rjshae

I think this change is going to further weaken the rogue class, but strengthen the barbarian. Opportunities for the rogue to flank opponents will be significantly reduced because there are now just four other party members available to double-up an opponent. In contrast, the likelihood of party members becoming isolated during combat will greatly increase, and the barbarian is the best class for handling that. I suspect that will mean the classes may need to be rebalanced again.

Yup. In the end I always just wind up looking at the price of items and choosing the more expensive, unless I particularly like the cheaper item for some reason. That was the great thing about the old HERO/Champions system; you could tell directly how useful and potent a power was based on its point cost.

Based on the new icons at left, I see the sticker brigade made another pass through the forums. At least that's what I call the folks who go around applying stickers to things where I work.

I see a couple of dependent variables here that may bias the results. First, if the students are aware of the experiment and are motivated for it to succeed, it will work the first time. Second is the presumed maturity level of the participants, which allows them to cooperate for mutual success without succumbing to competitive desires.

ME:A needs a head bag mod. Or even three layered bags. That way we don't objectify the protagonist.

This kind of makes sense though, doesn't it? Plus it makes the weapon more unique.

Mmm. Well for me at least, what I do during pauses is the only interesting part of combat. Otherwise I might as well be watching a hockey game.

Soul bound chain mail bikini armor... collect a full set.

A possibility that occurred to me is that a combat recording, storing only the actions and probability outcomes, could be useful for debugging and fine tuning of combat. I.e. they can tweak the parameters, rerun the combat record, play it forward for a bit, then take over at a certain stage of the combat.

For me it was hard to judge when to say goodbye to a soulbound weapon. There were so many fiddly little modifiers that make it difficult to judge their true value. In the end I just shrugged and kept using them.

US courts have a say in how treaties are applied internally, but I don't know that they have a say on whether the government can exit or not. For example, the US exited the ABM treaty in 2002 with nary a peep from the courts.

Sleep scumming is a nuisance; I have to thoroughly wash my face in the morning in order to flush out all the little bits stuck to the eye lashes...

Time limits are the enemy of exploration. It just takes away an important element of the game, as I always feel like I have to blow through the plot without looking around. FO1 felt like that -- I couldn't just go randomly off somewhere, but had to constantly stay on mission. For me that ruined the experience, so I prefer to play it with the mod version that eliminates the time limit. They could add time limits as a game option, with a default of off, but then they would need to include failure consequences.

You encounter a soul thief--a creature that is able to swap her soul for yours--and she puts you in her body. Your party doesn't believe who you claim to be, at least not initially, and you are left to fend for yourself bereft of most of your powers in a feeble body. A sea cave dungeon that floods during each high tide, leaving you unable to rest. It is inhabited by amphibious denizens that work for a slaver company. They keep their prisoners in the high ground area at back, which doesn't get flooded. A mysterious island that only appears at night, when it is periodically visited by a ghost ship. Rumor has it that if you stay too long, you'll never be able to leave. A peculiar fellow who claims to be investigating Watchers. He has some agents in Dyrwood that have been following your progress, and he occasionally scrys on you with the aid of a magic tea pot. In his back room he has a collection of perfectly preserved corpses of prior Watchers. He is secretly looking for a means to become a Watcher himself, and will resort to any means to get it.

One of these days we'll see a cRPG based on Ars Magica and then all those mage junkies can go hog wild...

This is how the BGs work, though: the natural recovery rate of a character without superhuman constitution is minimal. It just happens that the setting has lots of readily available magical healing, so 1-2 rests worth of spells will fix whatever ails you (up to and including death once you unlock those spells). The IE games had their own sleep restriction though in the form of frequent random encounters when you tried to rest in hazardous areas. Your choice was to backtrack to a safe location, or keep reloading until you had a successful sleep cycle. Either way it penalized players who slept after each battle. I'd argue that camping supplies are a less cumbersome substitute that create more interesting choices for the players.

The difference in these features is between the tactical (constantly pausing to swap arrows during combat) and the strategic (deciding whether to avoid some encounters in order to conserve camping supplies). I think the developers want low level combat to flow smoothly where possible, but throw in some logistical friction in order to provide planning challenges. But seriously, how big a challenge are camping supplies at the normal setting? I rarely found myself in situations where I needed to restock without actually traveling back to base anyway. The system worked fine for me, so I don't have much sympathy for the issue.

The BG1/2 rest mechanic is a total kludge anyway. Realistically, you'd need several weeks to rest up following a brutal combat, and you'd want to do that somewhere reasonably safe. The camping supplies represent a reasonable compromise for what's essentially a logistical issue. Games are about dealing with challenges. Deal with it, I say.

Without pause Yes, I know. Edit it.

Wouldn't you rather see the devs working on the game instead? Video capture software is sufficient for this.

A mysterious submarine... grown from the back of an ancient sea creature, and powered by glowing adra. What is it for, I wonder? Does it have some malicious intent?

Convert all racial attribute modifiers into specific combat modifiers. For example, an Orlan could get +3 Will, -3 Fort, +3 Accuracy, +2 Deflection. The attribute ranges could still be modified based on the original attribute modifiers, so you could still build an Orlan with a 20 Perception.

The priest class healing spells seem to scale fine up until level six spells. Why isn't there an equivalent of the D&D heal spell? The only healing spell at that level is minor intercession. For high level parties facing a tough encounter, that lack of a heal spell is really felt. My priest ends up spending several 'rounds' spamming enough heal spells to get the melee fighters back up to snuff. There's a big gap between restore critical endurance and resurrection.