Cthulchulain

I picture an interaction with an apprentice or Biff the Understudy: Incertus, pulcher... uh, impediment? Fizzle... Manus, potentis, pyro, *hand lights on fire* OWW!

Telepathy is sadly too open-ended for a really satisfying treatment. I once played a mind-flayer in a Planescape campaign, in which I had to telepathically instruct our tiefling (masquerading as a prisoner-holder) how to carry out her side of the conversation phonetically in infernal, and wound up having her unknowingly flirt with the fiend we were interacting with. Ahh, P&P.

No, that's not what I said at all. Maybe that previous post should have said "no more arbitrary". But as much as my immediate reaction to the cipher description was "psionics", it was also to some extent "sorceror", in the sense of intuitive ability rather than studied ability. Could be wrong. That covers different mechanic, but you're concerned with the possible effects. Update 15 has this to say: "And what do the tomes contain? Instructions on ways to use one's soul to alter reality, to warp time around enemies, to make skin as tough as stone, to counter even the most powerful magic, to invoke balls of flame, bolts of lightning, gouts of acid, to conjure nightmares out of thin air." The only one of those that comes close to what's implied by the cipher description is the last, but we don't know if those are material "nightmares" or illusory ones. In D&D. Not necessarily in PE. Ditto Illusionist/Enchanter/Necromancer/Transmuter/Abjurer... you get the point. Edit: Don't get me wrong -- I love the versatility of mages in D&D and have never played a sorceror character because I felt straitjacketed (except to experiment with a failed munchkin svirfneblin build for IWD2). But the specialist mages of 2E were meh, in that they didn't have fundamentally different effects relative to a generalist, and after a few levels and a ring of wizardry what's 1 spell per day and -1 save penalties? Psions in D&D ultimately turned into mages with mana ITO what effects were possible. If there was a strict split on what arcane magic and psionics could accomplish that led to a large expansion in mind-affecting abilities rather than taking away charm from wizards and giving it to psions, I think that would be incredibly interesting.

Psionics != sci-fi. It's a fantastical effect that has nothing to do with levels of science or technology. It's like calling the Force sci-fi, which it's not. The division of magic into environment-altering effects (wizards) and mental effects (ciphers) is no less arbitrary than the division into arcane blasters and divine healers. It's specialisation of a school of magic, with the potential to have a much deeper treatment than vanilla enchantment spells. Your assumption that it'll just be "the same effect" is unfounded.

OK, appreciate your point this time. I had a think, and even the presentation of DC vs %, while arguably equivalent mechanically, emphasises different things. DC's are easier to describe ITO scaling, while % (w/o modifiers) is a bit more transparent as far as knowing how often your spells will work, but less easy to describe circumstantial modifiers on. Anyhow, guess you really need a dev to answer the details, but I'd be surprised if they're approached in a manner substantially different from D&D, so I don't think your fears of magic being useless in the bulk of situations will be realised -- the occasional monster with heaps of resistance may exist to keep mages on their toes, but everything else will have at most minor reduction and/or saves to reduce the effect. These guys aren't Blizzard, JE Sawyer != Jay Wilson Don't want to harp on the cooldown vs Vancian (false) dichotomy esp when the details are still murky, but the consensus is that within each encounter it'll basically be Vancian and JES has said that he wants there to be attrition across encounters, so there will be conservation of spells but my bet is on this working without one cast of magic missile losing a slot for the whole day.

Eminently sensible IRL, but http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NeverSplitTheParty

Um, how are these different? You generate a random number, compare it with another number (save DC or %) and the effect succeeds or fails. In both cases there may be mechanics to pierce resistance. But don't think the devs have weighed in on that bit.

The flip side of time limits (i.e. the world progressing even if you don't get your act together) is that there should be times when the world can't and doesn't get its act together by the time you have. General: "Ah, you're back from that scouting mission. Our oracles told us what you'd find and when you would return, and we've timed our battle preparations to the minute. The vanguard departs immediately!" Hmm, no. More like: General: "Well, we didn't expect you back so soon -- you're two days early! It will take time for us to modify our strategy based on the information you've uncovered. I'll have more instructions in a week." So there might be times when you'd need to ignore someone in need due to a more pressing concern, but also downtime when factions can't quite keep up with your efficiency and you can go do some exploring on the side. There could even be in-game months when nothing necessarily may happen (perhaps mutable if you discover something particularly significant). But how/whether this works would depend on what the overarching storyline is -- something more open-worldy about self-discovery vs solving the impending disaster. In short, quest completion triggers might not always need to be instantaneous, but given that some people want infinite time before stopping the eldritch horror at the city gates and others might want to do the game in a day, YMMV.

Happy with a range, but one thing that would be nice with hordes is more resolutions than "you kill them all". IE games had certain weak enemies freaking out and fleeing if you killed enough of their kin, but that could turn into hunting them across the map until you got a good shot off, or they cowered in a corner with no escape. If you can rout weak mobs (with experience, so it's not like you "miss out" on anything) that'd be a nice touch. Of course a less... forgiving... party might then just freeze them in place and cut the lot town. There should be some point at which even the weakest could overwhelm, though. A party of 6 attacking the 100 000 strong undead army in a full-frontal assault shouldn't be a viable option.

Just wanted to illustrate that martial arts don't need to be tied directly to culture. As for why armour and weapons, monks need decades of training to punch through armour, and the average grunt isn't going to have the means or inclination to spend half his life in a cloister. Hmm, or subverted: http://mistborn.wikia.com/wiki/Sazed Possible interpretation: Monk soul powers are internal -- affecting their bodies, rather than the world around them directly. Self-buffs to increase their strength, fortitude, speed etc. Doesn't have to be tied to being weaponless, and unarmed combat could be available as a monk specialisation rather than tied to the class mechanics directly. Maybe ability to amplify some effects (like the flaming fist thing) above what can be achieved with weapons (having to channel soul through the blade dissipates some energy). Seems like all the magic is being separated into different spheres, so this seems an appropriate one. Edit: Also, I think the kensai as implemented in BG2 would be much more better as a monk kit -- the flavour suits much better.

http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Danica_Maupoissant Nuff said.

JE has said that he wants items to have drawbacks at all levels -- leather is better for some things than plate etc. So "everyone wears plate" is viable but not automatically ideal.

The above sounds like it addresses the requests to allow fully self-made parties, but not at game creation. I wonder what the "over time" means. Intriguing. Good option to have, I'd like to see it. Sounds like it's intended to keep parties to scale to the pace at which you'd acquire new companions. Given that it's a merc hangout, there might be a monetary cost per extra adventurer. Maybe also level requirements or sth.

They've already succeeded.

Love the latest update! Pledge bump, and request title of "Lesser Evil of the Obsidian Order".

One thing that keeps popping up in comments for me is an assumption of mutual incompatibility between different options. Why is (long) cooldown incompatible with rest restriction incompatible with spell selection etc? Imagine the following concepts: 1) Two different rest mechanics + fatigue based on time w/o resting - Short rest to recover cooldowns of *less powerful* abilities, only usable when "safe" (e.g. when you could save in IE). Does not recover health, fatigue (maybe a bit) -- like taking a breather vs a night's sleep. - Long rest to recover health, powerful (daily) abilities, rest restricted to safe areas - Short rest advances game time with accompanying cons (fatigue timers advance, timed quests if any progress) Result: no tedious stand-spamming, rest-spamming penalised, you have the option of doing other stuff while your cooldowns progress (scouting, inventory management, intra-party dialogue). 2) Vancian-like spell selection with tiered cooldown regeneration of spell levels. - This is just my summary of stuff has already been proposed and/or (possibly inaccurate) interpretation of Josh's comments. Could be made to work with mechanic 1. - At appropriate times (short rest permitted?), option to reselect spells available per level. Casting is like 3E sorceror, but with wizard-like respeccing. No shut-out of same spell, tactical spell selection with option to tweak once first encounters suggest what is appropriate. Limited so long-term strategy is still relevant (x spell swaps per day?). - Cooldowns (and whether cooldowns apply, or long rest is needed) scale with level: a level 3 mage can recover level 1 spells on cooldown/short-rest, not level 2, while a level 11 mage gets back spell levels 1-3 on short rest/cooldown, but has to ration level 4,5 spells. Lots of ways to elaborate on this -- fatigue could reduce number of regenerated spells per level etc. But with a bit of imagination, maybe these things can be made into a non-tedious system that retains all the tactical/strategic interest.

It would be nice to have some options for knowing ahead of time (rumours, tracking ability, divinations) what one might expect to face, which would help prepare accordingly. An extended quest should be expedition-like in terms of planning, and with the expectation of not being able to conveniently return to town every time somebody gets bitten by a squirrel -- though not every one has to be like this. Even warriors should have to think ahead and prepare for what's coming, though that could be more gear-oriented (rogues choosing appropriate trap components, bombs?) than "preparing spells". That could be an interesting dichotomy, actually -- physical classes having "universal" skills but more dependent on the right gear, whereas casters might be able to alter their spell focus. Then surprise/mystery encounters would really be that, the first time anyhow. Though hopefully not abused... The idea of adventurers saying "we're off to kill... things... in a... place..." and blithely walking off with no clue what they're about to face seems a bit absurd. Extended adventures designed in such away that they are balanced, challenging and *most fun* to do in one go (maybe short rest mechanic) would be somewhat less metagamey, and the right mechanics could move the metagaming into the game.

It may be worth bearing in mind that spells may not be the only manifestation of "soul power" -- there seems to have been some indication (don't ask for citations) that non-caster classes can also draw on their souls to perform superhuman feats. 4e-esque per-day/per-encounter etc abilities could work for all classes (one aspect of 4e I personally like). IMHO a fatigue system as has been suggested (coupled with some resource) seems ideally suited for limiting overuse of abilities plus maintaining realism. No reason that couldn't be hybridised with some ability selection -- prepare spells to make them less resource-intensive to use. The 3e spontaneous conversion of spells by divine casters was also a neat mechanism that might have a place somewhere. But regardless of what OE decide to implement, I'm sure they'll provide a detailed lore explanation of why things work the way they do, and that's from an RP perspective the most important thing for me.