure out that all the stats do, and those that want to do it won't be put off by a complex system, as long as it's not also bad for other reasons.

I think the current stat system is fine from a gameplay perspective, although I agree it leads to some strange situations. However, I'm not a huge fan of the OP's system. It doesn't seem any better and just leads to the same old (this class needs this stat) results. It does, however, make more sense with regard to strength. IMO the attribute system should look something like this: Strength: +Melee Damage, +Bow Damage (not crossbows), +Fortitude, -Armor Penalty* Constitution: +Health, +Endurance, +Fortitude, +Deflection, +Duration of Abilities, +Heal Dexterity: +Melee Accuracy, +Non-Spell Action Speed, +Reflexes, +Deflection, +Disengagement Defense Perception: +Ranged Accuracy, +Spell Accuracy, +Reflexes, +Buff AoE, +Max Ranged Attack Range Intelligence: +Spell Speed, +Offensive AoE, +Duration of Abilities, +Will, +Interrupt, +Crit Damage** Resolve: +Spell Damage, +Wand Damage, +Concentration, +Will, +Endurance as a percentage of Health, +Max Ranged Spell Range *Armor Penalty: -Non-Spell Action Speed, -Reflexes based on the heaviness of the armor **Crit Damage is a flat bonus to damage rather than a percentage With this system you can have a Str+Con frontline fighter Str+Dex big weapon melee DPSer who relies on armor for some protection Str+Per bow/melee versatile DPSer Str+Int melee crowd controller Str+Res nothing Con+Dex meatsack nothing Con+Per healer Con+Int crowd-control tank Con+Res frontline caster Dex+Per gun/crossbow DPSer Dex+Int small-weapon crit DPSer who uses disables and disengagement for protection Dex+Res melee offensive caster (weak) Per+Int AoE magic debuffer/buffer Per+Res single-target magic DPSer Int+Res AoE magic DPSer That seems pretty good to me (I'm biased) just a few combos don't work that well and with the right items/tweaks, that might be fixed too. Obviously, you can try and add a third or forth stat for added strengths and variety. Str+Con+Dex go well together, as do Per+Int+Res, not surprisingly.

It's just a small thing, but it would make sense for the numbers listing how many uses you have of an ability to be distinguished in color or some other way from one another. (Maybe by being on different sides of the ability, or by one having a little circle around it or a colored square behind it.)

It would be nice if the floating damage numbers had a color (or other modification) to let you know if they were crit, hit, graze, or miss. A miss could just be an asterisk *.

Also a IE veteran here. The thing I liked least about IE games was the underlying D&D mechanics (and their execution) that made things like pre-buffing and spoiler knowledge important. Save or Die spells are horrible, and PoE really did a good job of making the whole game less about lucking out on rolls (They saved against your 1 level 9 spell! Yay!) while still making combat feel dangerous. Don't get me wrong, in the end the D&D mechanics still allowed for great games, but they were the weak link.

Given that the pet is completely non-interactable, it seems a little strange that a giant name bubble pops up over it every time you Highlight Interactables, and it's annoying because it gets in the way of actually seeing stuff. It's especially annoying in fights when I'm trying to see the status of different characters and the giant name is blocking a bunch of stuff. I've taken to using no pet just to avoid that. Please at least make an option not to display the pet's name when interactables are highlighted.

It seems like sending camping supplies to your stash just makes them permanently disappear. This is not good behavior, since it unintuitively deprives the player of something they'd want without warning or reason. The player should either be able to stash camping supplies, or be prevented from taking them.

Good point. Scouting mode should automatically be "off" in towns (ie. non-hostile situations), but secretly be on, allowing you to find anything that is hidden, even while moving at normal speed.

That is, of course, more true later in the game. But you're forgetting that (at least as far in the game as I've played) there is no renewable source of income, so it's not a completely fair comparison. It would suck to miss buying that great late-game item for your character by 86 copper because you camped one too many times. You're also forgetting the other incentives the game provides for running to town. Yeah. That's not going to happen, not unless you're buying 300 camping supplies. By the way, the stronghold is a renewable source of income to infinity in the form of taxes. Given that you get several hundred copper, It simply isn't a valid calculation. Of course there are other incentives for visiting town/stronghold. You're meant to have gameplay - it would suck if there were no reasons to visit the stronghold. The point is that there isn't a strong incentive to keep running back to town in the middle of a dungeon just to sleep at an inn and save your 75 copper. I've just gone through 4 levels of Od Nua without running back to town. That's not because I'm awesome (people will play on different difficulties with different sized and composed parties). I just find that when I try to go as many battles as possible without resting it adds to the tension, it adds to the tactical diversity (if Eder is on 2 health I can't frontline him like I always do), and it adds to the fun. I'm sure somebody will make a rest-anywhere mod, of course, so that if you want to rest after every battle, or whatever other combination, you can. The player doesn't know there's an infinite supply of money coming from the Stronghold some time in the future, so it doesn't change the incentives (until you get there). Again, the player doesn't know what the total cost of everything they'll want to buy in the game is versus the total amount of money they'll earn, so it doesn't change the incentives (until they've played through the game at least once).

I love PoE's item system! OP, what you call bland is called balance--it's just good game design. Finding something that's just better than everything else might provide some sort of psychological hit, but it doesn't provide any gameplay. Gameplay is about choices, that means the choices have to be non-obvious. That means that you can't make some choices strictly better than others. As the game goes on you do find better stuff, but they're better versions of the basic weapon types that all only differ in their tradeoffs. In this game, the best choice isn't determined by the designer who decided to make this weapon just better than the others, but by the circumstance and the strategy you're using. You select the weapon that's appropriate--that's what makes it a game--YOU make the choice based on your strategy. The game doesn't make it for you.

I'm not talking about difficulty here, guys. I'm talking about incentives.

That is, of course, more true later in the game. But you're forgetting that (at least as far in the game as I've played) there is no renewable source of income, so it's not a completely fair comparison. It would suck to miss buying that great late-game item for your character by 86 copper because you camped one too many times. You're also forgetting the other incentives the game provides for running to town.

They need to fix this.

I hope you restart anytime you die and dont use save and load then otherwise you invalidate your claim. Simple way to make everyone happy, make the con system toggleable. The bestiary is there to give stats on creatures and limit grinding for xp as you fight the mobs. A con system is so you know if you should attempt to attack a mob. I should ... restart my whole game on a wipe because I don't think con levels are a good idea, preferring surprise over knowing the level of every encounter in advance? The bestiary gradually provides useful information about a creature ... such as its level. The point he's making is that you gain the same information by fighting and reloading as you would get just by a little more information on the popup. The first is far more inconvenient.

I would like this, even if it has to be an option. Really, it doesn't matter that much, but all things being equal, it would be nice. There are a lot of mobs that look almost exactly the same but differ in levels by a significant amount.

Actually, I don't go back to the inn to rest that much. The title was hyperbole to convey the urge I feel to run back to the inn to save some coppers, get a buff, or speed along the stronghold. Overall Pillars of Eternity is excellent, but giving players in-game incentive to waste real time is just bad game design.