PrimeJunta

There is a little devil of a roleplayer and a GM inside of me that thinks that this would be an excellent idea, but in actual play, it would probably be pretty horrible. Yeh, I'm pretty sure it would. Realistically, unless you somehow managed really quick stealth kills, the entire Skaen temple should get alerted to your presence pretty early on. You would have a lot of those Deep Wounds archers sticking pins into you...

@Luridis good point. The fighter's effectiveness is modified a lot by equipment since he gets those specialization/mastery feats. I just had one with the right specializations and an Exceptional estoc, which did turn him into a bit of a deathlord -- I suspect the monk would be lagging. Consider that objection withdrawn, for now.

It's not an IE game, obviously. It doesn't run on the Infinity Engine, and it's not D&D. It is, however, closer to the IE games than anything since then that I've played, by a wide margin. The visuals, the dialog, the overall "feel" of most classes, the "feel" of selecting characters, issuing commands, and seeing how they respond, the breadth of spells, talents, and abilities, the "feel" of the PC races... they are all very IE-ey to me. The game has a "crispness" to it that, for example, the NWN's and their successors lack, and it's nothing like the DA mechanics involving cooldowns, aggro, and ability spamming. Many of the innovations are also material improvements as far as I'm concerned. The cipher and the chanter are way-cool classes with no D&D equivalent, making the spellcasting classes much more clearly differentiated. I know opinion is divided on it, but I like the way engagement works now: it effectively stabilizes the battlefield, making it possible to think of things in terms of flanking movements and whatnot; also AoE spell effects are much less chaotic in such an environment.

Just noticed they made the Stash available everywhere. Joy! @KaineParker Which difficulty are you playing on?

Sure, but the graphics errors are mostly systemic in nature, not related to particular content. I can recall a few relatively minor clipping issues related to specific items like helmets, cloaks, and such, but mostly that's all fine.

Fair enough. I change the difficulty to suit the level I want to get. With the difficulty swinging wildly between builds, I find it highly frustrating to do otherwise. Just tried Hard and it is pretty brutal. Very hard to get anywhere without constant pausing. Those Adra Beetles are pretty nasty. I didn't find it overwhelming however, just not as much fun as Normal. From where I'm at Normal feels much like IWD on Core Rules, difficulty-wise.

Turn down difficulty to Normal maybe? As stated, I'm finding this build the most fun by a very wide margin. I've only played the "easy" builds on Hard though.

(1) The yellow circle is the spell's base AoE. The green circle is the bonus you get from pumping Int. The zone between the yellow and green circles has no friendly fire (if applicable). (2) Currently, no. Moving them would also require moving the ability/spell pop-up from them, so it's not entirely trivial to change (e.g. via a mod). (3) I don't find them problematic; they're small but you can still see what they are.

I'll take your word for it. I haven't been playing this build on Hard. It's challenging enough for me on Normal.

Most of the BB bugs are actually systemic. Problems with animations, FX, things like trapped chests not working like they're supposed to, and so on. The content -- quests etc. -- is mostly all good, and has been from the start.

The action queue has been discussed before. Opinion is split on it. I don't know if it's been officially ruled out, but the vibe I get is that it's unlikely to go in. I'm in the "against" camp as IMO it would drastically change the feel of the gameplay. For me, one of the key "feels" of the IE games is that it's all about responding immediately to events, and having the toons react immediately when you issue a new command. An action queue would make the feel much less immediate. There's also much less need for an action queue IMO, since the main use for it is to stack buffs or spam special abilities (like Whirlwind Attack), and the way things are set up you're much less likely to do either. If they do do it, I dearly hope they'll put it behind a modifier, e.g. shift-click to queue. Restore Endurance is an AoE effect by the way. There aren't many single-target heals; the paladin's Lay On Hands springs to mind, and I don't know if you can target that by clicking on a portrait.

That's fairly easily remedied by wearing some armor though.

Riiiight... that explains it. Duh, of course. Thanks. Not a bug then, more of a UI issue.

Gone through a few other classes in the BB. I think there's still some tuning required between them, because right now it seems to me that some are just objectively better than others in similar roles. For example: Monk > Fighter The fighter's main attraction is the staying power and engagement ability, plus constant damage output. Additionally you can take Knockdown which is highly useful to get your comrades out of trouble by breaking engagement. And that's about it. The monk, OTOH, has great constant damage output, and unlimited knockdowns which additionally send the victim flying away, and great spike damage, and great endurance (as long as you keep burning away those Wounds). Compared to the fighter it seems to me to be all upside with no downside, unless you count "high-maintenance" as a downside. I really really dig the monk's specials, and would be bummed if they got nerfed (much). I think the fighter's specials need beefing up. A longer Knockdown duration would do much, and pumping some of the bonuses given by the modals might too. Might even add a few bonuses given by the unique fighter abilities, e.g. weapon specialization/mastery -- how about adding some DT bypass that stacks with the weapon, for example? Other than this, I quite like the fighter as it is now. There's a lot of scope for fine-tuning the build in various directions, and a lot of abilities to choose from. I think this is mostly a matter of tuning the numbers until both feel roughly equally useful. Druid > Wizard The wizard's AoE damage spells are... unspectacular. The gishy ones work well enough for that, but at least my experience using them was that I was paying more attention to self-defense than hindering or damaging the enemy, and I was certainly way less effective with two wizards than with one wizard + one druid. Druids OTOH have really neat area debuffs, with some of them doing damage also. IMO the wizard (still) needs broader spell variety. In the IE games, that was the wizard's special strength actually -- they could do magically just about what any other class could do magically (except healing), if they had the right spells prepared. Right now most of the wizard's spells are either defensive self-buff (with a good deal of redundancy), AoE or multi-target damage in various shapes, and one or two extremely useful AoE debuffs. I would like to see some conjuration/summoning type spells (even at the risk of treading on the cipher's toes), and more "mage duel" type spells (cf. Spell Mantle, Spell Breach etc) at least, even at the risk of treading on the priest's toes. Right now it feels like the wizard is a useful member of the team, but in something of a support role. I tried playing the BB with a wizard and using her to carry the fight; it did work, but I expended all of her and BB Wizard's spells before I made it to Kograk's cave. With a druid I breezed through the beetles and halfway through the spiders before I thought it was prudent to take a nap. So IMO the cost-benefit ratio of wizard spells is a little off too, at least if not used in combination with those great druid area debuffs which make them that much more effective. So, of the caster classes, currently the druid, cipher, and chanter are all more interesting than the wizard. I would consider beefing up the wizard by adding a few spells that do other things than damage or self-buff. Also mmmmmaybe adding one or even two more casts per rest per level. Or, alternatively, beefing up the damage or accuracy of the spells. (Also, Slicken needs to be nerfed IMO. The duration and area are fine, but it should not be an automatic knockdown for the duration; the victims should be able to get up and struggle out of the AoE.) Rogue > Ranger I already covered my problems with the Ranger in another post, but here's another view of it -- I find the Rogue to be much more engaging and effective in every way than the Ranger, yet both are intended to play the "hard hitter" role. Something needs to be done about the Ranger. BTW I'm also starting to like the priest. It's not a lot like a D&D cleric/priest, but highly useful and there's surprising variety in the spells. Will roll my own next, to see what it's like to have two.

Yeh, the wizard is still a little dull. Not as dull as originally, but they could seriously use a broader range of different types of spells. I wouldn't bring schools into it though.

How come everybody else's Endurance regenerated all the way, even though they have less than max health as well?

Yeh. Already forgot the name of the ability, but it costs 2 Wounds. Sends the little bast... creatures flying. There are a quite a few other abilities and spells which push critters back as well, and of course any number that hobble, slow, knockdown, stun, paralyze etc.

Observed: Sometimes after combat, especially after a character has been poisoned, endurance doesn't regenerate, and there's a narrow band that looks like static or white noise in the portrait at the limit. The character in the attached screenshot had endurance stuck at 16 (same as health at the time). If this is an intentional effect due to poisoning, it should be made clear, e.g. as a status icon next to the portrait and a note in the "Active effects" section of the character sheet.

I would not release the BB, or anything closely based on it, as a demo. The learning curve is brutal. Go into it cold, and you'll find yourself choosing between, like, a hundred different things and then get roflstomped by coleoptera. I'm quite sure that would put off more people than it would attract, and most of the people it would attract would have bought it anyway. It's not hard once you figure it out, mind, but I don't think many potential buyers would have the patience to do so. A demo would have to be a dedicated lower-level affair, perhaps something that gets you from level 1 to 3, tops.

They're listed right here.

I equipped BB Priest with said secret staff this time, and she wasn't doing exceptionally hard damage. I think it must've been some weird bug manifesting.

AFAICT the base attack animations are the same as before, both armed and unarmed. However, there are special animations for the Wound-powered moves which look pretty neat really. Also, either I'm getting better at this or the monk is a seriously mean mofo. Packs a massive punch, has great staying power, and those special attacks are really useful for recovering from tactical errors -- if a beetle gets behind the front line, the monk can just kick it away. Made it a good deal further without resting, and polished off those beetles without much fuss at all. Mucho me gusta.

On it, good sir. Will report back shortly.

Good, it would help. The ranger would probably still not be my first choice, but it would at least be more viable. So if for example there's an interestingly-written ranger companion (Sagani?) I wouldn't kick her out of the party for mechanical reasons.

Funny that about DA:I. I'm actually enjoying it a quite a lot, much to my surprise, because I dislike almost every individual thing about it. The combat in particular is dull, grindy, repetitive spamming of abilities to whittle down mountains of hit points or swarms of respawning enemies. Yet somehow despite it all it manages to keep me engaged. I think the main reason is that pretty much everything in it has some kind of tie-in to the lore: the characters, the books and notes found in the world, and the look and feel of various places and things in the world itself. The kick I'm getting is from exploration and discovery, of the physical world and its lore -- history, politics, religion, the various companion stories, what have you. Also, even though in true BioWarean fashion the writing is mostly cringeworthy, there are just enough islands of brilliance in it to keep things going. Some of the companions are quite engagingly written. And despite being insanely cliché, the story makes some kind of sense. I did play it with FF on for a while, until it wore me down and I switched it off. The abilities are clearly designed to be played with FF off -- e.g. it's extremely hard to tell what the AoE effect for many of them is, the AI makes no allowances whatsoever for it, so switching it on changed their relative worth so much there wasn't any point. If I ever start a new playthrough -- which is unlikely, since it appears to be possible to discover most of what's there to discover in just one -- I might switch it on again and just pick defensive or single-target abilities. But... if DA:O could pretend, in some sense, to being a BG spiritual successor, DA:I clearly isn't. It's drifted far away from that, deep into MMO-esque A-RPG territory. I don't really know how relevant discussing it in context of P:E even is.