Wagrid

I have very good news. The dialogue debugging tool in this mod (https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/2?tab=description) fixes the issue. You'll need to be careful what you're picking, but it should get your playthrough back on the rails.

Yeah, I've also ended up starting a new game. I feel like I've seen so many posts regarding the quest to ally with the Wahaki being broken, either in terms of how you progress the Huana quest line, or how it impacts Aloth's quest. Crookspur specifically seems to be causing a lot of weirdness. I wish as soon as you got your first quest sending you there all the faction leaders sent you letters. A little immersion breaking, sure, but better than having to abandon a save 50 hours in. The Huana quest line in general seems a little off. The prince never gave me that first quest, skipping straight to his second, treasure hunt quest. I got access to Onekaza's quests before completing that one. Now this has happened. It seems odd because everything about the Huana faction quest line screams 'the one most players will do'.

I'm having several major progression issues related to the Wahaki tribe. Queen Onekaza won't give me the quest. Even if I go to the Wahaki Ranga and inform her that I've dealt with the Crookspur slavers (which registers the quest 'Cruel Cargo' as complete in my journal) I still have no option to follow up with Onekaza. This effectively locks me out of completing the main quest with the Huana. In addition to this, Aloth's personal quest is broken. In the first conversation with Ruasare I have no option to read her soul and all she wants to talk about is the slavers. As soon as I inform her that I've dealt with the slavers she gets angry at me (as the Royal Deadfire Company moved into Crookspur) and I can no longer enter conversation with her. So, essentially, I'm locked out of completing Aloth's quest and locked out of the faction I've been angling towards the entire game. It's very frustrating because I dealt with Crookspur slavers hours ago completely outside the framework of any of the faction quests - I just killed them for their stuff. This all seems like a pretty enormous oversight in an otherwise great game. I have uploaded my saved game here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1zWbeyGfx27b2wQfGg-dKoCb5lMM71nrc if that is of any help.

I'd like to respond to your bullet points here, since I like talking about class balance and you've raised some interesting points. So, here it goes: The wizard would need to stop actively wielding the weapon in combat. If this were some kind of maul they would need to rest it on the floor, or a lighter two-handed weapon (like a longsword) they'd need to hold with one hand whilst they cast with the other and so on with all the various weapon types. Whatever weapon they're using I think that there should be a uniform penalty to defensive abilities (to represent that the wizard is focusing on their spell, not dodging and parrying). Not every spell should be like this though. I think this one is a little arbitrary. I'd say just make an animation for the visor being lifted up. But even this may be going too far - I can suspend my disbelief far enough to assume that this isn't a problem for the wizard. I don't think Power Word spells require the enemy to hear it - just that the wizard says it and directs the power towards the correct enemy. Similar to the first point. The wizard would need to stop actively wielding their weapon - sheathing it or dramatically planting it into the ground or whatever in order to cast. This would impose a penalty to defence. This reinforces the idea that it's inadvisable to be casting lengthy, complicated spells in melee. This means the Melee-Wizard would need to rely on knock-backs and stuns if they want to cast in melee range. This is a fairly reasonable approach to balancing this kind of play style, in my opinion. Except Wagrid Obsidian has already said in plain black and white that this game is not based on D&D rules and will not be using any D&D mechanics, 1st, 2nd, d20 based, or any other version that exists. So ... yeah... it is pointless to discuss D&D mechanics in relation to Project Eternity, it has it's own rules and it's own mechanics system and may end up having almost nothing in common with D&D other than the whole fantasy genre thing. I'm aware of what they've said regarding D&D. The thing is, a lot of people are familiar with D&D (whether it's through playing the tabletop versions, or the IE games, or NWN, or all of the above), thus it makes for a good frame of reference. In the most recent update Josh Sawyer explained the Engagement rules in relation to the Attack of Opportunity rules in some editions of D&D. That's all anybody here has been doing. It's a lot easier to just go 'Y'know that one thing in X? Well it's like that, but different in the following ways. . .' than explain something in much lengthier terms without using examples or drawing on common experience. It's a good illustrative device, that's all. The answer to that is to alter the mechanics of the Fighter class, rather than to restrict the mechanics of others. But this line of discussion is about other RPG systems, not Project Eternity. We don't know how these classes will work in Project Eternity. But, for the record, I imagine few people think that the Fighter should be worse in combat than any other class.

Stop judging posters morality and look up the name of this thread already. Nobody's judging anybody's morality, and the name of the thread was rendered obsolete on the first page when somebody pointed out that wizards with weapons and armour are confirmed to be in the game. If the title of the thread was the only thing we were allowed to talk about we should have abandoned it after post #6. Considering this, Lephys' statement was entirely valid. But this is just bickering over the purpose of the thread now, which indicates to me that discussion here is basically exhausted, so we should leave the lengthy debates covering several pages and talk about something new.

I think this is my fault. I started the thread as a discussion of whether it should be included, unaware that it had already confirmed to be in the game. I wish that I'd scoured the updates for information again before creating this thread. That way discussion could have started on the right foot. I absolutely agree with you though. Since it was pointed out that they will be in the game I think that discussion should have shifted towards how to balance it. Although, to be fair, there have been some interesting, well thought out posts about balance. We're bringing up D&D because it's a common reference point for everybody here. Considering a lot of the developers worked on D&D games it's also probably a common reference point for them too. I'm replying to both of these together, since both have say that a wizard with melee capabilities should have gimped magical abilities. I think that's the wrong way to approach it and would be as bad as allowing the play style to become more powerful than any other class. Good balance involves keeping all classes and play styles, well, balanced. Not crippling some and overpowering others. If you look at the discussion on balance here nobody is saying that they want to equip their wizards with swords and have them instantly destroy fighters in melee. What people are saying is that they want Melee-Wizards to be inferior in melee to Fighters (but still strong enough for it not to be a waste of time trying), for it to be a major investment whilst building the character, to have spell casting speed restricted by armour and for this kind of character to have to focus more on close range spells to be fully effective. I think those restrictions and conditions allow for a powerful character that's fun to play, but isn't overpowered compared to a traditional Wizard or other classes. Another idea when it comes to balancing this kind of character is make it so that they can't fight in melee for as sustained a period as a Fighter - they'll have to pull out and heal up more frequently. This is accomplished by simply not allowing them the same bonuses to health as a Fighter. If you want to get around this limitation you either need to put points into Constitution or using equipment that boosts health. But this comes at the cost of damaging capabilities (both melee and magical), balancing it out. Based on these restrictions, the kind of character I picture myself playing is a wizard using a sword and wearing mail armour (nothing heavier so casting speed isn't restricted) who fights with the basic strategy of using long ranged, disruptive spells at the beginning of combat, then charging in using melee and spells line Cone of Cold and Greater Fireburst to do as much damage as quickly as possible before moving away to avoid being overwhelmed. To me that sounds like a fairly reasonable, balanced way of playing this kind of character.

EDIT: Never mind, I give up on trying to quote.

More specifically, armour makes everything take longer to do. That's the basic tradeoff for survivability. That's the best way to implement that, I think. Dragon Age tried to base it around how much spells cost whilst wearing armour and it ended up being easily ignorable. I think it will also add variation within the play style as it will mean a choice between how much casting you want to sacrifice for survivability.

I like the sound of that. Especially the no spell failure thing. I've always hated that. In some editions of D&D it felt like even bulky clothes would make you fail every spell.

I disagree with the idea that you cannot "go beyond mid level spells in either". That sucks. How I would like it work is like this.... You have 10 abilities available to you. If you are a pure wizard than you will simply choose a different set of abilities than if you were a melee wizard. They should be equivalent in power. I think you've misunderstood me. I'm not saying that Melee-Mages should be limited to mid-level spells, I agree, that would absolutely suck. I'm saying you could have either high level spells in combat oriented magic, or utility magic, but not both (where as without the investment in melee you could pick up both high level combat and utility spells). Do you see what I mean now? I'm advocating the loss of some magical versatility as the price of taking on a secondary combat role. I like the way you've described it though, I'm just thinking more in terms of skill trees with linear power progression that a pool of abilities though. I love the idea of abilities staying useful throughout the game (that's something else Dragon Age does well).

That's the kind of thing thinking of Failion. Learning skills outside the general scope of their class should be a major investment for any character. Sticking with a Wizard, if they learned to fight in melee they might have to sacrifice their utility or offensive capability, or retain both but not be able to access much beyond mid level spells in either. These limits should be imposed by the significant amount of investment it would take to become competent in melee whilst levelling. It's also important that you don't end up having melee-mages supersede warriors. I thought Dragon Age: Origins did this well. Even though you could be very powerful as an Arcane Warrior you still needed your Warrior party members for tanking. Not only that but they would always be more powerful than you in melee since you didn't have access to the weapon skill trees.

The whole idea of class system is to exchange flexibility for strategic and tactical clarity (pawn - moves forward, captures diagonally; mage - wears only robes, throws fireballs) and also teach dumb players to play coherent characters (not Elder Scroll like wielders of destruction magics in heavy plate who can sneak-kill a fly by prowling behind it and hitting with two-handed hammer). Yeah, I don't like mages with swords. There's nothing wrong with flexibility within the classes. That's the whole point of building a character as you play through the game after - to tailor your party's strengths and weaknesses to your own preference. Well then don't play one. Play through the game a thousand times without equipping a single wizard with anything but a quarterstaff. More power to you. But that's no reason for it not to be included. To quote update 15 "If you want to create a wizard who wears plate armor and hacks away with a broadsword from behind a heavily-enhanced arcane veil, we want to let you do that. If your idea of the perfect fighter is one who wears light armor and uses a variety of dazzling rapier attacks in rapid succession, we want to help you make that character. So it's good to think of Project Eternity's classes as being purpose-ready but not purpose-limited." That's the kind of philosophy on classes that I agree with and like to see in games. Since this is clearly a case of us having different expectations and preferences of class systems, shall we just agree to disagree? I understand and respect your point of view and hopefully you feel the same way about mine.. Well, it depends whether you mean just giving your mage a sword or actually speccing them as Arcane Warriors and giving them the necessary spells to fight in melee. But anyway, you're right that it's not unprecedented. They were in Neverwinter Nights 2 and both KOTOR games were built entirely around the concept. Then of course there's multi classing in D&D and classes like Swordmage that I mentioned in the initial post.

Oh yeah, WAY to go... Look what you did! You spilled discussion ALL over this perfectly good forum. Welp, we'll have to throw it out now, and get a new one, I guess. u_u . If you hadn't made the post, I wouldn't have had such cool, mental images from Moridin's response, and then described them in a manner that was much less cool and interesting than the images in my head. But still (and I don't care if Guild Wars 2 already did it)... LIGHTNING WHIP! I would love to see literally magic weapons ("purchased" with the same currency as "regular" spells.) Really, they already have Blasts for wands announced. That's pretty much just a ranged augmentation to a weapon. Why not melee versions? (Again... LIGHTNING WHIP!!!) So, thank you, Wagrid, for not knowing about Update #15 (which totally sounds like a government, top-secret code name for something...). "Initiate... Update fif-teen... o_o." Haha, this made me laugh. On the subject of lightning whip, Swordmage's in 4E have a power called 'Lightning Lure' that let's them pull enemies close to them and do damage. I'd love to see something like that. @Shadenaught: The thing is, there's no reason not to support multiple ways of playing a class. Being able to build your character the way you want is also part of the strength of a good class system and it should allow for as many play styles as possible. Adding more ways to play means more variation in building the party, in my opinion. And that's a good thing. The more characters have different roles the more opportunities for unique party combinations. I'm not thinking about this on a personal level, I started this thread because I think this a great play style that will enhance the game. Besides, nobody is advocating that Wizards should be allowed to supplant dedicated melee fighters. Also, you have to think about this from a roleplaying perspective - this adds a different way to roleplay Wizard characters, and that's important.

It was in Update #15. You don't have to name your first born after me, here to help. I can't believe I never saw that! Thanks so much for providing the link! Now I feel silly for making a whole topic like this over already confirmed information. Still, I'm glad to see this has created discussion.

@Osvir: I'm talking wizard with fighter perks here. The base class is the wizard and the class is still based primarily on casting spells. I don't think the wizard should ever gain the full melee capabilities of a fighter either as it's not their main focus. But if you invest in the perks you should be competent by the end of the game. Although, the idea of a fighter slowly learning some magic over the course of the game is interesting, it's not really what I was getting at. @Alexjh: If it has and you can find me a link I will name my first born son after you.

I've always been a fan of the Melee-Mage play style in RPGs. The squishy wizard that wears a robe and looks upon swords with utter confusion trope has never made sense to me. Why would a seasoned adventurer not have any basic self defence skills? It's just bizarre for a wizard with almost god like power to able to hacked apart by three bandits with rusty swords. So, that's why I'd like some melee capabilities for the Wizard class in Project Eternity. I'd like to see something like D&d 4E's Swordmage. I think that's a really nice balance between melee and magic. However, based on how things are currently looking I don't think that would really fit: it's more of it's own class than something that's part of another one. So what I'd like to see is give the Wizard optional feats that would allow it to wield melee weapons and a maybe a modal ability . I think that these should all be a fairly major investment, to keep it balanced. I also don't think the Wizard should ever get powerful enough in melee that it becomes preferable to casting, I'm thinking more along the lines of self defence at early levels and at higher levels an alternate play style focusing on melee and close range spells. What do you guys think? This is something I'd really like to see in the game. If it's not include initially it won't exactly be a deal breaker, there' always expansions and mods to add it, but I would really like to see this included right off the bat.