PrimeJunta

Currently there aren't, and I doubt there will be. There are charm/dominate effects which make enemies switch sides, but that's about it I think.

No command queue, please. It would totally change the feel of the combat. Better formation orientation control would be good though, and I would not object to movement waypoints.

The enemy AI currently appears to consist of "run at the closest target." That needs a little work too, methinks. Like being more aggressive at targeting squishies.

Okay, tried it. Rolled up a cipher, did not take Soul Ignition, and went wild. It was a lot more interesting. Strangely enough the bugs bit a lot less too; I managed to play until the dungeon under Trygil's tower before I got hit by any of the force-reloads and had to quit. I have a hunch BTW that the disappearing item bug is related to the mysterious duplicate items that appear on the floor of Dracogen when coming down from the second floor. Don't touch those, and stuff seems to stay put a lot better. Just a theory though. The cipher is quite interesting to play this way. I picked control/disable type spells, and combined them with melee. It was a potent combination. It felt a good deal more powerful than any other class except the (broken) chanter, but not outrageously out of line. The durations could be toned down somewhat I think; 50 seconds multiple-target paralysis is somewhat over the top. The charm-type ones were lots of fun to use, as were the self-buffs. I'm a little fuzzy on what the fear and sickened status effects actually do, but once I figure that out, I'm sure that one's extremely useful as well. Anyway, when I first tried it I was a bit lukewarm about the cipher, but it is actually quite cool. I like it. Can't really think what should be done to it other than nerfing the abilities a little; Soul Ignition obviously but also the durations on the others. In any case I understand how the Glanfathans scared the willies out of the Aedyrans when they started fielding these. So far, in order of preference, the most fun I've had with the classes -- 1. Gluteus Maximus the Muscle Wizard -- mostly because it was just so much fun to play a wizard that wasn't a glass cannon, also the only time I made it through the beta without being bugged to oblivion. 2. Dyrtipix the Barbarian -- I really like the tactical uses of Wild Sprint + Rage + Defiant Resolve. Not as versatile as the mage classes, but clearly my favorite melee class. 3. Murderhobo the Cipher -- see above. Yeah, cool take on the gish. I would still like gish-oriented wizard talents/spells too, would make a different one. 4. Mullet the Paladin -- hits a nice balance between the low-maintenance fighter and high-maintenance cleric. Nice melee support class. Could explore its capabilities when used with ranged weapons from the back row. 5. Friendly the Ranger + Pooh Bear -- Frankly? Felt a little gimmicky. Mr. Bear was also overpowered and it offended my ego to be outshone by my furry friend. I would like a more straightforward ranged build option, based on the fighter or rogue perhaps. 6. Pintsize the Rogue -- meh. Maybe I wasn't making the most of it, but he felt underwhelming. Perhaps I was doing something wrong, but for a damager class I expected better damage output. I also couldn't think of any other tactics than hobble stab stab stab which wasn't very interesting. I haven't yet really gotten far enough with any priests, druids, or fighters to be able to say much about them. (Character names may be fictional.)

I get the vibe that the intent for the cipher is your gish class. Many of the abilities are debuff/control with some self-buff, and they have decent base accuracy. I.e. it might be more fun to play that way; use the magic to make them easier to kill, then hit them until they fall down. Gonna try that next, and not take SI.

P:E isn't going to have aggro mechanics. Josh stated that from the outset. (For the record, I think that's a good thing. It would make things very MMO-esque amd not in a good way.)

IMO per-encounter doesn't fit the cipher concept. They should all work the same, and be powered by Focus. And I like the fact that they're really beefy. I'm not so sure about the possibility to open with a really beefy spell. Halving the pool would still let you open with a mid-powered one, but it would have an opportunity cost--fighting for a bit would charge it up so you could then use one of the heavy hitters, and if you used up the pool in the opening, it'd take that much longer to get there. If it was me doing the tuning, I'd halve the pool and double the charging speed.

Where does this preference for making systems inconsistent and complicated come from?

Thoughts on the cipher -- First off, Soul Ignition needs to be nerfed big-time. Being able to zap it at unlimited range combined with the massive damage turned the whole thing into cheese. Second: consider adjusting the size of the focus pool vs. the rate it charges up during combat. With the pool big enough to open with any of the highest-level spells, it felt somewhat overpowered, like giving wizards a couple of per-encounter fireballs. On the other hand, the pool charges up relatively slowly. IMO it would be a better balance to, say, halve the size of the pool, and have it charge up twice as fast. It would still permit opening casts, just not the most powerful ones, and would force the cipher to get down and dirty early on. I like having really punchy magic effects that aren't per-rest, but they need to be throttled a bit more. Having them come into play later in the encounter would do this.

Yeah, this. Just tried it. Soul Ignition turned the whole thing into cheese. Needs big-time nerfing. I'm actually also wondering a bit about giving the cipher such a big focus pool from the get-go. Monks need to collect wounds before they can do their wushu thing; it wouldn't be unreasonable for ciphers to have to do the same especially since all their stuff is per-encounter. I like it that the cipher spells are so punchy, but having effectively unlimited Dire Charms and Shrouds of Flame seems a bit too much of a muchness.

Yep, he did. That's one reason I've been posting talent suggestions in the Classes and Builds threads. I find they're likelier to make it in the game than all this head-butting over attributes. I've forgotten what my opinion was supposed to be already.

Check the "Products" tab on your account. You should be able to generate the key from there.

Excellent idea. Post it in the official Classes or Builds thread maybe?

But a fun one.

Big +1 on the ranged knockdown. Great idea. For the gish weapon focus... not so sure. I think the fun from playing a gish is that you can buff yourself to ridiculous levels, but only for a short period of time. If you're as good with a sword as a fighter and additionally can cast spells, that's just kind of munchkiny. So I'd rather have talents/spells that let your wizard make mayhem in melee for great burst damage. (Also I liked the paladin. Thought it struck a very nice balance between low-maintenance fighters and high-maintenance priests.)

Then try it with some other gimmick party composition. Seriously, there's a ton of variety to be had in the BG2 encounters, not least because so many of them are accessible in any order. Much more replayable than IWD.

I suspect they did the godlike portraits first because they're entirely new races, and they needed the concept art anyway. The general pastiness is a bit of a faux pas. Perhaps reflects something of the unconscious workings of the folks there, despite their obvious effort to avoid the general whiteness of western fantasy in their worldbuilding. I'm quite sure they'll remedy it, at the latest for release. In the meantime, if someone makes a combined Samuel L. Jackson/Grace Jones portrait pack, I'm using it.

LOLwut? Aerie and Jaheira as examples of 'deep' characters with sophisticated writing and emotional involvement? If you had said Dak'kon, Fall-from-Grace, Kreia, or even Safiya, Visas, or Boone, but ... Aerie? Ms Mom-Of-Inventory-Baby?

Actually, stats are a relatively minor component of supporting 'multiclass' type builds in P:E. The real meat is in the talents (and, for casters, spells). Add a nice medium-duration accuracy buff to the wizard's spell selection, and boom! you can gish. No need to tweak the attributes for that.

I played BG2 the first couple of times the 'normal' way. Then I played a couple times with hand-crafted gimmick parties. Try it with a full party of kensai/mages. You'll roflstomp over everything. It's fun because ridiculous. Also the story and companions in it isn't really all that great; it's OK by porn standards I suppose but not so good I'd want to play it a second time for the story. The variety in combat encounters, tactics, and party composition OTOH does make for massive replayability. I.e. on subsequent playthroughs I did pretty much click through the story to get to the fighting. In any case Obsidian's trademark is their writing, which you can already see in the BB -- I swear there was more interesting writing there than in all of BW's games since BG2 put together. @Monte Carlo IMO it's too early to tell if the combat is too fast; the main problem is the lack of feedback and critical bugs that turn it into soup. If it is fast I think the main problem is with movement speed, not with attack or casting speed. I'd rather have them clean up the pathfinding, AI, and character freeze bugs first and, if possible, add some better feedback, then see if it still feels too fast.

Life, death, and aerobics. Works for me.

You know what, Indira? I'm getting bored of this wrangling over attributes. It's really not a particularly significant feature of the mechanics anyway. I'd much rather talk about, say, what kinds of talents or spells to add to make, say, ranged fighters or gish wizards workable. (But... I still wouldn't want to see the attribute system complicated more, e.g. by moving different damage type bonuses to different attributes. This is fine; it's no less 'intuitive' than STR affecting accuracy, armor making arcane spells go 'poof,' or deciding to change professions making you forget everything about your previous one until you suddenly remembered it all one tedious slog later. Or, for that matter, a rhinoceros surviving a 30-foot drop instead of going 'splash' because it has enough hit points.)

Bigger powder charges make the guns kick harder, and you need to be stronger to manage them, and since durability was removed by popular demand, the damn things won't ever blow up however much you overload them. There, done, moving on.

Here's an idea: how about offering some concrete, specific ideas on how to expand choice within classes, while staying within the bounds of the system and its publicly declared design goals? Whining about what a travesty the current system is and how it betrays the legacy of the IE games and how Josh is a poopy-head is unlikely to make much of a difference IMO. I've made a few--about tweaking fighters to allow ranged builds (currently not covered by any class, not counting ranger whose gameplay is so focused around Mr. Bear) and wizards with gish tactics (currently covered by ciphers, which have otherwise different gameplay).

Ranged ciphers are a bit of a deathlord at the moment actually. Low-risk, very high-reward. Ranged rogues are poorly supported as--AFAICT--all of their specials are melee only.