Dark Elf

Thank you for your awesomely put comment! Yes, paladin sounds perfect, and Shieldbearer would definitely be the best fit for the character. Dialogue and mind-centric stat distribution... yup. Starts combat with a pistol shot, perhaps, and then tanks with shield and mace (or perhaps off-tanks with a morning star, what better to represent Illuminarium?). Thank you very, very much!

I am basing my new character on Lorgar Aurelian from Warhammer 40k fame, and thus I have narrowed down the class selection to either Priest or Paladin. For those of you who are unfamiliar with 40k, what I want is a diplomatic leader character who would rather resolve conflict peacefully but when pressed favors blunt weapons such as maces, quarterstaffs and morningstars. He doesn't have to be a stellar fighter, obviously. What build would you suggest?

I'm thinking 16 Might, Dex and Int, 10 in the others. Should make me competent enough in battle, give me a fair go in most conversations while still not presenting any real weaknesses.

I suppose that instead of min-maxing, I'll go for a balanced approach where I get some Intellect and Perception in then. Won't make me much worse at rangering, but better at talking which is what I want.

Hi! Suffering from a severe case of restartitis, I have settled on a ranger. I figure bows, guns and animal companions will be my thing. However, rangers want Might and Dexterity, and I wonder how I should do to build an effective ranger that can still do well in social interactions? I guess I need Resolve and Intellect for that, no?

Just abolish alignments altogether and go for reputations instead. Let the reactions of the game world define your character, not some blurb on the character sheet. The concept of alignment itself is just a corollary to the way conflicting interests regard you anyway, and noble paladins and fatherly wizards fighting twirling mustachios is fairly poor writing. If you've played The Witcher, you will have seen a conflict done right. The elves and the dwarves are terrorists or fighting for their own freedom and survival depending on your viewpoint, those knights are working to uphold order and stability or just out there to impose fascism and xenophobic tyranny, again depending on your point of view. Or, you know, none of these things are exactly mutually exclusive. The elves could be BOTH bloodthirsty murderers AND fighting for their survival. Shades of grey. I mean, who hasn't seen the threads where people try to pidgeon hole a historical or fictional character into one of the D&D alignments? It just won't let itself be done easily. Just take any of the Chaos Gods from the Warhammer universe. It's very common that people want to slate them as Chaotic Evil across the board, which fails to take into account just how complex these entities are supposed to be. For example, while it might make perfect sense to regard Slaanesh as evil, is he Chaotic Evil (a Chaos god), Neutral Evil (selfish!) or heck, capitalising on his penchant for perfection and pride, even Lawful Evil? A case could easily be made for any of these. And if we must still have alignments, please, for goodness sake, let me see Lawful Evil done right.

What with the apparent focus on souls, a memorable companion would be one that, without being too overt about it, is the most trustworthy companion you could ever imagine. I mean, the writing for this guy should be such that anyone with a modicum of immersive ability should root for him as if he were the wisest, most compassionate dude ever. This is the guy who risked his own life carrying you out of a burning tavern, this is the guy with whom much of the really interesting discussions on philosophy and morality take place (and this the point about him I would stress the most), this is the guy who sets the standards of what is truly right in this world of suffering and injustice... like all good heroes, he should be an angel in hell, yet with the kind of tragic backhistory that makes you feel for him even AFTER the point during which it is discovered that he is, in fact, soulless, a being that should not be, someone who has, at every turn, used your confidence in him to harvest your mother****ing soul that he may once again be complete. Not out of the kind of trope evil that involves the twirling of mustachios and spontaneous eruptions of "mwoahahahaha", but because of the helplessness of his circumstances, assembling the puzzle that is his story you see glimpses of the excruciating pain and spiritual abandonment that have plagued him for so long and he just cannot help it, betraying all his lofty ideals and high principles because ultimately the fallibility of man always shines through. I mean, looking at the more common fare, how many gruff-yet-kind-hearted ale-drinking dwarven berserkers with a Scottish accent does the genre really need?

... wouldn't this lead to a new body growing out below the decapitated head as well?

This, I believe, is the handle. What defines the kind of RPG Obsidian is promising us here is the concept of choices and consequences. During the course of the game, the player makes decisions that will affect the storyline, often in a major way. The original Witcher made a strong point out of this, with some choices having an impact on things you do several hours later into the game. Some have brought up Secret of Mana, and I know it was great experience to play in co-op. Finished that game together with my brother, and I'd be lying if I didn't say that it was one of the high points of my personal gaming history. But SoM is a JRPG which, just like Borderlands, lacks meaningful choices. Note that I don't think this makes these games bad per se. Not at all in fact, but this is an apples and oranges kind of scenario.

Human Cipher or Wizard. Nothing like donning a robe and psyching the hell out of my enemies whilst I stroke my beard.

You sometimes wonder what creatures in dungeons do all day besides standing in strategic positions battle axe in hand. Now, dungeons come in many flavours, but many serve as the living quarters for goblinoids and whatever creatures. So let there be merchants, non-player characters whose ideas of interacting with you go beyond trying to bash your forehead in, different factions tied into the world at large and all that jazz.

This is why you only fight knights on wet metal floors.

I think you answered it yourself. Time, money and effort that could have gone towards improving the single player experience would be directed towards adding a feature that's ill-suited to the genre. Like Luridis said about the trial in NWN2, some things just aren't meant for multiplayer. The time, money and effort thing is of vital importance. These resources are always in short supply where game development is concerned, everybody knows that, and it's only natural to feel that resources spent on features you don't care for are resources wasted. I am trying to see the other side of the issue, I really am, but looking back on great games I've played (Arcanum, the Fallouts, Morrowind, Planescape etc) I just fail to see how multiplayer would have been any improvement to what these games were and the experience they were designed to convey. Yes, I omitted Baldur's Gate from that list, and that's because I've tried it in multiplayer. We eventually gave up on it and fired up Half-Life instead. Some games are meant to be played in multiplayer. Most FPS and RTS games do this wonderfully and are typically enhanced by the experience. Other games are best enjoyed in single player. It's inherent to their design. MMORPG's have quests involving collecting 10 buttered carrots and partying up to kill that big respawning ogre for a reason. It's what works in that environment. In a story-driven RPG you want a different flavour of quest design, and multiplayer support just cannot handle that, meaning that something's gotta give. And in that case, I'd rather it be the multiplayer option.

The Witcher did this well, I think. None of the factions is especially pleasing from a moral standpoint, good and evil depends entirely on your point of view. No matter which way you bake it, you're just the middle man.

Definitely. Cooperation and alliances are important too, not just enmity. Subtle approaches are nice.

Not to sound like a grumpy old man, but all-out single player is the way to go. Reconciling turnbased combat with multiplayer is doomed to fail, it's the reason why NWN et al are realtime with pause instead of proper turnbased. Nothing wrong with multiplayer games! Hardly a shortage of them on the market either. It's just that the multiplayer option doesn't work well within the framework of a story-driven RPG. As people have pointed out, you can't split off from the party and do your own thing (unless you completely abolish things like cut-scenes and turnbased combat), dialogue gets clunkier... there will inevitably be trade-offs, and I rather wouldn't have that. It's better to focus on one thing and do that thing right instead of attempting to do too much. Saying that it won't affect the game's design focus simply isn't true. Just look at Arcanum - they had to implement multiplayer in order to please the publisher, the multiplayer option was nigh unplayable and could of course only be done in multiplayer modules, the main module (one of the greatest RPG's to date) simply couldn't support multiplayer in any fashion. It's just a matter of genres. Some genres are just ace for multiplayer, the flavour of RPG we're debating here isn't.

That works because Elder Scrolls games are essentially sandboxes. I believe there is a fine line between complete freedom (which leads to the incongruencies you describe) and freedom within a storyline, if you catch my drift. If there are factions, faction relations should play a big part, and if the Thieves Guild and the Assassin's Guild despise each other they should be kinda exclusive. This, of course, ties in with follower relations too.

Like it is in Warhammer 40k, where Power Mauls have the worst armour penetration of all power weapons. Don't know enough about Eternity's combat system to say anything about it, but it would sure be nice if weapons worked a bit more in line with how they are supposed to work. Full plate makes you pretty much swordproof, they began using hammers and axes for a reason. When you see a heavily armoured knight, that's when you reach for your poleaxe.

Checking if I have the K.

Same here, but it depends on execution, really. A lab coat providing bonuses to Medicine makes no sense whatsoever and is really quite a horrible idea, whereas it's somewhat plausible that an advanced suit of power armour should give, say, a small bonus to Guns (due to inbuilt stabilisers, on-board tracking systems and whatnot). Now, inspiration matters, I can see how having recently attended a theatre performance would make you feel more cultured and sociable or how someone who just returned from a reading binge at the library might feel and act more knowledgeable on lore-related matters. It's not that much of a stretch.

The best villains are those we can sympathise with. Irenicus was a great antagonist because one could understand how his being stripped of his soul drove him to do the things he did. Kerghan was a great villain because his motivations for ending all life are perfectly sane and make a whole lot of sense given how the afterlife works in Arcanum. Psycopaths who do evil just because are no fun.

One way of circumventing this mechanically would be to go the Witcher route and have character skill determine most of the combat-related numbers (damage and so on), and have the weapon itself provide only a relatively small part (this could also lead to more diversity in weapons, wherein a main gauche might confer a blocking bonus whereas a rapier adds 10% bleeding damage or whatever). That way, you could have both progression in terms of increased combat power over time and a reasonable game world that doesn't inexplicably throw +14 Greatswords of Infinite Tarrasque Summoning your way once you hit a certain level.

Magic items should be rare, and all unique with a story behind them. There should be no such thing as a "generic +5 sword".

Sweden, Europe.