PrimeJunta

Why would a katana appear in P:E?

Is the piglet already enchanted, and will we be able to romance it after breaking the enchantment when it returns to its true form as a beautiful prince?

Still more musings on the fighter. Again: in my opinion the main problem of the class is that it is currently role-limited to that of the tank. It's good at soaking damage and not much else; Knockdown is useful, but that's about the extent of it. In my opinion, the goal of the fighter class should be that it lets you make at least four different builds, for four different combat roles, and combine characteristics of these builds as you want. These are: The tank. This is the current build. Needs talents that boost defenses, regenerate stamina, protect health, engage targets and stop them from moving past it. The damager. Needs talents that, well, do more damage. Some ideas: the Power Attack and Cleave DnD3 chains, talents that improve DT bypass, talents that improve Accuracy. Don't tie these to status effects so we're not just replicating the rogue. The disabler. Needs talents that hamper enemies and take them temporarily out of the fight. Knockdown goes in this category. Others would include fast, high-Interrupt attacks, talents to improve battlefield mobility, attacks that push enemies back. The archer. Ranged talents, duh. There's nothing wrong with the tank we have now, but fighters should have broader possibilities than just tank. With talents supporting these four types, you could make a broad variety of hybrids which could be quite interesting to play.

You haven't seen it? Happened twice, around when I'd be entering Dyrford Dungeon. Strangely only for the PC. First minor fatigue with little penalties, then major fatigue which was not a joke.

In re the adventuring day, I noticed that if you play a bit more cautiously and frugally, fatigue will kick in about when I would otherwise have started to run low on health and/or spells. I.e. it appears to be intended this way. It should be tuned up a bit.

True, but as things currently stand you can use a barb as a pawn to control space with very little more micromanagement. OK, deflection isn't as high and the engagement limit is one lower so you will need to watch his stamina a bit, but that's only a little more micromanagement. There's nothing actually wrong with the fighter, it's useful and all; I just think it's somewhat boring and extremely role-limited. I'm sure there are people who like that sort of thing; I do not belong in that group however.

In re tanking and the classes, IMO the fighter needs to be made seriously more interesting. You can build a 90% as effective tank with the barbarian, with the additional bonus of more strategic durability due to the better stam/health damage ratio, better damage output due to Carnage, and the ability to turn into a human fireball with Wild Sprint, Rage, and eventually Defiant Resolve. Unless they do something to seriously expand the fighter's strategic options, I'll pass. That one extra engagement limit and Knockdown are nice but not that nice.

My absolute favorite character to play in all the IE games and their successors is a battlepriest. Pump STR at the expense of CHA, use some of those insanely powerful self-buffs, then cast a medium-duration group buff/debuff (some favorites are Recitation, Prayer, and Battletide from 3e), and wade in, and use healing spells offensively against undead. In fact the cleric/priest is my favorite DnD class by far, because it's the only one with real versatility, especially in 3e. Pick the right domains, and you can be just about anything: you can out-stealth a thief (Knowledge, or perhaps Magic domain gives Knock, you already have Find Traps), out-blast a mage, out-fight a fighter, all the time being the best healer and group buffer in town. It would be just as good if some of that power was dialed down a bit, while keeping the versatility. P:E ATM doesn't really support this kind of thing, which is a shame.

That's exactly the problem with resting in IE games. Why even bother imposing any limitations on spellcasting if all it takes is one keypress to get them back?

Nah, I do disagree. I think you're reading Josh's motivations wrong. I see what he's attempting with each of the mechanics, and in particular the inventory thing isn't about degenerate gameplay at all IMO.

I think the mechanic is OK, and I understand the reasoning. It's about "strategic healing resources" -- how deep can you go before you have to stop to rest/resupply, and with priest/cleric gameplay. In the DnD based games, the limiting factor was your priest's spell selection. You kept going until you ran out of heals. You set aside potions for emergency use in combat, but at least I rarely used them to extend the adventuring day as it were; instead when my priest was out of juice, I rested. This works well enough but it has two problems. One, you pretty much need a priest in every party, or at least a druid; and two, if you only have one, if not all, at least a very large chunk of the priest's spells go towards healing. I.e., your priest becomes a medic--someone you absolutely need, but who doesn't do all that much other than casting heals. The idea with the stam/health+no magic healing mechanic, plus having several classes with per-encounter stamina healing, is that it frees the priest's spells for other uses, and it makes it possible to play even without a priest. If your tank soaks up most of the damage, you can use the barb's Defiant Resolve of the fighter's Second Wind; if you have a pally in the party, you can Lay On Hands. And of course it all recharges after the fight is over, until you run low on health and have to rest. The principle is IMO sound. There would have been other ways to accomplish it, but this works well enough. Priest gameplay still has problems -- it's basically turned the priest from a heal-o-mat to a buff-o-mat, still making for rather monotonous gameplay -- but now there's no fundamental obstacle to giving the priest cool abilities. The stam/health ratio needs tweaking though. 1:4 is too punishing. I'd try 1:8 to see if it's too forgiving.

@Immortalis I did read through it carefully. I did not understand it. I picked up some antipathy towards Josh, but failed to quite understand why. Do you think he's failing in what he's attempting, or that what he's attempting is not worth trying? If the former, then why not specify what you think is working and what not, so maybe he can take notice and make changes, rather than musing about his capabilities or motivations? If it's just what you said later, i.e. that you like the camping but not the stash, then cool. That's a legit opinion and a data point for him. I don't like the inventory either, but I'd like it fixed in the opposite direction -- just give us a self-categorizing unlimited party inventory that we can't access in combat, and a half-dozen quick-item slots that we can, and get rid of the "top of the pack" mechanic. But that's because I dislike inventory management and would like it to be as easy as possible, and I think digging in your pack in mid-fight is cheesy. I don't get a lot of gameplay value from deciding which piece of vendor trash to dump and which to carry.

BTW for those bellyaching about "December or bust" and the consequences thereof for polish, balance etc. -- I'd like to point out that Obsidian does patch games post-release too. Uh, from time to time.

If you don't reward "degenerate" tactics you need to make sure that you appropriately reward "legitimate" tactics. E.g. I saw a thread here somewhere stating that spellcasting is currently weak and not competitive. If true, guess what it can do to how (if at all) people will play wizards. In other words insisting that players play the game the way it's "meant" to be played will do you no good if your perfect design vision is crippled by a buggy or incomplete implementation. Absolutely. You can totally ruin the best design in the world with shoddy execution. Don't forget though that the balancing process hasn't even properly begun yet. I disagree about the spellcasting, by the way -- the only character I made it through the beta with was in fact a wizard, and playing him was, if you pardon the expression, a blast. The power level felt just about right to me, whereas IMO rogues were clearly underpowered and ciphers and chanters overpowered. One clear difference with DnD wizard though is that the point-damage spells did feel less punchy. I mostly used area-effect ones plus self-buffs, and they felt very much in line with the DnD equivalents. (Other than Wall of Fire which was a bit of a "Win!" button ATM.)

I saved the dragon's egg once with BB Fighter. Did it last. The "great success!" message has [Con 20] at the end, which I thought was weird because BB Fighter doesn't have Con 20. (I confess I didn't bother to report it though.)

@Immortalis There's a big range between "borderline unplayable" (Arcanum) and "perfect" when it comes to systems that reward degenerate tactics. I don't fault Josh for attempting to move the slider, even if he's extremely unlikely to hit "perfect." It can be a tangible improvement over DnD without coming close to "perfect." And yes, I do consider many of Josh's changes to be such tangible improvements. If the end result turns out to be "not fun," that's bad obviously. However, I am not at all convinced that the not-funness is caused by the attempt to not reward degenerate tactics. As I've said before, for me the unique appeal of the IE games is in the richness of the palette -- there's such a huge variety of stuff in there that you can play with in so many ways. That has nothing to do with the grinding, rest-spamming, inventory management, or other similar things. This is also why I enjoyed the later games in the series more than the earlier ones, and why BG1 never really appealed to me -- the beginnings of that bounty are there, but compared to the rest, it's fairly thin gruel. Short version: I believe the IE games would have been even more fun with better mechanics, and I do not believe P:E would be better if it replicated their mechanical flaws. If P:E turns out not to be fun, the reasons will be different.

Yeh, I'm not a huge fan of the inventory system either. I don't like inventory that needs to be managed. I'd rather just have an unlimited, auto-sorting inventory, and if it improves gameplay, limitations on accessing it e.g. during combat. Let me manage my weapon sets and quick items, and keep everything else in a spreadsheet. Dragging icons from one box to another is not the reason I play this kind of game. If that makes me a filthy casual, then fine. And yeah, I believe some players are going to be constantly running back and forth between the inn and the dungeon. Most of them will probably give up on the game because that's tedious and boring, unless they were the same people who packratted dungeons in the IE games in which case they'll like it just fine, since their diligence has a commensurate payoff in power. I believe, though, that for a larger group of players the mechanic will work as intended. I rest-spammed shamelessly in all the games that allowed it. I don't rest-spam in the P:E beta, and quite like that part about it (although some stuff could be tweaked; I get fatigued earlier than I think I ought to, and the stam/health ratio is currently too punishing). I don't know BTW if Josh would consider packratting degenerate; rest-spamming certainly is. So in this case at least IMO the resting mechanic is a clear net gain, whereas the inventory is currently about as annoying as it was in the IE games, without the 'simulationist' benefit of (absurdly permissive) encumbrance mechanics.

@Sarex and others -- I don't know about you guys, but I can pretty easily understand the reasons for the other reinventions in P:E. The XP system? Much less work to implement, test, and balance. The resting system? Makes per-rest limitations actually mean something. The per-encounter abilities? Soften the blow of the resting system. The ability scores? Avoid cookie-cutter builds and establish a brand identity that's obviously distinct from DnD (STR-DEX-CON-INT-WIS-CHA would produce misleading expectations). And so on. You may not agree with the reasons, but there are reasons, and the reasons are understandable. The stash? Make packrats' lives easier without completely watering down inventory management (fail IMO, would be better with unlimited inventory -- but I understand the thinking). And so on. As someone who really dislikes many of DnD's mechanics -- I loved the IE games despite the DnD, not because of it -- I also respect Josh's effort at reforming them while keeping the spirit alive immensely. Those mechanics do need fixing, and even when he fails, he tends to fail for understandable reasons. But the decision to redesign the UI I just don't get. I can't think of any good reason they would do that.

I haven't noticed any respawning monsters in the beta. That said, new wildlife wandering in from over the edges of the map would not ruin my day.

I'm a bit puzzled why he didn't just crib the IWD2 UI. It was pretty refined at that point, with most of the kinks worked out. Why reinvent the wheel when there's a perfectly good one there for the taking, especially when you're risking inventing a worse one? If you want to add a floaty option, there's no reason you couldn't just remove the backing from the IWD2 one.

Hey now, I like it that we can't access inventory during combat. There are a quite a few quick item slots for that. (OTOH the personal inventory+stash thing just feels unnecessarily complicated. I like your proposed system better.)

Resounding yes. Pirate pistol for great victory. Edit: Have we finally found the one thing everybody can agree about?

@Cubiq fighters have an engagement limit of 3 in defender mode. They will engage anyone within melee range. A single sword 'n board fighter can control a pretty hefty region of space this way, more if you give him a reach weapon. Two characters side by side, one of whom is a fighter, will form a line. I'm fairly confident it'll be a lot different than the shoulder-to-shoulder-in-a-doorway thing you had in the IE. I'm sorry you're bummed about the game BTW. Betas are not for the faint of heart. From where I'm at this game holds enormous promise, but they do have their work cut out to bring it to fruition. They're also taking on a quite a task: they're inviting comparison with mature, five generations refined games, on their first try. I played BG1 earlier this year, and frankly I didn't think it was all that great. The AI was primitive, the encounters often repetitive (I don't think I ever want to see another kobold again), and there were plenty of ways to cheese it. The engine came a long way from that to BG2 and IWD. If P:E manages to do significantly better than BG1 it will already have done well, even if it doesn't match the dizzying variety of BG2 or the meticulously crafted environmental combat puzzles of IWD. So what I'm saying, I guess, is that mood swings are to be expected and it would be wise to attempt to moderate them as far as possible.

First, to get this out of the way -- yeah it's buggier than I had expected, especially the combat. Second, just to point out a few things that may give cause for cautious optimism: It's relatively stable. At least on my rig, it barely ever crashes or freezes or exhibits other engine-level problems. That's a good sign. It's feature- and content-complete, or close to anyway. All the quests are fully written and playable, the world and its inhabitants look polished and finished, all the classes are in, there's a pretty damn huge bestiary for a very small area, and so on. I don't think Obs actually wants us for bughunting. It's got to be a major hassle to trawl through the forum looking for unreported bugs and then log them in their internal system. Certainly at this stage it's going to be light-years more effective to have a handful of professional in-house testers systematically scouring the thing and reporting bugs directly into their issue tracker, with their standard format. And yeah, Gamescom. That kind of forced the schedule. All we know at this point is what the game looked like about a week before that. We don't know how fast it's progressing, what kinds of things are giving them trouble, and generally how well the ship is sailing. We need another build, probably two for that. If everything is going well, debugging can go extremely quickly. I.e., I'm not writing off a 2014 release yet. If the next build isn't a lot better and doesn't arrive pretty soon now, then I'll start to worry.