PrimeJunta

In these parts, what you call "secondary health" is called "health," and what you call "main health" is called "stamina." Stamina is regenerated continuously, health on rest. Follow the link to update #24 for details (and the exact definitions of the terms). And yeah, it is IMO a good idea to stick to shared names when available. Otherwise confusion and unnecessary chatter will result -- this exchange of messages, for example.

Syopa oui lyh ujanfneda dras fedr y hela kysa uv Pyngmao - Crid Ib Yht Zys: Kyetah?

Update #24: That's pretty unequivocal IMO -- you're only killed in Expert mode or as an option in standard play. AFAIK they haven't said anything about what "maimed" means in terms of mechanics, nor what, if anything, you can do to fix it. Again, perhaps they haven't even decided yet.

I'm pretty sure that type of 'resurrection' is in. If maiming meant that a character became useless, that would be a close functional equivalent of permadeath; no matter how much you liked him, it's unlikely you'd want to be wheeling your rogue around in a wheelchair when going dungeoneering. Nah, I think it's more likely that @Gfted1 is just confused.

I see. No doubt a good nights sleep will unmaim you, since theres no other mechanic available to do the job. Since they haven't stated how maiming works, all we can do is speculate. Maybe you have to go to a bone-setter, then rest. Maybe there is un-maiming magic at a temple (but not portable.) Maybe there's a skill like Doctor in the original Fallout. Maybe they haven't even decided yet how to handle it. Huh, I wasnt aware that resurrection had definately been removed from "normal" mode. Bummer. Huh indeed. There is no dying in "normal" mode. Therefore, what possible use would resurrection have? I didnt say anything about healing between chapters. I said that with no resurrection you will be a lonely fellow by chapter two. You are going to have battle deaths, yes? Uh. No. In normal mode, if somebody's health drops to zero, they're maimed, not dead. Presumably if the entire party is knocked out (with zero stamina or health), it's game over, in which case there's nobody left to use any resurrection magic even if it was available. Once more: there is no combat death in normal mode, ergo, there is no resurrection either. With combat death enabled, the consequences will be permanent.

@Gfted1: First off, we already know a lot of that stuff. One, at normal difficulty, when a party member's health goes to 0, they won't die; instead, they'll be maimed. We don't know what exactly that means, but I would expect something unpleasant but fixable. So resurrection won't be needed. I understand that with permadeath enabled, they will be gone. They've been pretty unequivocal about not having resurrection magic available at all. Second, since health will be regenerated on rest, attrition across chapters just ain't gonna happen. They're bleepin' unlikely to put in chapters with no resting possibilities at all. IOW, and pardon my French, but it sounds a lot like you're making up concerns out of thin air. There are legitimate things to gripe about re the mechanics, and definitely ways in which they could go wrong, but what you're sayin' ain't it.

Agreed. Awesome. Then how come you're speculating that they're going to design something that's for all intents and purposes unplayable?

You know, @Gfted1, I don't think the designers are complete morons.

I'd be tickled if it turned out the boreal dwarves spoke suomi.

Funny, I can't think of any better way to take the romance out of romance. Thing with romance, both real-life and (good) fictional, is that it's capricious. It happens when you least expect it, in ways that you least expect it to happen. The very thing that makes it romantic is that it's elusive. It's all about possibility rather than actuality. Being sure that it's 'available' will, by definition, destroy it and replace it with a shabby imitation. I do agree with your larger point, though, sort of, except that IMO you're looking at it too narrowly. If your choice of race, class, sex, etc. locks you out of meaningful interactions with your party, then yeah, that's bad design. However, if your choice of race, class, sex, etc. affects and changes those interactions, that's good IMO, even, perhaps especially if it means that romance will only happen to some of them. (The only bad thing about that IMO is that it would certainly cause such enormous whining that it would probably be better to leave out romance altogether.) Seriously: if the potential love interest is your typical golden-haired high elf maiden, the whole romance would have to be pretty damn different if you're playing a female half-orc or male wood elf princeling. If both of these got the 'same' romance, now, that would be really shabby writing. OTOH if it meant that playing one or the other locked you out of any meaningful interaction with her (and didn't compensate in some other way), then yeah, that would be sub-optimal too. (Come to think of it, if they wrote in a romance between the female half-orc and the golden-haired high elf maiden, that might actually be interesting to play. Certainly a hella more interesting than the one between her and the clichéd wood-elf princeling.)

David Gaider is a hack, and his writing for DA:O is emblematic of everything that's wrong with writing for computer games, computer role-playing games in particular. That's a false equivalence. In a party based cRPG, hell yes, your interactions and relationships with the party members are a big, big part of the game. I'm opposed to romance options precisely because once you bring it in, especially once you bring in 'romance options', it cheapens all those relationships. You choose which one(s) you want to bang and go after them, and eventully win teh secz. It's a lowest-common-denominator approach to character interaction. Again, IMO the best cRPG romances so far were in Planescape: Torment, and there they were left very much implied, hanging in the air, just out of reach. Which was the key to the whole thing. Simply put, almost always cRPG romance takes away more than it brings in.

I would be very disappointed if your choices had no consequences and everything happened the same way regardless of what you did. I would also be very disappointed if all there was to choices and consequences is a binary "good" and "evil" path. I think it's going to be more nuanced than either of those.

Cool idea, if the engine allows it without too much trouble. Also, carp.

How about using real-life languages? That would save time and would certainly be no less realistic than having English as the main language. Tolkien did this to an extent in his books; for example Hobbit names and the language of the Rohirrim were Anglo-Saxon although he had actually made up entirely artificial languages for both. The rationale was that Rohirric is to Westron (the Middle Earth common tongue) what Anglo-Saxon is to modern English. So Meriadoc Brandybuck's name was really Kalimac Brandagamba. Plenty of cool RL languages to draw from, both contemporary and ancient! Edit: BTW Bilbo Baggins's real name is Bilba Labingi. Heh.

Ev drao bid dra avvund du syga naym eh-kysa myhkiykac, E cruimt ruba ed'c y ped suna ehdanacdehk dryh y cesbma cipcdedideuh lebran. Nihel (un cesemyn) ymbrypadc fuimt pa luum druikr.

No me gusta. P:E should not, repeat, not, be or become a twitch game.

We can't really know that yet, can we? It all depends on how frequently spaced the rest areas are relative to the combat areas. If there are relatively few rest areas, you will have to be very careful about managing your health; if they are relatively frequent, you won't, and if some areas have more or less than others, they'll offer different types of challenges. FWIW, I kinda like this system precisely because it offers the possibility of varying the challenges in this way. With the standard system of hp + plentiful healing magic/potions etc., there's really not much to health management -- just stock up on enough make-well kits and you're golden. The workarounds to that aren't unproblematic either; if you make healing magic/potions rare, they'll easily get into "too awesome to use" territory and push you into save-scumming for optimal battle results every time, for example. Whether P:E will actually end up like this we don't know, of course. I for one am optimistic, though.

Hormalakh kicked off this thread by proposing that the Endless Path be continued forever in a roguelike fashion. Whatever the precise definition of roguelike is, I think he got the idea across that way just fine. Take everything that you can take from rogue -- i.e., procedurally generated, random or semirandom dungeon levels going ever deeper -- and drop it into a graphical, isometric, RTwP cRPG, and you'll get something that looks a lot like Diablo. Whether the result still counts as roguelike I'm sure we can keep on debating till the cows come home and die of old age. Frankly I don't see the point though.

Now I want a sword that has 15 other swords sticking out of it. Curse you, Lephys.

Good idea, but sounds more like a shaman than a druid to me. I'd prefer the Celtic variety meself.

Being able to find out information about monsters and have that information appear in a bestiary is great. Being able to add notes to the bestiary yourself is also great. Having the information appear there automagically just after encountering a critter... not. It's the difference between player agency and handholding. Same thing as with a quest log that records conversations and information discovered, and a quest marker that walks you where you need to go.

No. Bad idea. Kill it. With fire. That is the correct damage type. But not automagically.

That. They do character interactions extremely well. Not romances though. The interactions in MotB were brilliant, but the romantic twist to the Safiya story made me go like "Wait a minute, has this whole thing been a really extended blind date?" Jarring. Would've been better just to leave the possibility hovering in the air, as it were, without all those "...my love..."'s.

The correct definition of 'roguelike' is serious business.

Oh, OK, you meant no indoor fireballs without associated shockwave effects etc.? Yeah, that does make sense. It would certainly take a good deal more convoluted fantasy physics to account for that. I can think of ways, but they would have to be pretty far-fetched. (What ways, I hear you asking? Well, for example, the fireball could be produced by momentarily exchanging atmospheres with the elemental plane of fire. Once the near-instantaneous spell effect is over, the fire goes back to where it came from, and the air it displaced comes back, only marginally heated. You'd get a gust of hot wind but not an explosion strong enough to blow out windows or doors. Yeah, convoluted.)