PrimeJunta

Hey, why not combine the best of both worlds? Make the UI minimalistic with draggable components, but add an option to turn the screen entirely into solid wood or stone texture. Then let the user cut holes of whatever shape and size they like into it in case they want to see the actual game. Ought to be easy enough, and everybody will be happy. </tongueincheek>

Sorcerers are by far superior to wizards, if – and that's a big if – you know the spells well enough to give her the optimal selection. A sorc can unload all barrels; a wizard will very frequently be in a situation where he's out of the spells he'd need but has many slots full of ones he doesn't, so in practice his spell-casting potential is much lower. And to continue in my recent "D&D sucks in most ways" vein, both classes are designed badly. The wizard needs tedious bookkeeping (Vancian casting, yuck) and will almost never be able to cast to his full potential because there will always be some 'wrong' spells memorized, while a sorcerer is way overpowered if designed well and severely gimped by poor choice of spells, and also completely mismatched relative to the wizard. For spits and giggles, play SoZ or IWD2 with two or three sorcs in the party, specializing each of them into a suitable school. (In SoZ, prestige class them into Arcane Scholars while you're at it.) Once you get level 3 spells, you steamroll. And yeah, I love P:E's solution: learn and pick spells like a wizard but cast them like a sorc, and keep it all under control by limiting the current selection with the grimoire. It's simple and brilliant and if done well will replicate the 'feel' of playing both, in a good way.

Pack animals coordinate extremely well. A spec-ops platoon has nothing on a pack of African wild dogs. I'd be bummed if they nerf the combat AI for animals just because they're animals.

As an aside, I just started playing IWD 2 (first run), and I decided to make a party modeled on P:E's roles. So I took a fighter, barbarian, cleric, rogue, and two sorcerers, and minmaxed the bejeezus out of them to fit the roles Josh has in mind for P:E. In particular, I've been playing the rogue as the "damager," rather than the usual scout/utility character. I gave her Weapon Focus in polearms for more reach with maximum damage, Dash for speed, and of course the usual roguey sneaking and dodging skills, and then adjusted my tactics so that I actively try to get her into position for backstabs during combat rather than just at the start. (This gets a bit hectic with two sorcerers to manage as well, so I am pausing a lot.) Turns out that she is well ahead of the others in terms of total damage dealt... at level 6 that is. STR 18 + two-handed weapon + that magic spear with extra reach + stealth attack bonus does add up to rather a lot. It never occurred to me to play a rogue rocking a halberd, but it sure does work. However now my Evoker/Sorcerer got Fireball so I have a hunch she's gonna catch up plenty fast, as the D&D 'magic dominates' thing starts kicking in. It's always a bit of a bummer to have the non-magic-using characters turn into baggage as the levels rack up; if P:E manages not to do this, it is going to be the better game for it. If it manages to distinguish the 'defender' and 'damager' roles better, even cooler; as it is the fighter is kind of useless because gankers can just run past him unless he's literally shoulder to shoulder with the barb and cleric.

@Aybars, you're marketing localization services. As in, a language service. Involving translation. Your English is perfectly understandable and just fine for normal forum use, but it is not up to the standards of a company offering localization or translation services. Speaking as another non-native English speaker here.

I just started IWD 2. Haven't played it before as a matter of fact. Dat pathfinding... If there's just one change to the AI that I'd kill for, it's this: Don't walk into a harmful area effect unless explicitly ordered to do so. It's really bloody annoying to keep the little dudes from wandering straight into a Web or similar when they get over-excited after ganking somebody. Idiots. Other than that, it's good clean IE engine fun. I hope I run out of goblins soon, though, it's getting a bit repetitive. Still early going, just hit level 6, but I am getting kind of tired of fighting orcs and goblins in corridors.

I'm kind of in two minds about this. On the one hand, yeah, variety would be cool, and for example HotU was a lot more replayable because of the variation in loot. On the other, random loot tends to make players focus more on the loot. While loot is definitely an important part of cRPG gameplay -- and a core part in aRPG's -- for a more story- and exploration-driven game like P:E I'd prefer if it stayed to the side as it were, letting elements like story and setting come to the forefront. From the sound of it, though, the Od Nua mega-dungeon sounds like it would fit well with random loot; sort of a loot-driven dungeon crawl within the larger game.

I like the "logic" of the soul magic too as a matter of fact. Souls are raw power, but it needs to be shaped. Different classes do this in different ways. Monks through physical pain (wounds), cyphers through intense concentration in combat (focus), chanters through their voice, and wizards through their intellect. A grimoire is a natural extension for an intellectual type. Unlike most systems, I can actually imagine what it would be like to be each of these magic-using classes, and how the experience of using magic would be different for each of them. That's pretty damn cool IMO.

Concession accepted. Have a nice day.

You sure about that? The only mention of Raise Dead I found in the DMG is on page 75. It does not mention wanting to return, cost to the caster, nor required divine approval. I may be mistaken about this, though, so if you have a reference, please post it. I've got the book on hand so I can look it up right away. Perhaps you're thinking of 3d edition? That does mention wanting to return (in the spell description; couldn't find a reference in the DMG), but it nerfed the Resurrection Survival thing you're banging on about now as well as the permanent CON loss. And still no mention of required divine approval. The rest of your stuff is exactly what I mean by houseruling -- additional limitations, on top of the rules as written, to patch up a mechanic that would otherwise be absurdly broken. As to badly broken things not surviving for decades... one word: Scientology.

I re-read the descriptions in the PHB and DMG (AD&D 2e). Here are the limitations: Body must no older than 1 day / caster level, i.e., 9 days old, tops, for a 9th level caster. Recipient of the spell has CON permanently lowered by 1 point. Recipient must make Resurrection Survival check or be permanently dead. Recipient must be human or demi-human, unless DM rules otherwise. Any missing body parts won't be restored. (Of course there is other magic that can do that.) There is no mention of the soul having to want to return, cost to the caster, or required divine approval. (Some of that was added in 3e though, precisely because resurrection-on-order is so obviously absurd.) However the core rules as written do not impose any limits beyond that. So a L9 priest could cast Raise Dead 365 times a year. If one person out of 10,000 was a L9+ priest, that'd be enough to keep a fair-sized town's aristocracy in Raise Deads at will. Which is silly, wherefore all the houseruling to make it less so. D&D is badly broken, and AD&D is ludicrously broken. This is just one of the ways.

If they did, kindly provide the reference ('cuz I certainly missed it). If they didn't, kindly issue a correction. Rumors like this can take flight and do a lot of damage.

I like the grimoire. The mechanic itself – switchable lists of spells you cast sorcerer-style – combines the best of the wizard and sorcerer classes, while the grimoire provides a convenient in-game peg to hang it on. Plus you can slam people with it. Plus if you really don't like the idea, there are plenty of magic-using grimoire-less classes to go with, even if they're not all that wizardly. Cypher, chanter, priest, druid...

Re pre-buffing, I'm not sorry to see the mechanic go as it's really tedious, but I would hope the pacing of combat allows for a short period of calm in the beginning, longer if you caught them unprepared, shorter or none at all if they got the drop on you. Would add a bit of tension while retaining some of the 'feel' of pre-buffs, but in a good way.

In my D&D Campaigns I keep resurrection powers to very few privileged, charismatic and not-known-to-the-grand-masses people. Otherwise the world starts to crumble by default. So my PCs know in advance that if they die this will most likely be the end, barring special circumstances. With this told, I avoid sucker punches as well, using them in very few encounters. In PoE there will be NO resurrection at all, so sucker punches go out the window, Josh said that, no point in this discussion anymore. That's not how the D&D rules are written though. Raise Dead is a level 5 cleric spell, therefore available to any cleric of level 9 or above. In a world that has clerics of level 9 and above, it would not be a rare service – not available to the masses perhaps, but certainly to the privileged. I also houseruled around this problem in various ways in my different campaigns, for many of the same reasons. FWIW Planescape is IMO the best and truest D&D setting. Why? Because it takes those absurd D&D rules and provides coherent in-game explanations for more of them. Trouble is D&D wasn't designed for Planescape, it was designed for Mystara, and the rules really don't work for Mystara.

Coding for multiple threads is a lot harder than for a single thread though. Harder means longer development time, more and harder-to-catch bugs. Race conditions can be real bästards to pin down. Bottom line: don't do it unless there's a real, concrete need, and a real, tangible benefit. As far as P:E is concerned, from what we know about it I doubt that's going to be the case.

<sigh> Oh, Volly. You keep thumping your chest about that 'challenging' thing but it still ain't so. Insta-kill doesn't make a game with unlimited saves challenging. It just makes it repetitive.

It's not that hard I think, if you take into account that the designers also control encounter design. Just include a suitable mix of ranged and melee units in each encounter. Give them two stances: aggressive and defensive. In aggressive stance, the melee units will go after high-value targets preferably, but if engaged before they get there, stay that way until incapacitated; the ranged units target the high-value ones and attempt to stay clear of being engaged by melee units. In defensive stance, the melee units pair with the ranged ones to shield them, intercepting and engaging any player-controlled melee units that attempt to go after them. On an open battlefield, this would turn into a situation where you have lines of durable melee units slugging away at each other while ranged units shoot at each other, concentrating fire on highest-value targets on either side. Which is, more or less, how pre-gunpowder infantry tactics actually worked. Throw in some shock units with suitable AI, and you've got a recipe for challenging and engaging combat. Even applied as simply and as mechanically as this, it would make for a wide variety of interesting encounters by varying the specifics of unit composition and terrain. If you add a bit of higher-level AI so that e.g. it recognizes gaps in your line and tries to punch through, or weaknesses to your flanks and attempts to outflank, and it could get quite hairy indeed. Also, it's not like this is anything new; RTS's with decent AI have done more or less this for years -- and P:E, being an RPG rather than an RTS -- doesn't even need to do it that well.

Here you go – [ http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Companion ]

Damnit, what a great post. All I can really say is "hear hear." Also in re Kreia, I loved the way KoTOR 2 subverted the whole light side/dark side dichotomy in general. Of NV characters, I especially enjoyed Boone's story, and liked Rose's story least, largely for the reasons you describe -- Rose was basically sitting there drinking waiting to be rescued, whereas Boone had some heavy **** to deal with which he eventually dealt with himself, with you just the catalyst. Veronica was a close second to Boone. In fairness, though, I think e.g. the laser pistol quest reflects more the massive breadth and ambition of the game. I thoroughly agree that it would have been much better if there were other options than a simple treasure-hunt, but with a game that size, some of the sidequests are bound to be less fleshed-out than others. I'm optimistic about this with P:E. For one thing, many of the writers who've written this kind of thing are involved, and Josh has explictly stated that he's not a fan of ego-stroking as narrative technique, and doesn't want to encourage it. So yeah, I will be disappointed if this ends up as another biowarian egotrip. But it won't. It may fail in many ways, but that's not one of them.

Your combat scenario sounds about right, but I'm not so sure about the stealth scenario. If detection is based on radius, there could easily be situations where your fighter's detection radius is simply too large to get him past the guard without tripping the alarm, no matter what you do. And that's all good as far as I am concerned.

For most people, the answer to your question is "yes." People respond to incentives. Games are built around incentive systems. They work. If you want to give the game long-lived artifacts that stay with your character, then don't provide artifacts which outclass them. Either make them gain in power with the character, make them insanely powerful to start with, or make them cursed so the character can't be rid of them. But expecting the player to keep a +2 sword around when a +3 is available for role-playing reasons is unreasonable. Of course, there's nothing to stop you, as the player, from doing just that anyway. But designing the game around the assumption that you will is bad design.

Sounding lovely. Can't wait to hear what it's like with a live orchestra. I wonder how many of us think of this sound as 'game music' or 'movie music' though? Anyone else here go to concerts, opera, or ballet, or listen to recorded classical music at home? It certainly warmed my heart that Justin Bell turns to Bach when in trouble.

While I don't think rogues should necessarily be weaker than fighters in combat, I do think something has been lost with the "utility character." The party leader of my most fun party in Storm of Zehir was just such a character -- I built him to have all the skills... or, well, all the skills needed on the world map anyway -- so when combat started all he could do was sit on a rock and plink with an arrow, more or less. On the other hand, everyone else was a minmaxed-to-the-hilt wrecking ball, so they made up for it. That was fun to play specifically because of the changed party composition, and the constant discoveries on the world map made it more than worth it. (Okay, technically I did kit him up with scrolls in case extra magical firepower was needed, but that was rarely used and more of an optional extra.)

BG2 was as mainstream as games got at the time.