rjshae

For all we know there is something unusual about the nature of this setting that prevents those of a pure soul from dying in combat. Call it the will of the gods, if you wish. The meddlesome gods choose to intervene in the lives of the blessed by this means, restoring the victim back to full health. However, the recipient of their blessing is left marked in some manner. "The Mark" is like a divine IOU; the character must perform a penance or divine service of some form before it will go away. The specific act may be revealed, for example, by a vision, or it can be resolved with a cleansing spell from a temple. If the character forestalls this act for too long, then he begins to suffer the most rotten luck; taking a penalty equivalent to a curse spell. "The Mark" can be made permanent by the game, causing it to apply retroactively if the player does a restore to an older save. Characters can receive multiple marks and the effects will grow increasingly unpleasant. At worst it can result in a horrid, lingering death after suffering from leprosy.

Personally I think it's been a splendid discussion, despite a lot of grumbling and fretting. Sure there are differences, but you can also recognize some strong commonalities as well. They obviously picked up some popular trends like the Adventure Hall and recent class additions from the discussion threads. I hope (and expect) where they will follow their own advice is in the development of the world setting and the plot. That includes the companions, the magic system, the native inhabitants, and so forth.

Hmm... I could see something like alcohol being a palliative for a broken soul, at least on a subconscious level. Perhaps many alcoholics in this world suffer from a broken soul but don't quite realize it, so they seek a temporary solace in a bottle, or with certain mind altering drugs. A related effect may be to make it harder to manipulate the souls of people under the influence of alcohol, but that also makes it more difficult for the inebriated to draw upon their own soul energy. There could be certain circumstances when that is advantageous for the drinker, such as when they're facing a Cipher.

Umm... really dumb question: am I supposed to be able to order just the T-Shirt through a separate $25 PayPal pledge? Or will that just be a 'gear' option in the aftermath?

It's not just a job, it's an Adventure Hall.

It must be at least 40K, nothing to do with being half a million. Oops, you're right. Long day and all that...

More good news! So the PayPal tally must be around a half-million then. This project may make US$3million yet.

Yup. An Area of Effect centered on the caster.

We're men... we're men in tights We roam around the forest looking for fights. We're men... we're men in tights. We rob from the rich and give to the poor, that's right. We may look like sissys, but watch what you say or else we'll put out your lights.

ToEE let you have eight: five you generated and three you recruited. It didn't seem to hurt the game too much.

Yea, I should have added one, but I did not think at the time and given my opinion is to drop martial arts and have a different kind of monk entirely, that would have coloured the poll a bit. I think the community is slightly divided on the subject, some like and some dislike, Obsidian has no hope of satisfying everyone with this class. I'll bet every class except the core four have some opponents who would love to see them gone. It's a compromise.

Depends on the depth of the combat system, but yeah, different weapons for different situations. A rapier for unarmored foe versus a whacking great sword for an armored knight. If you are disarmed, or the weapon breaks, then you can switch to the mace. Against somebody with a shield, then a flail.

I guess the developers could encode information into the maps that describes whether a particular unwalkable area provides partial cover and allows adjacent ranged fire to pass through it. The AI could then compute line of sight to the target, check if it intersects an unwalkable area, then have the creature behave accordingly (crouch or whatever). Fire around corners would be a little more difficult to implement, I think.

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.