Adhin

Actually considering majority of 'armies' in DnD terms are all lvl 1 warriors, your lvl 20-30 Fighter could annihilate thousands by him self... go to-hit systems (that scale with level) gooo!

Saying blancing blows (misses that do small dmg) do stamina and health isn't really implying it, its stating that's how it is at the moment. So yeah he did say it does stamina and health damage, just heavily reduced and will even do less then 1 dmg as it keeps track of decimals.

Yeah though I'd like to see some variation and, preferably, meld on the fly instead of a specific set. NWN had a few it would cycle through. The main reason I bring it up is because of DA2 had 'attack sets' animation, and it gets extremely repetitive to look at when they do the exact same 5 moves over and over in long chains. An Action game, like a DMC, does that but often has 2 versions based off if you step out the button presses or rapidly tap... that and you can often break the chain up with other stuff or flow into another chain using another weapon. Point is, it gets less boring in those action games because your in controle of this 1 guy and you get to play around with various animation chains. DA2 in isometric will be the same thing over and over. BG+ had a few animations it would randomly pick between which kept it at least a bit random. So yeah, but they need to have a few variations of the 3-4 attack chain animations to randomly cycle through.

That and if you played a fighter in original BG you 'had' no abilities. in 2E, Fighters had nothing but there base attack (BG auto-attack). Far as im concerned, removing the base auto-attack from combat for only use-special moves is going to be a boring game. They're needs to be action going on, and ability use only means force-pausing for each character every second. With auto-attack you get to at least let your front liners flail away at enemies and use abilities when you need them. Simply put they can't do this with out a base auto-attack feature.

I don't think having a defensive roll vs an attacker roll matters to be honest. The only difference is which sides rolling unless BOTH sides do a roll in which case that's... just awkward and a bit pointless. 1 point would no longer = 5% at that point. The only main reason 'attackers' roll in DnD is because its that persons turn, they have the die, or they're the ones rolling. So they, ultimately, do 'all' the rolling. They roll to attack, roll there damage, even roll to see if they beat someones Spell Resistance. It keeps it simple in PnP terms.

@TRX850: The big screenshot from the link is a larger screen res (then is native to the game originally) of Planescape: Torment. The other picture is screen resolution sizes of the picture they released of a level they're working on for PE. @JOG: You are literally argueing against me, and making my point.. sort of. Also perspective has little barings, in general, on how the effects work. If your in a first person and a NPC is submerged in water his lower half is still being blurred via an effect, it works the same way regardless of perspective. THAT ALL ASIDE. Atmospheric, from Directionary.com. Atmospheric: 4. having or producing an emotional atmosphere: atmospheric quality; atmospheric lighting. Water in a level, walking through it or not, will add to the general atmosphere of the room. Having you partially suberged will add to it. Weather or not that is a tactical thing, weather or not you fight in it can also add to that. Saying having an added option of being able to walk into it wont add anything to the feeling of the map, but then go on to say it will add feeling if you can walk in water (if your fighting) is.. just seriously man. Adding water, walkable or not, will add atmosphere to a map. Having you 'walk on water' will ultimately negatively impact the atmosphere as it'll make little sense why even your feet aren't being submerged, that's the point I was trying to make. That and they can do it in the style of game they're doing. Feel free to sigh again and argue my point for me though.

I think it would be interesting to keep crits max + 50% and then have an extended range due to talents or items that add a maximum range increase. One way to look at that would be, at base, 50-50% critical dmg (going off max base dmg value of course). Then with talents or special magical item properties the max range could be extended so it ends up more like 50-100% or something like that. Ultimately, compared to DnD, 50% is much lower DT or otherwise though so 10-50% seems like a rather low bar for critical hits. Makes sense in comparison to glancing blows being incorporated though.

Yeah, liked the BG1 'exploration' feel (for the most part) but disliked the emptyness and generally preferred BG2. Looking forward to PE combining the 2 as they've mentioned. Also a lot of random crazies in BG that feels weird playing again (i know i've said that before but srsly...weird).

I know but higher damage is higher damage. Doesn't matter if your reducing that by % or by static damage values. a consistent, always, 36 crit dmg is worse then 34-48. And your example still leaves a few crits that're the same dmg as a normal hit. It should not be just random base dmg +50%. It'll lead to a lot of critical hits that aren't critical hits, at that point they might as well just lower the crit chance if you want that to happen. It's a critical hit, it's supposed to be powerful in relation to a normal hit. Not having a mildly better range. That's all I've been saying, and they're current setup ensures a critical hit is always a benefit to you. Again, critical hit is 'already' a random chance at better damage. It doesn't need to be a random chance to have a random chance to do better damage. That's like playing black jack to find out if you get to play black jack, it's just a tad stupid.

They seem to be using a parcial vancian system. You don't memorize spells, like your not going in with 2 fireballs and 2 holds or something for the same tier. It's more sorcerer like in you have say a few spells in a tier, and 5 casts in that tier. Looks like as you level up at least first tier of spells become per-encounter instead of per-rest so you'd be able to use all 5-6 of your magic missiles every fight and they'd reset once your out of a fight. They've also talked about using a spellbook mechanic as kind of pre-sets. So you'd still be picking spells to have 'at the ready' but it would be in more of a set. For instance maybe you can only have 4 tier 3 spells available at any given time but you know 10 of them. You have multiple spell book pre-sets (like weapon sets) that you can switch between out of combat (with a CD between book swapping). That's all from ideas Obsidian has mentioned in updates. Resting is still to reset your spell use per day, but they seem to be trying to make it less of a forced thing to deal with certain encounters. Like one bad encounter needs a certain number of buffs, now you can just 'swap' to a new spell set to do that instead of rememing, resting, then going in again.

Heh yeah, it had nice water effects for the time. Great interaction with enemies and the player, was extremely fluid ehh... fluids. Probably find footage of DA1 or 2 on youtube incase anyones curious what I'm talking about.

It's not, actually, go back a few pages I did the math using the critical hit chances for average damage. DnD had a higher average (BG and so forth) then PE did but lower hit chances with glances had it winning out slightly. Critical hits are however still worse then DnD's with only 1.5 dmg boost even at max. Jist of it was 21/20 for the 2 first hits, 20/20 for the PE variant. Dropped off for the last 2 hits in a turn on DnD side, kept up for PE due to glancing blows. Avg dmg a turn for DnD over time was about 64, PE was 70-ish (again, due to glancing blows, not critical hits). -edit- If you want another DnD comparison in dmg directly take a Longsword of that same dmg variable I was using, 17-24. In DnD that's a 10% chance of 34-48 dmg. PE it would always be 36 dmg which is on the lower end of rolls in a base x2. There system ultimately is less dmg on crits, but its more consistent (which is better for balance and battle pacing) and, ultimately, always better then a normal hit (so is DnD though). Like I said they'd have to use an x2 base modifier or higher to ensure a min roll is always higher (for vast majority of dmg spreads anyway). As is, they're crits are less big bursts then DnD but always better regardless of your build.

See that's probably where we differ. It's a critical hit, its already random even if the dmg you do is always the same 'when' its a critical hit. Though if they wanted to add a range into it I wouldn't care as long as its always better then a normal hit. DnD only ever has that issue if your playing a char with no STR or bonuses. Once you have +4 or more added to your damage your crits, even on min rolls, are always better then a max normal. So the weakest rogues or a no str mage which... who cares at that point. If you want a random range they could do max roll and then 110-150% dmg which would result in that. Always 150%, range of 110 to whatever, I don't care. I just don't want the possibility of your crits being a normal hit.

@JOG: I disagree that it's not an atmospheric thing. Also they're using 3D models for characters and some objects/animated things (spell effects will most likely be volumetric effects). The backgrounds are the only thing that's 100% going to be a pre-rendered picture. So, for the most part, no sprites. If they can work in water to a level to have your characters wade through at knee height or something it can add atmosphere to the area. I mean, more then that, they can have your characters physically move the water. You know, ripples, waves, that kinda thing. It pains me to use this as an example but Dark Alliance, with the Baldur's Gate title (should never of used that) is a good example of this perspective with fun water effects. It's one of the few things that game actually did well and when you waded through low water it would ripple out and generally bounce around which was always fun. I have no doubt if they can pull it off, it'll add a ton of feeling to an area. -edit- Oh as another example, and a bit more apt one I guess. Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 both used a repeating sprite for 'water' that was animated. They would draw lines in the map where they wanted the water to show up and you'd get extremely ugly looking, bright water that never really fit. Now imagine that but with actually good water effects from today. Now imagine parts of that are traversable and blur your characters lower leg and cause the water to ripple out and bounce back from the edges. I'm pretty sure they can manage that.

I've never been a fan of the random roll for crit dmg unless its at least an x2 base. 9-18 vs a 6-12 is barely a difference and leaves part of the 'critical hit' with in the normal range of a basic hit making part of your critical hits pointless. Add to that crits can be an extreme rarity having it do normal dmg when it does happen is just a big let down. One reason I was happy to see they chose to go with max dmg *1.5 (base). It just makes more sense as a critical hit that way and stops the awkward parts where your suppose 'critical hit' does the same dmg you normally do. I mean whats the point of having critical hits if they don't do more damage consistently?

Flooded levels can be rather atmospheric so I like the idea though I'd imagine knee deep would probably fit the game style a bit more. Could be some interesting monsters to face in extremely watery areas, lizardmen come to mind actually. Could be a fun ambush to see a bunch stand up out of the water as a fight breaks out. Either case, more atmospheric stuff the better, doesn't have to change gameplay one bit to be effective though... hell sometimes that ruins it.

@TRX850: Don't think anyone has any issue with it being 5% intervals and, ultimately, they're not using a d20 system anyways. It's just what people are using as 'example'. d20 is like English. It can confuse people, some folks have a hard time learning it... but its the trade language, the world often defaults to it as a means of middle ground. In the end numbers are numbers, they can use any variation on math to come to general time line for a fight to take using any number of whatevers.... but we all, more or less, understand the d20 stuff so it's a good thing to use as examples. PE will ultimately be using decimals for just about everything, I wouldn't be surprised to see a 80.45% chance to hit thrown around. Hell even on a glance, as they said, it'll keep track of fractional damage. So that 3 damage may get cut down to .6 dmg but it'll keep track of that, and 2 glances will end up being 1.2 stamina damage. Rack up 4 of those and you got 1 actual health damage (if they go that route). And yeah, greys are generally a better area to deal with things, more variation in general. If you look at d20, majority of 'armor class' is actually based off you getting hit but it not causing any damage. Natural Armor, Deflection, and Enhancement are all 'you got hit, but it was blocked or deflected due to a hard shell, plate or thick hair'. Think about that, only dodge and the base 10 armor is 'actually' them missing (or a natural 1 critical miss). They just combine it all into 1 big number for the sake of maknig it easier to deal with. Everyone would rather do there BAB against a single flat number then do all kinds of awkward calculations. In the end, there glancing blow idea is just a more normalizing version of what d20 already does. If they go with an at least 50% less then = a full miss, you basically got an, in my opinion anyway, more interesting system then d20. As a side note, NWN actually used (to some extent) the AC variations for animations to play out. If you had a shield on, and they needed say an 18 to hit you and they rolled with in the Shields AC's (1 to 3+5) limitation on the top end, say a 15, it would play a 'shield block' animation. Below that was 'armor' which was usually a weapon block animation, when it got into the lower bits with dodge and the base 10 you'd get an actual dodge animation to play out. High dex, low deflect, no shield, you spent the fast majority of the animations dodging, with the rare weapon block. One of those d20 flavor things a lot of folks don't seem to pay attention to.

There is a good chance bonuses from stuff will be direct points instead of heavy % which should keep the same general 6 dmg difference in his example. For instance 6-12 maybe a dex based rogue but a fighter with +10 from str would have 16-22, same difference in range but the difference between a low and a high is less in general comparison.

Yeah DAO had some issues with that, I loved talking with Zevran and him flirting with my NPC but not being gay and not wanting to RP a gay relationship I just wish there was a middle road option. Cause you kinda lose something when your only options are 'gods yes' or 'omg get away you gay elf'. They needed a bromance option with Zevs damnit, he was fun and murdered people.

Yeah variation and multiple paths, in all parts of the game is a good one. Not everyone should be romancable, but completely ignoring the options for the sake of ignoring its a bad idea as far as im concerned. Sides I adored the semi-romance with Annah in PST. Also yeah good ehh... negative? relationships yes. Depends what you mean by negative though but I like a good rivalry with ego-jabs.

Yeah I agree about concealment amongst other things but his example was quite literally shields in melee and nothing else, while also referring to them considering it amongst a bunch of other things to handle other situations. For basic melee situations I think it works good, hopefully we get more detailed information as to other examples for other systems. And while I'm very much in favor of a more consistent system (even with some wild range in dmg numbers and glancing blows) there should be situations of negating all dmg for specific things.

Couldn't agree more with ya Lephys. And also, to prove my point that it wont actually require HP 'bloating' I went and used the exact same % values they've given, using a Longsword (19-20 range, no feats for bonuses) and you can kill a Balor (20d8, 30 con, max hp at 360) in 5-6 Rounds. Avg dmg output per rounds 21/20/14/9 = 64 per turn. Takes 5.6 rounds to kill a Balor with that dmg output with a single fighter. Going off a 5% crit chance with there x1.5 max dmg and a half of the min dmg on a miss and using the same miss percents as before (95%/90%/65%/40%) it's a bit surprising, It's exactly 5 turns, instead of 6, so it goes only a tiny bit faster. Base DnD 3.5 vs 360 hp :: 21/20/14/9 = 64 per turn - 6 turns (5.6) PE using Same %, 360hp : 20/20/17/14 = 72 per turn - 5 turns You could up that to 400 hp to get 6 turns if you really wanted but that's not much of a bloat. -edit- @Malekith: I did already, read the whole thread before posting. Part of why I posted was a lot of that and the QA part in the first post. All I got to say is what I've already said. HP bloat isn't a product of this kind of system, it's a byproduct of bad difficulty design in games over the past few years on computers. A LOT of that comes from 'time investment'. Think of big HP pools as 'filler content'. If they make fights take longer they can extent the length of there game that much with out adding any extra work to make real content. Granted even with out that a lot of those games are still chock full of 'stuffs' but still. There is no real need for major HP bloat and crits or crap dmg are already highs and lows. I would like a dodge stat specifically to ignore, as Lephys mentioned at one point 20% or something but I'd prefer that as a use skill and/or passives then something thats apart of attributes and all armor.

Can't disagree with ya more on that one Malekith but that's just a difference of opinion really. As for HP 'bloat' that's not an inherent issue with this kind of system it's a symptom of how cRPG's (more often then not 'action' RPG's or MMO's) tend to handle 'difficulty'. They have an odd habit of just jacking up HP to extreme levels and call it a day. If you look at a Balor in 3E (or 3.5) AC vs a 20 fighter with a +5 weapon and 24 str (not counting extra buffs) the fighter has a 95%/90%/65%/40% chance to hit with his 4 attacks. Other then a few freak rolls he's going to be hitting with his first 2 hits rather consistently, with a pretty good chance of the third landing, 4th is kinda a crapshoot but not as bad as it could be. If you replace that setup with a single %chance to do crappy damage the fight doesn't get much longer or shorter. Also keep in mind that on a crit hes doing x2 or x3 depending on his weapon and he can have a pretty solid chance of that on a higher end roll. With there current system crits always do max and x1.5 dmg can potentially make up a bit of that. The biggest issue I see with the hit/miss system is its general exploitability. Working on pure AC in DnD could, for the most part, make you nearly untouchable and if on a 20 roll they couldn't hit you normally it was almost impossible for them to even get a crit on there 5% chance to hit you. With there current system you'd always at least be taking some immediate damage (maybe just stamina damage, hopefully) which at least keeps things dangerous so you can't just make a super tank who can't really be hurt the vast majority of time. I just think people are using some poor examples for why they will just start having bloated HP. If they want a fight to last a short time, say generally 3-4 hits. A system based around always hitting will ensure that fight is a short one, a black and white hit or miss system can throw a wrench into it and make stuff take much, much longer then was intended just due to some bad choices on the players part. Or as I mentioned above, super tank which can get out of hand.

@Lephys: That's what I was thinking after reading it, half min dmg done to stamina only on a 'miss' would make a lot of sense. Personally I prefer a mitigation system like this, they tend to be more balanced. DA2 issue's resulted from a lot of other crap completely different from that basic setup, such as armor becoming worse as you got higher in levels. Or an extreme case of base weapon dmg based off weapon lvl instead of the kind of weapon turning into some kinda Diablo on steroids non-sense for what should of been an RPG. DAO had a tiny bit of that with scaling weapon dmg based off lvl instead of due to being magic, a lesson you'd think they would of learned from DnD. Oddly the Mass Effect team relearned it for ME2-3 though for different reasons I guess. Don't really think arrows should always hit, would like a literal dodge % chance somewhere for actual complete dmg ignore but his example was just for melee using shields. So, curious what else is in there but yeah. I like it so far and hope they go with only stamina on a miss. Also like how they're handling Crits being max dmg x1.5. Always hated it when my crit ended up being about the same as a normal max dmg roll in some games because it still used the base random values... so silly.

Yeah attributes definitely can make up a good bit of the difference there if a fighters doing the str route and still wants lock picking. Though most fighters wont go sneak/hide if they're strength based rockin' full plate. Having to get into there skivvies for the sake of stealthing is beyond less then ideal for someone whos spent there life training to be sneaky. Least in that case I'd imagine the fighters dex based. Then again he probably also has 4 or so levels of rogue and has that +3 bonus to go along with it all as well. Well, either way, can't wait to get info on what the non-combat skill stuff is gonna be in PE, and level progression and when we get talent and skill points and all that good stuff.