PrimeJunta

Yeah, and reload until they fail their saves. :eyeroll:

The 'poll' in pollaxe comes from the same root as, say 'take a poll.' That comes from Middle English and means 'head.' See also 'poll tax,' a tax levied on all taxpayers equally, i.e., per head. So a pollaxe is an axe for hacking heads, whereas a poleaxe is just an axe on a pole, which is way less cool. Etymology, brah.

@Indira I certainly hope there will be "spike" difficulty in P:E -- but that has nothing to do with how areas are balanced overall.

@Indira: Every game has content designed to match its mechanics. Every single one. And also mechanics to match the content. It's a game of push-me-pull-you to get it right.

We demand that water flows properly downhill! Water flowing uphill breaks my immersion! In water!

Yep, @Pray, that's a much better idea. More class versatility, not less.

You're right, Hiro. My liking it was hasty. On further reflection I'm not sure I like it much at all.

@Hiro Yes, in the subsequent updates the fighter was clearly specced as a defender/tank. That's why I'd like them to go back to the original vision, which, as the quote I showed you, was clearly much more versatile than that: "Fighters are dependable and flexible, able to shift between a variety of attack modes that alternate between high damage, maintaining a strong defense, weakening opponents, and dealing harsh retribution to those who attack his or her allies ... while fighters are often thought of as being primarily melee-based, they can specialize in a variety of weapons, including bows, crossbows, and even firearms. They're unlikely to outclass rangers at their own game, but fighters can be almost as dangerous at a distance as they are up close." This does not describe the fighter as it currently exists, namely, a pure tank. I would like them to roll back to that original vision.

I was more interested in the ratio. 1:1 is punishing even if you've maxed both 1's.

I like this. One question though: will we be able to affect the health/stamina ratio in any way, e.g. via abilities? For example, I would assume that wizards have less health than fighters. One of the most fun wizards I rolled in the beta was an armored frontline wizard blasting away with those cones and lines. He would need higher health than your traditional glass cannon. Will it be possible for me to take this into account in character creation?

That's a shame. It was a bit of a staple tactic to sneak the rogue in the back, engage with the rest of the party, then de-stealth the rogue and backstab. That's currently hard to do because the rogue un-stealths with the party as combat begins, which means one of the nasties is likely to get at him. I am not enjoying the current stealth system. It lacks the tension of the original. All you have to do is not make some circles intersect, and you're safe. In the originals, stealth was always a risky proposition: you could be detected and then had to bugger off to safety. That was a lot more fun. Edit: saw your other post describing the goals for the ongoing work. Sounds like you're addressing most of these concerns, so yay. Re-suspending judgment regarding per-character stealth.

Looked it up. Didn't find it. I think it may have been Tim Cain in one fo the videos. Here's Josh's first post on the fighter, though, which is fairly close in spirit, and IMO the current tank is quite far from the class described here. Update #15: "Fighter - Fighters are men and women trained to use a wide variety of traditional weapons in brutal combat. They are often put in -- or put themselves in -- harm's way and are built to take an extraordinary amount of punishment. Though not traditionally as mobile as the monk nor as likely to dish out individually withering attacks as a rogue, fighters are dependable and flexible, able to shift between a variety of attack modes that alternate between high damage, maintaining a strong defense, weakening opponents, and dealing harsh retribution to those who attack his or her allies. Some fighters build up arsenals of feints, knockdowns, and special attacks rather than rely on the “slow and steady” approach. "And while fighters are often thought of as being primarily melee-based, they can specialize in a variety of weapons, including bows, crossbows, and even firearms. They're unlikely to outclass rangers at their own game, but fighters can be almost as dangerous at a distance as they are up close. Though it may not look like it to see them in battle next to wizards and priests, fighters are just as able to tap into the power of their souls to devastating effect: accelerating their attacks to a superhuman speed, striking foes with such power that nearby opponents are knocked off their feet, and maintaining a phenomenal endurance that allows them to rapidly bounce back from even terrible wounds."

Wel-l-l... I just started another BG1 playthrough and actually some of the fairly early fights are quite intricate. The adventuring party that tells you a cheerful hello when coming out the Nashkel mines on the other side, for example. That's not easily winnable with your basic trashmob tactic.

Good catch. Log a bug.

True, but I'm not sure the current system is an improvement. Invisibility and stealth were perfectly serviceable. The detection circles, especially visible, are a step backward. They take the thrill out of stealth. It becomes dull and predictable. As to magic invisibility, the reliability was kind of the point. You knew you wouldn't get detected until the duration ran out or you stabbed someone in the face.

This. The IE games managed selective invisibility. I can't believe it's insurmountable for P:E. A bad stealth system won't ruin the game, but it is an ugly wart.

I just meant to report that but you beat me to it.

Apparently Stunning Blows are becoming per-encounter and Clarity of Agony per-rest Huh. Then what are Wounds for?

@Indira I hate to break it to you, but monks are clearly OP at the moment. With two of them I've no doubt you're roflstomping all over the map. I doubt it's gonna be that easy once they're suitably nerfed.

I think the spider teleport may be a bug (heh). If it's not, it needs a better animation, like them dropping from the ceiling on a thread or something. I like the burrowing beetles, it makes them more interesting. Edit: Thanks for the beetle-swatting tricks. I get the message, I clearly suck at swatting them. Will try again with the benefit of your wisdom.

I like a good sandbox game as much as the next guy, but that's a subgenre, not a measure of excellence.

Blunt weapons, mostly. With the beetles I mostly use spells etc for CC rather than direct damage (except Minoletta's Minor Missiles -- crush damage -- on the wood beetles to take them out fast). That may be a mistake in this case. I don't find the difficult to kill, only tedious. One issue probably is, though, that I generally play with only one melee character forward, and if I go straight to the beetles, I don't have any ranged blunt weapons. So it's poor BB Fighter with his hammer or morningstar dealing all the damage. BB Rogue is fairly useless, and the casters keep them immobilized and debuffed, or the party buffed. Haven't tried the corrode spells. I expect they would help.

The beetles will be a walk in the park when Poison DoT is fixed. The stone beetles still take too long to clobber IMO. Too high DT or too many hitpoints. (There are ways of course but IMO a wandering monster like that shouldn't take special tactics to defeat. Brute force should work decently.)

I'd say it's somewhat tedious some of the time. In addition to Sensuki's excellent suggestions above, I'll point out two things -- * Some of the enemies clearly have too high HP. Even if you're doing most things right, it takes a quite a while to whittle them down. This needs fixing. * There are bugs related to DT which make this much, much worse. They can give enemies (or you) ridiculous DT, which means that combat turns into graze, graze, graze. Like trying to dig a well with a toothpick. None of the reasons for the tedium are fundamental; they're a matter of fixing bugs and tuning values. But right now combat in the beta isn't all that much fun, except sometimes. (So sue me but I've enjoyed finding different ways of making spider pudding.)

I honestly don't have a problem with encounter/monster variety in the BB. Quite the contrary really. Fighting the same beetles over and over does get old fast, for sure, even if you mix in the occasional wolf, but there's really a lot of different things here and they do feel quite different. The wolves, lions, and drakes are kind of vanilla, but a game needs vanilla monsters too, otherwise the wack ones wouldn't stand out. Not everything has to have a badass mofo special attack. Not even the wolves. The big swarm of different-sized spiders in the ogre cave are cool. The ogre is cool, although needs more powah badly; kind of anticlimactic as it is. The totes-not-shambling-mounds are cool, with pretty neat specials of their own. The cultists are cool and varied too. The cult boss makes for a nice climactic fight, if you decide to fight him. Medreth and Syfre are both interesting-enough encounters, as are the adventurers next to the egg. (Need better AI of course.) The syllable-soup things in the syllable-soup dungeon are also different and cool. So is the totally-not-mindflayer. Short version is, I quite like the monsters and encounters, although the difficulty does need tuning -- the beetles and perhaps spiders down a notch, the ogre and a few others up a notch. No complaints there, honest.