rjshae

If people really want rare magic, then it might help play a little for the developers to provide more grades of craftmanship and metallurgy for the non-magical items. Start with ordinary iron for a sword, then improve it to steel, followed by damascus steel, and on to dwarven alloyed steel. At the pinnacle of conventional development, dweomer-forged steel is made using magical techniques but is otherwise an ordinary weapon. Masterwork weapons can then be further improved by endowing them with magical powers that draw upon the soul of the wielder. To make this work though, it would seem like weapon improvements would need smaller bonus increments. That would entail using percentiles rather than d20 bonuses for attack and damage calculation. Similar logic with armor; better materials and improved crafting techniques yield more effective defense and armor ratings.

Note that other KS cRPGs have been making progress with less than what PE received: * Shadowrun Returns is looking nice at $1.9 million. * Wasteland 2 developers have their basic look down and are working on building scenarios with $2.9 million. Both seem to be taking similar graphical approaches as PE.

I'd like to see an intelligent humanoid race that changes to the opposite gender as it gets older; a sequential hermaphrodite. It'd be interesting to see what we humans make of it in terms of our various gender biases.

A large, bulbous nose. Got to have that. Greasy eyes protruding from the skull like a goldfish. A cluster of quivering tentacles dangling pendulously from an extraordinarily long, pointed chin. Loose flaccid flesh hanging from the skeletal frame, with multiple clusters of pale, pulsating buboes that explode into a white burst of pus at the slightest touch. Oh and webbed feet too. They inhabit braccish coastal swamps and trade in artfully decorated driftwood sculptings.

Phew, that was close. I thought for certain they were going to mess up the audio. Glad you warned them in time.

I thought that was, like, every day?

Me I'd like it if they throw just enough changes into the mix that they defeat our expectations. I.e. stock D&D monsters are okay, but it'd be better if we didn't quite know how they will behave or what their combat capabilities are.

Yes, the unique magic items with a custom lore in the IE games added a lot of color to the experience. However, I would really like it if the items varied a little bit with each playthrough. Not enough to be completely random, but enough to change the replay gaming experience. (I.e. sufficiently to make writing walkthrough guides more difficult.)

Better editing than the CNN news stream would be a good starting point.

I'd just want them to be rare as hen's teeth; and prized when aquired ~and saved for last resort. I did like the toxin mechanic for potions in the original Witcher. Well dang, if we keep following suggestions like this, the game might as well just be a medieval Europe sim. My impression was that most people signed up to get a game experience like the IE series. Neither magic nor potions were that rare in the IE games; just expensive, as should be. The economics can take care of the scarcity.

My guess is that food won't be included because it can be handled as a game mechanic. I.e. some percentage of the loot you find goes to food; you just never see it so you never have to deal with it. It's like a hidden tax.

About the same as in the BG series will be fine. Magic should be about as common in this magic-oriented fantasy setting as technology was during our medieval era.

What kind of mechanics would that be? We know there will already be positioning bonuses... Although I'm hoping enemy AI will be good enough to try to compensate for backstab attacks after the first jab. Rogues also have a ton of utility outside combat, besides which the flexible classes probably means we can create a fighting build somehow. It would depend a lot on what type of combat mechanics the developers are going to implement. I'm looking at it as rogues getting an attack bonus that makes them almost as good as a fighter, but only when attacking a target as a member of a team.

Yup. Possibly this may be the most cost-effective approach, depending on how hard it is for an artist to fix the 'uncanny valley' problem.

One thing is for certain, it doesn't matter how much they brought in, somebody will always fret about whether it is enough.

While I don't expect they will support 3D console interfaces with the first release, I very much hope they will retain the files and information needed to implement this in the future.

Is this connected to PE somehow?

By way of comparison to the movie industry, this feels a lot more like an indie film than a big budget production. But indie films can make for great theater and big budget movies can be an absolute disaster. I'm looking forward to that niche market feel of a BG release.

That might What if it were 6 of each? Six of each facial feature (with some slight differences between races/gender), that would barely compare to the ridiculously large numbers you were using. No. I only want 1. The face is barely going to be seen. The face is going to be a portrait. Instead of wasting time and money on modeling extremely fine details that would never be seen, I'd rather they focus that energy elsewhere. I mean where would it stop? If we can change the nose and eyebrows, then why not the color of their fingernails? Why not the color of their eyes? It's unneccessary detail. tl;dr - if its never going to matter visually in-game, why waste time/$ on it? That might be something modders can implement, if the developers leave in the hooks. But I agree that a modest selection would be more than sufficient: 3 hair styles/5 hair colors/6 flesh tones/4 facial hair options and a variable background would give you 360+ variants at a cost of 12 graphical overlays and a color palette. They might even be able to use the same production technique as with the area images: render in 3D then have an artist bring the face to life.

Giving rogues perks for fighting the same target as another party member might be a nice touch. Individually a rogue wouldn't be as effective as a trained fighter, but he should be better able to utilize distraction and sneakiness.

A pair of muscular meathead barbarians called Kutchek and Gore.

This love (thread) will never die.

The BG series had several instances where party members were removed as a result of the plot. It may hinder the story not to allow for that possibility.

Yep, definitely. We kind of discussed some thoughts along those lines in another thread.

It looks slick, but what's with the plastic shoulder trim? Is that just to make any falling radioactive dust slide off?