Hagen

Same for me. My order is on "shipping soon" with no update for quite a while now.

A combination of avoidance, deflection, and damage reduction. The lighter your armor, the better your avoidance. Plate armor and shields may additionally deflect some weapons (mostly stabbing and slashing attacks, but not maces or hammers). Hits neither avoided nor deflected cause (the weapons damage roll - the armor's armor rating) damage points. To compensate for blunt weapons being undeflectable, stabbing weapons could score bigger critical hits against lightly armored targets (representing deep piercing wounds) while slashing weapons could cause bleeding against lightly armored targets (representing deep gashes). Might be a bit complicated, but the nice thing about CRPGs is that you can keep all this under the hood and not require a GM to memorize a lot of extra rules.

An alignment is never required to define a character's personality. A character in a RPG is barely different from, say, a character in a book. It is up to the player / the author to define the character's personality. It doesn't need to be expressed in game mechanics, it just needs to exist somewhere, whether it's purely in the player's head or scribbled onto some notepad. It's that personality that defines roleplaying expectations. Why would a character suddenly become inconsistent just because his personality has not been forced into the constraints of an alignment? If that were true, no book author could write any believable character without giving them an alignment first, because writing a character is a very, very similar creative process to playing one in a roleplaying game. If Tolkien had no note that said "Sauron is lawful evil" (or whatever really), the Dark Lord of Mordor would have suddenly started to build orphanages or something? A paladin is free to pee on an altar, and the God in question is free to strike him down with some lightning from the sky. I've been a gamemaster for years, none of the system we played used alignment, and I never had to worry that any paladin crapped on his deity's altar or any acolyte ever told his inquisitor "y'know, I think the God-Emperor is the biggest douchebag in the known galaxy". Honestly, if players are unable to make up a character personality that fits the setting and the storyline and act at least moderately sane in that character's role, well, then roleplaying maybe ain't the right hobby for them. That potential trouble is easily avoided by defining a robust reputation system. As a general rule, a good reputation is frigging easy to ruin - the local hero who is caught stealing will very quickly stop being a local hero. And you simply need to define "points of no return" - kill somebody, and your rep can never go over a certain point again. No matter how much your donate to charity after murdering someone, you'll still be a murderer and appropriately unpopular. Consequences do not require the presence of an alignment, it requires simply common sense from the game master, or, in the case of a computer game, the scripters of the system. You desecrate an altar - bad things happen to you, no matter what alignment you are. You murder someone - people will hate you, no matter what's on your character sheet. I think alignment is mostly a constraint. A crutch, at best.

Whenever someone brings up alignments, I think of that entry in the "Real men, real roleplayers, loonies and munchkins" list. Real men are lawful good. Real roleplayers don't use alignment. Loonies are amoral silly. Munchkins are whatever gives the most plusses. Ancient humor aside, I agree with one of the lines above.

Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines will always have a place in my "all time awesome" list. It managed what only very, very few games ever did during my gaming "career" - making me stay awake and play until 4 AM during the week, wandering to work like a frigging zombie, not regretting a thing about it and doing it again the next night. Here's one to Troika!

I just increased my pledge because it's the last week and I felt it was worth giving it one final push. Hope my car won't need any repairs or some such next month.

I voted for "follow the same rules but have an unique feature". Said unique feature shouldn't be anything super-powerful, just something that fits with the theme of the character and gives them a little quirk, makes them stand out just a little bit. Also, I'm no fan of wildly exotic companions. In PS:T, exotic companions worked well because the entire place was full of exotic creatures, and a party of six totally average humans would have looked weird and out of place. However, in a more down-to-earth setting I like my companions to be much less exotic. No demon lords or vampires in my party, please. That type of companion takes something that should be rare and exciting and dangerous - in this case, demons and vampires - and turns it into something common, something familiar. Because it hangs out in your party every day. "Oh look, a coven of vampires, like our old pal Edward here." Yay.

Not interested in a flame war, kid. Have a good one. Sorry, are you perchance Chris "E..xtremely childish" Priestly? :D http://social.biowar...14315447-1.html "I'm not evil, I'm actually very nice and kind. I can prove it. Here, loan me your wallet and sister/mom/daughter for a few minutes." Today's pearl. Ah, the Bioboards.. Erm, that was kinda harsh. :D I have no interest in anyone's mom. And I'll also stop derailing this thread, hehe.

I said "so far", not "whatever". I'd rather see what they come up with and not run in a circle like my hair was on fire before we even had confirmed dev statements on the topic.But hey, to each their own.

No. My opinion is that level-scaling can be done smartly and doesn't always completely fubar a game. I do not need it to be present, I'm indifferent about it. If they can pull it off without any level scaling, fine! If they choose to implement it somewhere for playability's sake, also fine. It's hard to please everyone with their design decisions, but so far, I think Obsidian is doing a really good job. No need to bitch and moan just yet.

It depends how you define "player skill". Action gaming skills as in swinging swords and dodging via keyboard/mouse? No! Strategic/tactical skills as in what classes did you pick for your party, what skills, spells and equipment did you choose and how are you using it in tactical combat? Hell yes!

Maybe you should just wait and see and let Obsidian do their thing instead of writing it off like this on principle. They may still surprise you in a good way and present a tactical combat system that's deep, challenging and fun to play.

Then the alternative is what? Everything grows slightly more dangerous in relation to how far away it is from the starting point of the game? Look, I'm all against stupid power scaling à la D&D and such, but somehow, you have to ramp up the challenge as the story progresses. Otherwise the beginning of the game will be hard and will then get easier as you progress.

Their reply to the question makes absolute sense. If you have a large world and want to give the player freedom of choice when to go where, you have to include some form of level scaling. Fixed creature levels *everywhere* are just a gentler form of railroading. Also, level scaling can be done very differently from "lowly street punk (lvl 1) will be a lvl 20 badass when I come back later". Instead, encounters can spawn more creatures of the same type with more dangerous abilities. That's how you defined encounters in the NWN toolset, for example. If the player is level X, spawn Y - Z amount of creatures of types A, B, or C, etc. Places that are meant to be challenging should not scale below a certain level (i.e., dungeons), and some places should not scale above a certain level either (street thugs and such should be about the same difficulty everywhere, there's no reason for a city to have tougher street scum just because I was a higher level when I got there). Places that are level-scaled should retain the original level they are scaled to. A den of lowly bandits should remain a den of lowly bandits, and a crypt of horrible undead should not scale down to accommodate a low level party.

The PC should not ascend to ridiculous level of power unless there's a compelling story reason for it. But I'd prefer it if that wouldn't happen. I suggest the following to keep the PCs power somewhat realistic and in line: - increase attributes on level-up sparingly (DA: O, as good as it was in some aspects, gave you a ridiculous amount of attribute points which was bad) - increase hitpoints only if the governing attribute (usually constitution) is increased or an appropriate passive skill is taken - realistic progression in weapon and armor quality - no stuff like a low quality sword doing 5-10 damage and a high level one 60-90 - increase the PC's power by allowing them to learn better combat maneuvers and skills In the end, I want the feeling that an experienced PC is a veteran with an edge, not some inexplicably unkillable tank that mows down entire armies.