Epsilon Rose

Why do all of the upgrades need to get offloaded onto the talents system? That just prevents you from getting any of the tallents that would let you make good use of your now upgraded flames. Why not put a few of them on the abilities side?

Description: The game crashes when I try to enter the Black Hound in. Steps to reproduce: Attempt to enter the black hound in. Uploads: Your uploader's 1mb cap is to small for the save files (or even a zip of all of the files with best compression) and won't accept .zip, .dmp, .log, or .ini files. Here's a google drive link to the zip instead: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0LEiSl05KJjRkhCWkZwQU00V1U/view?usp=sharing

Bah. Don't give them priest spells. Priests already do that and they do it better and, besides, casting priest spells would interfere with them doing paladin things. Give them more ways to charge them selves or their allies or bursts auras they can use to create instantaneous effects. New things that can fit their own niche, rather than clumsily trying to ape another class. I suppose that's fair. All in all there's a lot of room for improvement with the class. My only concern with that suggestion is that any added abilities will likely only show up as feats you have to choose at level up. Really the class needs to progress naturally while still being able to choose offensive or defensive feats as well, in my opinion. This is true, but that's more of an implementation and system problem than a paladin problem. It feels like casters are a lot freer to advance their power than non-casters, largely because of which abilities become feats and what abilities are given for free or in their own progression.

Bah. Don't give them priest spells. Priests already do that and they do it better and, besides, casting priest spells would interfere with them doing paladin things. Give them more ways to charge them selves or their allies or bursts auras they can use to create instantaneous effects. New things that can fit their own niche, rather than clumsily trying to ape another class.

That really just suggests that the melee types also need to be fixed. Or, that they are both fine as is, kinda depends on how you look at it i guess. I personally think that all melee abilities should be per encounter though. And that wizard/druid spells should be balanced better vs each other. But I am okay with the amount of per battle/rest spells that casters get atm. The problem with that is there are a lot of other problems that you can point to for per rest mechanics. Resting doesn't have a substantial in-game cost. It's purely an out of game frustration, meaning you're giving the player the option of trading enjoyment for power, which is never a good choice to offer. It makes it hard, if not impossible, to balance encounters properly, because it creates an incredibly wide variance in how much power a player can bring to bear, beyond just differences in level and build. A player could spend none of a daily resource, an encounter's worth of power, or most of a day's worth of power on any given encounter. The final option will always easily overpower any encounter designed for the first two, but the first two might not be able to meet a challenge designed for the last and the same is true between the first two on their own. It doesn't actually add tactical depth to the game. Tactics rely on information, but you can't know the difficulty or number of encounters you'll face before your next rest; so, at best, you are essentially gambling when determining how much power you spend. Per rest abilities ask you to make decisions on the per-rest scale, but the game gives you know ability to act on that scale and, in fact, assigns no value to that scale beyond the recovery of those abilities. That is four reasons to not have per-rest abilities irrespective of their relative balance to per encounter and at-will abilities. However, I could also make arguments about the lack of active abilities for melee and options for casters who have spent/don't want to use their spells being a bad choice, because it minimizes engagement.

That really just suggests that the melee types also need to be fixed.

I'd also argue that D&D paladins, like most other classes in D&D, were very poorly designed and shouldn't be imitated. Having a classes main ability to interact with combat be so severely limited is silly. Particularly if they have basically nothing else to do once it's gone.

I'd argue that their biggest mistake was taking to much from D&D in general. The names are a bit problematic (though most of them are fairly archetypal even outside of D&D), but their are too many bad or half done mechanics as well. I'd point to per rest abilities and rests in general as the largest offenders.

A) You should not have to read the manual, which is not part of the game, to find in game information that should be available in game and could very easily be made available. B) You shouldn't have to look for spoilers to figure out a quest locks you into a faction, regardless of if those spoilers come from a forum or the game's own manual.

Honestly, SoL spells like petrify are just a bad idea in general. I'd rather cry "Remove It" than nerf it.

That's interesting. More generous than I'd normally be, but I can also see a lot of reasons to do it that way. I like that idea, it's basically what I suggested but I had the payment in quests while you have it in gold, but I'm not sure why the cost should increase with uses or why the uses should be limited to one time only. I suppose, theoretically, a player could respec their party so it's always tailor made for every major encounter, but that would cost a ton, even without increasing costs, for marginal benifits and I imagine it's a corner case. More likely, if a player respecs it's because they want to try something new, that might or might not work, or to correct a percived problem in their original build, which may or may not create new problems. I'd further argue that either of those two uses is liable to result in serial respecs, but those resecs aren't terribly different from the originall and should not be punished any more than the original.

But can they even fill that multi-role position? Will a buff/tank paladin beat a buff/tank chanter built for the same purpose? What niche can it fill that another class can't fill better? NPC paladins don't ge the bonuses for having a disposition.

While I agree the Stronghold could be better, and I really hope it can be improved with mods, I think it's meant to be upgraded only while you're committed to exploring the Endless Dungeon all the way to the bottom and have no other use for your money because you've basically beaten the game already. When you look at it under that light, most of it starts making more sense. I could be wrong, because we can't know the minds of the developers unless they speak them. But I think that's why the stronghold is the way it is... it's not really something you're supposed to invest in until you're in the endgame -- the Endless Dungeon. But don't a number of it's features (the taxes, and to free material upgrades) only function while you have new quests to do?

I beg to differ. I gave you my reason. I like paladins from a role playing perspective. This is a role playing game and choosing to like a particular class from a role playing perspective is a completely valid choice. I also happen to like Rangers, and my first PC happens to be a Ranger. My decision to like Paladins (and Rangers) has nothing to do with game mechanics. I liked Paladins in BG1 and 2, and in IWD1 and 2. And I still like Paladins ... for reasons that have nothing to do with game mechanics. And IMO why I choose to like paladins is every bit as valid a reason for doing so as some game mechanics reason. I prefer games like this for the role playing. I'm not looking to create a party of min-maxed OP characters and have no intention of judging any class from that perspective. It's a completely valid choice when deciding what to play. It has literally nothing to do with the balance or mechanics of a class. I keep seeing people bring up that this is a rpg as if that somehow negates the stats and abilities and all the other aspects of an RPG and only leaves you with the stories you tell. If your decisions and opinions have nothing to do with mechanics, then might I kindly suggest that you should not be in a sub-forum dedicated to mechanics in a thread that discusses mechanics. Nothing that has been suggested in this thread, nor any of the criticisms that have been levied, touch on the flavor of the class. It would have the exact same flavor if flames became an at will ability, a modal, 3 times per rest or was completely replaced by something else. And I would kindly point out that the subforum is doesn't include the word "mechanics" anywhere. No, but it does include Builds, Strategies, and Unity Engine, all of which have much more to do with mechanics than fluff. It also does not change the fact that this thread is solely about mechanics.

the keep poses a ridiculous difficult balancing problem for the developers. in a game with abundant copper/gold, making the keep produce copious amounts o' wealth for the player would be inimical to their overall design philosophies. sure, the player wants something for their investment in the keep, but rewarding with gold is bad. the keep could be an effective gold sink, but so far, players appear less than enthusiastic with the results. a gold sink is not a popular feature in single-player crpgs. get a largely cosmetic or illusory benefit from a huge currency investment works in an mmo 'cause conspicuous consumption is an exploitable social failing. what is the point o' such stuff in a single-player game, eh? likewise, the keep should not be providing enormous amounts o' additional xp, but it does via the bounties. am realizing that it sounds a bit silly, but the keep, ideally, should reward you with nothing, and make you happy with your nothingness. HA! Good Fun! It could also reward you with intangibles or things that change your power orthogonally. Here are a few possible ideas off the top of my head: Being able to directly access the resting option from the travel screen and the travel screen from anywhere in the keep. Possibly ditto for the merchants. This would allow you to skip loading screens, which doesn't effect AFFECT in game power in the slightest but would be an incredibly nice feature. Being able to leave a companion at a structure for a number of quests and respec them (possibly to varying degrees, depending on how long you leave them). This wouldn't change a hypothetical player's power, since they could have theoretically made any of those choices to start with, but it could let them correct early game mistakes or make the game more pleasant. It could also make it easier to try out new builds. Move enchantments from one weapon to another or strip enchantments from a weapon and salvage their components. This would let you experiment with enchantments more and put interesting enchantments on weapons you're more likely to use, but it doesn't actually give you anything new. Have the merchants take custom orders for a slight markup (I want a weapon with these enchantments and get me these ingredients while you're at it). This could, potentially increase a player's power, but at least they'd be paying to get the things. Training room where you can spawn monsters (who would drop no loot and grant no XP) to fight against and test new strategies. Some interesting ideas here. Not sure I like idea of changing the enchantment on an item beyond merely upgrading it. OTOH, the idea of custom orders is interesting. Don't particularly like the idea of being able to respec pre-made NPC's either. They should be made reasonably well in the first place. To me, this smacks of powergaming which I'm honestly not a fan of. Hell, in a game like this, if I had my druthers, I'd set some hard caps below which a character's stats could not go. Extreme min-maxing of stats in IWD2 always bothered me, because the idea of having a character running around with the intelligence of a ferret or a toad just seemed wrong to me, and still does. But if the devs are going to provide a mega-hard game mode, then I suppose that role playing concerns sort of fly out the window and the idea of "realistic" stats with it. Back to pre-made NPCs. A different way to deal with them could go something like this. As long as the # of pre-mades was small, what could be done is provide the character's scripted background, dialogs, and so forth. And have their class and race and so forth be fixed, but let the player select the NPC's distribution of stat points, skill points, and other abilities and talents. This would let the player customize the NPCs to be more to his liking. Having said that, this could seem like a lot of work for people who are really new to this sort of game. And I suppose that for that sort of person, you could also include traditional pre-mades as well. A training room sounds pretty cool. It'd be great to be able to test out strats for fighting mobs of ogres or vithracks, for example. OTOH, I'm not entirely sure how one would justify what amounts to a fantasy world "holodeck", except possibly through magics though I suppose that that's rather obvious. The first item sounds good, but I could see some people complaining about it breaking the immersion of moving around your stronghold. (Heck there was some poster complaining about the upgraded loot picking up feature of PoE, for crying out loud. Somebody actually wants to have to go pick up every single freakin' item that gets dropped after a battle? Wow.) Still, good stuff. Keep in mind that the respecs could be limited to talents only and even for the premade companions you'll be picking some talents that you might make mistakes on. Also keep in mind that there are completely custom NPCs available as well. I'm also not sure why replacing talents with ones you're more likely to use is automatically power gaming. I can understand why doing something like dropping stats to 3 would be power gaming, but how is "Kana, I hate that story. Stop telling it. Go spend a week in the library studying something else." power gaming or immersion breaking?

so... show me the classic old textbook from all the previous games that feature a cipher. oh, that's right... IT'S A NEW CLASS. gees. *rips hair out* egads, the comments are inane here. It's.. a psion or soulknife. Like.. what? Come to think of it, isn't one of the NPCs that shows up at your keep actually called a psion?

I beg to differ. I gave you my reason. I like paladins from a role playing perspective. This is a role playing game and choosing to like a particular class from a role playing perspective is a completely valid choice. I also happen to like Rangers, and my first PC happens to be a Ranger. My decision to like Paladins (and Rangers) has nothing to do with game mechanics. I liked Paladins in BG1 and 2, and in IWD1 and 2. And I still like Paladins ... for reasons that have nothing to do with game mechanics. And IMO why I choose to like paladins is every bit as valid a reason for doing so as some game mechanics reason. I prefer games like this for the role playing. I'm not looking to create a party of min-maxed OP characters and have no intention of judging any class from that perspective. It's a completely valid choice when deciding what to play. It has literally nothing to do with the balance or mechanics of a class. I keep seeing people bring up that this is a rpg as if that somehow negates the stats and abilities and all the other aspects of an RPG and only leaves you with the stories you tell. If your decisions and opinions have nothing to do with mechanics, then might I kindly suggest that you should not be in a sub-forum dedicated to mechanics in a thread that discusses mechanics. Nothing that has been suggested in this thread, nor any of the criticisms that have been levied, touch on the flavor of the class. It would have the exact same flavor if flames became an at will ability, a modal, 3 times per rest or was completely replaced by something else.

the keep poses a ridiculous difficult balancing problem for the developers. in a game with abundant copper/gold, making the keep produce copious amounts o' wealth for the player would be inimical to their overall design philosophies. sure, the player wants something for their investment in the keep, but rewarding with gold is bad. the keep could be an effective gold sink, but so far, players appear less than enthusiastic with the results. a gold sink is not a popular feature in single-player crpgs. get a largely cosmetic or illusory benefit from a huge currency investment works in an mmo 'cause conspicuous consumption is an exploitable social failing. what is the point o' such stuff in a single-player game, eh? likewise, the keep should not be providing enormous amounts o' additional xp, but it does via the bounties. am realizing that it sounds a bit silly, but the keep, ideally, should reward you with nothing, and make you happy with your nothingness. HA! Good Fun! It could also reward you with intangibles or things that change your power orthogonally. Here are a few possible ideas off the top of my head: Being able to directly access the resting option from the travel screen and the travel screen from anywhere in the keep. Possibly ditto for the merchants. This would allow you to skip loading screens, which doesn't effect in game power in the slightest but would be an incredibly nice feature. Being able to leave a companion at a structure for a number of quests and respec them (possibly to varying degrees, depending on how long you leave them). This wouldn't change a hypothetical player's power, since they could have theoretically made any of those choices to start with, but it could let them correct early game mistakes or make the game more pleasant. It could also make it easier to try out new builds. Move enchantments from one weapon to another or strip enchantments from a weapon and salvage their components. This would let you experiment with enchantments more and put interesting enchantments on weapons you're more likely to use, but it doesn't actually give you anything new. Have the merchants take custom orders for a slight markup (I want a weapon with these enchantments and get me these ingredients while you're at it). This could, potentially increase a player's power, but at least they'd be paying to get the things. Training room where you can spawn monsters (who would drop no loot and grant no XP) to fight against and test new strategies.

so... show me the classic old textbook from all the previous games that feature a cipher. oh, that's right... IT'S A NEW CLASS. gees. *rips hair out* egads, the comments are inane here. The class itself might be new, but the mechanic of "Build up points during combat to unleash special attacks" is not. It also fits into the archetypal rolls fairly well. It's a blaster with AoE and CC ability. It's also only 1 of 11 classes. Chanter is also technically new, but it's just a different take on the passive aura buff concept or a reskined bard, depending on how you look at it.

When you come down to it, flavor is a pretty bad consideration when it comes to class balance. Yes, you should have flavorful classes and, yes, you should play the class that you like the flavor of the most. However, that does not mean a class should sacrifice power for flavor, nor does it have to. A flavor full class is good and an effective, but boring, class is still boring, but an effective and flavorful class is the best. Paladins have some flavor, but they aren't very effective at what they do. They don't have a niche that they're best at filling and the way their powers work and advancement is handled means they can't be effective generalists in multiple niches either. This is important because, while players who are die hard paladin fans will play them regardless of their strength, players without strong feelings for paladins will have a hard time finding a reason to fit them into a line-up and even those die hard fans would, likely, have a better time playing with them if they filled a niche better or were better at being generalists. You gave a reason why you would choose the class, but it had nothing to do with the actual mechanics of the class. You didn't tell us what features you like over other options and how they fill that roll better than the other options (or how they can sufficiently fill multiple rolls well enough to free up other spaces). All you told us is you like paladins and dislike homogeneity as concepts. In a discussion about the mechanics of a class, this is not useful information, nor is it valid reasoning.

I mean it's too many re: how game forum structure has been done here for ages. The 4 forum format has been standard forever. PoE is a somewhat different beast and some differences/more fora have been added when needed, but it's unlikely the need (traffic or purpose) for 11 chr. build discussion fora is going to be enough to warrant changing that drastically.PoE is a special case of course (beta forums, patch-beta subforum) and of course ultimate decisions are above my paygrade, as Cant likes to say. I just find it doubtful. What makes PoE so unique in this regard? I found its classes to be fairly standard and their uses to be almost textbook.

How about a pinned index or a sub for mega/index threads?

Have you looked at paladin as a ranged damage dealer/support? If he's on the back lines, the other ranged types can benefit from his aura and his flames would benefit from the higher per shot damage of a gun. His high defence also means that, if something breaks through your front line, he can act as a backup tank for your squishies until your actual tank arrives. Actually, bards in 3.5 can be pretty good. What is the paladin's niche and how does he excel at it compared to other classes? Also, why is any critism or suggestion for change drama? I would consider your exhortation to be much more dramatic, though probably not rising to the level of actual drama.

I think a whole forum for each class might be a bit overkill. Some pinned threads for general questions might be a good idea. The best solution would be a more robust tag and filter system with some pregenerated tags and an auto complete feature; so people actually wind up with standardized tags rather than barb, barbarian, and Barbarian being three seperate categories. That way you could just filter the forum for all Barbarian threads or all Barbarian + weapon threads, effectively creating a subforum for any topic you're interested in.

Normally, manuals don't have anywhere near that level of detail, so it's pretty reasonable for people to not go out of their way to read it without being told in advance. It's also a pretty bad way to convey information, as a primary source, espesially given all of the ways they could have included that information in play. Edit: After a quick read through, the manual is also kind-of useless for these sorts of things. It gives you a brief description of the spells, yes, but it doesn't give you any of the specifics you'd need to actually employ them.