Aotrs Commander

I dont see how 5 person parties are a console centric thing. I thought they wanted a smaller party size in order to reduce the cluster battles from pillars 1. I dont blame them either so many of the battles in POE1 was a mess with spells and masses of people cluttering the entire screen making it hard to even tell who was friend or foe let alone any tactical gameplay. I can sort of relate to that. On the table-top, I now typicaly run with 7-8 characters (and was up to nine players at one point) and you can quickly find that physical space becomes a problem. (Stuff like Wizardry 8 got away with it by not actually having any discrete character positioning.) While I would prefer six characters - since that's what I think the the optimum, given thatg I spent 2/3 of PoE playing with GM and mt own Cypher doing the same things but twice pretty much, I haven't got much of a leg to stand on. (In my defence, this was rare and was mainly because Cyphers are such ludicrous FUN; especially before they got nerfed...!) Besides, five is still an improvement over the 3/4 we got with the non isometric RPGs that succeeded IWD2 and it wasn't a deal-breaker (albiet that it did change the nature of the combat (DA:O being a bit of an exception) to be less about maneuvre and position.)

And yet PS:T, BG, BG2, IWD, IWD2, PoE and Tyranny did that just absolute fine (and I'm going to deliberately exclude NWN and NWN2 from that list, let alone DA:O, KotR 1/2 and ME trilogy-apart-from-the-last-fifteen-minutes-of-3, which didn't even have any "rest"-like abilities) and collectively, all of the above are the most immersive games I've played (well maybe not NWN 1 so much). PS:T, in fact, is still, in my opinion, the best RPG of all time (and among the top three best games period of all time, alongside TIE Fighter and Dungeon Keeper 1) and in that game in was actually required some effort to actually DIE. If I wanted to play Dark Souls (or equivilent), I would play Dark Souls (or equivilent). I emphatically do not want to play Dark Souls (or equivilent). PoE was the first game of its type - my favourite sort of game - in literal decades and it was exactly the game I wanted. So I am afraid I am going to have to politely draw my line in the sand here and say: no, no, I do not want PoE to be made into a different sort of Dark Souls. That genera is still getting plenty of (popular) support, so I don't feel that by saying so I am denying people the chance to have the sort of game they want made by anyone - which is what the shift of the last few years was doing to me; until Obsidian came to the rescue with Pillars of Eternity. I'd like to keep at least one or two companies* making games for MY type of gamer, thank you. (*And it is pretty much literally two at the moment, Obsidian and Paradox Development, plus some potentials kickstarted (but for those, the proof will be in the pudding as always.)) None of that is "tedium," which was the gist of the point I was making with that comment. (I would aso question why, given subjective nature, it is not "fun" to be subjected if one is so inclined, to any of your aforementioned criterion. Perhaps "entertaining" would have been a better fit, I will grant you, but my point was "tedium" is not any of that.)

If, on the table-top, my DM suggested this as a way he was going to run his games, I would walk out the door so fast I would have left before he started speaking. (And I say that as quarter-century long-running DM who considers his micro-management (like making the PCs pay for their food expenses) as it is only tolerated by his players as foilable.) I'm not sure what my players would do if I suggested that to them - actually, y'know what, I'mma ask them. I'll get back to you if they don't lynch me. Ye gods, it would make Rolemaster played to the hilt look benign by comparison. All of that applied would be a unilaterally terrible idea. It would make the game unfun, tedious and - especially with the inability to save - arbitarily inconvenient, Save points are a legacy of primitive computer technology and they have no place in a modern RPG - nor even in one twenty years ago. And there is nothing worse than having to do the same thing over and over because you keep dying at some late point; especially if you are going to be actively punished for going away, elimianting the chance of coming back with a different approach. (It was to the detriment of JPGs that they still (at least in the PS2 era ones i last played) did that.) Let alone that it absolutely forces players to play one, very specific way - your way - when giving the players the option to set their own difficulty is becoming more common. If such as system was implemented, I can very much imagine it would lead to far more people ragequitting (and then that's lost revenue for Obs when they say "never buying a game from them again, that was [inesrt expletive here]" becaue angry people do that) or just using a walkthrough from the start. But I'd take even Dragon Quest 8's terrible "you can only ever rest and save in inns" over that - though only barely, since it was so crap a system I never made it past the first boss. It really, really, REALLY isn't. If at any point, one of the design ideas of a game designer (i.e. "game: a thing that is supposed to be fun") is "create tedium" they need to give up their day job and take up a career in buracracy or something.

It's damned if you do, damned if you don't. BG2-style quest-crafting is great except for the fact that half the time, you end up an item that might be really powerful, but which is completely useless to anyone in your party. Whohoo, I crafted this really super-awesome axe; except no-one in my party has axe proficiency (or has picked weapon focus in weapon groups which do not include axes) or no-one uses two-hand weapons or something... Same applies if you do the BG1 thing and have no crafting - you will very likely end up in a position of mandating to the player what weapons and armour the party will have to use (and likely make some weapon types just a poor choice). Even if you have some weapons for every weapon type, there's no garentee they'll be enough. Imagine if you have a couple of characters the player wants to have dual-wielding handaxes. If they aren't enough decent handaxes, the player has to either just not do that or has to live with a suboptimal choice because they though having a particualr weapon choice was cool or something. PoE's crafting system had the problem that the uniques weren't really unique enough... But if, for example, you made the unique enchantment on top of the regular enchantment, then the argument would be that nobody ever uses anything but the uniques because they are better, so all you've done is move the goalposts and slightly added some option as to what elemental/slaying damage your default baseline weapon has, (The other - and not very appropriate in this instance - solution is to do the Diablo thing where it becomes a luck-based loot generator.) On top of all that, most heroes in literature tend to have either no special weapons or find one which sticks with the for the whole adventure - something you can't do in most tabletop RPGs without some sort of special mechanical effort. I think PoE's choice was a reasonable compromise (though I very much wanted to have been able to craft stat boosting items, since playng musical chairs with all the stat boosters and the fixed bonus from armour (usually crafted) was mind of a nuisence... But then again, you might argue that would depreciate the value of found treasure (which was, by mid-late game, mostly "funny-shaped cash" anyway. Like a lot of things. there is simply going to be no good answer, only a least bad one.

I can only assume that was directed at me, since I beleive I was the only one to bring prostiution up; and I was not taking a stance on it at all, merely interested in what people thought about Obsidian's idea of making sex with them have a concrete mechanical bonus in comparison to the oft-complained-about Bioware romances not having any mechanical benefit). Aside: Given PoE's (and Tyranny's) mechanical function for sex, should we expect in PoE2, IF the Watcher can partake in a sexual relationship (and not necessarily a romnatic one...) with a companion, likewise a bonus? Or will that be solely reserved for ladies and gentleman of the working profession? (Is it, like, a class feature..?) Does the Watcher, in fact, confer a bonus to their partner on sexual union (which would obvously never have been a visible issue in PoE?) It asks a whole mess of serious (and hilarious) possibilites, does it not...?

Just out of honest and genuine curiousity, what was the opinion on Obsidian including "sex with prostitutes (who have no apparent restrictions on gender of client) gives you (sometimes quite significant) stat bonuses" in PoE (and Tyranny)? (I mean, I know the inclusion of prostitutes somewhere was a staple of IE games since BG 1, but I don't think, for all the (not unjustified) flack people give Bioware over their one-sex-scene-at-conclusion-of-romance-arc, they have done that (edit: clarification by "that" I mean "give stat boosts for sex," not "use protistutes," which you could do in pretty much any game beyond BG1 (where it was a little wierd they put you in a brothel but that wasn't an option) (unless they have in the post ME3 games i haven't played properly?) Is that better, worse, different or what? Ancillery question (because, again, I'm interested in what people think), what would people feel about being able to have sex with your companions without romance ever coming up? (I'm not suggesting that is something that should be done, but I am interested in whether people would think that was better or worse than romances, and particularly in context with the above prostitute question.) Ancillery ancillery question: what about romance that did not involve sex (in the course of the game's timeline, perhaps assuming that a character in question would want to wait until after [some event] (the world is safe/marriage/somethng else etc...)? (And would thus sidestepping any possbility of Bioware's... interesting...? attempts at sex scenes.) Better, worse etc...?

Video = hilarious. That is the sort of thing that actually makes me really excited about this feature. Mass Effect's strongest point by far was the character work with the characters that ran through all three games (Tali, Liara, Garrus) and that not only could they be mates (or more) with Shepard, but were with each other. Which was fraggin' awesome, I would love to see that with Aloth and Eder (and my Watcher*) doing the whole "down to us mates to save the world again" thing. I would, in fact, be TOTALLY down if the only romances were inter-companion ones that did not involve the Watcher at all (aside from the player perhaps steering through the right decisions). That way, actually, you could sidestep some of the complaints because you'd be setting it up to make sense for two specific characters, that could be more tightly focussed, as opposed to the more open-ended natur of involving the Watcher (who is going to be differnt for each player.) *I didn't use Pallegina in my playthrough, aside from the points I swapped her in just long enough to do her quest.

Actually, that'd be really kind of cool. The annoucement made me quite cheerful, since the main thing I took away was not romances, but better relationships in general with (and between, from the implications) companions. Which is the most important point for me. Edit: After reading that, I thought I probably ought to watch it properly. I got 22 seconds into that video and had to stop, because there's is absolutely no way I can possibly watch that video while simultaneously trying to paint my tanks and I really need to do that today.

I've just been finally getting around to completing White March part 2, so while the issue is fresh in my mind and this is at a conveniant point where things might actually happen, let's have a collective conflab about potions (and by extention, other disposables). As I come to the end of the game, I once again find I have a stash and half the quickslots full of potions. Potions, which, aside from the healing potions, I have never used. I maybe used them in a handful of fights at the start of the game. This is not, for that matter, unusual. In pretty much every game back to Baldur's Gate, it has been the same. They get saved for "I might need them." But, you find, by the end of the game, "when I might need them" has come maybe only once or twice in the entire game. (And, in my experience, the table RPG is no different. A party will end with dozens of potions in party funds or on their sheets that will almost never get used.) I think the issue is, basically, ever problem with the "per rest" syndrome, plus one. PoE makes matters worse, I think, because unlike the older games, you can't even use them before combat. Food in PoE, I used... Basically only when I had dragon meant and that maybe before each dragon fight and the final boss. The benefits of the other food seemed rather small in comparison to the faffing about making everyone eat it before combat, so I basically never bothered. Now, I'm given to understand that they are more used at the higher difficulty levels, and I will have to bow to the judgements of the fine folk you play at that level. What I would like to do here is see if we cannot perhaps hammer out some ideas about what could be done to improve potions and disposables (If anything), as this maybe the opportune moment to do so. The first ideas (which I am throwing out in no particular order of judgement for dissection): 1) Allow more disposables to be used before combat (a la older infinity engine games). Now Obs specificaly said they didn't want to allow pre-battle buffs because then they had to balance for it, which is a fair point. But, by the same token, it means that for the people disinclined to use disposables (because of the "rainy day" syndrome), they are even less likely to be used. 2) Drastically improve the speed at which consumables are used in combat; possibly just make them flat instant, rather than with a time or animation. (But perhaps impement a cooldown equivilent to the current drinking time so you couldn't spam them.) This does, however, nearly comes back to the problem, except for only being able to stack them more slowly) and is a bit more game-mechanic-y. 3) Drastically increase the average power of potions and significantly decrease their availibility. Play to the "rainy day" syndrome. Make each potion a one-shot item of importance, that does something really good, and then work on the basis potions are only going to be used in "boss" fights. (Healing potions would be exempted from this, they seem about right.) 4) Change the balance of potions a bit such that there are far more potions that Do Stuff rather than provide buff (e.g. invisibility) and then provide, a la White March, reactivity in scripted action sequences for havig said potions. (Like the grappling hooks and whatnot.) 5) Do nothing, and work on the basis that with a few exceptions, nonhealing disposables are really basically just funny-shaped cash that the majority of players would be better off selling, rather than cluttering ther inventory; except possibly for people on harder difficulty levels. The same comments can be applied to scrolls (though as they create spells, I find they lend themselves a little bit more to use) and food to a lesser extent (though the solution to food might be as simple as just providing a more efficient way of eating it; an "at all" button you can use from the stash to make the whole party gobble a portion (maybe even consider making 1 food item a whole-party disposable altogether).) What does everyone else think of this issue?

And, having now played through the main path of White March 2... I will qualify my previous statement by saying that the ability of enemies (maonk in particular) to apparently completely ignore your front line and apparently teleport right next to Aloth in particular is extremely annoying and I sort of think I see where the OP is coming from. Do monks actually have a teleport ability or something? I've not actually played with one as a class, but they seemed to just... appear behind Eder and Sagani (especially annoying with the former, since I always started with his "pull into engagement" ability) without any kind of travel time. Either that or their speed is ridiculous. While I'm all for intelligent enemy targeting, I'm rather less for "we're going to hit your mages several seconds after combat starts and there's almost literally nothing you can do about it because they don't even have time to cast a spell before they get hit." (The inability to pre-buff before combat doesn't help. In the entire of the game, I only ever used potions once or twice; the only times I remember I might use them, I didn't because I couldn't use them beforehand.)

We have a saying in our tabletop games: "the wizard dies first." Essentially meaning that good tactics require prioritising on the enemy that do most damage and can be killed fastest. In a world where Magic Is A Thing, everybody knows that you hit the caster as a priority. So it's good that the monsters in PoE (and preumably PoE2) would/will be going after our fragile party members. (Though, granted, unintelligent creatures probably shouldn't, for flavour rather than game mechanics, but if that has to be sacrificed on the altar i don't mind too much.)

Food as a requirement resources brings the problem you always get with that sort of thing - like ammunition. In the end, it is either a) a nuisense (because you have to keep feeding the party every so often) or b) largely irrelevant if automatic, since then it becomes a case of "spam purchase button" (because if prevent the player from buying as much food as they want, you are basically putting a time limit on the game). You are right about the food inventory problem, but let's not compound the problem by meaning you have to re-equip everyone with food (whether in a special slot or otherwise) every twenty minute half-hour of game play. That would be wrose than the current system, wherein at least I only have to care about food IF I remember to activate any potions or food before a boss fight (and /I virtually NEVER remember to do that anyway...) As I suggested about ammo, if you were desparate to model rations, you'd be better to save the faff and just subtract [x] cash per day for standard of living. (That's all, basically, I care to model in a tabletop D&D game, 5 silver per day for meals/rations per PC and I consider that a little bit over-complicated; and even only that because I have downtime rules for the PCs so they can earn a trickle of money in between advnetures...) As to better UI, I think a better option would be to do as the old IE games did and just have a "use/consume" button on food. And better yet, add a "all consume" button (which would function in the stash" which means everyone in current party eats one of that food (presumably greying out the option if there is less than 1 item per party memdbr). (Actually, this wouldn't hurt with potions, either.) Making everyone individually eat dragon meat before the final fight doesn't make me want to do it any les, it just makes it tedious.

Should it be more "intutitive" in that it is much clearer it how the mechanics work? Absolutely. I have NEVER understood why games designers don't tell you exactly how a system works from the get-go (Paradox Development Studioes are no better at this, and they have issues between whether percentages are addative or multiplacative and what not). Should it be more "intutitive" in that it is any less complicated? Absolutely not.

That's a good point. I started postng before I'd picked up PoE again and had sort of forgotten is more 3.x spontaneous caster than true Vancian. The more I play over the years, the more I become convinced that the exact opposite is better; make more fights "boss-fights" (with a few "easy" trash fights in between to ease the players into a new session/campaign (tabletop) or area with new stuff (CRPG). Those are the ones that are most interesting. Trash-mob fights that are resolved with the equivilent of just clicking attack... There's not much point to them. If the PCs aren't to be seriously challenged by them, the only good reason they are there is provide a learning/relearning exercise for the PCs to see how their abilities work (more of a line of dominos set up by the DM (or metaphorical DM) to knock down than usual). They only way there are a drain on resources is if the PCs actually use some resources to win them. And to do that, you have to make them enough of a threat the player/players don't go "trash fight, no point using anything, better save that for the more important fights later." Taking them out (almost) alogther makes for a different paradigm, but I think a much better one. I will be interested to se if Tides of Numenara pulls this off, since that was one of the major flaws of turn-based combat; unimportant trash mob fights are a grindy-chore because you CAN'T just "auto-attack" through them,

Not only that, but even if you somehow could, you run the risk of the equal problem of homogenising the classes. (One of 4E's problems, though I understand late supplements attempt to do something with this). And whe you get to the point one class is much the same as another, the choice between them is not really a choice. To some extent you NEED to have some disparity of good and bad in the choices you make for your character (class, class abilites/spells, race etc) to avoid that; the grand trick is, of course, trying to make those good/bad choices not absolute (nor crippling if one does pick them), but relative to what role said character is going to be performing (class or clas combination, in this instance, or more specifically what sort of role that particualr characte rof that class is aiming for. Rather like in D&D how you can have two characters of the same class that are build such as they can perform different job (melee fighter verses archer fighter, for example, or blasting cster verses summoner or something; you get the idea. You yeah, you kind of need to have a system where, peforce, there will be an optimal build for a particualr role; the trick is to make it so that the power disparity between the optimum and modal (and the most suboptimal) is reasonably tight.

But the specifcs of the abilties absolutely matter. Otherwise, you might as well say all fighters in all games are the same, or all wizards. Hell, even in D&D a Paladin and a Fighter/Cleric are very different animals (well, maybe slightly less so in AD&D). Certainly in 3.x, where a cleric doesn't get all the shiny bells and whistles a Paladin does, but a cleric/fighter will get more feats and access to spells a paladin never has. (Though to be fair, a fighter/cleric in 3.x is much more likely to be only a splash of fighter on a cleric for extra feats.) Assuming nothing much changes from PoE 1, a Paladin will have access to all the Paladin powers, and a Fighter/Priest will have access to the different powers than Fighters and Priests have; which means they will play differently, even if they fulfil the same broad role.

I... What? Can you follow me that logic though, as you've lost me there.

Bear in mind that it was stated that it may not actually be 3+1, that was just the example we were given. I believe it was stated the real values will be somewhat more scalar - presumably to remove or at least migitate, said sweet spots. Edit: sorry, if I understood corrctly, the maths was done on the latest update, whch I didn't get before I made that post...

Ho hum. I thought the old system was really clever. In a lot of ways, it worked better than per-rest resources as a method of determining whether or not a rest was required. I am to vaguely understand there's some sort of injury system at lay instead (something like Dragon Age Origins, maybe?) Though I'm not sure that will not just encourage resting to get rid of injuries instead of because the health is low, but whatever, I guess... Apparently not, looking at the link in the posts prior. *shrug*

Well, that's a first, Usually it's just peope misreading (and spelling) "Aorts;" if I had a [unit of currency] for everytime someone writes "Aorts" not "Aotrs1," I could have funded PoE2 myself (though it is a fascinating study of how human lingual pattern recognition works). "AndreaColombo" is entirely new, though. (Should I know who that is? I feel, from context, I should know who that is. I do not.) 1It's pronouced "A -oat-ers," by-the-by, not that anyone will actually care.

With the last two sentences thus ensuring that you annoy customers, including otherwise reasonable ones who might have accepted the change had you said that's what you were doing, and getting a reputation for greedy business practises and thus harming your company's reputation for any future endeavours. Whatever Obs decide to do, they absolutely need to be open about it - especially with a crowd-funded game, where people are giving them their money on, basically, good faith. Lying (even by omission) to rake in more money is, like, the epitome of sleazy business practises. Let's not even joke about Obs starting down the path to the next Konami/Ubisoft/EA/Sony etc.

I'm not especially fond of Vancian casting myself - even on the tabletop. (I actually went through the enormous effort of decoupling it for my current campaign world and made it into a mana system). (But that only changes the implementation of spells, not the strategic implications, mana points run just as much on the fifteen minute adventuring day.) The problem is, it's only a self-imposed strategic limit. Only the people that want to basically roleplay it are the ones limited by it; even in IE games it was pretty trivial (if tedious) to circumnavigate. PoE actually only sort of partly took some of the irritiation out with the camping supplies... But as inns gave you bonuses, there was some benefit to the tedium of traipsing back out of the dungeon every time. (And random-encounters-while-you-sleep to try and force people to not rest when they like doesn't really work, since if the PCs have stopped to rest, it's because they're out of combat powers. Throwing combat encounters at them to punish them while they're already week will only work if the DM is prepared to end the campaign by killing them, or the CRPG is going to reload (or game-over). There's only so much you can do with respawn or moving monsters around the dungeon too.) On the other hand, I made it through more-or-less the entire of White March 1's dungeons on the strength of the then-per-encounter low-to-mid level spells; but part of the reason I stalled out until this week on WM2 was, I think, the dropping of that feature. So while it did mean that I rested less often, because I only burned my high-leve resources more sparingly, there were time when I didn't have to use them at all. (Conversely, outside Concelhaut's tower, when I went in at level 12, I was resting more or less after every fight.) So... yeah. The problem is, basically, it's trying to do diametrically opposite things - have a limitation on resources and also having the abiity to refresh the resources whenever desired. D&D 4E presents the same set of problems, with the mix of perencounter and daily powers. The early (official) modules taught us not to go wandering when low on resources, so for the next umpteen levels we regularly rested and caused the DM no end of problems; in the end, we made a gentleman's agreement we would aim to do four comabts between rest and use our resouces accordingy. (So anecdotally, even o the tabletop, someitmes the rest-limitation only works if the players agree to it.) And on top of that, you have the trash mob/ boss battle issues as well, feeding directly into this, The more of the former you have, the more disposable resources you need. (Now, I tend to run games I write myself on largely a "trash mob to get the players settled in to the day session/all bioss battles thereafter." Preportedly, this is what Tides of Numenara is going too attempt to balance out the fact that turn-based combat can be really grindy and dull with trash mob fights.) And about the only way to force people to divide out their resources (becaue otherwise, the designers have to take into account every fight will be treated like a boss fights by a not insignificant proportion of players) is to start having time-limits... But that itself tends to put unwanted pressure on people who want to take their time. (I particularly dislike them; one reason I have never finished Mask of the Betrayer was I just got sick of feeling like I had to rush through the entire game; especially when most of the companions were primary casters..) There is no good answer, really.

Limits for basic ammo don't add anything to the game, it's not a challenge beyond "remember to spam click the buy button occasionally" it's just busywork that came about as a legacy of (old crufty) pen and paper design but doesn't actually enhance a computer RPG (which tend to have considerably more combat). Even having limited quantities of special ammo was rarely useful, because what tended to happen in Baldur's Gate was that you just hoarded them and never used them because you might need them later, until the point where you didn't need them because you got the quiver of plenty anyway. Having special ammo as a per rest or per encounter equipment would preserve the "when do I use this" nature of special ammo without the annoying busywork part. Or, as I found in my last part-playthrough of IWD2, 3/4 of the party's inventory is full of arrows half the time (the other half being because you've used the ammo), even considering infinity-ammo magic items (which, because you need so many of, I "bought" using DaleKeeper). (And on Heart of Winter mode, which I gave up on after trying the first act, there was pretty only one tactic for fights, which was "scren with summons, everyone else shoots," the problem was worse.) So yeah, limited ammunition is a pain the backside when you have to be fiddling around in you inventory pretty much every combat. The stash would make that easier, yes, but at that point, you are just going to put a mountain of ammunition in it anyway. Heck, at that point, you might as well, instead of modelling ammunition, just subtract [x] money every [y] arrows or something. BG (et al) also had the thing where, (I beleve, though could be wrong) you stacked ammunition and weapon bonuses (which was why it was so nasty). Later games only took the best one. Given that and that crafting is quite easy, I don't think there's that much use for elemental ammunition especially. And if you are going for "per rest" ammunition... Wouldn't it be just easier to have a per-rest/encounter ability on the weapon or the character that would do [x] effect...? (And instead of carrying more ammunition, carry more weapons?) (Given that "realism" and "ammunition quantity" in CRPGs are never on speaking terms, and even in table-top RPGs are barely looking at each other... Fantasy characters often carry nearly more ammunition around with them than most modern soldiers do...!) Dubious. I imagine some arrow heads could achieve this aim but if your aim is to disable a ship without destroying it you'll find it a lot easier to simply use broadheads against the crew. This one is wrong. You can calculate the kinetic energy that an arrow has upon leaving* a heavy warbow or a quarrel has when leaving a very heavy draw weight crossbow and it's simply not enough to do any significant damage through blunt force trauma. The blunt arrows you occasionally seen in books are probably for hunting very small game where using a sharp point would cause too much damage to the meat, or perhaps for training (though this one I doubt). I can pretty much guarantee that no archer has ever evaluated their target and though "I'll be best served with a blunt headed arrow for this one". *Also arrows and quarrels slow down very quickly, so the kinetic energy is going to be even less when hitting the target. Let me take a moment to recall from one of D&D 3.0 sourcebooks the "tumblng bolt," which preportedly tumbled around with an erratic flight path such that it denied the target its Dexterity bonus or something; an idea so implausibly, stupendously, ingloriously arse-backwards and assinine that even today, I am overcome by the urge to slap the author of that item with a clue-by-four upon which is written "PHYSICS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY."

Edit: MaxQuest not only beat me to it while I was typing this reply, but his maths was even right...! (I've corrected mine so as not to confuse people further...!) The power source doesn't seem to be an attribute you can raise like Might. It's seems to be tied to your character level so they can do that 75%/75% power level thing when multiclassing. Going by Josh's explanation, it works as the real level of a class for your character in term of unlocking and scaling abilities (note abilities didn't scale in the first game). So a not multiclassed character will have 100% of the power source value, while a multiclassed one will have ~75% of the power source of is full combined character level). example: A Fighter level 10 will have Discipline at 10. A Fighter/Rogue level 5/5 will have Disciple at 7 and Guile at 7. That would be my understanding. I think it might help if you imagine that "power source" equates to "character class level." A bit like, how in D&D 3.x, if you had a spellcaster, a prestidge class would increase your character's level for the purposes of the caster level and number of spells you could cast (without giving you nay of the other class features). Only in this case - to use the apparently over simplicifcation from the blog, every three points of "power source" gives your character the class features of a level of the class. So, for a single class character (which gets three points per level), one level you take in a class gives you one level of powers and features of that class (no duh!). But if you multiclass, you basically get one-third of a level in your other classes every time you take one class level. So, to (I think) slightly clarify and/or correct use the example above, a 10th level fighter has 30 points of power source in Disipline, which gives it the powers of a 10th level fighter. A 5/5 Fighter/Rogue gets 15+5 (=20) points of Discipline and 5+15 (=20) points of Guile, giving it the powers of (assuming it is indeed every three) a 6th level fighter and 6th level rogue. If they take one more level of say, fighter - taking it to 18+5 (=23)/6+15 (=21), it has the power of an 7th level fighter/7th level Rogue. (Verses an equivient 11th level fighter.) Though from the blog, the numbers are more granular than that, so the progression might be smoother, but that gives you the idea, I hope. It's rather clever, actually.

Oh heck no! The last thing we need in an RPG is the equivilent of a hunger and thirst bar. It adds nothing to the game but tedious micromanagement. Hell, that idea doesn't add much in survival games. You either end up in a situation where you're always watching the clock to find more food or you end up just having a load on food in the stash after the first couple of areas (or maybe worst of both if you are expected to manually feed the party). Or you end up spending more time playing quartermaster with your inventory if you don't have (or turn off) a stash. (And/or PDX have to start giving us horses/pack animals to carry all the food and water.) Heck, I consider making my PCs on the table top fork out 5 silver a day for food to be just on the border of excessive micromanagement as it is; I sure as frack woudn't want to make the issue even more complicated. The current system is fine. (What next, stamina meters?)