PrimeJunta

Only since 1984 or so. Seen 'em. Tried 'em. Observed 'em being less effective than high-STR fighters just piling on the armor. AD&D didn't have Combat Expertise. That was added to D&D3 specifically in an attempt to mitigate the "just pump STR" problem. It (also the Dodge/Mobility/Spring Attack/Whirlwhind Attack chain) are useful, and if you have a DM that's liberal enough with stat points that you can get DEX 15 and INT 13 as well as STR 18 (which isn't too hard sometimes since you can safely dump WIS and CHA) it's worth taking. But that's about the amount of wiggle room for a fighter. (Of course they later piled on the prestige classes so after slogging gimped through a few levels you could have another pre-crafted mold that would suddenly make you Deathlord to fit the concept you're playing. Which is a really clunky solution to a problem that could have been avoided with better systems in the first place.) As to why you're talking to me... that, Mrak, only you can answer. Fighters aren't even the worst offenders though. You cannot make a low-INT wizard, or a low-WIS cleric. They won't be able to wiz or cler. (Which is one reason they added yet another class, the sorcerer, which had the additional "benefit" of breaking the lore -- D&D had lore reasons for the absolute necessity to prepare spells, to which the sorc says "Oh, never mind.") Yet low-INT wizards and low-WIS clerics are perfectly interesting character concepts: the wizard could be a savant, say -- someone with a hyper-narrow talent for magic but nearly unable to function in normal life; the cleric could be a charismatic, weak-willed fool blessed or cursed with great powers by an evil god using him for its own purposes. D&D just doesn't allow these kinds of characters. Nuh-uh. As a DM, if a player came to me with one of these concepts, I would find ways to make them work, but it would require pretty serious breaking of the rules. Oh? STR 18 CON 18 DEX 14 INT 3 WIS 3 CHA 3. Power Attack, Cleave, Great Cleave, Weapon Focus: Greatsword, Weapon Specialization: Greatsword, Improved Critical: Greatsword. STR 18 CON 18 DEX 14 INT 3 WIS 3 CHA 3. Ambidextrity, Two-Weapon Fighting, Improved Two-Weapon Fighting, Weapon Focus: Scimitar, Weapon Specialization: Scimitar, Improved Critical: Scimitar. Yes, he is! In fact I would like P:E to support the archer-fighter, with no animal companion. Note to self: write a note in the Classes thread. STR 18 CON 14 DEX 18 INT 3 WIS 3 CHA 3. Point-blank shot, Rapid shot, Multi-shot. Weapon Focus: Longbow. Weapon Specialization: Longbow. Improved Critical: Longbow. STR 18 CON 16 DEX 16 INT 3 WIS 3 CHA 3. Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack, Weapon Focus: Greatsword, Weapon Specialization: Greatsword, Improved Critical: Greatsword. Yeah, this one's fun. STR 7 CON 18 DEX 15 INT 13 WIS 3 CHA 3. Combat Expertise, Improved Combat Expertise, Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack, Weapon Finesse. He'll never do much damage, but boy is he hard to hit. (Of course this fighter will be fun if your DM is generous enough with stat points or magic items to bring STR to where it belongs, i.e. 18. And you can maybe compromise on the CON a little.) Can't think of how this would be different from mage-killer or maybe tank. (This was all from memory BTW so it's possible I got the feat thresholds wrong, but they're not far wrong. If you want to embarrass me you can go "The INT threshold for Combat Expertise was 15 not 13 you fool, haven't you ever played D&D?") Let's see: all but one of those builds had INT, WIS, CHA 3 with everything else in STR, CON, DEX, with STR always maxed, and that one had pumped INT to a moderate value to get Combat Expertise. Am I seeing a pattern here? Yes, I am. Which is the point I'm making: if all your fighter builds (except one) have you pump STR, CON, DEX with trivial differences, and dump INT, WIS, CHA, then why even bother having attributes? Why not just roll those bonuses right into the fighter's class description, giving him attack, damage, AC, and hit point bonuses from the get-go? Attributes are only meaningful if they permit variety. It would be interesting to role-play, say, a wise, charismatic old warrior who's lost someof the raw speed and strength he had as a youth... and still be mechanically effective. D&D won't let you which makes the whole attribute system borderline pointless. Haha, we do agree about something then. The attribute system is confusing and non-intuitive, and does need to be overhauled.

I kinda agree in theory. In practice I don't think it'd be the same if, say, Strength or Dexterity had no mechanical effects at all. Twiddling attributes for combat effectiveness is very near the core of the D&D character building experience; moreso for AD&D because class + attributes were pretty much it for most of 'em. So I think stats ought to have mechanical effects, if only for the feelz. The hard part is making all or most of the compelling for all or most classes. Perhaps "no dump stats" is too ambitious; relaxing it to "at most one dump stat per class, and different dump stats for different classes" might make it possible to get more role-play-ey stats without forcing everybody into cookie-cutter builds. (I'm still taken by the muscle wizard idea though. I'd really like to see that work!)

Sure I have. To make a good melee character, pump AGI for the action points and INT so you can max out your Melee Weapons (or Unarmed if you prefer) ASAP. Average STR will do just fine. Then just punch/slash them in the eyes. I did play a dumb character once. It was an amusing novelty, but mechanically pretty hopeless. I'm saying that a system that has such a thing as a prime requisite (or role attribute as you put it) is dumb. If fighters have to have high STR or wizards have to have high INT, why even bother asking the player to allocate the points? There's no choice involved. "Please specify if you want pie or a kick in the nuts" is a false choice.

@Mrakvampire: If stats are unbalanced, it means that you'll always allocate them the same way (for any given class). This is very much the case in D&D. If you end up with the same stats for each class every time, then why even have stats? Where's the meaningful choice in them? Why not just get rid of them and roll those bonuses directly into the classes? If you're always going to pump STR for your fighter because of to-hit and damage bonuses, why not just get rid of STR and give the fighter those bonuses outright? From where I'm at, stats are only really meaningful for role-play purposes. The D&D ones are fine for PnP. They define what kind of character you're playing. Effectively forcing classes into particular stat distributions detracts from that, rather than improving it. Mechanically they're an unnecessary complication.

Apparently that only happens if you hit continue instead of load then manually picking your save from the title screen. Unfortunately not. It's happened to me a lot, and I never Continue.

I'm pretty sure the "chants" are going to be in. They've only started voice work recently, so it's not surprising they didn't make it into the beta. The animations are likely final though.

To reproduce: 1. Go to the Options pane and untick the Show unqualified and Show qualifiers boxes in dialog options. 2. Have yourself a dialog. => Expected/Observed: the unqualified options are removed, and qualifiers are hidden. 3. Go to another map (exit a building, enter a building or similar). 4. Have yourself another dialog. => Expected: the unqualified options are removed, and qualifiers are hidden. => Observed: the unqualified options are displayed (in red, with content hidden), as are the qualifiers. 5. Open the Options pane. => Observed: the boxes that I unticked in 1 are ticked again.

I think I saw an effect of dumping RES in my previous attempt. I made a back-row druid rocking an arquebus, and when an enemy engaged him the attacks interrupted his reload pretty effectively. If interrupts do interrupt melee attacks as well, and RES is needed to stop that from happening, then hell yes, PER and RES are both vital. Pump PER = stunlock most enemies; dump RES = get stunlocked in most combats. That said, I'm not sure how much fun getting stunlocked is.

Hey, there is an XP system in place. I finally leveled up. Once. In the ogre cave. Before meeting the ogre. I think the secret sauce was that my starting quests didn't disappear before I managed to complete them. After that some Bad Things happened again and I had to quit. Again, I think it's too early to tell. For me I think the main appeal of an XP system is frequent small rewards punctuated by big juicy rewards (i.e. leveling up). Can't tell from the beta how that's gonna feel, because it's (a) broken and (b) inflated.

They were. Fallout: pump INT and AGI, the rest are cosmetic. OK, STR if you want to use heavy weapons (although there's no reason really because you'll be able to shoot a gnat in the left eyeball soon enough otherwise). Arcanum: decide whether you want shoot, melee, throw, magic, or have your buddies do the dirty work for you, and pump the associated attribute. The skill trees even handily tell you when to pump it. If you're a technomancer, never mind INT, just buy those potions from the helpful lady near the city gates; it's useless for anything other than crafting anyway. The main takeaway from those games is that yes, Virginia, it is possible to design an attribute system that's worse than STR-CON-DEX-INT-WIS-CHA. (Great games anyway, though. Especially Fallout.)

The attribute systems of both Fallout and Arcanum were terribad.

What kind of profound effect, specifically?

Nah. Balancing is done near the end of the process. It hasn't been done yet. Revising the attribute system before final rebalancing barely registers.

I like that idea, @Amentep. I'm in but not in this build. Let's wait a bit until it's stable enough that you can play through most of it most of the time without hitting one of the game-breakers (disappearing inventory or quests, in particular).

An attribute-less system would be mechanically more sound, no doubt. How well it would fit an IE successor is another question. I say make these attributes work. Can't be that hard.

I normally don't respond to this sort of thing, but... really, Helm. You're one of the most abrasive and divisive posters on these forums. Getting all pious about how bad it is that the community is split is a bit rich, frankly. If you want us all to be a big happy family, then :roots in cliché bag: be the change you want to see.

There seem to be at least three different variants of the infamous stuck character bug: 1. Triggered by weapon-swap in mid-reload animation (reproducible) -> Character can't be selected by clicking on toon or portrait, but can be selected by dragging on the ground for the rectangle -> When selected, weapon sets and modes can be swapped, but won't respond to commands 2. Triggered in combat for unknown reason -> Character can be selected normally and responds to all other commands than move; if close to map exit, can exit map and he will follow, but will remain unresponsive 3. Triggered when character falls in combat due to stamina hitting zero; when gets up, is unresponsive as in (2) above -> Behavior same as in 2. Could be the same bug.

Haha, actually you ought to then be in the happy minority who likes the current attribute system. Pump PER. It's fairly useless in combat but does wonders for dialog.

This is kind of funny actually. My head says combat XP (and systemic XP in general) is bad design and a bad idea. But my heart misses it.

Anything that discourages people from playing elves is a pro in my book.

Massive kudos about this, @Sensuki. It's these little, almost unnoticeable things that make the difference between something passable and something really smooth and natural. They ought to take notice.

I think it'd help if they just made the race/culture attribute bonuses a bit bigger. +2 or +3 means more than +1. Perhaps reduce the free pool of attribute points accordingly.

Actually, attributes are among the least essential aspects of the system and one that's the easiest to change. It's basically a map of attribute values to combat bonuses. Not even programming, just adjusting values in a hashmap. There are plenty of topics not worth discussing ("Make it more like BG2!") but changes to the attribute system are not among them. As long as there are six, pretty much anything can be changed right up to the last minute. (FWIW I voted "something else." Per and Res are too dumpable, and I don't like the "might affects all damage" thing, which is counterintuitive. Find some other way to make muscle wizards attractive.)

Tips: (1) Use slow-motion (tap S). (2) Use at most two melee characters. Three or more will trigger the Y U NO DO???? bug, which will leave them just standing there getting punished. (3) Switch out the starting gear. BB Wizard wears breastplate, which makes him cast s-l-o-w-l-y. Swap that out and wear it instead if you're a melee character. (4) Explore the per-encounter and per-rest abilities. In particular, use BB Priest's buffs; they're seriously powerful. (5) Pay attention to weapon type vs damage. Bugs in particular are vulnerable to crushing. (6) Move your character before switching weapons, or it'll trigger the "stuck" bug and you'll have to reload, which will trigger the "disappearing items" bug.

I actually agree about the unintuitive bit. It's pretty easy to tell that Josh would rather not have attributes at all. As it is they do feel shoehorned-in, with counterintuitive effects that are there in an attempt to make all of them useful. I do like the effort to avoid cookie-cutter builds, but there's got to be a more intuitive way of getting there. We'll see how it is in the next iteration.