PrimeJunta

I'm waiting for cloaks to make a comeback. They're bound to. More practical than coats, plus they look way cool.

Yeah, you're right, you do need to have a feel for the spells before rolling up a sorc. Once you do, though, I do find them lower-maintenance. But I still stand by my main assertion – different circumstances need different spell lists, and I do want to switch between lists rather than individual spells. If I'm going into an undead-infested dungeon, I need one set of spells; if I'm fighting a horde of orcs, I want another set of spells, and if I'm facing a few powerful casters, I want yet another set of spells. I'll want lots of arcane defense and disjunction spells against the latter, for example, whereas I won't need them at all against the orcs. Just going with a fixed list fleshed out with some scrolls is... sub-optimal, shall I say. In PnP this is no problem of course; my caster-players keep a bunch of lists they've prepared and just announce which one they're memorizing. Effectively grimoires.

Yeah, sorcerers are much lower-maintenance than wizards and arguably more fun if you just want to get on with the game. Wizards for hardcore D&D geeks really. I like playing them too; with some thought you can just make them ridiculously powerful. I like the P:E grimoire thing, by the way – it will let us combine the fluidity of playing as a Sorc with the situational optimization you get as a Wiz. When playing as a wiz (or cleric, for that matter) I pretty much play as if I had two or three 'grimoires' I'm switching between – except that I have to hand-manage it spell by spell, which is a drag.

@bonarbill, the cleric is my favorite D&D3 class. They're wonderfully fine-tunable with the domains, and spontaneous conversion gives a lot of tactical flexibility too. If it was up to me, I'd have dropped the druid as a separate class altogether, mixed in the best druid spells as domain spells, nerfed the domains a bit but given three instead of two. A druid would be just a cleric with plant + animal + one elemental sphere. As an additional benefit, you'd get differentiated earth, air, fire, and water druids.

I think another four million bucks might do it. Probably not though. Firearms were in from the first Kickstarter pitch. Cadegund – the armored priestess – was rocking a blunderbuss in the first concept art. The tech level is renaissance minus the printing press. If you don't like it, then P:E isn't the game for you.

Yeah, OK, granted, rest-spamming gives mages an effectively unlimited supply of those support spells. I consider that such an egregious exploit that I don't do it; it's the only way I intentionally gimp myself in NWN2. (Perhaps that's why I liked the MotB spirit-eater mechanic so much – it meshes well with the way I already play the game, imposing just a little bit more discipline than I impose on my own.) Even so, I'll take a divine caster over an arcane one any day of the week, up to level 10 or thereabouts. From there on out it is a matter of opinion. I agree with the larger point though – the way your first companions are saddled on you is bad. Neeshka only makes sense if you're neither a rogue nor a mage nor cleric with Knock; Khelgar only makes sense if you're a squishy. The game really should have given you a caster from the start if you're not one yourself.

I agree with (1) and (2). Re (3), D&D mages are pretty much baggage at low levels. From level 5 on they have some limited usefulness. You get your first arcane caster not much after that. Re Elanee, I agree about the stats (not to mention the writing, yech), but she's actually one of the mechanically most useful characters in the game. Druids have IMO the best all-round spell selection of all the classes (almost as good offense as mages, almost as good buffs as clerics, some of the best low-level debuffs, e.g. Entangle, and enough dispels to get the job done, and of course the best summonings), plus they can tank; also being an elf she gets proficiency in longsword. She greatly obviates the need for a mage IMO. If they had optimized her stats, there's a good chance she would've been significantly more awesome than the PC, which would be kind of depressing.

More MotB impressions. My anti-romance stance: confirmed. I'm still playing as my aasimar lawful good Doomguide/Cleric. Got to the point where Gann declares his love for her. Boom, awkward dialog plus a situation that really, truly does not flow from the narrative. Felt like a real hard landing and I stopped playing, and now I don't even feel like getting back to that game. Simply put, that romance effectively ruined the game for me. (To my recollection the Safiya romance had the same effect on me when I was playing as a male PC, only that was so much later in the game that I made it to the end.) So. Please. No romance. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Kill it and bury it at a crossroads. This is an epic, heroic adventure, not a high-school soap opera. Second: I do not like the influence mechanics. I find myself gaming dialogs to avoid losing influence, or to gain influence, instead of staying in character. This happens for two reasons: (1) the influence mechanics are based on simple, linear reward/punishment, and (2) they're transparent. The perks you get for high influence are significant and interesting, and the game tells you when influence goes up or down, and you can check where you stand with each of the NPC's at any time. This is a classic Skinner box mechanism -- pull that lever, get a candy; pull the other, get an electric shock. When I game, I game – i.e., I try to play the game as efficiently as I can. That means I'm extremely susceptible to these mechanics: I try to find out how they work and then play the system for maximum reward. In a simple, binary Skinner box situation, that means that the game is effectively playing me, not the other way around. The only challenge is to discover the 'right' way to play the game. With a game that allows unlimited saves and reloads, this becomes worse since the easiest way to find that out is just to save/reload repeatedly until you get it 'right.' Moreover, in MotB, this mechanic is in direct opposition to one of the main themes and attractions of the game, i.e., the way it explores ethical choices and their consequences, and devotes a lot of effort into writing in ethically complex situations and a variety of defensible ways to resolve them. The influence mechanics favor one, specific set of choices over other sets of choices, introducing effectively "right" and "wrong" answers. That's bad, especially with the complex and well-written characters. The game is simultaneously treating the characters as characters – individuals with complex motivations and sometimes surprising reactions – and systems – things you interact with in certain ways to get desired results. I would have preferred a game where (1) the influence mechanism was completely under the hood, and (2) the consequences of influence would have been richer than just gain influence/gain reward, lose influence/don't gain reward. I think the devs were aware of this because they put in some "macro" choices, e.g. that two of the NPC's are mutually exclusive. They could have played this up a lot more, for example made the NPC's react in opposing ways to more things, and to introduce "conflicted emotions." In the simplistic system they have, an "agreeable" action cancels out a "disagreeable" one. They could have tracked both of these quantities independently for each character, and tied specific reactions to either of the totals or the difference, depending on context. They could also have set things up so that you can't max out your influence with all the characters. The upshot of this system would have been that you'd have to decide what kind of leader you are. You could go with strong personal ethics, and let the followers fall where they will: you would probably gain one devoted follower and lose many or all of the others. You could be a diplomatic peacemaker -- i.e., avoid doing anything disagreeable to any of your companions, which would mean that you could probably keep all of them relatively happy but none of them would become truly devoted. Or you could be a narcissistic manipulator, saying whatever you think each of them would like to hear, which would rack up both your "agreaable" and "disagreeable" scores for your companions, yielding interesting love/hate relationships. They could've written in specific dialogs where you could argue your case to an NPC, giving you the opportunity to reduce your "disagreeable" score with them. In other words, I think the influence system in MotB represents a bit of a missed opportunity. It would certainly have involved significant effort to get it right, but the characters are so good they would have deserved it. As it is, I think it's an ugly wart on all that beautiful writing. I do hope P:E does this part better.

@Micamo, I like your vitriol.

Another thing that bugs me about NWN2 OC is how timid it is. It does take some steps towards subverting/deconstructing the hero tropes -- e.g. by giving each of the "heroic" companions a flaw, and perhaps by not having your traditional "happy ending" -- but it fails to go anywhere beyond the first tentative steps in that. They could've taken the "creepy stalker druid hippie control freak" thing so much further, or the "conflicted, horribly remorseful, damaged paladin," never even mind Ammon Jerro who could have been a genuine tragic hero in the Greek sense. But no. It sort of flashes the possibilities and doesn't go anywhere with them. I just started MotB -- at the beginning of Chapter II -- and am, once again, struck at how the writing in it is miles and miles and miles better. Not to mention the voice acting -- Kaelyn, Safiya, Okku, and Gann are all just perfect. The things I still don't like about it? The dopey pyrotechnics of epic-level D&D and mmmaybe the murky way the Spirit Eater mechanic is presented. I vaguely remember how it works, but if I didn't I would have a hard time figuring it out. (Also my aasimar-cleric-doomguide is just way too powerful for her own good; I figured I'd open up that epic battle with Okku's army with a few area-effect spells, and the poor little furry thing surrendered when I was just getting started. I hadn't even gotten around to him yet.)

@Sabotin, generally speaking I agree. However there is a use for metaphysical 'absolute' good and evil in cRPG's as well. For example, magic items or spell effects tied to it. A holy sword that deals extra damage against evil creatures, or an unholy aura that causes the good to despair are worthwhile narrative/game elements, but to make them work mechanically you need to know where you stand on the good-evil axis. They're also much overused, and badly used, in computer games, so if P:E won't have them I won't miss them. But there is still a case to be made for an absolute morality meter. KOTOR/2 worked this into the narrative rather nicely actually.

Yeah, I think it would make sense to keep it within the dialog system itself. Tying it mechanically to, say, killing things would probably make it too gameable. Might make sense to tie it to quest resolutions though.

Except internal, perhaps. What would you think about a dialog system where the conversation options available to you shifted based on your past actions, for example?

None of the alignments as such are dumb. Many interpretations of them are. Counting it by "evil points" and "good points" is also.

Hear hear. If anyone can do it, it's Obsidian. They have villains with complex yet understandable motives. No need even to go hyper-ambitious with it, just give us an option to play as a ruthless, end-justifies-the-means type, for example, with consequences to match. Mustache-twirling I-kick-kittens-because-I'm-ebul is just dumb. For ideas on how NOT to do it, just see NWN2. The "evil" options in that were just random and pointless and made no kind of sense, either relative to each other or to any character concept other than raging psycho who shouldn't have been able to get out of West Harbor before being locked up for his own good. I feel a rant coming on. Take the very beginning. You get the option to slit the throats of some characters you dislike but who have not done you any actual harm. Which is a completely psycho move. No sane person would do that. A sane but cruel person might toy with them a bit to get back for the bullying, but that's it. That nets you 3 "evil points." Three. And Bevil just stands there and disapproves, then continues with you like nothing was the matter. You also get a spitload of "evil points" just by being pouty and impolite when demanding rewards for, oh, I dunno, saving a couple of kids from being eaten by wolves. Conversely you get 10 "good points" for sending in your Greycloaks to defend a village within your demesne against bandits -- even though, as the baron of the lands, that's your bleeping job, never even mind that keeping the lands safe is insanely profitable. MotB did the evil thing much better; at least it provided you with a meaningful and concrete motivation for your psycho behavior, and didn't just reward plain ol' ordinary nicencess with scads of "good points." You actually had to pull of some real duck moves to get seriously evil, and even those moves made sense from a ruthless, end-justifies-the-means perspective. Ranting aside, I'm feeling pretty confident about P:E, given the writers, especially the involvement of George Ziets and the fact that he's one of the main plot guys. Eric Fenstermaker is responsible for much of the writing in Chapter II of NWN2 though, but since that was the least awful part of the game, writing-wise, I'm not too worried about that either.

To be fair, you could say that about most if not all of the IE games, and NWN, as well. Even PS:T had tedious mobs from Curst on out.

@KaineParker, no advice at this point. Well, other than my disdain for the D&D paladin class; my recent playthrough was with a similar concept but mechanically stronger (Lawful Good Aasimar Cleric -> Doomguide.) There will be more interesting combat encounters, but also many, many, many mobs to wade through. Which is why playing a pally (or a rogue or bard or fighter built for defense rather than offense for that matter) is kind of a chore. It's not that you won't be able to beat the encounters, it'll just take a while to hack your way through them. They will go much faster with a nice complement of area of effect spells, or even with a melee type built for max damage (Fighter -> Raging Berserker -> Weapon Master using a two-hander will mow through most anything really fast, and with the high Int you need for weapon master you'll have room for some skills that'll make things kind of interesting in other ways too; there's really only one encounter in the game that should give such a fighter some pause and that one's easy to beat with the magical abilities your followers will have). Of course you will have followers with some boss AoE spells later, but still.

@exodiark: The ending. No. Just... no. (I'm not putting in "Spoiler" tags as I assume anyone reading this is familiar with NWN2 anyway. If you're not, be warned.) "Suddenly, the dungeon collapses" is not brilliant. It's unsatisfying and dumb. "You win! Haha neener neener, no you don't, you're all dead LOL!" If I did that as a DM, my players would walk out on me, deservedly. Walking away to cheers and acclamations would have been clichéd, yes. But there would've been many ways to create a satisfying ending from the elements already introduced in the game, building on that 'deconstructing heroism' theme. Here's one which takes Ammon Jerro's fall to its logical ending. Consider the Ritual of Purification. That was built up to be a really big deal. As in, the only reason you were saddled with Ammon Jerro was that he had the missing part of the Ritual, and supposedly you couldn't defeat the KoS without it. Yet actually you don't need the Ritual at all. I didn't use any of it once. (Aside: nor the silver sword, for that matter, other than the single instance when you have to use it. My Holy Keen Bastard Sword +5 was more effective. In fact the "artifact" weapons in the game were way too weak; there's no way you should be able to craft something even close in power to them.) So, for example, why not do something like this: Really make it so that using all five parts of the Ritual is the only way to defeat the KoS, but doing so will cause the hero and Ammon Jerro take his place as the new Guardian of Illefarn. Ammon Jerro would draw from the Shadow Weave (for obvious reasons). You would draw from the Weave (if Good), or the Shadow Weave (if Evil), or your choice of which Weave (if Neutral). Then you would have to fight the being that was Ammon Jerro. Once you defeat him, you have a choice. If you drew from the Weave, you can choose to sever his connection to the Shadow Weave, which would destroy him and leave you as something very similar to what the Guardian was intended to be. Perhaps a Guardian of Neverwinter? Or you can choose to merge with him to become something different, a composite being drawing both from the Shadow Weave and the Weave -- what that could be I leave up to the imagination. Perhaps an apotheosis of sorts? Becoming a minor god? Or you can choose to sever both your connections to your respective Weaves. Narratively it would make most sense for this to be a suicidal move, but if you absolutely wanted to leave the option for a sequel open, you could bend this to make it the "OC" ending -- as the connection to the Weave fails, the dungeon collapses, leaving both you and Ammon Jerro trapped under the rubble, unconscious, merely human, but alive. If you drew from the Shadow Weave, Ammon Jerro will be destroyed, and you will become a new and deadlier King of Shadow, with the general consequences of the official 'evil' ending. Then have Zhaeve survive and narrate the ending from the perspective of someone residing in the Outer Planes. All of these would have made more narrative and thematic sense, and provided closure. (The other part of why the ending was bad was the dungeon design -- it was bland, boring, repetitive, and wading through crowds of monsters thrown at you and trying to wear you down through attrition is just tedious, not fun. To add insult to injury, there's the AI that doesn't obey orders and rushes off to attack when you just told them to read the True Names or hack away at the statues.)

I'll read 'em if you do.

(Does this count as thread necro, or is two weeks plus not enough?) @exodiark, yeah, I agree with a lot of that. NWN2 OC isn't as bad as its reputation IMO. It has redeeming qualities. The writing is actually pretty good on the "micro" level -- as in, the dialog flows nicely, every character has his or her own voice, and so on. The combat encounters are varied and even interesting most of the time (not counting the awful, awful endgame). There's plenty of variety in locations. They've done a great job working around the weaknesses of D&D 3.5, so you can actually make a big range of viable and powerful character concepts. The character-building is in fact the best single thing about it IMO. But the bad. Yeah. The writing at the "macro" level. Just terrible. Relies on really threadbare tropes, from the whole "ancient evil" thing to fridging not one but two women. The awful romances. The characters who really had no personality beyond class + race + alignment + quirk. Zhaeve, the embarrassingly bad Torment fanfic. The way the game saddles you with some characters whether you want them or not. The endgame. The horrible, horrible endgame. On this playthrough, for example, my character would not have asked any of her companions along for the endgame unless they volunteered and she was really sure they wanted to do it. That means Ammon Jerro, Zhaeve, Khelgar (probably), Casavir, Elanee (probably), Grobnar (possibly), but certainly neither Neeshka nor Qara -- I hadn't even adventured with Qara one single time except for that one plot-related excursion. That whole part made no sense. Nor stuff like a simple farm girl suddenly blossoming into a level 16 fighter. I mean, really? But really. Whoever approved that endgame needs a spanking. It was bad. Then again maybe it's an Obsidian thing, as the KOTOR 2 endgame was just as bad if not worse. (The MotB one was kind of OK though so maybe they're learning.)

I'd drop long-term buffs altogether. The bad ones you just ignore, and the good ones are just a chore to apply. Put those effects on items instead; they still take up slots which involves a meaningful strategic trade-off, but it removes the chore part of it. Short-term buffs OTOH make for one kind of extremely fun gameplay, as long as they're powerful enough to make a real difference. In fact IMO one of the problems with D&D short-term buffs is that at higher levels they, too, last too long. You can memorize two or three Battletides and Hastes and you'll be all set for the whole day, more or less.

As an aside, D&D paladins make no sense to me and never did, in any of the editions. They're basically gimped fighters with some relatively useless magic abilities and a strict code of conduct. You can get a much more powerful holy warrior based on the cleric class, without even multiclassing to fighter, never even mind some of the absurdly powerful divine prestige classes.

And I support your ability to play the game you want to as well. P:E will surely allow you to save-and-reload all you want, hunt for random monsters to kill all you want, and trek back and forth between dungeons and shops all you want too, if you consider those enjoyable activities. It just won't reward you for it. Now, what was your complaint again?

These Pally abilities are seizing my imagination. I'm seeing Drill Sergeant L. Goode and his merry squad of adventurers. - "On your feet, soldier!" - "Aww, did Private Grunty get a boo-boo? Would he like a plaster? MOVE IT AND CHARGE YOU WORTHLESS TUB OF IRON RATIONS!" - "Stunned? STUNNED? <slap> FORWARD MARCH OR I'LL SHOW YOU STUNNED!!"

And this is where you keep being stubbornly wrong, Gfted1. "Gaming purists" -- i.e., those of us discussing degenerate strategies like the one you're describing -- are not mad at players for exploiting them. FWIW I did exactly the same thing in exactly the same place. What we do is just this: (1) Ask if an activity is enjoyable or not. (2) If we decide it's not, have a preference for games that do not reward the activity over games that do reward it. Many of us feel that farming, grinding, save-and-reloading, rest-spamming, trekking back and forth between a dungeon and a shop etc. are not enjoyable activities compared to, say, exploration, discovery of lore, finding treasure, solving problems, solving puzzles, and defeating enemies that stand between you and your objective. Therefore, we prefer mechanics that do not reward the former, but do reward the latter. I still don't get how come you take it as a personal slight, or a criticism of your style of playing these games. Note: I do get the appeal of the hunt-for-monsters-to-slay-for-XP mechanic that was so central to Baldur's Gate (although much less so for BG2 or the other IE games). I realize this is close to the defining characteristic of BG-style gameplay for some players, and that these players will miss it if it's not present in P:E. I do not fall into that group myself, but I understand where they're coming from. I think there would be more enjoyable ways to implement a similar feeling, though, but that would be a bit of a tangent.