IndiraLightfoot

PJ: I feel just like Silent Winter here, this down here is the baseline for me: I just don't like big swaths of a CRPG getting predictable in one aspect or another just to fix a mechanical problem. Sometimes, you have to let balance go, just for the sake of gameplay, variation and nice surprises. Mind you, I still believe that those cities will be like Silent Winter describe them. However, I reckon all of the fights there will have their lowest level boosted. So, surprise fights will be like that party by the docks in the shadow plane version of Mulsantir or the late-to-the-party-annihilate-all badger in that barbarian lodge, so most of the fun and the variation in rhythm will be retained.

Pray: That will work too, anything that makes attributes more important than they are now! And your suggestion captures Resolve being "enduring pain" as well. Of course, a high Resolve could also counter (a little) some possible bad effects of fighting on low health.

Pray: Not a bad idea at all! I'd also like to suggest that the attribute Resolve would make you go on, despite bad "health", and still perform at 100%, so it could give some kind of boost to health as well, whereas CON should affect Stamina (now re-named to Endurance, acc. to Josh).

Labadal: That's not entirely true. I know plenty of backers, many of whom had followed the updates eagerly, who didn't pick that up. No xp per body count and objective xp were still interpreted as encounter/combat xp, skill xp, crafting xp, etc, being in. There are loads of loads of honestly surprised people over this, and we will see more each and every day.

I don't think that has anything to do with it. Again, fighters in AD&D got more health than most other classes as well, and barring ranged weapon cheese in BG1, that was because they needed it. I may be dead wrong here. But combat variety itself in the IE games was pretty fantastic, and one reason for that was that in one fight your frontline party members didn't get a scratch against an evenly strong foe or a few enemies. Some of it came down to good rolls, and some of it because of the skill of the player. In another, they took some damage. In yet another, they were almost dead. Am I alone here in thinking that kind of variation in combat outcomes was fab? I reckon on the contrary that the PoE beta missing any comparable combat system has a pretty big impact on the "feels" of combat and the fun of it. Please, never forget gameplay. Ask yourselves whether the combat is fun and varied enough.

Hiro: Yep! You got a point here. I liked it, since I instinctively saw a potential for more variation between classes, but I somehow missed that it locks in class types even harder, at least if they are kept as one trick ponies.

[overly concerned mode] Recall the Josh quote on city encounters being designed as harder, since resting (inns) are easy access there? Isn't this health multiplier yet a fix to prop up the rest mechanics system first and foremost? Infinitron put the words right into my mouth: "fighters will always be taking much more damage than other classes due to their 'lack of flexibility'." Are such huge health pools really needed? Or are they symptoms of fighters always taking a little damage (instead of the old system of a few hits and quite a few misses), so there is some damage/health-ratio inflation going on? Changing how "to hits" work and how damage is dealt is perhaps easier than shoehorning the system into some over-complicating health, endurance and resting cycles? EDIT: Btw, I'm actually surprised how fast combat encounters are resolved in BG:EE (playing it now) compared to PoE. And obviously, the excitement, the "to hit"-roll is there at the forefront. Will my character hit or not? The swish-swooshing in the IE games (and in NWN1+2) is pretty rare in low-level playing (unless you try to take on too powerful foes, but then you'll die in seconds), it rather becomes slightly more prominent at higher levels, often an armour/protection race behind it all. [/overly concerned mode]

Sensuki: Most of us want more class variety, not less, that's for sure, heh! I see the point you guys are making, and this system could very well lock some classes even more into one single role, which would be sad. But, and this is a big but, if Josh & Co really will diversify for instance fighter, ranger and rogue, into at least ranged weapon roles and melee/engagement roles, this health with multiplier system could be good news. Imagine a really health-heavy fighter at the back, specializing in crossbow. Cool, huh? Or a slightly helath-deprived damage dealer rogue assassin at the front. Then it becomes a smorgasbord of options.

Pray: Yeah. I agree 100%! I was tired when I wrote that. Look closely and it says "one of its roles". I should have typed in one more sentence: "And then please add a melee ranger with light armour and no shield, perhaps two weapon fighting specialist, as an option."

Josh recently wrote that the Health/Stamina is being changed right now. Stamina will be renamed into Endurance, and Health will become a class-based variable, instead of static. J.E. Sawyer, on 11 Sept 2014 - 05:46 AM, said:

And it's basically a Lego MMO. He figured out a winning formula before Lego Group did, and I'm sure someone over there is annoyed they didn't think of that sooner Wasn't there lego games before? I remember that I've seen such "build whatever you want" stuff before Minecraft. Yes! In a way. There were themed Lego builders, like a knight and castle theme, a city traffic theme, etc. And there you could put out a few moving objects, build your own houses, and so forth, but there was nearly no gameplay (often that occurred in the tutorials). Humanoid: The first times I played Minecraft, I was actually a bit scared. I played survival mode and on hard. I actually play horror games and Dead Space and stuff pretty fine, but it was almost scarier than that. And there was also a psychopath running around in Minecraft alpha/early beta: Herobrine. *shudder*

It has always been like that as far as I know. In my very first playthrough, I leveled up after killing the adventurer party guarding the drake egg (which was after cleaning the spider's cave). In fact, I didn't even realize there was no combat XP because of that. I didn't talk to the pig farmer the first around, so I went there without having activated the quest during the last patch BB.

This is all I want for a fighter - versatile with all kinds if weapon setups, including ranged ones, and able to specialize in all those fields. The ranger can keep one of its roles as ranged beasts, and speaking of which, they have their totemic bond with an animal companion, wilderness lore, tracking, survival, etc.

Hammer time!

Nice find, Sensuki!

I sure do. If I create all party members myself, I want max freedom when making those role-playing characters. "Whatever background story I can come up with" >"Each and every self-rolled character is a mercenary or a money-hungry opportunist." I reckon, my idea makes sense. It's even called "adventurer's hall", not "adventurers for hire", hehe.

I see. Fair enough. I will start out my first playthroughs, using the companions, so this is for laterz. Perhaps another possibility would have been to restrict the number of possible self-rolled recruits at the first town, and then raise that number slowly as the player reaches the other adv hall points in the game, more or less in sync with when the OE-made companions become available. RPG-wise, I find it a bit contrived that you need to pay them to join you. That's a new feature.

D) Haggis is of ancient roman origin, and it's first mentioned in a text from North-West England.

That's good news for me, then. Only time I really used an active ability after finally having received two wounds was some electric strike on that ogre. Otherwise, I just use that speed passive. It's a great way to intercept enemies with monks.

I knew it all was too good to be true. Still, I had my old dream of a party with six monks, and I must say it's dead-easy to play with two already, so that dream's alive and kicking. EDIT: They were both just using their bare fists, though. Isn't that at least a little impressive? I mean, they punched an ogre into minced meat.

It also hits that sweet spot of having all ages as a target group: children, teens, young adults, middle-aged parents, even older peeps. It's overwhelmingly cute, creative and immersive.

Or, rather both. I can't have 4E without my beloved Forgotten Realms!

So have I, and I agree, to an extent. However, I must add, that all the books and scenarios and everything that's been released, I have plenty of them, once you get used to the cataclysm, a few dead gods, and all the time that passed, it's a treasure trove of fantastic stuff. It's just that the mechanics tend to lead to banality and locked approaches to things. EDIT: I ended up inserting 3.5 instead, and translating everything back to it as I went along.

Gfted1: I can now confirm that in V278, you do get subquest xp. So far my record is two subject xp incidents during one quest.

All the complaints about dog-piling, and I never got the hint. I cleared the entire Dyrford Crossing map, the encounters in the village, and went into the ruins, cleared half of it, with one single tactic: dogpiling each enemy, one at a time, with all my characters except BB rogue (firing arquebus, and BB wizard, now using Lead Spitter). It requires about the double amount of resting but no skills or tactics whatsoever. It is probably tedious, but the progress I'm making is pretty outstanding.