PrimeJunta

As an aside, killing the ogre isn't worth XP either. Josh said there are other ways to deal with him as well. The objective was to stop the ogre from stealing the farmer's pigs. That's worth XP.

No. But all of them are romance. And that's much better.

They've been pretty ambivalent about EA in their public statements. I'm betting they won't do it. If they're releasing by the end of the year, there isn't even all that much time for it.

Yes, that's correct. You're probably wise to pass; you'll enjoy the real thing more. I meant to but failed my Will save.

I'm with @Sensuki on this one. No command queue please.

My reaction to the lightning bolt was much as yours. Then I remembered how they look in the IE engine, and immediately felt better. They are very IE-ey.

One of my favorite options in fact. I think some of them were overpowered and had too-long durations; entangle, web, or stinking cloud were something of win buttons at times. If they had expired after a few rounds things would've been more interesting (and also less waiting around for them to expire after the battle was won).

Embedded here BTW I also noticed how fighters are a strategic resource. Their ability to pin down beasties and stay standing while the rest of the party whacks them is massively useful, but costs a lot of health. I thought that'd be the standard tactic for most combats, but it looks like that's something to reserve for the big battles or else you'll have to rest a quite a lot. Also looks like fighters really need to pump Deflection and Health if they want to play that combat role a lot. Am wondering if there would be less costly ways of pinning down beasties. Rogues clearly had some ability that does that, there was the Halt spell (very short duration), perhaps more. Are traps in? Would it have been possible to sneak in a rogue to place a bear trap, then lure the ogre into it and stick it full of arrows as it struggles to free itself?

It's not turn-based under the hood (unlike IE). Timing is based on animation frames. Actions take different times and can overlap freely. There's no way to make it turn-based without a massive overhaul. (For the record, I prefer turn-based too.) Good auto-pause settings would be nice though. Also needs auto-attack and perhaps some basic party AI (not where they run around manically and get into trouble immediately though, like in some games I could mention), like Sensuki's been pointing out.

For me, the most important reasons are political. I disapprove of DRM for reasons of principle (although not so much I'll refuse to use DRM'ed software if no other alternative is available). Therefore I'd rather support solutions which don't have it. Given a choice, I'll also always support the little guy where possible. Steam is nearing market domination on digital distribution for the PC, so if it's available somewhere else, I'll pick that. Monopolies are bad, m'kay? Secondary benefits are technical. DRM always adds complexity to the product. It's yet another thing which can and does go wrong. Steam games start up more slowly, the Mac Steam client is a bit wobbly e.g. I often have to restart it between restarts of a game or wait for it to auto-update before I can start playing, or re-authenticate after using it first on one computer, then on another, and so on. Minor inconveniences to be sure, but they still detract from the experience.

Watched today's stream. Take that, beetles! Did Josh coach him a bit or something? I do hope they'll improve the pathfinding; it was obviously wonky. Also it'll be interesting to see how exactly you're supposed to play a rogue for maximum damage -- I get the feeling that it's all about status effects, so there's a lot of potential for synergies between classes there. Could a rogue take down an ogre if the rest of the party focused on slapping suitable status effects on it?

Adam did not play very well. He fireballed friends, let some of the beetles through the lines to nibble at his glass cannons, had his most powerful damager (the rogue) stand around doing nothing, and backed into a situation where he got swarmed by two groups from two directions. Scouting ahead with the rogue would've helped but it would've slowed things down.

Not sure about dimensions, but I'm assured there will be planes. Like Concordia. Also Boeingia, Airbusia, and Tupolevia.

I look forward to being totally owned in the beta. I think I can maybe do a little better than Adam even on a first try, but if I don't get party wiped a few times before getting the hang of it I'll be disappointed.

/me raises hand If I had a reasonable shot at reaching a safe spot, I'd certainly give it a shot. Keep moving, send a sneaky scout ahead and try to avoid combat until I can get properly rested up. Strategy mang.

Watching the stream again. Seeing Adam get pwned again was even funnier. At least now he and Chris have something to talk about. "Wolves, man. Just like beetles, but hairy." :drink:

I have long held that the IE games too were great despite D&D, not because of it. Except... the way D&D did contribute to their greatness is indirectly. The people who made it were so enthusiastic about D&D and Forgotten Realms that a lot of that enthusiasm shone through. I'm sure they wouldn't have been anywhere near as good with a mechanically better system nobody cares about. Thing is, you can have both. It's incredibly obvious by now that Obsidian are enthusiastic as mad about P:E, and P:E has what appears to be a much better system mechanically than D&D ever was. If you really want to make me swoon, Obsidian, announce a game set in the world of Malazan but with the P:E ruleset. That would be holywowYES! (Edit: also LOLwut? at the actual announcement.)

Paging @TrueNeutral -- we need an Official Boobs Thread

Quantity does not trump quality. McDonald's is the biggest purveyor of hamburgers in the world, but they still taste like something out of a compost pail. ... Okay, that wasn't fair. There are plenty of interesting settings in the Pathfinder world. It's not garbage. The problem is that they've thrown everything from steampunk to Pharaonic Egypt into the same damn setting, which makes the whole incoherent. Again, this is not a problem for PnP gaming because every campaign creates its own world; if you don't like the incoherence, just pick the parts you like and assemble your world from that. I've done exactly that when running Al-Qadim or Oriental Adventures D&D campaigns, and it's worked great. It is a problem, however, for a licensed computer game, because they can't just ignore all the incoherent bits as they have to stick to canon. They're still there and they restrict their freedom to define things. The problem with Pathfinder (and D&D in general) is that it isn't really a system. It's more a collection of vaguely related special cases flying in loose formation. There's no overall coherence to it, which results in things being defined at a very specific level, which leads to things like classes being straitjackets, which leads to things like reams of prestige classes created specifically so you can break out of the straitjacket. Suppose you want to play a character concept that goes against the grain of the defined classes. Say, a fool blessed by an evil god who uses him to further his nefarious goals. That would be a low-WIS cleric. Sorry, you're SOL. Can't cast divine spells without high WIS. The only way out of that is to define a new class or prestige class which ties spellcasting to some other ability, or detaches it from abilities altogether.* Thing is, the rules for defining classes or prestige classes are extremely sketchy, and drafting one is a lot of work which will involve playtesting to see that it's viable without being overpowered. Not something you'd do just like that. This situation happens because the ruleset is incoherent. All the rules are about specifics, not general principles. It only works -- sort of -- because of the sheer variety of classes, feats, prestige classes, and what have you; trawl through them and you're bound to find something that you like or at least can live with. But mechanically D&D3/Pathfinder sucks donkey balls. It's clunky, incoherent, mechanically over-heavy with unnecessary arithmetic, and unnecessarily constraining while at the same time crazily unbalanced. From what I've checked out, D&D5 appears to be a genuine improvement; there's actually some effort to create coherent mechanics underpinning very D&D-ish gameplay. *Yes, my example was far-fetched. This situation has gone on for so long that with all the supplements that have come out by now, you're likely to find a carefully crafted straitjacket that will fit the concept you want to play, more or less.

Very much this. Fantasy doesn't mean "anything goes because magic." Good fantasy creates rules for its worlds, sticks to those, and explores what the consequences of those rules would be. Just like P:E is doing with souls. I'm sure it ain't gonna be perfect; it'd take a superhuman effort to plug every plot hole and get rid of every inconsistency, but they've already shown that they're making a serious effort not to screw up in obvious ways. Which is one of the main reasons I'm so hyped about this, in addition to pushing all my nostalgia buttons and then some.

It was pitched as the spiritual successor to the IE games, with "the IE feel" the top design goal. So to answer your question, yes, this is very much The Nostalgia Game.

It would also detract from satisfaction for the nostalgic among us. That would give me a sad.

Oh good. The boobplate discussion again. I'll be over in the romance thread. Arguing about romance.

@WotanAnubis did you play the IE games? They were brutal before you had the system figured out.

I disagree about the armor and cloth: I especially like the restrained and relatively realistic look they've gone for. I'm sure there will be higher-level gear that's a bit blingier, but I am SO happy there are no spiky pauldrons or oversized greaves here TYVM. As to the animations, that's obviously due to budget. This isn't a cinematic game, and was never pitched as one. They get the job done just fine.