rjshae

If that's the example, then I'd rather they didn't.

How does degenerate gameplay devolve into degenerate discussion? Now we know.

Apart from quantum entanglement...

If he had a functional attack roll. One of my peeves with D&D has always been "touch attacks", ranged or otherwise. If you wanted to rely on your attack roll then you probably wouldn't have rolled a class with the worst one. Personally, I've always avoided even bothering to learn those spells. HERO/Champions had a nice approach to this problem: if you want to target a character with a ranged spell, then you had to do a ranged attack and suffer the chance of a miss. But you could pay a little more for the power (+1/2) and target the hexagon containing the character. That way you only had to do a ranged attack against a stationary, unarmored target--the area above that spot on the floor. The target, of course, could still apply any resistances to the effect. Maybe something like this could be implemented as a meta-magical ability? I.e. you memorize a ranged targeted spell at a higher level and gain the ability to ignore the defender's dexterity/shield defenses? Like a "precision guided spell". Alternatively there could be a separate combat skill for targeting spells & guns -- essentially line-of-sight weapons. (Crossbows too?)

^^^^ Yup, you almost have to design an entire game around a cursed object for it to work well. Curses are much more interesting when they have a deep story behind them that the player can help resolve. Otherwise they're essentially just nuisance pranks.

I like to think that the designers know what they are doing.

He's not asking that all spells be removed, hes asking that the game be completable without them, which it probably will be anyway. You shouldn't treat every religious person as if they are identical zombies - far from it - and while there are certainly obnoxious people out there, there are plenty of reasonable people out there who are religious and willing to let others get on with their lives. It's just that the idiots who cry witchhunt if they see someone reading Harry Potter on the bus are just a lot more vocal than everyone else. The only way that you can stop this being an issue is to have some dialogue with religion - not the extremists of course, but if a regular people are engaged, see something for what it is then it leaves the extremists without a leg to stand on. I don't believe I did treat this person as an identical zombie; I am arguing that the game shouldn't be designed around one player's moral principles. Get it? I'm disagreeing with the message, rather than the messenger.

Hahaha... amusing stuff.

Did you ever see the film "Mazes and Monsters" (1982) with a very young looking Tom Hanks as a roleplay-addicted college teen? Not a great IMDB score by any means, but it came about from all the negative press D&D received around that time. It's a crying shame there was so much misunderstanding back then. I'm just grateful it was able to withstand the test of time. Yes I did. The fact that some of the most decent people I ever knew were gamers flew in the face of all that nonsense. But it did leave me deeply skeptical about organized religion.

No offense, but I don't see a particular need to design the game in order not to offend the religious beliefs of one person. There are other games out there from which to choose. Try Wasteland 2 or such. P.S. The moral panic over D&D permanently burned out my interest in placating the religious groups over gaming. If we let this one slip through, then more demands are sure to follow. Just... no.

Slide rule, assuming you don't count the pencil and paper.

I believe it can be used for both. Yes, that would be a consistent way to use it. Perhaps a divination spell could also be used to "sense danger", reducing the odds of a surprise attack along a dangerous trek? Potentially divination could also be used to find a safe place to build a camp, lowering the odds of a monstrous encounter. Another use would be to predict foul weather, if the game incorporates environmental effects.

I can't say I'm all that interested in watching somebody else play a computer game, but I would enjoy reading Mr. Chris Avellone's reflective game design comments in the aftermath, if he has an interest in such.

One of the elements I recall with a certain fondness from the table-top experience is the role that cleric divination spells played in the game. Being able to stand before the entrance to a dungeon and augur whether it would be a favorable or hazardous experience, added a lot to the magical flavour of the game. Now I wonder whether something similar could be done with a CRPG, albeit in a more limited fashion. Could a divination spell be used, for example, to determine whether a particular site is something that we are capable of handling, or is it much too dangerous for our current party level. Likewise, are we on the "correct" path for our destiny? Or is this just a side trek? What do you think? Does divination have any role in a game of this type? How can it be implemented in a sensible manner?

Tenser's floating disk.

I don't see that a thrown javelin is quantitatively any different than, say, a hurled axe or dagger. Now granted, it's probably not the ideal weapon for a party of adventurers to lug around, but it might be a nice change-up for an enemy attack.

I do hope you're talking about goats here...

The context matters here.

First we need to know if it naturally regenerates at all. My preference would of course be: no. Zero regeneration is essentially the same as slow regeneration unless the combat is really, really long and characters can pull out and rest. Hence: no, you only need to know if it is slow(zero) or fast. But no matter.

Seems like the rate of regeneration would be more important than whether it does or not. Slow (or zero) regeneration makes Priest restorative abilities more important. Fast regeneration benefits the guy with the heaviest armor.

me either. I'm not playing the game for the animations really, but this was one of those "I'm not really invested in it, but I'm interested in others' thoughts" kind of thing. On second thought, maybe we should have a special melodramatic death animation, but only for the Chanter's class.

^^^^ I wonder though whether flank/rear attacks would compensate for that somewhat. That is, even if your attack odds are low, if you can attack from the rear you will still have some chance for a crit. In that case, a mob attack becomes something to be feared.

For the purpose of simplicity, perhaps an "endless supply of X" is something you can gain during the game by cutting a commodity deal with a merchant's guild? Say, 500 gp to supply the party with ordinary arrows; 5,000 gp for improved flight arrows, and so forth. A cool-down would then just represent you drawing from this stash. Sure it's somewhat abstracted, but it would smooth out those pesky logistical details. I could actually see a savy merchant guild cutting deals like that. They may calculate that as an adventurer either (a) you will die before collecting the net worth of all those arrows, or (b) you will want to pay even more to get a commodity upgrade. If the merchant guild cuts enough such deals, on average they will come out ahead. The "endless arrows" commodity can just be treated like an item that has a cool-down power.

Meh, I'm not hung up about it. There's usually so much going on in a party-based game that I usually don't spend much time focusing on the particulars of the character animations. As long as they aren't jarring, I'm okay with just a few animations. They could always just implement rag-doll physics for the death drop.

Perhaps, but that would appear to go against the canon in the films. Yoda didn't use healing to cure himself from the lightning attack in the film series; he withstood it.