Razsius

The health/stamina system is a degenerate game mechanic plain and simple. Another poster in another thread stated that it basically reduced your party adventuring resources into individual resources. The reason being you could dump healing onto any character that was taking damage and transfer the party's total resources to the correct individuals. There's no way to do that in this system. The fact that even one poster wants DoTs to completely ignore the health mechanic is basically the poster child argument of why the mechanic is degenerate. I mean what about traps? If they are even equally as deadly as the IE games they should do a metric ****ton of damage. Should they ignore the health mechanic as well? What about dragon breath? High lvl ticking AoE spells? The list can go on... A system that needs "band aids" in place is a crappy designed system. There's really only two things you can do with the system: 1) Nerf the health/stamina ratio down to an amount where it feels "right" (which would mean it becomes trivial). But that's simply covering up the fact that it's there. It simply doesn't fix the problem and begs the question "Why have it in at all?" 2) Redesign it so it's not the health/stamina mechanic we know. I saw another post that suggested "flipping" them though the funny thing is it reminded me an awful lot of the mp bar....

I agree some of the recovery times are pretty ridiculous. The worst one i've found is the weapon swap. Switch BB Fighter to a bow, fire an arrow then swap to sword and board and wait till the next century before you can throw up his defense buff. When you have an adra beetle, a stone beetle and a couple wood beetles beating on him this isn't going to cut it. Also crossbow and gun reload animations seem to screw up ability imputs sometimes. My BB Rogue can get locked into an idle animation if I tell her to use Crippling Strike when she's reloading. When I realize she's idle and move her she still has to do the reload animation all over again before she'll even fire.

I'm doing much, much better now. Enemy AI or Crippling Strike is bugged or something as i'm pretty sure Hobble is a slow but it roots. So I have my Rogue (with crossbow) root at least one target throw down a Warding Seal (AoE knockdown) or Electricity Seal and go to town (after pulling with BB Fighter). Still... some of those spider pulls are no joke. Think I just had a 8 or 9 pull. Poison and Petrify are no joke but you can suppress the poison with the lvl 2 Priest spell. BB Wizard has an AoE dot that's pretty gnarly too. And I don't want to hear it from those not playing on Hard . Beetles and spiders are a joke when they come in groups of like 2.

God I hear ya. Finally checked how much poison damage is actually doing to my characters. ~120 over 18 is just a tad..ouch. I'm rather glad they decided not to fix the petrify bug /sarcasm (still 400% health damage... wtf?). I mean where would i be if my Barbarian wasn't being one-shotted.

Yea taking another check and beetles were ripping me a new one. So maybe not. I can't tell if DT is working or not anymore. Edit: Yea that math... lol

The reason combat feels "slower" is because it is. Armor DT is actually working now (celebration!). Edit: It also looks like the damage types dealing less or more damage is in as well... very nice. Crits still seem strange in the log though...

Okay fine i'll bite Karkarov.. i'll bite. Here's a few of the things that were posted on the kickstarter front page: Obsidian Entertainment on September 12, 2012 said: What a nice pitch! It's almost like they were thinking what a lot of others were thinking. That the crpg golden age consisted of some IE games that we all love and adore and they'd like to "recapture" (as they put it) that feeling. I'm definitely down so far... Well hell sign me up! I think the translation of this looks like: "We're going to take the best stuff from all 3 and combine it into one game." Again this is Obsidian's pitch not mine after all. What Obsidian Entertainment did not say: Strangely, I don't think they would've quite gotten as much money from their kickstarter. You know what with all the "new" ideas and stuff. Now mind you i typed all that with my tongue in my cheek but for some that stuff up there might be a deal breaker. It's simple really. The more changes you make to the "style" of the IE games the more you risk alienation of the very people that funded you making the game in the first place and although it does keep the bones of it's predecessors they've got a lot of work ahead of them to get closer to the "perfect formula" that many remember from days long past. Note: I, for one, REALLY enjoyed the BG II wizard battles as they were epic. The only change that was needed was the curve of "dispel wizard buffs or die" needed to be softened quite a bit. An epic wizard battle where your wizard is blasting spells to counter the opposing wizard or holding off a finger of doom with a channeled spell while your priest is stripping off buffs and your warrior is tanking the adds the wizard has summoned would be BADASS but i'm pretty sure that kind of fight wouldn't be streamlined enough for Josh . Wizards are crap by comparison in PoE. Pretty sure #1 and #3 have been answered before in the countless combat xp threads but I suppose I could add my own input if you really wanted me to.

A lot of this has to do with classes feeling distinct I think. There's not too many of them they just all need more branching ways you can play each of them. The monk doesn't feel like a tank at all unless you go sword and board and even then it's just a really crappy fighter. If they had different stances that affect whether they had hobble attached to their unarmed strikes or if they gained deflection in their Way of the Beetle stance or some such... Hmm this is almost worth a thread in itself...

Because most of the "whiners" want the Baldur's Gate experience again. This argument of yours Karkarov makes absolutely no sense. I don't want a refund I want a game that just blows me away like BG did. It doesn't have to have the same mechanics, it doesn't have to abide by 2nd edition AD&D rules, it doesn't have to be in the same universe but it has to wow me like BG did. Not to mention even the most far sighted individuals can't know everything before it's actually in play. I thought health/stamina would be a good idea. But it's most definitely not. I loved the miss/graze/hit/crit mechanics but there weren't any misses at all till the posters griped enough about it. In play I enjoy the miss/graze/hit/crit mechanics as I previously thought. I didn't quite realize they were redoing the stats system but I like the general direction though it could use significant tweaking. Some of the lame "delay" mechanics (rounds in the IE games) got added back in under the more "fluid" recovery time mechanic (which some beta testers are having difficulty getting used to). Not sure about the DT mechanics yet but i didn't really enjoy how armor never really protected you in AD&D but my favorite was always the Fallout system. Don't throw "Yea well you should've known like *I* did" in our faces. If you *had* known how these things would turn out in practice you could've given us lesser mortals a heads up you know. Me? I'm just trying to get my head around some of this stuff. A LOT of stuff has changed and whether it was necessary to the Baldur's Gate experience is only a question that can be answered with playtesting and feedback (yes even the negative kind).

Killing a couple of Kobolds isn't an achievement. Slaughtering a Xvart village isn't an achievement. You going out of your way and endangering the lives of your party members is not an achievement. But killing an ogre for stealing a farmers pig's is? Quit being asinine. Adventurers live in danger every single day they go adventuring. Edit: You know Prime i'm only going to recommend it because it's you but... you might actually want to try The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky. Yes, yes I know you hate my guts now because everyone hates the jrpgs. But it's perhaps the most well crafted world i've ever seen. Almost every npc in the entire game has a name. The script for the main scenario of the first chapter alone is something along the lines of 3-4 Wheel of Time novels. 85% of the time I found myself just chatting up npcs because their dialogue would *constantly* change. I learned so much just from the most generic of npcs and although the game is choked full of troupes, it's utterly ridiculous peppiness(sp?) actually grew on me (and i'm a pretty melancholic guy). I was laughing it up within the first 2 minutes. Now i know nothing comes close to the metaphysics that Planescape had but man I can't remember the last time I had so much fun reading SO MUCH dialogue.

As I said before, it doesn't matter if they are technically right, it won't do them any good, they rode the "hype train", when/if it crashes they are going to go with it. They simply didn't do enough to clear the waters and that is squarely on them. Simple fact is they had a slam dunk on their hand, all they had to do was make a copy of the IE games with new/story setting and improve some minor things that bugged people and maybe add some more features if they had the time. They instead chose to "fix" core systems of the IE game and remove some altogether. They took a gamble and if it doesn't pay off it's sadly all on them. Yea I personally thought the health/stamina mechanic would be a good idea but feeling it in game and extrapolating "future data points" I realized instead it's a very degenerate game system. It doesn't have any impact on any of it's stated design goals and there's a fatigue mechanic in place anyways. It ends up just being a health bar you can't heal and promotes rest spamming. Edit: What if you're both?

It was a pretty short game though (or at least DMS was). I have 19 hours clocked in it and it takes me forever to play anything.

SRR was a thoroughly mediocre game (or at least the one I played was). Combat was piss easy even on Hard. You hired mercs instead of real companions and the ones I did get I didn't really care about at all. I realize Jake was in the first game but i'm not sure why Harlequin is supposed to be cool. That telegraphing of both villians in DMS was one of the worst things i've ever seen. Leveling up didn't seem to matter all that much. Just kinda "meh" all around. Oh and "Space bugs! RAWR!" I definitely agree with Sensuki about the writing. When you compare it to something like The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky it ends up looking like trash. Art and music were about the only things they nailed and I tend to place a much lesser value on art as it fades (sometimes quickly) with time. I think they are very aware of that and I think that they regret immensely not being clearer during their KS. Then again they wouldn't have made as much of the KS if Josh was upfront about his feelings on BG and what he wanted to change. Time will show if they made a mistake with how they handled the KS. Definitely agree with this. Helm might blow things out of proportion a lot of the time but I just think he's a very, very, VERY big fan of the IE games and maybe BG in general which would reflect my own feelings on the matter. He's a really passionate guy and likely doesn't want Obsidian Entertainment to screw this game up so he LOUDLY proclaims what he deems is wrong with said game. I agree with some of his sentiments. Obsidian damn well better have known what they were getting into with that kickstarter. They didn't promise just a really good game that sorta resembles the IE games. No, they promised a spiritual successor to them. Yes, a successor to what was perhaps considered by many a golden age of crpgs. No pressure there Obsidian no pressure at all and yet every interview I hear or see there doesn't actually seem to be any with perhaps the exception of Feargus who basically said "we will see." What I do see is a game that's sort of based off the IE games yet hits me with none of the nostalgia of them. Close to everything is incredibly different from what I remember. I see some of the elements of them hidden away in the back but they certainly aren't at the forefront and instead I see degenerate game systems in place that remind me that I may never get that experience I once had (Josh might dislike degenerate gameplay but i loathe degenerate game systems). Only time will tell if this thing ends up being the "successor" or not.

Crippling Strike is a slow + debuff. Halt person is only a root i believe not a stun and i believe Petrify is simply a stats debuff + massive health pool ownage (200% health damage). The only class i've seen with an AoE stun is the Chanter but then again i haven't tried all the classes. Priest has AoE knockdown but it never seems to actually work for me. I'd say most of the cc is pretty short duration as well. Certainly no 2 minute stun like Josh said.

So you basicaly saying, my strategy that worked in game A doesnt work in game B. That means game B must be broken because I am not willing to adapt in any way to a different system. I also think it breaks real life logic if I try to spread out hits to get my people through a fight because in reality one guy usually trys to get hit as much as possible while everyone else does not get hit once. It also breaks game logics because I highly insist that the logic and mechanic's of game A are the epitome of gaming, basicaly a law so everything that does not use equal rules is therefore wrong and illogical. I almost forgot to mention it does also reward bad play because any type of gameplay that differs from what I personaly like is bad. Seriously, people and arguments on this forum sometimes... Also you need to rest way less often than in BG, if you **** up and lose tons of stamina because you couldnt controle the flow of the battle, well you get punished for it. Let me tell you a little story my friend because it seems quite a few missed what I originally stated. On January 14 of the year 2014 Stoic released the single player aspect of the kickstarter funded game The Banner Saga. The Banner Saga has a completely new and "innovative" system in regards to how a turn based strategy is played. First off, there are armor and strength values with the former being protection against attacks and the latter being both the health total and the max damage the unit can deal. Here's the kicker rounds always move at a 1 player to 1 enemy turn ratio which means that if you move your archer then the next turn would be the computer moving a varl (large tank-like unit) forward. The one turn to one enemy turn ratio is *always* true (with one exception). Over the course of the battle if you had played this game as you play a normal tbs you might've found yourself in for a world of hurt. Why? Because the system design allowed for the side that was losing to get "more turns" as the roster of units who needed to be rotated in was less. Remember that one exception i was just talking about? Yea that was the pillage mechanic that activated when there was only one enemy unit left you had to deal with. There was only one reason why pillage was added in and that was to stop a single ranged unit from being able to devastate the rest of your remaining army. Without it, for every one time you had to move a unit forward you would be on the receiving end of a move and potential attack from the remaining enemy unit. This massive "speed increase" was perhaps the worst mechanic I have seen in a game to date. Now, of course, there were certainly ways to play "around" the mechanic. Namely, that you would rarely finish off units and instead damage their strength down to 1 so they would do inconsequential damage but the more i played The Banner Saga the less fun I was having in general. It became a "game" of me trying to meta my way out of the crappy game mechanics. I might meta game on occasion but being forced to is anything but fun and it's even less so when there's no basic logic to even back it up. The pillars of eternity health/stamina mechanic is on it's way to becoming as crappy as Stoic's turn based "logic". Now before you throw the "Razsius must be a terrible player" argument at me. I almost religiously play games at hard or above and that includes betas if they allow me. Yea that 2 spider pull Rose had to deal with in the cave is like a 6 spider pull complete with a mature Crystal Eater Spider on hard. Yea have fun not taking a crapton of health damage with petrify on you. But oh no i'm sure you can rotate out your fighter and make him ranged with all those ranged talents and abilities of his (oh wait). I swear only in America would we think the wheel needs to be square to allow for a quicker stopping car. Edit: It should be noted that unless you are terrible you don't have to rest nearly as much in BG as you do in the current PoE beta iteration. You simply can't "prevent" nearly as much damage.

Well i'll be. Hmm bad example then (makes sense though now that I think about it). Point still stands bad example or otherwise.

Health is strategic resource which purpose is to pace player's adventure time by forcing them to rest when player's characters health starts to get closer zero. This need to rest is added with per day abilities and characters' exhaustion status which causes them to get several minuses in their stats, exhaustion status is controlled by athletics skill. Addition to these there is unlimited stash inventory that can be accessed only during resting and places that developers are marked as safe (inns, shops, stronghold, etc.) To prevent players to abuse rest system game has limited camping supply resource which limits player's ability to rest in the woods addition to this inns and player's stronghold offer rest bonuses that last until next rest. There was also plans that resting can be done only in specific places but it seems that is removed. Stamina is tactical health resource which purpose is to add intensity in fights and make it possible to characters to be knocked out fight without them being death or removing strategic use of health resource, like for example in NWN2 did. Because stamina is meant to be tactical resource characters will lose it much faster than they lose health, but as it is per encounter resource player don't need to worry about it between fights, although currently stamina recovery between fights isn't instant, which gives it bit strategic meaning but as its recovery rate is very high, that meaning is very minimal. Stamina is also only health resource that can be restored with spells and other abilities, which makes healing spells to lose their strategic importance to make it possible to play parties that don't have healer and not to be heavily punished for it. Lessening healing power that spells, abilities and items have, serves also purpose in lore and world design wise, as designers don't have to invent reasons why people in world of Eora don't use healing magic to cure all the illness and even death in the world or how world would work when such things (illnesses and death) are rare occurrences. Yes, yes that's all fine and grand and all but my question was never actually addressed. Here, let me put it another way. With the current implementation of the health/stamina ratio, fights on a non-trivial difficulty level devolve into doing the most possible damage while preventing the most possible damage you can for EVERY fight. If a wood beetle is headed toward your fighter and he's already tanking 4 beetles and your mage still has spells there is no choice involved on whether you should throw out a big spell to nuke it. The "choice" is 1) use resource or 2) pay consequences (ie shorter adventuring day.. or worse). Instead, "choice" involves rotating out characters who aren't built for or probably shouldn't be tanking in order to spread out health damage because it's beneficial to do so. Not only does this break every single form of game and rl logic but it also rewards bad play. So not only does this system not do what it was originally stated to do which was allow a longer adventuring day while still setting a hard cap on how far you could go, but it instead rewards terrible play(ers) with additional benefit. That's not "strategic" by any stretch of the imagination. If a group of professional poker players went to a tournament and suddenly found that the rules of the game became that the worst hand wins the pot the players would be (rightfully) pretty pissed off. Really, the more i think about the stam/health system the less it makes any form of actual sense. I certainly didn't pledge money so obsidian could collaborate with Stoic to make their design decisions. Note: It should be noted that although I am not a professional poker player i'd like to think that poker is just a little more than being the best liar at the table.

I still don't get it though. Wasn't the point of adding the health mechanic to *increase* your adventuring day or in other words to make it feel like you don't need to rest spam in order to progress during play? In all the IE games i've played i would rest really, really, REALLY rarely. I'd blow all my healing and damage spells sometimes potions in order to make it longer before I had to take a rest. Now i have the health mechanic defining when I "should" rest and it manages to make my spell and ability use feel somewhat frenetic rather than tactical play on my part. Blow them *all* EVERY fight. I don't mind the camping supplies thing I might add but it would be nice to do well... anything to extend my adventuring day. From what i've seen and experienced recovery time seems to dictate when your next attack will land as well but it's a (really buggy) beta so.. who knows? Ah nevermind! You're saying it's less of a penalty. It's still pretty noticable though.

Yea adding more deflection is pretty nice to say the least 10 - 15 more is rather noticable if i do say so myself. Still, my fighter does take the occasional crit and it's not like DT protects against everything (screw poison damage). Would definately be nice though if my listed 15 DT on my fighter was acutally 15 rather than 5 right now .

It should be noted that armor isn't even working correctly right now so i'd probably put this thought on hold. Still I rather like the general idea of it. Would rework the mechanic so that you aren't so punished for using your high DT shield equipped characters to you know.. tank? I find it rather stupid that having my wizard or ranged rogue being beat on is actually beneficial to me rather than a detriment. I mean why hold the line at all? The plate mail *already* halves the total amount of actions you'll be able to do and the tradeoff is a flat 12 damage reduction. When you eat a crit for like 60 the 15 less damage your fighter's going to take doesn't suddenly make high DT armor op.

Definately agree with Prime in this case. I definately don't think the attributes are the problem here it's their lack of focus. They have a bare bones setup of what they're supposed to do and can easily be expanded to be REALLY impactful without outright breaking things while giving players ACTUAL choice for their characters. As an example, I was thinking somewhere along the lines of giving each stat defination. - Might would be "Power" it should remain exactly how it is as a straight damage and healing increase. - Dexterity should give "Speed" and provide a bonus to your recovery time in that you cast spells quicker/shoot faster etc. - Constitution should give "Longevity" in health/stam gain (would've been perfect if there was a mana bar but...) and ability durations - Perception should give "Accuracy" which should increase just that... all of your accuracy (mind you spells can hit, graze, etc. as well). - Intelligence should give "Control" increasing both AoE as well as RANGE of spells/abilities so that an int specced Paladin could Lay on Hands the backline without having to move. - Resolve should give "Disruption" and affect both Concentration and Interruption %. Interruption should work on multi-hit or "ticking" spells if it doesn't already (hard to tell). I figure this system really wouldn't have a dump stat (yes you might think it's Resolve but you haven't been paying much attention to combat if you believe so) and would give focus to each stat which is what I think it really needs. Oh and each point should be much more significant.

That bug only affects the mobs on that particular map and it does more than just make DT hit 0. I play on hard so i notice almost immediately when it hits me. Not only do mobs drop like flys but they can't seem to hit or do any reasonable damage to you anymore after that. I kept getting my arse handed to me in the spider cave (because petrify is absolutely stupid) but decided to bail and head back to town and restock. When i came back to the spider pull before the ogre I screwed it up and my party utterly destroyed them regardless. Mind you during all this BB Fighter was still absorbing 2 points of damage rather than the 12 he should've been. If his DT *had* been reset to 0, he wouldn't have been absorbing anything at all. Regardless this happens with or without the prior mentioned bug.

Yea you'd really think so wouldn't you... Mainly the combat log as well as the damage i'm actually taking while playing are the 2 culprits. If you mouseover any particular damage transaction it'll say something along the lines of "Accuracy - Deflection = X. X + Roll = 87 Hit! 35 - 0 (your DT should be here) = 35 damage." I was getting 0 DT reading whenever a wolf or beetle was eating me alive on my Barbarian who *should* have had 8 DT in leather. Now I know that there should be some % form of damage improvement based on type but... that's a tad much. Meanwhile, BB Fighter was only absorbing 2 damage and he's got a 12 DT plate mail equipped + a buggy ability that should add 5 more DT but mainly just does what it pleases and only works when it feels like it. When I started the playthrough it was adding 3 additional DT. Now the irony is after I posted that I ended up fighting spiders that were doing crushing not piercing damage and largely got the same "where the hell's my DT!" results. So to be honest, I don't know what's going on with the damage threshold calculations right now (or criticals for that matter). That aside the damage types are either broken as hell or buggy as hell and really shouldn't have been added into the beta because it's certainly rather difficult to get a feel for combat at all considering. I'd do some more testing but I ran into the "suddenly everything is easy" bug and monsters no longer have DT themselves and can't hit me for more than single digit damage (which might be why some posters think the beta is easy). Either way it's a mess.

...why Crystal Eater Spiders SUCK!! Okay so i've been browsing the threads and doing my own testing and it appears that some (though i'm sure not all) are missing some vital information that PoE does actually give you. When i first started playing combat felt way too fast, horribly unresponsive and combat mechanics felt clear as mud and here's why: In any of the IE game series, anyone that played on a non-trivial difficulty level intrinsically understood that there was a hidden global cooldown in those games that would bar you from spamming your abilities and such (potions and spells being the worst offenders). This was, i suspect, in large part due to the hidden rounds that the AD&D ruleset was balanced around. Personally, to me this was perhaps the most irritating aspect of the IE series in general. This mechanic is actually back in a slightly different form... I call this "recovery time" or maybe RT for short. Every action you do has a recovery time from a swing of your sword to a cast of a spell to an "instant" fighter, barbarian or paladin ability. This information is displayed in a little bar directly below your health bar when you are in combat. Unfortunately, it does not show up at all outside of combat. The problem is that there are various bugs involving movement and ability use that will create a RT that is well outside of anything that is remotely reasonable. Move and activate the fighter's defense buff and you might suddenly find your fighter unable to attack at all until that extremely slow depleting bar hits 0 (and the buff is finally used). In the meantime, the monsters will naturally be chewing your face off. There also seems to be an auto attack bug that includes never actually getting to the next action you recover from (namely your next attack) which means you watch your character sit there staring the monster to death but that's neither here nor there. The real problem is thus: using an ability will reset this recovery bar. What i mean is this. Assuming your RT bar was halfway depleted toward your next action (say another auto attack), if you used the Rogue's Crippling Strike you would lose said RT bar and instead work toward the next one. An example would be your Rogue using an Arbalast in the "reload" animation would begin said animation yet again before firing the crippling strike (with the exception that a bug actually prevents that but...). If you remember I did state at the beginning that this was present in the IE games in the form of that hidden global cooldown. If you pumped a potion a little too quick your fighter would stop all that he was doing to wait and use that potion. I am SO glad that apparently after 15 years of "progress" a worse form of this is currently in the game . Needless to say the recovery system (bugs aside) as it stands right now is ridiculous. Arbitrary delays to ability use is about my least favorite way of balancing a game system. I, for one, would not mind this system taking a hike or finding itself completely redone. As for the next order of business, as it stands the damage type system shouldn't even have been implimented into the beta at all. Why do I state this? Because of piercing damage. Piercing damage for some inexplicable reason has a 10 DT ignore. In laymen's terms this means only BB Fighter, BB Priest and potentially any character you create will have any armor at all. BB Fighter starts with 12 DT (and a buggy talent that makes it higher... sometimes), BB Priest starts with 11, BB Mage starts with 8 and BB Rogue starts with 6. That means BB Fighter has 2 DT and BB Priest has 1 DT when facing a piercing attack. That's right 5/6 of BB Fighters entire amount of armor is negated by an attack type and BB Priest is even worse off everyone else can fight naked and suffer the exact same amount of damage. "But Raz!" you say "There shouldn't be too many monsters that use piercing." If that was the case it wouldn't be so bad but wolves, beetles and spiders all use piercing attacks and that accounts for an entire map if not more of encounters. I don't even *want* to know how this made it by QA because this is well outside the realm of reasonable and borders more on the "we went to Planet Absurd." To be honest, if I take this as a serious tester of the beta than i am more than a little insulted because the only feedback I can even give in this case is "My armor does absolutely nothing in combat." There you guys go there's my combat feedback . I'd be curious to know what everyone else has uncovered in regards to the beta's dirty little secrets. I also know that critical damage seems to be being calculated incorrectly if the combat log is to be gone off. Nothing like seeing "Critical hit! 64 - 9 = 39" in there which would mean criticals are probably supposed to be gutting us even harder than they already are.

If you're going to restart anyway it might be a good idea to pick up BG EE instead. You can do things like dual wield and start with the kits/etc. It also has a Wild Mage that you can pick up who's not attached to a partner as even I found it difficult to find a satisfactory Mage. I count 5 in that group so I think you have some wiggle room if you do decide to go the route you're going. If you're going fighter/mage as a kind of hybrid with bows it might be a good idea to try the ranged version of Kensei which would be the ranger kit Archer. You'd be raining death left and right with those arrows. Only reason I haven't gone that path myself was my neurotic nature of having my main character be the lead member of the party. In other news... In *knowing* the teachings of Zerthimon I have become stronger . Dak'kon is awesome period. I felt he was the strongest of the companions the first time, I feel that way even more so now. Being able to unlock all the plates of his circle was pretty boss. "Playing" Planescape is essentially a totally new concept to me. Normally, I'd be metagaming the heck out of things about now and finishing every quest my eyes laid upon but i'm not doing such right now. I've blown past a *bunch* of stuff in an effort to get to Pharod. Problem is, I'm still partially doing it because I'm metagaming but in general even if I'm following the story I find I'd probably make the exact same choice. I think I've caught on to the "flow" of Planescape but right around the time I get a really good groove going Planescape crashes on me thus absolutely ruining any "roleplaying" I had gotten into... and my mood. I still feel that the game systems detract *a lot* from the experience however. Nothing more annoying then having to side quest to "gear up" in case some combat strays my way. For once, I don't really want to have to do them. So strange that this is coming from me... Edit: It should be noted that I do not have BG:EE myself which is the only reason I didn't answer you Kaine but from what I've seen and heard it would seem to be worth it. But then again... *points at the Keldoran avatar* would you expect to see anything but an endorsement from me?