PrimeJunta

Forest shamblers Spider queen Between the beetles and the spiders, the beta does have a lot of bugs...

dat codpiece

I don't have anything against them in principle. My only objection is if there are too many of them. If you can equip your entire party with superweapons then they're not so super anymore. Carsomyr notwithstanding, BG2 had rather too many IMO, as a consequence of attempting to cater to all weapon categories. A better approach IMO is to give the player a measure of control over which type of superweapon he acquires, and then only have one in the entire game. It could be a quest where the weapon is crafted, or it could perhaps be a unique blessing on an existing weapon from a god. What I would really like to avoid is magic inflation, where über-powerful magical loot is all over the place and if you're not rocking +5 everything by the end of the game you feel like you're slumming. Powerful magic items should be very rare and very impactful.

Yes?

I'm using Boot Camp as well, and it's working fine. Er, 'fine' meaning about as well as can be expected; I'm certainly experiencing fewer issues than many.

That there looks an awful lot like an arena. Bottom right. Could be an amphitheater too. Perhaps you get to decide which, or both.

I think he likes BG1 better than BG2. He did want to make BG3 after all, and a lot of the ideas from that are here. I'd be disappointed if there aren't creative ways to reward exploration, including ones that involve XP. Again, to compare with BG1, I wouldn't have liked it any less if I'd have gotten an XP reward for finding the xvart village rather than murdering them. Still feel a little bad for the puir wee critters.

Yep, MIG still increases both physical and magical damage. I wouldn't make any mechanical changes to distinguish between the two, especially as the line is sometimes blurry what with all the special attacks even melee characters get. Maybe rewrite the description so it makes more sense. IMO the abilities are fairly intuitive if you think of them in terms of souls -- an individual with a mighty soul can choose to become a wizard or a fighter; if a wizard, she channels that might into more damaging spells; if a fighter, he channels it into powerful blows. Given how small the toons are, you're free to imagine if and how that's reflected in their physical appearance. Or pick an elf, human, or aumaua, depending.

It was an attempt at deadpan humor. The implication being, P:E needs a muscle wizard boss, full stop.

I'm not sure. The combat is currently so chaotic that I can't really tell why my toons aren't doing much damage, if that's the case. Is their Accuracy too low? Is the weapon DT penetration too low? Something else?

What do you mean, 'easter egg?'

I don't like this. It'd just get us right back to where we started: cookie-cutter stat distributions for each class, or damn close anyway. This would also add more IMO unnecessary complexity. I say keep the current system but make it more impactful by doubling the mechanical effects and setting the baseline at 10 (penalties below, bonuses above), and make a few minor tweaks. I've made a few proposals; here's another one. MIG: Damage, Healing. CON: Health/Endurance. DEX: Accuracy. PER: Crit chance, Interrupt. INT: AoE, Healing, Duration, Recovery time. RES: Concentration, Duration. I bound two things to attributes that currently aren't, crit chance and recovery time. Both are there to make the relevant attributes more valuable, as they're currently somewhat dumpable. Moved Healing from MIG to INT because it makes no sense on MIG but at least some sense on INT, and moved Duration to RES to make that more attractive. (RES is pretty important already, it's just hard to tell because of the lack of feedback.)

Balancing two distinct XP systems is a bit of a handful methinks. I think it's most likely we'd just end up with two half-arsed ones and everybody would be unhappy. I'm all for a mod implementing old-skool XP though.

Some fights are definitely avoidable. Some quests have peaceful resolutions, and some trash mobs can be avoided simply by not walking into them. Incidentally, in the case of at least one of the quests, the loot drops are so nice that it's definitely more attractive to fight than not, even if the XP reward is the same. That one at least gives the biggest (immediate) reward for "murder everybody now." There were hints that the peaceful solutions would have repercussions down the road, but it's impossible to say from just the beta.

@wickermoon As Infinitron likes to point out, you can work around the deficiencies of any mechanical system by tailoring content to fit the weak points. That doesn't mean the system itself isn't flawed.

@Cthulchulain Yep, that would also make it possible to double the impact without doubling the absolute adjustment you're able to do. So you wouldn't need to reduce the number of distributable stat points.

Monks need more feedback too. There should be a noticeable sound+visual effect when he gains a Wound. As it is you have to watch that Wound counter like a hawk or risk taking completely unnecessary damage.

Haven't played it but skimmed through the rulebook. It looks pretty good actually, mechanically cleaner than 3e without the rigidity and MMO-ness of 4e, and very much the D&D feel. Also has much of its baggage, but that's to be expected I suppose.

@Malekith @Stun it looks like we're actually in agreement then, at least about a core issue: the attributes currently don't have sufficiently big mechanical effects. I even posted a thread about this earlier. Fortunately this ought to be very easy to remedy, just double or triple the effects and reduce the number of stat points accordingly. This could only get problematic if the stat effects become so big they erase the base values from the classes. I wouldn't feel entirely comfortable if a muscle wizard who pumped DEX would hit in melee just about as well as a fighter with moderate DEX. Fighters ought to be better at melee than wizards, because that is what they do.

Right: sorry, my bad. I missed that part. I will concede then that yes, a low-WIS cleric is viable in AD&D.

I would've voted "more than twice" had you left out the (A)D&D reference. I don't want the cookie-cutter attribute distributions of (A)D&D: I want all attributes to remain important to all classes, and to support diverse builds within classes, and I believe the best way to do that is to significantly increase the mechanical effects of the stats.

@Longknife no it's not. Consider Resolve. Double its importance. Hell, triple it if you like. What it does is defend against Interrupts. This will be important to every character that gets attacked a lot. This means every character that can be built/equipped for the front line. Which includes, at last count, everybody. The challenge is to make every ability similarly useful to all classes, without making all classes feel the same. This can be done by permitting diversity within classes, e.g. the famous glass cannon/muscle wizard path. I.e. I really do want both: that abilities have a meaningful mechanical effect, and that there aren't cookie-cutter builds for each class. That I can make a front-line wizard or a back-row wizard; an offensive cleric or a pure support cleric; a fast, nimble fighter or a slow, crushy, damage-resistant fighter.

@Crooked Bee That's a bug in the description. "Melee weapon" includes fists. It just means it won't work with ranged weapons. I just tried Stunning Blow and it worked great.

And miss out on spell levels 5-9? I don't think so. Unless you're intentionally going for a gimped build; Stun has said he enjoys that as a challenge of course.

Except that your muscle wizard still needs max INT (or CHA, if sorc-based to cast), and can't cast wearing heavy armor. Remember? (And yes, there is the Spellsword prestige class, specifically and carefully crafted as a band-aid to cover this very deficiency.)