PrimeJunta

@constantine, yes, they do and it does. However, it stopped making sense the minute they introduced the sorcerer. That IMO is the biggest downside of the class, even if mechanically it's more enjoyable to play.

Back in Usenet days, a troll was considered a failure if he had to post in the thread he started.

Yes to the title (I'm fairly certain). But probably no to the questions in the message body. P:E's entire animation budget is probably less than what DA:O's trailer cost to make, and that is bound to show, whatever tricks they pull out of their hats.

As an aside, I don't see any conceptual problem with the rogue-as-damager and warrior-as-defender roles in P:E, even with this whole "full-time-battlefield-dweller" thing. I would expect that a full-time-battlefield-dweller's primary skill would be to be very good at not dying. I.e., defensive, recuperative, as safe as possible, including factoring in the risk of getting executed for cowardice. I.e., he'd be someone you can park in a formation on a battlefield and expect not to get killed nor to run away even as horrible things are happening around and to him, and to get in the occasional stab when the opportunity presents itself. Whereas the talented amateur who doesn't actually live on the battlefield would be foolish enough to go for riskier, showier, more damaging strikes, while sticking out his head more. My guess is that one-on-one, toe-to-toe, the P:E fighter should beat the P:E rogue, by the way -- but that in party statistics, if both are played to their strengths, the rogue would rack up more kills. Next topic: samurais and ninjas. Which is better and why? Discuss.

@Lephys and others, the conceit behind Vancian casting is that spells are discrete entities. Like pokemon if you will. The wizard "memorizing" a spell is capturing that entity in his mind, ready to be released, and once released, it's gone. It's totally not like remembering a thought or knowing a muscle movement. More like, I dunno, putting a genie in a bottle and then releasing it when needed. It works in Vance's fiction, but as a gameplay mechanic it's bloody tedious. @Mr. Magniloquent, yeah, I do find the sorcerer limiting as well. As I said earlier, both classes are badly designed. Another downside of the sorcerer is that it doesn't fit the metaphysics of Vancian spell-casting, which only makes sense if you think of spells as bottled-up entities. There's no problem with the classic classes -- divine casters are given those entities by the gods they serve, arcane ones pull them out from wherever they come through skill and knowledge. If this is the case, how come sorcerers have a flexible supply of each type of entity? It makes no sense. I.e., the sorcerer and her divine counterparts are yet another attempt to patch a clunky, unenjoyable mechanic in D&D. As usual, it solves some problems but introduces others, and makes the entire system grow yet more hair and become yet less coherent. OD&D worked as a system; no edition since has (with the possible exception of 4e which I haven't played, and which I don't want to because it doesn't focus on the things I want from a PnP system.)

Permadeath is an extra option you have to enable separately. You can play on hard without permadeath. or, if you want, on easy with it. It's also part of the Expert Mode option set. Source: http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Mode - follow the links for references. See also http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Health#Health .

@Gfted1, close, but no cigar. Running out of stamina does indeed cause you to drop in combat, but you won't be maimed when you wake up. However, if you run out of health in combat, then you will be maimed, or, in Expert mode, dead.

Windows 98, ME, and 2000, I believe, just like the originals.

That is sad. I had missed that news. I didn't know anything about his life story either. His work lives on. That's more than can be said for most of us. :salute:

OT @IndiraLightfoot I just gotta say, great avatar. That drawing always was one of my favorite pieces of D&D art.

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.