PrimeJunta

Won't comment on BG2 as it's been many years since I last played it and I only started a playthrough now, but I did use those quite a lot in IWD just now. Individual uses against less powerful targets in mob fights, and several at once on a resistant boss. I found them extremely effective, even against enemies with magic resistance or high saves. With several casters in the party, I had a bunch of them memorized; in a boss fight where I was figuring I'd rest afterwards anyway I simply hit the boss with all of them at once. This worked great if the enemy's chance to avoid the effect was, say, around 50%, and acceptably a good way beyond that. Expending two to four spells to get a boss out of a fight is not a prohibitive cost IMO. In fact, I think I only used Fireball, like, once, and I might as well not have. Used magic for status effects, buffs, and counters, melee and arrows for damage. Was a lot of fun that way. Holy Smite was awesome not so much because of the damage but because it blinded everybody for a round. Made all the difference e.g. with Yxonomei and that Corrupted Temple fight. Also used it to great effect to suppress various massed evil archers for the time it took to get to them.

But but but, lots of IE spells were exactly like that. Especially the really powerful single-target ones like Rigid Thinking, Feeblemind, Dire Charm etc. Why is consistent damage so much more important than consistent status effects? Even I didn't reload just if a Rigid Thinking didn't bite.

Not diminishing returns; a cap. Once you've killed enough critters of a particular type, you know everything there is to know about killing them and don't get any more XP for them. Also, no XP for killing people (=not beasts or monsters).

If you had fun then that's great. I find playstyles that require meticulous micro-management tedious. As to cheesy, it is IMO because it's exploiting a problem in the AI (units not alerting each other when going aggro). Like kiting.

In (A)D&D that would have been something like 0 (save), 0 (save), 22, 18. Also swingy.

Pulling enemies one by one isn't a particularly fun way to play either IMO. Also feels cheesy. Hm, maybe Josh has a point in wanting to eliminate these exploits and force people to play it so it's fun...

Kill XP is not a "main aspect of an RPG." There are lots of RPG's without kill XP, both pen-and-paper and computer. Off the top of my head, Vampire: Bloodlines, Shadowrun Returns, and Numenera, to name three.

Not sure if there is one. Thing is, there were things about IWD (and the other IE games) that I formerly found extremely frustrating and un-fun, whereas now I find them fun. I also had a much easier time of it. The main thing I learned was that you're not supposed to hold a line. That it's all about tactical movement rather than tactical positioning. I still prefer games based on tactical positioning, but I can now appreciate tactical movement and enjoy the IE games for what they are. I.e., if you, like I was, are playing these games by advancing carefully to a choke point, holding it, and using ranged attacks to get at high-value targets, and are finding the experience frustrating rather than fun, then you're doing it wrong. Instead, try moving forward aggressively, sending a powerful melee unit to hit the high-value targets, and using the rest of the party to support him and protect your squishies.

In re the cost, I at least feel I've gotten more than my twenty bucks' worth from the BB. It's been fascinating to follow first-hand how this kind of thing takes shape. Also I've learned to play IWD properly. That's gotta be worth more than that.

Okay, I was overstating the case. Iconic Projection is good, as is the one that deals bludeoning damage and knocks enemies down. But still, where's mah Rigid Thinking, Hold Person, and Dominate?

Yeh, the priest could use some spicing up. The spell selection is highly useful, even borderline essential, but there's not a whole lot of pizzazz to it. In combat, usually the most advantageous thing for a priest to do is to cast a buff, so that's what she keeps on doing. This is not at all like DnD priests which can -- even in AD&D, by making a fighter/priest -- skew in all kinds of directions, from pure spellcasting (offense/defense/debuff/heal) to self-buff + melee, to even utility (I had a cleric/thief in my latest IWD playthrough and he did the job great). I think your ideas about the choice deity changing important features about it is a good one (cf. spheres in DnD3). As it is I can't really see making a priestly PC, although I'd def. want one in the party.

BTW finished IWD. Damn that was a stupid boss battle. Shades of Decline there; the main challenge was the mountain of hitpoints and ghastly melee damage, which just meant a long time, effectively, kiting, since not even AC -11 was enough to keep a toon alive long enough to murder him. I finished off the iron golems quickly and then it was just a matter of keeping my toons off the traps while he chased someone, as my two archers were pelting him with arrows of piercing. Took a while and was rather dull and unimaginative; if there had been no pause available it would have been a lot harder but in a frustrating way. Regrettable end to an otherwise great dungeon crawl... and here I was, just about to compliment it for providing a great variety of challenges without going the easy way of hitpoint and damage bloat. At least all my practice with not pre-buffing paid off with that one. Generally speaking... Dragon's Eye was by far the best part of the game, and I also had a blast with the towers of Broken Hand. Upper Dorn's Deep and the glacier were easy; Lower Dorn's Deep was a welcome change of pace and had some nice set-pieces but it lacked the tension, and became a game of have-the-right-counter-to-win. More of a boss fight followed by a boss fight, with a fairly obvious strategy for beating each of them. What's the relevance to P:E? I'm imaging what it would have been like to play IWD with the P:E mechanics and engine. I think about 80% of what I liked would still be in there: the variety of encounters and monsters and the variety of ways with which to deal with them, in particular. I would have enjoyed playing some of the setpieces with Engagement in place; to see how I could nail down the battlefield and keep it from becoming utter chaos, while using the abilities available to get at high-value targets. OTOH I would have missed the spell battles in the Broken Hand. As for encounter design, I could have done without Malavon and the final boss battle, but that really has nothing much to do with the mechanics. Imma try BG2 again next. I think I'll enjoy it a lot more after all I've learned here.

Oh, it has a lot in common with BG and PS:T. Not trying to pooh-pooh the differences, mind, but there are still far more similarities than differences, and not all the differences are for the worse.

TSLRCM is bloody brilliant. I just played through it last year. And I feel like a cad for not complimenting you on it before.

All that, and more: Class design. Most classes are much more fun to toy with than their IE or DnD3 counterparts. There are fresh new takes on the paladin and monk, the fighter and rogue are both engaging and fun, and the new cipher and chanter classes are original and altogether brilliant. Also low-level wizards aren't just baggage. Character advancement. P:E hits a happy middle ground between the almost-completely-on-rails advancement of AD&D and the better-be-damn-sure-to-pick-the-right-feats advancement of DnD3. You can tilt your build in various directions effectively without becoming completely hopeless in other areas or making a "wrong choice" that'll block you from being what you want to be later on (DnD3 prestige class feat and stat requirements, looking at you here.) Engagement and the way it stabilizes the battlefield so you can actually control areas and, for example, flank with a caster to use those cone- and line-shaped spells. Yeah, I dig it. So sue me grognards. Weapons, especially missile weapons. I'm really digging the way you've made the weapons different and not just cosmetic substitutes for each other. Rocking firearms and opening an encounter with a devastating volley and then switching to melee is way-cool. Rocking a war bow and keeping up a deadly hail of arrows all through the encounter is also way-cool but altogether different. Items with personality. So very BG2/IWD and although purely cosmetic, Leadspitter is so much more interesting than Flaming Healing Apostate Staff. Aumaua. Aumaua are awesome. No two ways about it. Breaking out of the race = culture trope and taking an actual close look at what it would mean to have societies composed of elves, humans, orlans, and others, and then making several of them. The reputation/disposition mechanics. We're only getting a small glimpse of them here, but I am sure they're going to be boss. ... and much more.

Haha cool. Could also be used as a Passwall substitute. Changes a section of wall into meat, and then all you have to do is eat your way through it...

Which status effects did you have in mind? Petrification? Don't care for that solution; IMO it should be permanent-unti-dispelled. The way I'd do it, the process takes, say, 2-4 rounds and can be countered in the meantime by a number of spells (say, selected blessings plus any movement-enhancing spells) before it's complete. Once complete, you'd need a trip to a temple to de-petrify. Alternatively, think of other uses for Stone to Flesh. In NetHack, you can use it to turn rocks into meatballs and boulders into huge lumps of meat, which is highly useful for a wizard in the early to mid-game. You'd have to think of other uses for meatballs in a DnD game.

@Sensuki in re the counterspells: yep, my stance has shifted on them. However, I still think the hard counters like Protection from Petrification, Chaotic Commands, Freedom of Movement, Death Ward, Remove Paralysis, Negative Plane Protection etc are kind of derp. Put another way, I love it when you're able to counter a spell with another spell, but I think spells designed specifically as counters are unimaginative. I would much rather have the counters rolled into spells that did something in their own right. Using a Dire Charm or Dominate to counter an enemy's Dire Charm is way cooler than using Dispel Magic to do the same, or Chaotic Commands to stop the spell from biting in the first place. If I was designing a DnD-ish spell system, I would have every spell counter one or more other spells as a secondary effect, but have no dedicated counters. For example: Sonic Burst - dispels Silence (also add low-level, low-damage Sonic spells) Silence - absorbs damage from Sonic Burst and other sonic attacks (but is dispelled by it) Various Charm spells - counter the same Owl's Wisdom - counters Confusion Expeditious Retreat and Haste - counters Hold Person, Slow, and Web (plus I'd add some other movement-enhancing spells between the two) Bless, Chant, Prayer, Recitation - also "soft counter" the stuff Death Ward hard counters ... and so on. Apart from Dispel Magic which does make sense, I don't like having to memorize spells that are only counters.

There's complaining and there's complaining. "This game is going to be doggy-doo and Josh Sawyer is a poopy-head and my life is ruined and I want a refund" or "if the vegetation doesn't move and the toons don't fidget this is garbage and it's not 1990 anymore whaa" is not very productive. And yes, there is ... a certain amount, even a quite a lot of that here too. But: pointing out specific problems, in the design or the implementation is extremely helpful. Explaining what you want to do or how you want to do it and why you're not able to is also extremely helpful. It's not always fun for the developer/designer to find out that the user thinks his design isn't working, but it is helpful. You know what else is helpful? I mean, really, REALLY helpful? Letting the devs/designers know when and where they're doing well. Devs/designers very rarely get positive feedback because users tend to ignore everything that's working and throw hissy fits about everything that's not (or doesn't fit their expectations, or whatever). Getting positive feedback is enormously important for morale. If a dev gets heartfelt thanks from a user once, it'll keep him cheerfully splatting bugs and fixing design mistakes for a week. (And yes, I am speaking from experience here. The mood in the team really changes if there's positive feedback. I've seen this happen time and again over many years and different teams.) So, my suggestion, for whatever good it will do: let's keep the feedback coming, general and specific, mechanics and esthetics, writing and visuals, bugs and design decisions. But let's also remember every once in a while to let them know if there's something we thought was really cool and we really liked. Both things help, and both things contribute equally to the end result: the criticism helps make things better, and the praise helps keep up morale.

More notes. Partway through Lower Dorn's Deep. Man I love the pacing of this thing! Breezed through the glacier, yawning and feeling pretty good about myself. Then, okay, salamanders with that AoE fire attack, a little annoying but nothing that difficult. Then... that elf maiden who gibs my party in like no time flat. Wow. Change. Of. Pace! That wasn't too hard though when I woke up. I had a couple of Rigid Thinkings memorized, and the second one bit. She got into a fight with one of the fire giants, and while she was stabbing him, I had my fair elf maiden (CHA 8 ) put her full of Arrows of Piercing. The fire giants were not much of a challenge. Anyway, I just whacked Malavon, which was the fight I really really hated the last time around. It's still not my favorite. Pure mayhem. Also has that "This is not even my final form!" thing which I also... dislike. I didn't fight it particularly well and if I did it again I would pre-buff a bit more (which, as stated, I've been trying to avoid this time around so I won't get lazy): Chaotic Commands against the Umber Hulks plus a standard Prayer+Recitation combo for better saving throws. As it is, I had Stabby the Berserker glug a Potion of Heroism and an Oil of Speed (he didn't know it was supposed to be applied externally and is feeling a little queasy now), equip him for immunity against Confusion and with Free Action (his standard equipment actually), and sent him after Malavon. That worked well, although it did take a few rounds for him to whittle him down. The rest of the party didn't do so great against the Umber Hulks and Iron Golems, and I eventually had to Raise Dead on two of them. I'm sure I could avoid that with those pre-buffs; as it was my Dispel Magics went unused because the toons who had them got confused. I'm thinking that if I buffed Stabby absolutely to the hilt to absolutely ridiculous levels, he could take the fight all by himself. But... the Malavon fight is clearly one of the ones that is tough if you go into it "cold" but becomes easy if you know exactly what's coming, memorize the right spells, and apply the right buffs beforehand. I don't care for that type of fight. It feels like I'm using knowledge my party isn't supposed to have, and it feels cheesy. Even if it's kinda sorta designed that way. I had more trouble with the temple fight with the multiple Greater Mummies. I was advancing too carefully and didn't discover the idol until dying a couple of times. Should have scouted with a thief, but I was feeling ****y at the time. Then when I sent a couple of my guys after it one of them got Petrified by it (sucker punch! sucker punch!) and, died again. So next time I pre-buffed Stabby with Protection from Petrification (metagame knowledge! metagame knowledge!) and sent him after the idol, whirling around it to avoid getting pinned down by the others, and had the rest of the party drop Holy Smites to keep the mummies blinded and confused and otherwise suppressed. Then I won, and the only guy who got his armor scratched was Stabby.

Not to mention, I would never have learned to play the IE games properly.

Yeh, sorry about my part in derailing the thread. Won't do it again. Er, not on this thread anyway.

It's also broken in that if you were Spiritshifted when combat ends, you'll automatically Spiritshift at the start of next combat. (That's kind of the least of its problems though ATM.)

I almost got stuck in the Severed Hand at that point this time. Had to go through the place like three times to find the staircase, and felt really dumb for not noticing it when I did now. The Fell Wood was just stupid. I didn't have a Ranger or Druid either, and it took me hours + pencil and paper to get through that. Nothing wrong with the puzzle in principle, but the execution was just really really bad and un-fun.

It's a bug. It worked before. They will certainly fix it, so you can all relax.