DCParry

almost all martial disciplines emphasize some sort of evasion for defense, either a parry or a dodge. this is pretty much like dodging and blocking in martial arts. in fact the proper use of a shield is to parry with it, and not have it absorb blows. any time that shaolin went to war they used what armour they could, but being a monastic order, they didn't have a lot of money for armour, so they typically weren't well armoured compared to their non monk counterparts, though it is of note that their forces tried to armour even the peasants that most armies of the time didn't care about armouring. they even gave more training to the peasants than most armies bothered to do, though their forces almost always were smaller than the opposition (fighting against your lord for no pay isn't too popular). the more i think about monks as a class name, the more i dislike it. there are better names for what is trying to be achieved, both in DnD and in P:E. ultimately i'd have to say that is the only thing i have an issue with, and frankly it is a pretty minor qualm. Unless you have a Ph.D. in Chinese History, phrases like "almost all martial arts" are completely meaningless, and of course, anyone with a critical mind would never use such a generic sweeping phrase in the first place. Monastic martial art practices are extremely varied. A number of posters have given specific examples of historical precedence for this vision of the monk. In fact, living in Singapore, I can go down the street to the Chinese community centre and sign up for Southern Shaolin style classes which emphasis (perhaps not to the extent of the PE monk) these qualities (firmness, rootedness, stand your ground are just some of the catch phrases they use to describe the styles). In fact, a number of martial arts styles that concentrate on defense center on blocking moves as opposed to dodging, something that, in my mind at least, would lend itself towards the wound system. Also. Enter the Dragon. Bruce Lee. Licking his own blood. Becomes more a killing machine.

Most of those are not classic fantasy setting (unless we count those manga that are derived from cRPG) with dwarves, elves or even medieval European settings. Again, you said it, but it needs to be repeated. In a classic WESTERN fantasy setting. PE has some inspiration, but is not wholly defined by WESTERN fantasy stereotypes. Chinese Epic, Hong Kong action, and, yes, even Japanese Manga (often inspired by earlier literature and art, but hey, when you can cast a disparagement on a non-Western art form by emphasizing its popularity, why not, right?) are all suitable sources of inspiration for a fantasy setting. So, are we going to have a permutation of the monk hate now?

Well, my answer would be.. so? Making any equipment viable for any class can be an admirable goal, but the definitions of "viable" and "optimal" are going to vary from person to person, and, more importantly, from player to designer. The benefit for using any equipment should be the ability to use any of the equipment. Monks can use plate armor. Should they have special benefits for wearing such armor? I think that's were you are heading. I see two problems with this. 1) Design time: Being able to design specific class based advantages for every piece of equipment in the game is prohibitive (in my opinion), 2) Class distinction: I think that you bleed away some of the unique flavor of a class when you make them completely optimal in every situation with every kind of kit.

One word - Boomerang Arrow. Ok, that is two words. It would be too awesome for just one word.

First and foremost, there is no doom song like the original doom song, so Deekin is, in fact, the best. Evah. Then there is old Jolee Bindo. No matter what play through, I had to have him in the party. A sign of a good, engaging character is one that you take in your party despite alignment clash/sub-optimal stats and such. HK-47 and Shale are prime examples of this. Both are fascinating characters that add a lot to the experience when they are in the party. And finally, I know you love to hate him, but man, when he chugged the darkspawn blood in Awakenings he won my heart, here's to you Oghren (as an aside, there is a smuggler class mission - or was it a world story mission? I forget - where you kill someone with Oghren's voice, and I was like NOOOOOOOOOOOO).

I have nothing particular against this sort of idea. We could commune with our soul stone as an abstract way of organizing the concrete meta-data of our character, which is interesting. But please, for the love of all that is fluffy and holy, leave hotkeys to access specific functions. I played hundreds and hundreds of hours of FO3 and FO: NV, but damned if I didn't keep hitting m for map and i inventory even through rationally I knew damn well I had to hit that tab key.

All good stuff. The medicine ball flail definitely needs to be included. But only if I can have a leotard +4 and a bicycle with a giant front wheel.

I like monks, I'd just rather have Yip Man than Goku. Please no herp derp "I use glowing energy fist -insert name here- attack" which is what OP sounds like. Also there shouldn't be crossover between the fighter and monk. The fighter has his own techniques (yes *gasp* the west had its own martial arts) the monk is supposed to represent something exotic and different. No. As far as we know the monk does not represent anything particularly unique or exotic in terms of the PE setting. We don't know the history or form of monastic orders in PE. You know what differentiates a fighter and a monk? The exact same thing that will separate every single class in the game. They way in which they utilize their soul. That is not to say there will be no cross over. The devs have set up a system where the use of the soul mechanic is class defining. I would conjecture, and again, this is my own personal opinion, that other aspects of the class will be viewed as interdependent with the soul mechanic. Hence, there will be something particular and unique in the monk's soul mechanic that lends itself to a possibly unarmored, unarmed or exotically armed warrior, in the same way that the warrior's soul mechanic will enforce and enrich the use of particular weapons and actions while in armor.

But why would they follow the player character, then, aside from "Oh you are the CHOSEN ONE! I must follow you in your quest to fulfill the prophecy!"? Maybe they just like you? Maybe you smell nice? Maybe you pulled a thorn out of your paw? If all your social relationships are based on raw power dynamics, then you must have an interesting circle of friends.

Wow, it seems the whole anti-monk brigade has become a bunch of asshats on the board. Good job fellas. I think this sort of thing would be interesting, but of course I would like it to extend to all classes if possible. Maybe some classes can share some techniques with slight revisions, so lets say the fighter and monk might share one or two secret techniques (of course the technique could be altered to be used with the appropriate soul apparatus).

Apparently, the easiest way to get consensus is to say there is consensus, whether that has any basis in reality or not. This seems like a thinly veiled attempt to "strong arm" devs into following a particular design philosophy, which of course is just silly and based on a misunderstanding of a supporter's role in the Kickstarter environment.

HOT DOLPHIN!

Dont understand a question. You have gore and then it have sense, or not have gore and its then senseless ( it doesnt make sense to butcher someone with sword and not see gore) For example, in FO 3 when I shot someone with my gauss rifle, I hit them in the chest, and somehow cut off all their limbs with one shot.

I might be mistaken, but, for what it's worth, I think you could actually grab bodies by their limbs with the "pick up item in a literal sense, not the add-to-inventory sense" button and drag them off of each other to get to loot. Also, I apologize if there was confusion, but I was actually stating that some kind of complex corpse-removal system is entirely unnecessary and not worth the coding time. I was trying to say that, since there are a bajillion factors that contribute to a body not just lying around as-is for weeks on end, the best thing would probably be to just simplify it and have the body vanish after a certain amount of game time (maybe a day at the longest). I don't think it should be just after leaving the area, because if you take 3 steps, then come right back because you forgot to check something, there should be no reason those dead bandits aren't still there. Literally like 10 minutes has passed. I was only suggesting the possibility of some corpse remnants that would amount to scenery (bone bits, like you always see in animal lairs and caves in RPGs, maybe some blood and a couple of tattered garment/backpack remains) if there was a particularly large battle somewhere. Like, if you annihilate an entire bandit outpost, and you come back to it a week later, and it's still uninhabited, there should probably be maybe some evidence that 50 people died in that 70x70 foot area. After that one day period, though (or maybe less? Whatever you want to set it to, really), the corpses are either gone as if they were never there, OR you have some remains dotting the ground now. It would be pretty simple, really. Unfortunately my gauss rifle had reduced the corpse to gooey bits that were for some reason unmoveable. Oh well. Anyways, I like the idea of a day in game time or something for corpse decomposition.

This thread promises hawt action...

I see what you are saying, but on the flip side (besides the technical limitations) there are interface issues. For example, recently replaying Fallout 3 with the DLC, I was unable to collect all the steel ingots because I killed two trogs and a wildman on top of a couple ingots, and their bodies nicely blocked me from getting the ingots (which I tried for an hour to get, using all sorts of explosives and other shenanigans). Also, there is immersion and there is immersion. Should areas with a lot of dead bodies attract scavengers? After a day or two should traveling through an area with a number of dead bodies result in penalties because of the putrid stench? What about looters? What about smart looters, who learn you are two steps away from being a sociopathic war crime and start following you around to pick clean your victims? Wouldn't that make sneaking up on your enemies tough when you have a legion of dirty camp followers who picking over all the lint and yarn you left in your enemies pockets? That last part was just teasing of course. ;-)

It is in medias res, literally meaning "in the middle of things" (en, as a preposition, is really a transliteraturation of the Greek preposition). The Romans specified spatial limitations with adjectives for the most part, which is why medias res, in which medias is an adjective modifying res is best translate as "middle of things/events" (as you can see, the English idiom relies on an objective genitive construction).

Something like this could be fun, as long as they don't implement interface reflections of the PC's status, that is blood spattered screen, fuzzy field of vision if you get knocked in the head, the screen gets red when if you get close to death and so on. Or, if they do, that it is able to be turned off. I think stuff like this has little place in a tactical iso set up.

As someone whose research areas touch on narrative studies, I always enjoy reading about "living" narrative strategies (most of my subjects have been dead 2000 years or so). I really am excited to see what the team comes up, as from the post I get the feeling they have a solid idea on why integrated narrative structures are fundamental to a compelling narrative. It is often hard to find the right balance, especially when there is a different type of fun in pulling towards a more sandbox environment. I look forward to seeing how these move from here!

Hey dude. I've got your character portrait for you and his name. Ron Swanson. You are my hero. Back on topic. People, some of you of losing roleplaying in the mechanics. As have been said, mechanics are completely arbitrary. They are used to set the stage and are supposed to tools to enabling a rewarding roleplaying experience. Not straight-jackets that have to be slavishly followed. Point is, you could spend your entire life as a cobbler. You can make the hell out of shoes. A bunch of drunk goblins burn your house down and you can start your adventuring at whatever age as a level 1 Warrior. Perhaps you were a level 43 cobbler, but those skills are of little relevance. Think about it like duel classing in 2nd edition. You could be whatever you want for most of your life, and then bam, one day you start over at level 1 of a new class. It just so happens that the skills of your previous profession are no longer relevant or mechanically re-presentable in the game.

eh still. I'm not saying its incredibly unreasonable or something, but I think they are a lot of good arguments against it as I like to think I've shown, and the only real argument you've brought up is that you think it would be cool. And it seems like your main objection to the current system, at least in your first post was just that the portraits don't usually match, which could be remedied fairly easily. The only argument that needs to be used is that it increases the range of role playing experience for the player. If it does this, does not cost more zots (or significantly more zots for the pay off), does not interfere with the creative vision of the creators, then there is no reason not to add it. Now, these are admittedly some big caveats, but I think we can reasonably say that it would indeed increase the range of role playing experiences for the overall audience, even if you, in particular, wouldn't use it. From what we know of how the game starts, it wouldn't interfere with the creative vision (or at least seriously interfere). The questions then are the labor/design investment and how it might play out later in the game. As for previous experience, that is all encapsulated in the starting skills and load out. In most cRPGs you don't start out completely incapable of doing anything. So I wanted to play a grizzled woodsman. In his youth he was conscripted by the local baron to fight in some border war. While away, his village, with his wife and child, was burned to the ground by raiders because the baron was too worried about protecting the his vineyards than his peasants. After returning, he lived as a near hermit, dealing with people on to trade with when necessary. Cue traumatic spiritual event, start game. So, my PC is either a ranger or warrior, depending how much I want to play up the woodsman angle. In rangers are all druidy and tree hugging, I go with warrior. Regardless as far as stats I drop charisma down, since he, you know, hates people. Second, for skills I concentrate on survival/hunting/wilderness skills. For weapons, I throw in a spear as a proficiency (if they exist, proficiencies that it). Perhaps there is something like a perk system, so I could pick something for flavor, like anarchistic type trait to represent his hatred of established feudal government or some such. Viola, I have my grizzled, 40 year old woodsman. Functionally, not a lot different from any other character creation. I think if Obsidian provides use the tools to do minor customization like this, then I think it will be better for everyone. No mucking with boni or mali for being aged (also, I doubt many of us are full time adventurers, so we might not be entirely familiar with how a life of goblin killing, troll burning, spelunking or whatever would affect our physical state.

I would love the option to implement age, but do it sensibly. In the end it should be an aesthetic and narrative choice. Don't try to standardize the aging process with some strange formula or what not. As far as I know, I really didn't lose a point of strength at 40.

This is a good state I think. There can be some exceptions, as let us say that your companion has a favorite weapon or ring or helmet (or hamster) that they won't unequip or allow you to sell. Of course the challenge in this is to make that piece comparable or scale-able with other level appropriate loot. It becomes less important with minor pieces, but with a weapon it could be an issue.

Well, there seems to be a couple approaches to designing a ranger. D&D has influenced this a lot so I will use a lot of that as a base. I am old though, and never really played PnP past 2nd edition - First, there is the holy nature warrior approach. The Paladin equivalent for tree lovers (similar to cleric/druid split). This ties up the ranger's powers with a particular ethos, emphasizing his connection to nature. I am not such a fan of this particular paradigm. Nothing wrong with it per se, just not my cup of tea. Second, a general outsider warrior, this one focuses on the self-sufficiency, mountain man sort of attitude. Skills are learned from experience (as opposed to divinely granted) and the role they fill is a bit more varied. This is sort of the 2nd edition ranger I envision, at least in character, if not mechanics. He or she could be anything from a huntsman, sheriff, yeoman, guide, bounty hunter and so on. The sorts of activities that require a more varied skill set than a warrior and a martial disposition than a rogue. Then we come to animals. Companions. Pets. Whatever. This has been a trend, and their is plenty of precedence for it. Grizzly Adams anyone? Anyways, while I am normally not one to advocate not using something because a popular genre or game has utilized it, please, for the love of all the is holy, no WoW BM hunters. Sure, mechanically, if you are going to play an archer, pets are a blast. But I would prefer if pets or animal companions stayed with druids (if they are class bound at all). N.B. To teknoman2, at least back in the 2nd edition, both clerics and druids were classed as divine casters if I remember.

I will speak thoughts as to werewolves here. With the idea of souls dominating the IP here, I think we could incorporate that into myths of lycanthropy. A couple ideas: 1) Someone has purposefully or accidentliy killed the animal in question and absorbed the wolf's/bear's/badger's (please, we need badgers) and as such has the ability and/or compulsion to turn into a hybrid form of said animal. 2) It could be part of a returned soul cycle. Someone who was so vile and animalistic in a previous cycle returns, but the soul now reflects this stain by transforming into the werewolf (sort of like the Greek myth of Lycaon myth [as with many Greek myths, best preserved in Ovid's, a Roman, poem the Metamorphoses]).