PrimeJunta

I finally got around to play a rogue. Some thoughts. After playing a muscle wizard, paladin, ranger, and chanter, it feels a little underwhelming. Pumped Dex, Mig, and Res. My tactic was to pull the enemies with BB Fighter, then flank them with BB Rogue and Murderhobo. I had BB Fighter do a Knockdown, one of the rogues a Hobble, and then wailed away. It worked well enough, as in I managed to kill lots of creatures without taking too much damage, while intentionally restricting use of those mad-powerful priest buffs, but it took a good deal longer to kill individual enemies this way than by blasting them with spells. I understand the design intent of the rogue is to excel at point damage. That didn't really seem to be the case though. I was dual wielding a fine sword (piercing/slashing) and fine dagger (piercing), and the experience was broadly similar with Medreth & co, that orlan he was chasing, the beetles, and the spiders. (At that point Mr. Ogre moonwalked off into the landscape and broke my quest, so I left it at that.) It may be that I'm not using weapons optimally; if so I may withdraw this comment, but as it is I think rogues need to be beefed up a bit. If their role is to do point status effects and damage, both the status effects and the damage ought to be more dramatic.

To reproduce: Fight the spiders in the ogre cave. Observed: I have noticed that relatively frequently my characters fighting the spiders very quickly lose all health (not Stamina), and keel over Maimed. The health can go down from 100% to zero in a single combat. I was under the impression that this should not happen; that you can lose at most 25% of your health during an individual fight, if stamina regeneration effects are not applied. In any case, this has happened on several occasions, but not always. I suspect it may be a bug.

To reproduce: grab the top of the combat log pane and drag it up to expand it. Observed: it's possible to expand it past the top of the screen. After that, there's no way to shrink it again, since the mouse can't reach the drag handle.

I wasn't asking you how you think the IE/NWN games should have been. I was--still am--taking you to task about what you said about the P:E classes compared to the IE classes, as they actually were. Earlier on, didn't you say that P:E wizards are just like P:E archers except with sparkly arrows? Also something about MMO-esque?* Basically, I'm trying to get a handle on your criticism, but not much luck here. So exactly what do you think is worse about P:E's classes than IE classes? *Yes, you did. I checked.

Nor call it Pathfinder (unless you have the license, as Obsidian does now), nor d20, nor -- unless you want to risk a lawsuit -- point out that your ruleset is, in fact, a clone. But yes, other than that, you could. Which is what I've been saying all along.

Unfortunately, no. Ranger gameplay is based on the shared health pool with Mr. Bear. The experience is completely different from playing a ranged fighter. Ehm, it does actually mean that. If you can twist the cookie-cutter to make different shaped cookies and they still taste good, then you have eliminated cookie-cutter builds, by definition. Why?

Sorry, my bad: I meant the d20 System Trademark License, not the OGL. I.e., you can "clone" d20 if you remove all the trademarked elements, and make a computer game based on that. But you can't make a computer game and still use the trademarked elements of d20.

No, I'm not. I am a little confused though. You were criticizing P:E's wizards as "simple damage/buff engines." I asked how they're different from IE wizards. You brought up noncombat spells. Now you're pointing out that the noncombat spells never had any noncombat use. So I guess I'll get back to that: if P:E wizards are "simple damage/buff engines," how are they different from IE wizards again?

I love meself a nice crafting system, but I also want unique and interesting discovered items.

I'm sure Obsidian's reputation and credibility will be just fine if they release a great game. It will suffer, though, if they delay the release, or, worse, if the release is buggy and unpolished. Any effort they spend servicing us is not spent on fixing bugs, polishing, and keeping the project on-budget and on-schedule. I.e. I believe that your suggestion is actively harmful, also for Obsidian's reputation.

It ain't gonna be PS:T, that's for sure. You can't get that with a blank-slate character like here. But it isn't going to be another Icewind Dale either. There are at least eight fully fleshed-out characters, and a story that's about you. I would expect a similar setup as in FO:NV or Mask of the Betrayer -- something nasty happens to you and you have to deal with the consequences. Obsidian is good at story and making you care about it; I don't have too many worries on that score. I would also expect there to be multiple endings.

Is this true? If so, major derp.

Yes on both counts. Full control over party inventory, full control on levelup. I understand some members will join your party already at some level, so you won't be able to level them all the way from 1.

Dum dum dee dum...

IIRC there was a separate "Crafting" skill, which affected item durability. You could repair your gear with it when camping, and the better you were, the better the repairs would turn out. You would then use the same skill to craft new stuff. The public didn't like item durability so it was dropped, and without it the Crafting skill felt sad and lonely, so they bound crafting to other things instead.

Friends was of extremely limited use in the IE games. Wish was never properly implemented (couldn't be, since there's no way to implement such a thing in a computer game). True Sight was primarily a combat buff. Infravision was there and I think I even cast it, once, before acquiring an object that had it on it when I needed it. Spook, Horror, Emotion were all combat spells (and good ones at that). I'll give you Know alignment but... when was that actually useful? Farsight... no recollection of using that. PnP is a whole 'nuther ball game--dig or passwall, anyone?--but I honestly don't recall having much use for magic out of combat in any of the IE games or their successors. Crafting, of course, but that mostly used combat spells.

Also because of the extremely limited possibility to unlearn spells, and because the spell selection was so enormously variable in utility, there was a real risk of gimping your character through lack of foreknowledge. Sorcs were lots of fun on second, third, and further playthroughs when you already knew what the spells did and could make informed choices. If you were going by the descriptions alone, not so much.

Use the item duplication exploit. Open Inventory, equip your most precious items if not already equipped, and double-click to un-equip. Then switch to another character and back. You'll have backup copies in your inventory. I take a couple of backups of the grimoires as a matter of course, just in case.

:thinks: I honestly can't think of too many non-combat spells I regularly used. There was Knock I suppose. Light, of course, which was extremely rarely necessary. I think I used Wizard Eye at times, which was genuinely cool. And scads of pre-buffs, of course, which I'm delighted they've removed since they got really tedious, especially at the higher levels. What specifically do you have in mind?* *PnP DnD is different of course, but I don't think any of the computer games had spells like Contact Outer Plane, Augury, (Limited) Wish, and so on.

Haha, yeah, I know that "did I miss anything?" feeling all too well. The upside with the incremental small rewards is that missing something on occasion is no big deal; it will only start to bite with consistent behavior.

More feedback: I really, really like what you've done with the wizard. Being able to break free from the pasty bookish anti-social nerd slinging fireballs from a safe distance archetype is immensely liberating. I also think you've hit the trade-offs regarding front-line/armored casting and back-row/glass-cannon casting just about right. The spell selection is great, the grimoire mechanic is great, and I'm finally giving those spells originating from the caster a good workout since I can actually stand in the front-line without pre-buffing myself to a Christmas tree. So basically... don't change anything there, it's perfect as it is.* *'cept the bugs natch.

Uh... so what's a wizard in the IE games?

I want it to be somewhere in the happy middle. Completing every quest at maximum detail should get you to the level cap a bit early, and should get you significantly better gear by the endgame. Completing most optional quest a little carelessly should get you to the level cap by the endgame. Completing only the crit path carelessly should leave you underleveled for the endgame, but no so much it would be impossibly difficult at Easy. (I wouldn't mind if it was a serious challenge at Normal and genuinely tough at Path of the Damned -- I'm sure the folks looking for a challenge would like that.) There's a lot of space between the extremes here.

I think you'll like the P:E wizard. It combines the best parts of D&D wizard and D&D sorcerer. You can learn all the spells you like and put them in your spellbook like a wizard, but then you pick a selection for your grimoire, and cast from those like a sorcerer. You can (eventually) have several grimoires with different selections and switch between them. I really like what Josh did with the wizard.

That's not how the game plays at even this early stage. For one thing, most wizard attack spells are AoE damage of various types (burning hands clone, fireball, wall of fire, cone of cold effect that also slows, and so on). There's only one point-damage spell sequence that I've come across (Magic Missile-ish). Archers OTOH exclusively deal point damage/debuff. Seriously, there are plenty of criticisms you can legitimately level at P:E, but "all classes play the same minus the special effects" isn't one of them. They really do feel diverse.