PrimeJunta

You mean, the game gets harder when you up the difficulty? Imagine that.

I like it.

DoT is bugged. I suspect once they've got that sorted out, poison won't be anywhere near as punishing as now. Nor do I think poison will be as frequent an occurrence on average as in the beta. Give us some potions of antidote and ways to craft them, and we're good.

Do you? How so?

Hey, good investigation. They did mention something about a hairy secondary weapon slot related bug; this might be it.

The reasoning is something like this: in the IE games, how deep you could go was (often) limited by your party's priest's (or druid's) reservoir of healing spells. This had two implications: (1) every party "needed" a priest or druid, and (2) the priest or druid spent most of her juice on heals rather than all the other cool spells (unless you had more than one). So Josh's solution is to get rid of the mandatory party healing battery and give each character one instead, thereby freeing the priest and druid to use their other spells, or players to go without a priest or druid altogether, without gimping their party more than they would by foregoing any other core class. The reasoning is sound IMO and does make for potentially more interesting gameplay. It just falls down somewhat ATM because the priest's spell selection is a little dull, so she's been turned from a heal-o-mat into a buff-o-mat. That's easy to address just by giving her more and more interesting spells. I do know I often played with multiple priests/druids for this very reason. Not so much more healing capacity (I'd be out of other spells etc. by the time that ran out), but to get access to all the cool divine magic while still retaining the healing capacity. (I don't think rest-spamming has anything much to do with this mechanic BTW. It doesn't really affect it one way or the other; in both cases you need to rest when your strategic healing runs out.)

That's not the problem health/stamina is intended to solve. Priest as strategic healing resource, remember?

Edit: never mind.

I have a feeling that pressing on with a maimed character is going to be every bit has harrowing, or even more so, than doing the same with a dead one in BG. The dead are after all immune to dying again, whereas the maimed will die permanently with one hit. Quite looking forward to that actually. As to the XP, IMO it's too early to tell. A lot of us have made it clear that we have a strong preference for small, frequent XP rewards rather than large chunks. We may want to continue waving that flag. Beyond that, I don't think there's a lot that can change before release.

A high INT fighter will have more effective special abilities (Vigorous Defense, Knockdown etc), but will not have as high DPS in standard attacks. It will perform better if you make effective use of those special abilities, and worse if you don't or, for whatever reason, can't. This is because he'll do less damage per hit, but the durations of the special abilities will be longer. Cool, but I still don't understand what you find so difficult to grasp about this. Especially compared to the "abortion" that was AD&D2, with its two completely different multi/dual-classing mechanics with entirely arbitrary restrictions, some classes completely unable to even equip certain weapons or armor, hard level caps for nonhumans, or even DnD3 with feat chains and prestige classes with hard prerequisites so you had to--literally--plan your character advancement as far as 18 levels ahead to hit the prerequisites you want. How opaque and "gamist" is that? Deflection is like AC. Armor is like damage resistance. Interrupts are... interrupts: like getting hit while casting a spell. The only innovation of P:E there is that you get a degree of control over how good you're at causing them, and instead of a saving throw you have a stat called Concentration to roll against. You can't build a "light fighter" very effectively right now, but I hope that's going to change. To build a tank, you pump the defensive attributes at the cost of offensive ones, i.e. Constitution and Resolve (in the S&M system) for more hit points and higher deflection and concentration. Any more questions? (snip whine)

@MC ... I don't get it. This system is much more straightforward than any DnD edition. If you did a similar analysis of the AD&D or DnD3 attribute and combat systems, you'd get something that's every bit as intricate, probably more so. What exactly do you find hard to understand about it?

"Toys are tools to facilitate games." That, sir, is a damn good definition. I will keep that in mind.

I agree, wizards need more variety in spells, even at the risk of treading on the toes of ciphers, chanters and, to a lesser extent, priests and druids. (Priests need more spell variety too.) You're using the buffs wrong. This isn't DnD where you pre-buff until you're a Christmas tree. Use buffs situationally, and pick the right one for the job. Try this: max RES, kit your wizard out in heavy armor, and stand in the front line. Then use cone- and line-shaped spells for offense, and self-buff when the going gets hot. I've tried this and did not find the self-buffs wasted in the least. I don't see this as a bad thing BTW. Also there are a number of point and line-based spells as well. I tend to agree, although it's not fair to compare a L5 fireball to a L10+ fireball. The damage for a L5 fireball in AD&D is 5d6, which means a very tight cluster around 17-18 points. A sword-n-board fighter with a +1 sword and 18/50 STR would do 1d8 + 4 damage, which averages to 8.5 points. Which is pretty damn close to half the damage of the fireball. I.e., P:E seems very very close to AD&D in this respect. It may not feel like this because some of the beasties have relatively high DT and high Reflex, which lets them soak or avoid some of the damage. Which ones? I didn't think any of the wizard spells are all that unique or particularly interesting. They're entirely serviceable, but that's about it ATM. (Moar variety!) Disagree. I think it would make them OP early on, or else the /encounter spells would have to be nerfed to Cantrip level which wouldn't be much fun. We already have Arcane Veil. Won't happen in P:E. Josh didn't like it either. I think the idea is to populate your grimoires strategically, so you only need to switch if you've made a mistake.

Imma let you finish but Vampire: Bloodlines had the best XP system of all time.

The thing you're missing here is context. I'm sure Josh wants to design a game "where players are expected to look for optimal play and have fun in the process," but what you're missing is that in the context of a cRPG, these are always local optima. I.e., they're about looking for optimal choices within constraints players have, to an extent, set for themselves. "I want to find the best way to play with an all-wizard party." "I want to find the best way to play while role-playing a strict but honorable character." "I want to find the best way to play without pausing." Want evidence? Here's some. You're right -- the most efficient way* to play a RTwP game is to pause way more than would be fun. Since this is a fundamental feature of P:E, wouldn't you say that it's pretty strong evidence that Josh does not want to make the kind of game you think he wants to make, at least when it comes to P:E? I.e., I would, again, strongly recommend you stay away from P:E and cRPG's in general. That's not what it's about, and it would ruin the game for a lot of us if it were. (Also, you're using "hardcore" in a very different sense than it's used in the cRPG community. "Hardcore" cRPG gamers tend to play these games in intentionally inefficent ways -- by playing with smaller parties, intentionally handicapped builds, and so on. It's considered part of the challenge. There's a guy here called Stun who's about as hardcore as it gets. Ask him, he'll talk your ear off.) *if you assign zero resource cost to your time, as the player.

@MC: Be happy to. Might and Perception (and dexterity) make you do more damage. Constitution and Resolve make you last longer and function more effectively when you're under attack. Intellect and Dexterity makes your spells and special abilities last longer and affect more targets, and lets you fire them off faster. Simple enough for you, or shall I break it down ability by ability?

Can't tell if sarcastic. Nevertheless, I agree. You do have to be careful. That's not the same as not doing it at all however.

For DPS characters obviously DEX (and in your system PER) and MIG are highly desirable; for defensive ones, yeah, CON and RES. If this makes DEX and MIG or CON and RES no-brainers for particular classes, IMO the solution should be to add talents that permit either DPS or defensive builds within them. I.e., the tanky fighter or the hurty fighter; the glass cannon wizard or the armored frontline wizard. Rinse and repeat for the other classes. I do not dig the features in the character system which push you towards either frontline or second-line, like the ranged/melee base accuracy inherent to the class. Iron out these and the other problem sorts itself out too. Edit: what I'm saying is, what I especially like about the S&M system is that there is something every character would want on every ability. Everybody wants to do more damage, have more health, act faster, have longer durations, hit more accurately, and avoid being hit or interrupted. Adjusting the abilities means changing the distribution between these universally desirable characteristics, which means having to adjust tactics to make use of the strengths and get around the weaknesses. Which is the whole point of the exercise really. I honestly can't see why Josh would see it any other way.

Point out that it is a tough choice. More durations and AoE's are always desirable, and more defensive ability is also always desirable. If you're trading off one for the other, you need to adjust tactics accordingly. So my answer to his question "would you ever trade off INT for RES on a caster" is "absolutely I would, for example when building a front-line caster."

It's not a binary choice, Waterd. You can make a toy with more robust systems, and the more robust systems may make it a better toy. But toy-ness is a crucial defining feature of a cRPG. They're different in this sense from RTS's let alone multiplayer PvP games. I don't know if Josh wants to make an RTS or multiplayer PvP game, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't want to turn P:E into one, despite the accusations often leveled at him.

I believe they check the current stats, with bonuses. I am certain the CYA panels do.

Surprised druids are getting so little luurve. It's my second-favorite ATM.

Interestingly, many if not most cRPG's never even do that. There's not necessarily any victory condition, beyond "don't die until the main quest finishes." There's a main storyline you can follow and sometimes affect, some obstacles in your way that you may solve in one or several ways, and various characters in the game tell you what they want. Beyond that, you set your own objectives. What's the victory condition of Fallout 2? There isn't one: there's just a big ol' set of consequences to your actions. It's up to you to decide which constitute victories and which constitute defeats. I.e., again: wrong genre son. No games here, just toys.

If only you had seen it in the first build. This one is crystal-clear by comparison. It's being heavily worked on, and I'm quite sure it'll be a lot better when the beta finishes. It can. I don't find six characters particularly hard to manage though. There's an unlimited stash in which you can throw vendor trash. The inventory does kind of suck though, but not so badly it'll ruin the whole game IMO. I would slightly qualify that. I have had some fun in the beta, but only after fairly extensive fighting with the combat, due to the general lack of transparency, pacing problems, and balancing problems. It is progressing fast though; the difference between the first and second builds was already enormous. A few minutes? Awww. That's not the purpose of the beta. The purpose of the beta is to let you play for a few hours with a broad selection of systems in the game, and then give feedback to the developers on what should be changed, and secondarily to report bugs. Considering that you appear to also have pirated the beta, I've no doubt you'll pirate the real thing too. 'Cuz you're a real class act, son.

Just my 10¢ -- I prefer AoE/Duration on Int and Concentration/Deflection on Res. Reasons -- intuitive: while Duration would make more sense on Res than Int, Deflection on Int makes even less sense than Duration, i.e. switching them would be a (small) net loss in intuitiveness. Reasons -- mechanical: Concentration and deflection are both defensive/passive characteristics, while AoE/Duration are both offensive/active. I like the option being able to build a more active or more passive character by pumping one and dumping the other, and then adjusting tactics accordingly. Split the other way would make this more difficult. Admittedly Int would be dumpable for characters who don't do much with AoE or Duration, but that would be easy to solve by giving them more such talents, or increasing the effect on the talents they do have. A significantly longer-duration Knockdown would be a most tangible advantage. I.e. IMO switching Duration and Deflection would be a net loss both in intuitiveness and especialy mechanically, in terms of character-building freedom.