rjshae

Why does Robin Hood: Men in Tights spring to mind? I'm sure the modding community will come up with enhanced garb to complement whatever Obsidian develops. We won't be able to see that much detail on the game's denizens anyway.

The D&D alignment system is a trivialized view of complex behavior patterns. Personally, I prefer the HERO/Champions approach where characters suffer from specific psychological limitations to varying degrees. In Odo's case he had a psychological limitation that caused him to carry out justice (common/strong).

Being able to use concealment for defense against ranged attacks would be a welcome addition to the tactical options. It's a realistic behavior and the enemies can use it just as much as the player. I'm just not sure how readily it can be implemented in a game of this type.

I'm okay with a stronghold as a goal. I just don't want to spend the rest of the game decorating the place (without a compensating benefit). If I wanted to build a castle I'd buy a kit.

I'd like just whatever Obsidian comes up with. They are designing a new setting with new cultures, so the character races should be appropriate for those circumstances. Trying to force-feed a fan favorite into the mix would be kludgy at best.

That would be stupid, yes. It wouldn't be quite as stupid if you could switch to purely defensive mode while you recover your breath and overcome the pain.

Tomorrow. Still I don't see it :/ Thursday was my understanding.

I hope they have a Ball and Chain of Grumbling item. It's intelligent, but all it does is whine about what's in the Kickstarter pledge levels. Joking, of course.

That does make a lot of sense from a resources standpoint. They can always add one or two more companions with the expansion pack.

I've played games where vitality slowly returns during combat (in contrast to injuries, which must be healed). It's an okay mechanic; the main factor is that the total vitality must be lower than what you'd get with a system using out-of-combat healing. That way, the net risk is the same, with the additional factor that the heavily damaged character will have the option to retreat in order to recover without healing magic.

I like it. The game designers could also flag specific items throughout the game that are of particular interest to Adventurer Hall recruits. If the party finds one of those items, a member of the appropriate class would call dibs and claim it for him- or herself. Those items could precipitate background-related conversations that would add some color to the otherwise generic characters.

Orcs and Drow are interesting races, but they should get strongly negative reactions during most encounters and conversations, if not outright belligerence.

Great, more crud I have to store away in a drawer.

It pretty much points down to a choice of class-related strongholds with little customization, or a single-class stronghold with many customizations. Since we are already getting a house, I'm not sure that adding a customizable stronghold would add that much value. Shrug. They'll never be able to please everybody, but maybe the modders can put something in later?

Hopefully specialties like these can be mostly covered by themed extensions to existing classes.

I prefer the Baldur's Gate series approach where the stronghold depended on the class.

Plus a castration option to keep that tone just right. Kidding.

Maybe such features could be included as a game option in the expert mode. I'd like the ability to turn it off.

It's not always about wanting to exclude certain classes; it's about trade-offs in resource allocation. Do you want Bards or do you want, say, an underwater adventure? If you don't particularly want to play Bards then you might prefer the underwater adventure. No matter. We're all getting something we want or we wouldn't be here. I'm looking at it from the opposite side. Without the Bard Chanter, the Underwater adventure won't be there because the Chanter God hails from tales of a Siren that lured in good men and taught them how to sing for her pleasure.... *shrug* see where I'm getting at? You didn't disprove my point; you only noted that they will be a Chanter-related experience. The original poster was saying that we shouldn't play the Chanter if we don't like them. But that would therefore preclude the Chanter-related side quests for that player. I'm saying that the Underwater adventure (or whatever) would be available to all, regardless of whether you play the Chanter or not. Anyway, it doesn't really matter at this point. It's a done deal. I actually kind of enjoy companion-related side quests and I'm hoping the developers will make Paladin and Chanter something that everybody will want to play.

It'll depend a lot on the damage system they adopt. If they have hit points with a separate injury system similar to Drakensang, then the level won't matter quite as much. You suffer degradation in capability with each injury and then you go down after four injuries. It felt a lot more realistic that way.

Funny thing about the concept: the idea of a bunch of dangerous, well-armed adventurers wandering around should make the local nobility pretty nervous, at least if they are human nobility. I wonder what makes the place economically and socially viable? Maybe it's run by a clan of dwarves who are powerful enough not to be concerned by the potential threat? They must charge a fee for each recruit. Or each recruit pays a fee for the opportunity to be recruited by capable talent. I guess the latter would make more sense, game-wise.

It's not always about wanting to exclude certain classes; it's about trade-offs in resource allocation. Do you want Bards or do you want, say, an underwater adventure? If you don't particularly want to play Bards then you might prefer the underwater adventure. No matter. We're all getting something we want or we wouldn't be here.

There is no good or evil, only survival and extinction. That which brings survival for the self and the group is called good. /

The experience I've had with playing Monks is that they dish out a lot of damage, but they take a lot as well. Being a front-line character, they often take more damage than anybody else in the party, steadily draining healing resources. Thus, while they look interesting and have a lot of bells and whistles, they aren't always an optimal character over the course of a long campaign. That won't matter as much, of course, if they use some sort of autohealing function...

Each companion they add likely increases the intra-party dialogue in proportion to the number of possible companions (2n - 1, where n is the total companions). I'm guessing they may also be planning to add character-specific side quests as well. Finally, it adds to the variations in enemy classes we'll face.