Bokob

Again, I think it depends on if you're firing Minié Ball style conical sabbots out of rifled barrels or not. Once you have a musket with a rifled barrel and you move away from round ball ammunition, it's effective range goes from 50-75 yards to 500. There's no way you're going to hit targets consistently at 500 yards with a bow and arrow, or if you did, the arrow wouldn't have the same penetration at all. Anyway... I guess all of that is moot. You're unlikely to engage any enemy at a range of 500 yards in an isometric RPG. :D A Minié Ball might be a little bit overpowering for the game, specially if you consider that they might not use gunpowder (or at least a better formula) higher muzzle velocities equal more accuracy. Plus, if they are going to have blunderbuss and handcannons a Minié ball might be too advanced. Also I think Bokob overestimated the effectiveness of a bow and arrow, at those distances a single bowman wouldn't be as accurate. That's why they fired in volleys, at close quarters they actually took care when firing since ammo was limited and expensive. I was in fact referring to smooth bore muskets, since rifled muskets only appeared in the 1500s. The 500yd effective range you are referring to is from the Springfield Model 1861, as the name suggest, a weapon that appeared in the 2nd half of the 19th century. A typical smoothbore musket had a range of 100 to 150yds according to your own source. while : "The range of the medieval weapon is not accurately known, with estimates from 165 to 228 m (180 to 249 yds). Modern longbows have a useful range up to 180 m (200 yd)" (source here http://en.wikipedia....English_longbow). The relative technological time-line of the game, as I understood it, would seem to take place in something equivalent to the late medieval era, hence why musket are said to be rare by the dev (My own personal opinion). This is why I assume Rifled barrels do not exist yet. If they do, yes, they will make the bow and arrow obsolete, make naval warfare very different and make walls around castle completely obsolete. Regardless, it all comes down to game mechanics to decide of the difference between weapons and their usefulness in specific situations. ^.^

I'm not a fan of a system that gives automatic arbitrary consequences to every decision you make but I agree that sometimes it would be good if good decision have negative consequences and vis versa. Those could be due to cultural factor that differs slightly from yours, like a society where helping the weak is not something they encourage. Or it could be due to indirect effects, like saving the life of the person who will later be the king's assassin. It could also have personal negative effect like helping a faction more would result in loss of respect by a competing faction. Want I hope I won't see if decision that have to be taken repeatedly but have dire repercussion every time. One thing I really didn't like for example was the soul eater mechanics of one of the NWN2 DLC. you eventually have to focus so much on this that you love sight of everything else and makes the game less enjoyable in my opinion.

If well balanced with other weapons, firearms are good. Some people seemed to think that firearms offers an advantage over any other weapon outhere but it's actually a incorrect, especially with early firearms. The main advantage of a firearm that that anybody can use one with little training. With time, firearms became so easy and cheap to mass produce in a short period of time compared to a bow of equivalent quality that most country chose to equip their troops with rifles. The low production cost and time with the low training requirements made it the weapon of choice of modern military powers. A good archer can shoot faster and farther away then a good rifleman. Over long distances, the trained archer is also more accurate because the rifleman weapon is not very accurate, not matter how good the shooter is. I'm not sure of the place they want to give to firearms in the game but I would say that they should be good medium to short range weapon. They are not as good as a bow in long range and not as good as melee weapon in short range, but they can more or less be useful in both situation.

Like in mot RPG i've played, I'm probably going to play a human because they are easier to identify to, especially in a fantastic universe I won't be familiar with on game launch. I would hope that they are well balanced with other species. Also, I disagree that humans have to be the base. In fact, one cool thing about us, is that we are built for extreme physical resistance. Here is an example: We sweat during physical intense physical exercise, this is our way to regulate our body temperature and it allows us to regulate our body temperature while moving, this allows us to run longer distances then other animals who controls body temperatures but breathing (like dogs and cats for example). Those animals can run faster then us but never as long then us (if you are in good physical shape that is). This fact is a serious advantage in a warm dry environment but can prove lethal in cold environment and useless in a very humid environment. SO technically, humans are better at physical resistance in most environment found on earth. so the start point should always be a base which offers no bonus of defects like, how easy it is for me to survive in environment A and why. Lets take "darkvison" for an example. We consider this an advantage because we can't see in the dark, but in the case were they've adapted to see only in the dark, we both can see 50% of the time on the surface, meaning that in reality, we're pretty much equals. If the creature that can see in the dark only lives underground, then yes, it would have an advantage but that creature would live in an environment where everybody else can do the same, cancelling this advantage most of the time because creature who needs light won't be in competing with those who don't like light 99% of the time. TDLR: If a specie really had a significant advantage over the other that is not balanced out by anything, eventually, one will completely dominate the other, either by predation or by breeding them out (in the case of subspecies). That's why I think, logically, all existing species should be equivalent to another and therefore, human should also have bonus.

The best character portrait generator I've seen came from the only game that didn't really required one... namely EvE online. You create a character from scratch, shape it, dress it, find a cool position with a background, take a picture, save it and you'll never see anything but that picture (Althought I heard that changed). The portraits are extremely realistic but they are also static. In the case of this game, that might be overkill to go in so much details. I liked the BG way of doing it back in the day but if techology allows it, I won't say no to a bit more in dept character creation. Dragon Age:Origins had a decent character creator I think, not too detailed but enough to make your character unique to your eyes. Althought If I'm never going to see my character up close, a selection of epic painted portraits would still make me happy at the end of the day. Addendum: Tiax Rules All, awesome portraits =) Addendum 2: This was the portrait of my Character in EvE, for example of what I meant by "a bit overkill" (also portrait is in low res, computer obliged) http://imageshack.us...33/90410888.jpg