PrimeJunta

@Chilloutman no, but if they could, I don't think it would hurt their career prospects.

@CoOn it's not at all like that for P:E. The maps have to be rendered from 3D in five (I think) passes, after which they can be touched up by hand. Lot more complicated.

I don't think you need to worry. JES has said repeatedly that playing a class against its type is perfectly doable, it just won't be optimal.

Not sure if this is already in, actually, but... reputation and party influence change notifications. I would rather not see them so I don't start gaming that system. I enjoy gaming character and party development, but not narrative-related things, which ruin the narrative for me, and seeing those "Safiya +6 influence" pop-ups detracts from my enjoyment.

Both Edér and the Devil of Caroc are mentioned on the character sheet mockup. That would be unlikely if it's the same person.

I though they used Testacle.

It's too bad if Forton got dropped. I would've hoped he's in, and they got Iggy Pop to voice the combat barks.

I think barbs are more melee crowd control than tank. Their damage-soaking capabilities appear to be relatively limited. Thick Skinned means they risk less when getting beat on, but they'll still drop much faster than fighters (stamina regen, self-heal) or monks (convert Wounds to attacks).

Yeah, that. Anecdote -- I killed one of my PC's during the first fifteen minutes of my first-ever AD&D DM'ing session. Unlucky save against poison. This after we had spent most of an entire day lovingly crafting characters. I was about twelve or thirteen, I think. It was not fun and, like most DM's I think, I learned to cheat with the dice where applicable after that. There was a great bit of advice in one of the Star Wars RPG books, I forget which one. It said that PC's have script immunity. Meaning, they can't get killed unless it's dramatically appropriate. I've applied that to all my PnP campaigns since and I think it's worked out well. Some of my PC's have died, but every one of those deaths has been climactic and memorable. I also liked the IWD2 prologue. It was varied and interesting, and perhaps made the ensuing trash-mob-after-trash-mob grind all the more disappointing.

Character and party building mechanics are a lot of fun to play with. You don't get those in RTT's (much). I did enjoy the combat in IWD a good deal more than in BG 1/2. Main reason is that it felt fairer without feeling nerfed -- fewer sucker punches with less save-n-reload -- and the maps were IMO better designed for tactical play. IWD2 had the same good features about the combat, except it was much more monotonous and repetitive, which wore me down about halfway through. Haven't completed that yet, very probably never will.

Train wrecks are great entertainment though.

Don't forget Anna Akhmatova and Alexandra Kollontai.

Whim. Sometimes I use bad puns. Sometimes I use rude Finnish phrases. Sometimes I make a themed party and think of names that fit the theme. One of my parties was named Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Bukharin, Dzerzhinsky, and Rosa Luxemburg.

Obsidian has a way of building games around new subsystems they introduce, or making the subsystems integral to what the game is about. One of the core themes of KOTOR 2 was the way you build connections with people around you -- and the major new subsystem it introduced was companion influence. One of FO:NV's main themes was faction balance -- and it introduced a pretty sophisticated faction reputation system. MotB had the Spirit Eater subsystem, which was pretty much the point of the whole game. I think a "strategic intelligence" subsystem would fit rather nicely into this tradition -- and I agree that it would be much more impactful if it was as central to the game in which it lived as party influence was to KOTOR 2 or faction reputation to FO:NV. Thing is, the major new subsystem of this type that Obs is introducing for P:E is ... reputation mechanics. In my opinion this would work very nicely as an extension of that subsystem. Your reputation would be reflected in the way people fight you as well as the way they interact with you in dialog.

I am touched by your concern -- really -- and flattered that you want to make this thread all about poor little me, but really, Valorian, I don't merit the attention. So thank you for your kind offer, but I am going to decline it.

@Valorian: thank you for conceding the debate so gracefully.

Uh, Hiro. Are you seriously claiming that "pretending to be weaker than you are" is something you've never, or rarely, encountered in fact or fiction? "Witness the power of this fully operational battle station" ring any bells?

Coming from you, that's high praise. :salute: Reactivity is the thing I like about it too. If a world changes based on your decisions, it feels more alive. The most important way this happens in cRPG's is through quest triggers, obviously, but I still think dynamic systems can significantly enrich the experience. Reputation mechanics, for example. I see this idea as very similar in many ways. If the "jack of all trades" party was the resulting optimal outcome then I agree, it would not have been a successful system. I think some care would need to be taken to ensure that there isn't a single obviously dominant strategy to play against the system, but I think the same thing applies to character and party mechanics in general. While (IMO, as always) classes ought to be roughly similar in value, they don't have to be exactly balanced, just not obviously unbalanced. Same thing for party strategy here. I also don't think this system would fit well in a game where you have no party pool to draw from, i.e. where you only have the party you travel with and that's it. That would severely penalize specialist parties since they would be the most vulnerable to being countered, and you would have no way of changing strategy mid-stream. However, if you have more NPC's than party slots and can swap them in and out, then I think it could work nicely -- it would encourage you to swap between party members from time to time. In P:E I understand you'll be able to send NPC's off on quests to gain XP on their own, which would prevent them from falling behind too much even if you don't adventure with them while avoiding the (IMO jarring) system of having everyone level up at the same rate even if all they've been doing is play pazaak in the Ebon Hawk. Again, this obviously wouldn't work for every game -- the player, would need to have sufficient tools to work with the effects of the mechanic, and there would have to be a solid in-world justification for it. It would also have to be transparent enough that you have an idea of what's going on. But I think that if done well, it could add significant flavor. It might even be possible to mod something like this in, even at a very rudimentary level where it only responds to your party composition. That would be a good addition. You could hook any number of things to the base mechanic -- script triggers, quests feeding back into it (e.g. spies), special encounters feeding into it (e.g. armed recon), and so on.

So you'd be OK with changes in encounter composition if it's done through quest triggers, but not if it's done through an independent subsystem? I'd certainly not be opposed to doing it through quest triggers; just from where I'm at the independent subsystem would provide similar dynamism with much less work -- it'd be doing its thing in the background, and the only thing the scripters would have to do is flag which encounters are subject to adjustment by it, and what the brackets within which the adjustment happens is. Again, the system I have in mind isn't all that dramatic; I wouldn't want to have it completely change encounter composition, simply to adjust it to a moderate extent. Swap out a few magic-using units for a few ranged units, or vice versa, or perhaps equip the melee units with slashing instead of bludgeoning weapons, or vice versa, whichever is more effective. The kind of stuff that would be quite tedious to script in on a case-by-case basis.

I like the idea of an evil or desperate king raising an undead army for a war, with the leftovers still wandering the world. It's pretty clear that we don't know everything about the origins of undead at this point, by the way. Several of the undead monsters that have been presented clearly aren't part of the fampyr to skeleton chain. I'll be interested to hear what the lore for them, and others, is.

@Chilloutman, there are shamans, chanters, and druids -- albeit not under that name -- plying their trade right now, coexisting with the Internet and atomic weapons. I've even met a few. Just sayin'.

Do you have any such mechanism in mind? I agree, it would be entirely possible to ruin this by making it too heavy-handed. What I had in mind was adjustment within brackets. So if the encounter designer makes a "base" encounter consist of two orc shamans, four orc elite archers, and four orc elite grunts, at an extreme you might see four orc shamans, two archers, and four grunts, and at anohter, one shaman, two archers, and seven grunts. Fairly subtle, yet enough to make a tangible difference.

In a reputation system, you see, we're talking about your party gradually accumulating like/dislike points for various factions; you lose points for some factions, but get some for others. They react to your reputation when you interact with them. There's no "best way". It's pure role-playing. I see. Is this a general preference? I.e., are you opposed in principle to any system which, if played optimally, gives your player advantages in beating the game? Or does it apply only some systems and not others? If so, which ones and why? Also, could you give me an example of a game with a reputation system that provides you with no tangible benefits, i.e., is role-playing only? I can't think of one off-hand.

But why shouldn't it? Why is the way you interact with people fair game for a reputation system, but your party composition and favorite tactics not?

@Valorian, I notice you're arguing against the subsystems I specifically removed from my example, rather than the core idea. I find that both characteristic of your style, and illustrative of the strength of your position. Consider the idea an extension of the reputation system. If you get a reputation for fielding mages, the opposition will start fielding mage-killers. So, once again, why is it bad if reputation systems are good?