PrimeJunta

@OP I strongly disagree. I think it's extremely cool that you can experiment with weird builds like greatsword-wielding monks and full plate wizards, and the mechanics are flexible enough that you can actually make it work. It doesn't make the classes same-y at all. Pillars has its fault, but class differentiation isn't one of them. Considering that there are so many, it's amazing that they all provide such different experiences. It does a far better job than (A)D&D artificially differentiating between, say, fighters and rangers, or fighters and barbarians, with arbitrary equipment restrictions.

It is very confusing when they make the cards with the bigger model numbers slower

Being fast is very useful. For spits and giggles, try making a ganky character -- fragile, but with massive point damage, and a few talents/buffs against disengagement attacks. Then use him to run around the enemy to get at the squishies in the back, then run away when targeted. 'Sfun. Of course, it's also possible to play with Roman legionary tactics -- have a front line of tanks shielding a second line of ranged attackers, and do everything at choke points. That works great most of the time, except when it doesn't, like when the game hands you a fight where you're outnumbered and there isn't a choke point.

There's no increased payoff with Hard, other than more interesting gameplay. If you're a BG series veteran and are willing to put in a bit of effort to figure out how the game works, I say go with Hard. It's ... not, really, if you play it at all intelligently. Re mechanics, six of one, half-dozen of the other. If your main is one of the classes who gets a bonus in it (rogue, cipher, chanter, wizard) then you might as well pick a background that gives another level and max it. Else just let Aloth or Kana (or, later, Devil of Caroc if you want her in the party) take it. There's no particular benefit to having it on your main as opposed to the others.

No, it wasn't. However, in 2000 the Internet was a very different place. Social media didn't exist. Steam didn't exist. Metacritic had just launched. Diablo 2 was just out, and battle.net was a few years old, and an island for a single publisher's RTS-ey games. In most places, the Internet was too laggy and slow for real-time multiplayer games, so when thinking "multiplayer" you would think "LAN party." There was Usenet and a bunch of smallish, disconnected BBS's. The main source of information on games was magazine articles and reviews, and these almost never followed up on things after launch. Community feedback was much more of a family affair than it is nowadays. In other words, I think the risk of community pressure from the multiplayer contingent wreaking havoc on the single-player campaign really is much bigger today than it was back then.

Thanks for the clarification. It sounds unintended, perhaps even a bug though.

I just tried this and it doesn't appear to work: I only had one FoD use left after my stealthed first strike. In 2.03.

True. That's why it's bleeping near impossible for Pillars 1. They could do it for Pillars 2 if they put it in from the start. I would still vote "nay" though, even if the resource cost was estimated to be relatively small, largely due to the risk of the slippery slope -- which is very real.

I only learned to play BG2 properly -- and appreciate just how good it is -- while waiting for Pillars, although I had finished it a couple of times back in the day. Pillars clearly doesn't reach its highest summits -- Defiance Bay is no Athkatla, and the Master Below is no Firkraag. But then nothing else does either. However, I also think BG2 fails in many really stupid and entirely avoidable ways, and a big part of learning to really like it was all about finding ways around them, and Pillars avoids just about all of these pitfalls. If you graphed the peaks and the troughs and then took the average, Pillars' line would probably be higher than BG2. But for most of us I think the peaks count for more than the average; that's certainly true for me.

@why That's pretty much why I'm not super-thrilled about adding co-op multiplayer to Pillars either, even in a limited "IE style."

Pallegina's breastplate does have a unique feature, it gives 50% more DR when your endurance is below 25%.

@Nonek Vecna = Vance -> :mindblown: I never realized that.

I find ciphers rather dull compared to wizards, druids, and priests. They play almost exactly like cooldown-based characters, only you have to auto-attack to make the timer run down. One thing Pillars does really well is differentiation between classes -- most of them look different, play differently, have different capabilities, and generally provide a different gameplay experience. Making all casters like the cipher would take that away and turn Pillars into just another MMO-esque clickfest. No thanks.

I think an IE-style multiplayer would be doable without changing much about the single-player. The main change would be with the combat as pausing becomes problematic (if one pauses, everybody pauses). If they removed pausing altogether in multiplayer, it could work well enough, and since each player is only controlling one character, that wouldn't make it too hectic. One player would have to be the Watcher who does all the dialogs and cutscenes of course, the others would be "companions." Whether it's worth it is another question. I wouldn't use it, I've only ever tried IE multiplayer out of curiosity.

Extremely unlikely. Obsidian have stated on numerous occasions that they're not going to do multiplayer for Pillars. They haven't said anything much at all about Pillars 2, but I would be somewhat surprised if they added it there.

Yeah, a "what's Dunryd row?" dialog option would've been nice. They can't think of everything I suppose...

I liked SoZ too. Except for the loading screens, ugh...

The skill system isn't great, but slavishly copying D&D3 isn't an improvement.

Well that sucks. Because it could use it. I find "only usable by" sucks unless there's a really good reason for it. A soulbound weapon is a really good reason. "Firecam family armour" is just arbitrary. In any case I don't see this as a particularly big problem. Yes you can exploit it to gain a small edge in the early game, but so what? Edit: overall the economy could use some rebalancing yes

Pillars has very few hard limits on item use. I can't think of anything beyond a few class-restricted items, unless you count the Devil of Caroc's chest armour which is actually a part of her body. Pillars just doesn't do "only usable by."

BG1EE incorporates all of the mechanical complexity of BG2, and SCS incorporates years of work by a dedicated fanbase. Even so, personally I disagree, I don't find BG1EE+SCS particularly interesting.

Damn it Boeroer, you're really good at finding ways to break the game. I would never have thought of this way of using Spelltongue.

It's not really Vancian though. In Vancian magic, spells are actual discrete entities captured in the magician's mind, and released when casting the spell. AD&D magic is true Vancian magic. D&D broke with this with the sorcerer and bard (and, later, other classes) in 3e, which IMO do not fit the metaphysics of the world at all. Pillars magic isn't Vancian since wizards can cast any spell from their grimoire, up to their limit. It's just a system with an arbitrary per-rest cap on casting. How I feel about it? Aesthetically, I prefer either proper Vancian casting, or casting based on a resource (mana etc). I don't think Pillars would've been any worse if it had limited casting by mana which is replenished on rest, rather than hard per-rest-per-level limits, and it would've made more metaphysical sense. I'm not hugely bothered by it though as the Pillars system is almost standard in fantasy RPG's these days, including D&D, despite the overall inelegance of it.

It's not a binary choice. I'm willing to trade off a certain amount of elegance for a certain amount of interesting, and vice versa. I suspect you are too, although the specifics of our respective equations may vary. As it is, IMO Pillars is considerably more interesting than BG1, considerably less interesting than BG2, and more elegant than either of them. I much prefer Pillars base mechanics to AD&D base mechanics (which is something like saying I prefer a cheeseburger to being punched repeatedly in the face), and believe that Pillars has the potential to become very interesting indeed, given sufficient time and effort.

That argument has more merit. AD&D is unquestionably more interesting than PoE. How could it not be, it represents nearly 20 years of stuff piled on by a huge number of people? What I at least object to is the contention that design elegance and interestingness or richness are opposed goals. Things can be elegantly designed yet complex, expressive, and rich. Classical Arabic for example -- it has a beautifully simple and logical grammar and way of deriving meanings from roots, yet is as rich, expressive, and, yes, interesting as any language you might care to name.