PrimeJunta

:shrug: Maybe I'm just dumb then because I do find it hard. I have restarted all the IE games multiple times a good way through because I find my party just isn't cutting the mustard. On my first attempt at IWD I had a bard and a fighter with a bad specialization, I forget which one. Bastard swords maybe because they were good in BG and have great damage for a one-hander. I quit halfway through Dragon's Eye and started over. And yes, I'm still mad about that. I don't forget easily.

Freedom of expression includes the freedom to express an objection to an expression. The Codex has extremely strong social prohibitions to certain types of expression. They're just different than those of society at large, which means all the neo-Nazis, homophobes, misogynists, and other assorted neckbeards feel right at home there, while qq'ing about their freeze peach and the ebul femminists and Anita Sarkeesian suppressing and oppressing them everywhere else. Here's a little thought experiment for you, Hormalakh. Create a new account on the Codex, and start a thread about how Sarkeesian is right about a lot of things. You'll see just how much freedom of expression the Codex has.

There's the rub. Building an optimal party is hard, and the games are extremely unforgiving about it. Do it wrong and you will eventually hit a blank wall where progress if not impossible, at least extremely difficult and tedious. Also, before you've actually played the game, you won't know for example just how high your THAC0 needs to be to consistently beat encounters without getting a bloody nose. That's actually my main beef with AD&D character mechanics right there: there are trap choices, and there's no way to correct them when you discover your mistakes. It's not like reloading, changing your spell selection, and doing a fight over; you have to restart from zero. I.e., you're right: IE combat is not swingy, provided you have an optimal party. It's not hard to hit enemies, provided you have an optimal party. I'm not saying that there should be no difference between an optimal party and a poor one, of course; part of the fun is building the optimal party. I do say that the games would be more fun overall if the effects were more scalar and less on-off. So, for example, an optimal party could breeze through Dragon's Eye (on Normal) with, say, only a rest before Yxunomei, whereas a poor one would have to rest, like two or three times per level even if you used it tactically more or less OK.

And a founding member whose avatar is an SS officer, and at least one regular who I'm pretty sure is an actual neo-Nazi and is not Cleveland Mark Blakemore who is uncategorizable. Which is clearly all in good fun and not at all in poor taste because hey look, one of the mods is Jewish. Srsly though, I have massive mixed feelings about the Codex. It is a wretched hive of scum and villainy -- really, it is -- but it also has some of the best discussions on RPG's anywhere. But it is like diving for pearls in a pool of pigshït and radioactive waste. I.e., you had better make damn sure your drysuit is entirely 100% impermeable.

Yeh. It's a waste at this time. Fortunately I think that it would be pretty easy to rescue just by adjusting the numbers: give it a limited duration and make it really deal out damage (or soak it, depending on the form), or give it some specials that impose some genuinely scary status effects. Kind of like a druidy "behold my animalistic power" version of a barbarian's frenzy for great burst damage.

Priority issues, other than just plain ol' bugfixes? Broaden the wizard's and priest's spell selections with stuff like the Charm sequence, Hold Person, and Rigid Thinking, with suitable counters for these. Give the Rogue and/or Barbarian (at least) abilities that let them scoot through enemy lines to a high-value target, gank him, and scoot back out of trouble. Or, alternatively, make these single-target short-duration buffs or spells. This would reintroduce an IE tactic while keeping the stable battlefield given by the engagement system (which, I must remind everyone, I like.) Rethink and redesign the Ranger class. I'd go with a light fighter who has a limited selection of single-target priestly spells, animal companion optional with no shared health pool. Last but not least, get the numbers to make sense. Currently there are trap choices in weapons (anything light/fast with no DR bypass) and the armor system with flat DR and flat DR bypass makes armor entirely useless against enemies that punch particularly hard, which is both stupid and counterintuitive.

Channeling Sensuki, why don't you use an archer or Magic Missiles to interrupt the mage's casting, then rush, Knockdown, and murder?

Oh, the system definitely needs tuning, just like the armor. I was commenting on the design. And AD&D's attack resolution is murky, never even mind the entirely unnecessarily complicated arithmetic with THAC0 and AC, but especially attacks that target something else (magic resistance, saving throw). The current implementation in P:E (with Normal difficulty enemies anyway) is enough in the ballpark that you can tell that the design is sound. They just need to get the numbers right. As to THAC0 vs AC: I checked the IWD bestiary, and in fact the AC's of most critters there are surprisingly poor. There's a bit of an inverse difficulty curve here actually -- in the early game, the AC of your toughest enemies and the THAC0 of your best fighter tend to track each other, but the enemy AC curve levels off somewhere around 0 while your THAC0's keep rising. I.e. they mitigated the design problem by balancing content. Which is what you do when you have a design problem you can't resolve by design. I don't have my old Monster Manuals available here so I can't check how the official monster AC's are supposed to be, but I do recall seeing negative values there.

I'm going to have to revisit BG2 at some point to see if I change my opinion about them too. My problem with them there was that they didn't feel fair: the enemy mages started out with a stack of protections you had to get through, and the best way to get through them was through a specific sequence of counters. The way I remember them, I died until I knew which protections the mage had, then reloaded to rest and memorize the counters, then won. That felt cheap. Really digging IWD's magic fights so far though. I am getting through them even without having the optimal spell loadout, by repurposing what I do have. That feels awesome. There are those few encounters in Lower Dorn's Deep I really struggled with before, but we'll see how they go now. On the other hand: I built my party specifically to mitigate this IE game feature. Everyone's a caster except my dedicated fighter. I don't spam magic to get through fights much, but I do have an extremely broad range of spells to draw from. With four fighter/clerics I've got most of the divine repertoire available at any time, even allowing for generous heals. I tweak the selection based on hints the game gives me, so far without much success -- for example when that dude in Dorn's Deep talked about undead, I loaded up with spells like Negative Plane Protection and Death Ward and such, but meh, just more zombies and skeletons and whatnot, plus a lich which didn't need anything particularly undead-y to deal with. I suppose I could've used my lone Hold Undead on it at some point but it wasn't necessarly. This I feel is a weakness in the IE casting system. With a more typical party that only has one cleric and one wizard, you do get caught with the wrong spell selection a lot more often.

I've only used Haste twice in my IWD game so far, once against the Talonians and once against Yxonomei. It still feels like a cheat button though.

Yes, in addition to its other fine qualities, it is a bit of a sausage party. Even more than this place.

I have another thread on P:E combat vs IE combat (IWD:EE) going, but I thought I'd put these thoughts here since it's a more general comparison and less of a let's play. Scope is game mechanics, i.e. not writing, graphics, sounds, art direction etc. The BB is getting mature enough that we can see what the design intent is, even if a lot of it still needs work, so this is no longer speculation but based on actually playing both games fairly intensively back to back. The three sections below naturally involve preference and judgment, but I've tried to put things in boxes where I believe the argument that something is 'objectively' better or worse is pretty damn strong, and in 'different' if I believe a lot of preference or value judgment is necessary. Where P:E is better than IE Character building mechanics. There's not a lot to AD&D character-building, other than dual-classing which is, frankly, a really weird mechanic even if you enjoy running around as baggage for an extended period in one-quarter into the game to get a massive boost in power for the second half. You pick your race and class, minmax your stats, pick your weapon proficiencies, and that's about that. Occasionally on levelup you add a pip to a proficiency. The only class that has a bit more to this -- the thief -- is also the least effective at combat, especially at higher levels due to the lousy THAC0. What's more, the choices you do make have a big risk of ruining your playthrough. Building a fer-de-lance fighter and picked a weapon specialization with no good weapons of the type in (much of) the game? Too bad, so sad, you're useless, start over halfway through the game. P:E on the other hand lets you skew your character in different directions. The classes themselves have more things they can do, the choice you make have significant mechanical effects, and you can play against type. What's more, Josh has thought of really cool ways to differentiate them: not just a different spell selection, but a different way of casting spells (cipher, chanter); not just different special attacks, but different ways of pulling them off (monk). The ranger is currently just bad but it's not beyond redemption; I hope they'll be able to make it at least serviceable. Attack resolution mechanics. The P:E system is clear, simple, and understandable and directs you think of what you do rather than just spamming what looks like your most powerful attack. Dealing with foes that have too high Deflection for you to hit properly? Attack their Will with a spell or special to deal damage and lower Deflection, then attack Deflection. OTOH I played AD&D for years and still can't remember, by heart, what all the saving throws are named, let alone decide when you're supposed to save against rods, wands, or staves and when against death. For example, what if it's a wand of Power Word: Kill? Jeebus. Also: THAC0 and AC make for some really weird threshold effects when near the ends of the scale, e.g. when dealing with a really tough enemy. One point of THAC0 can double your chances to hit. The system pretty much requires specialization -- near the endgame, a middling THAC0 will be as useless as a dumped THAC0, only pumped or single-mindedly focused will do the job. (Note: in the current build P:E's Armor has a similar problem, with high DR bypass completely negating it. I hope they'll fix this as it's clearly not the intent.) Where P:E is different than IE Movement. The IE games have free movement. This means that a general strategy of holding a line against their attacks and dealing with enemies at range is not very effective, and things are moving around so fast that notions like "pincer movement" or "flanking" simply do not exist. Instead, you have to send your tanks against their squishies going right through them. This makes for fights that are fast-paced and frantic, all based on reacting extremely quickly to changes to get at those high-value targets while not getting surrounded. P:E on the other hand has engagement. That means that your general strategy is forming and holding a line to stabilize the battlefield, then using that battlefield to maximum effect: flanking with a wizard to throw a Rolling Flame, focusing ranged fire on the squishiest but most dangerous units, using special abilities to get through to those units and gank them (note: this needs work!), using spells or specials to break engagement and get a buddy out of trouble (knockdown, kick etc.) and so on. I had to this day not realized that this is how you're supposed to play them, and found the inability to block enemy movement incredibly frustrating, and I have Sensuki to thank that I finally have. I'm now having much more fun playing IWD than I ever had. However, I still prefer the more deliberate pace of the P:E encounter. I think this is due to fairly deeply ingrained ideas about what tactics are, largely from playing a lot of Total War, but I also went to officers' school damnit and they didn't teach us to charge through enemy lines to gank the general, then charge back. Where P:E is worse than IE Magic. OK, magic in IE games does have its issues. I don't like spells that one-shot an encounter, on either side, for example, and effectively game-ending effects like Disintegrate aren't much fun either. But. There's not only a huge selection of spells in IE, many of these spells have multiple uses. A companion got Dire Charmed? Slap a Dominate on him and get him right back on your side. Out of Dominates? Hold Person to get him to stay put while it wears off. There's a whole bunch of spells there that will just shake up an encounter, like Teleport Field for example. P:E's magic system removes many of the things I find un-fun about IE magic, such as super-powerful/one-shot effects like, at their respective levels, Horror, Confusion, Haste, and Cloudkill, which is a sound decision. And the system does have synergies which are a lot of fun to exploit. But with no spell counters, and no spells like Hold Person, Charm/Dire Charm/Dominate, Rigid Thinking and so on it does feel flatter, more one-dimensional. Extremely powerful, long-duration effects should still be in, as long as there is a way to counter and/or prevent them. A special kind of IE fun has been removed here, and that is a shame. Why is it so? Josh has often stated that his design decisions are based on a lot of observation of how players actually play these games. I believe that. For example, I have attempted to play the IE games like P:E is supposed to be played, by holding a line at a choke point and taking it from there. Josh's addition of Engagement is, I believe, specifically designed to make this style of gameplay possible. The Interrupt mechanic is there to make it clear to the player how they can interrupt enemy casters. The save-or-die effects are gone because most of us found them frustrating and un-fun (including me). But... the counterspells? Were so many of us just... not using them that he had to go and get rid of all of them and put them under Suppress Affliction, even making Petrification temporary? If so, then that's a shame. There is, I think, also great scope for mods here. Sensuki and Bester have discussed a 'grognard mod' for P:E that would remove engagement and replace abilities related to it with others. I would certainly try it, but as I said I think I'd still prefer Josh's version. However, if someone were to make a Counterspell mod, putting back some of those powerful single-target long-duration effects and ways to counter them, I would be so in. Who knows, I might even attempt something like that myself.

The opposition does though. I used Confusion once. It didn't do what I wanted but still won the fight. It was in the setpiece over the bridge in Upper Dorn's Deep. The drow resisted, but the orcs went cuckoo which got the archers out of my hair and let me beat it. Second try, and my only reload in Upper Dorn's Deep, not counting the trap which disintegrated my thief because of a misclick. I am getting better at this. Perhaps I will beat some of the tougher set-pieces on the first try at some point. Haste BTW is seriously OP. I'm trying not to use it unless I absolutely have to because it's so powerful it feels cheesy. Something that strong should absolutely be single-recipient only. Or else it should be level 7 or thereabouts.

It could be done better though. As I said I'm not a fan of spells that one-shot a battle, on either side. If something's powerful enough to take you out of the fight, it should be single-target only IMO. Group spells should be damage or debuff, not something like Confusion, Horror, Cloak of Fear, Cloudkill etc. I think the key is that there's more than one use for a spell, like, say, the Hold Person to deal with a Dire Charm on a comrade. P:E probably won't have this, and will be worse for it. I've also nothing against spells like Petrification which have a permanent-until-dispelled effect. The ones I really don't dig are true save-or-die, like Disintegrate. Anything that ends the game on a single die-roll should not be in IMO. That's the essence of random.

More notes. Most of the way through the Severed Hand. Another like: the rhythm of the game. Severed Hand is much more relaxed in pace and in tension than Dragon's Eye. It's also easier. What's more, I'm now way better at playing this than on my first playthrough; I remember really struggling with some of the encounters with Serrated Skeletons, but now they were barely a speed bump. The fights against mages and clerics are rather brilliant and the IE spell system is really coming into its own. For example, I loved it when I was able to deal with a Dire Charm on a party member with a Dominate, and later when I had already used it and it happened again, I slapped a Hold Person on him. Plus making a note to self to memorize some Dispel Magics the next time I rest. The P:E magic system clearly has synergies, but I'm a little concerned about counters. This type of magic duel is fun, unlike the IMO way OP spells that can put an entire party out of the fight with one cast. Preliminary conclusion -- my stance against hard counters and on/off effects is softening. I think they're fine if they're single-target spells, and do not involve instant death (which prompts a reload for me until/unless I have Raise Dead available in some form). But countering genuinely nasty spells like Dire Charm, Dominate, Hold Person, Petrify, and similar is fun. (Death effects are fine later, of course, once you have Raise Dead available.) Also, having WAY more fun than before. Not turning into a grognard just yet, though: the extra fun I'm having comes from using spells and counters better, and picking my targets better. If P:E provides a similarly complex and fun system of spells, status effects, and counters, and of suppressing and then eliminating high-value targets, with a tactical cost, I'm happy.

I'm not sure it isn't just because it makes things easier. No need to account for possibly knocked-out party members for example, or decide whether baddies can chase you, and if so, program that as well, and if not, decide to which state they return when you get back to the map (e.g. it would be kind of dumb if they were frozen in time exactly like you left them, or if the encounter was restored to exactly what it was before the fight).

Or, alternatively, make the charmed unit do nothing until the others go hostile. Or, make the others go hostile when the charmed unit attacks them, at the very least.

@Sock Huh, interesting. And cool. Sounds like if they drop the shared health thing and find some other non-unfun way to balance out Mr. Bear that rangers might turn out to be a lot more fun and versatile than I thought. But yeah, I think the numbers do need adjusting if the dedicated stabber is better at range and the dedicated ranger is better at stabbing.

The combat only restrictions make no (gameplay) sense to me. I can think of technical reasons they'd want to do this; it might make some of them marginally easier to implement if you're a lazy programmer. Same thing with not being allowed to leave a map while in combat.

Chanters rule. They're powerful, fun, and unique; not a substitute for any other class. I don't think they're way OP though. The invocations are powerful but because they only bite late in the encounter they're less significant than they could be.

Oh goody. Another let's qq about combat XP thread.

No, it doesn't. It's more about a long discussion/argument I had with Stun and others a whiles back, where Stun argued that the setpiece fights in the IE games do not require reloading or metagame knowledge (=what you're about to face) to win. As to mah opinion? I think reload-to-win is perfectly well-suited to a dungeon crawl like IWD. I think it was jarring in a more story-focused game like PS:T. However: I really, really want a reload-to-win game to have unobtrusive and FREQUENT autosaving, because when I get into the "flow" of it, I forget to hit the Q key. Reloading for one fight is one thing; reloading for crawling an entire level is another. I agree; it's less important at higher levels though when you have enough slots to memorize a few just-in-case ones. That's actually the main reason I made this party so that everybody except Stabby the Barbarian has magic. In a more typical party if you only have one cleric and one wizard, at the low/mid levels it does become a problem. I think P:E's grimoire is a good solution to this problem. More flexibility, but not unlimited flexibility. It does give the druid and priest a major advantage; especially the druid whose spells are to a great extent functional substitutes to the wizard's. And for them, it removes a layer of planning. In AD&D there isn't a whole lot more to character-building/level-up choices than weapon proficiencies. (Other than class + minmaxing your stats accordingly, that is.) DnD3 is a whole 'nuther ball game. You can screw up your character in so many ways it's not even funny. I like the intricate minmaxing to get a deathlord magic-user or fighter dealing ridiculous crits with a scythe in MotB, on some level, but systemically it is a problem. Yep... but many of the setpieces follow a conversation or opening a door. Scouting in the Yxunomei fight would have revealed yuan-ti and a spooky little girl. You're expecting something bad to happen, but pre-buffing with medium-duration super-powerful buffs there just feels gamey. I felt this way the first time I played IWD, following BG1. But its a very different game, and although it is very combat focused and linear, it is NOT all about combat. If it wasn't for the absolutely amazing music, environments and the way the story is told I wouldn't play it even once. IWD has an incredible atmosphere, which is one of the most important component of an RPG to me, despite my obsessive powergaming. That wasn't me!!! I finished IWD the first time I started it, and I think it's the only I game I did this way. It totally pulled me in from the start, and just because of the fighting.

I built a better party and did Dragon's Eye again. This time Yxowhatsit went down easily the first time. Partly it was luck though; three of my toons were caught in the Cloudkill but all made their saves. Tactics same as before, except I had the good sense to cast Prayer and Haste first, and also I had prepared not one but two of those combo Holy Strikes. Archer on Yxonomei duty, Stabby the Berserker doing his thing, priests casting Holy Strikes in unison. I think somebody got Held for a bit but Remove Paralysis sorted that out. Other than that it lasted for like thirty seconds or so and I barely got scratched. Put another way, I'm starting to understand why somebody would want to turn up the difficulty to Hard. Don't think it would have made all that much difference in this fight actually. Those +2 arrows fired at 7/2 per round bite. Expensive tactic though. (Party? Fighter specialized in daggers and dual-wielding 'cuz good daggers are bloody everywhere, three fighter/clerics, one cleric/thief, one fighter/mage. Everybody's a half-orc except the gish who's an elf.)

Wizard spells also synergize really well with druid spells. A wiz + druid team works even better IMO, plus it's much broader.

Something like that. There's a quite a lot of talents by now. I wouldn't mind being able to pick one every level. Some of them could stack, making it possible to do highly focused builds, but there would be enough that one bad talent choice wouldn't turn your character into a squib (cf picking the wrong weapon specialization in IWD:EE).