Captain Shrek

1) Is it different from traditional RPGs.: I am not sure. I am also of the opinion that different for the sake of different is not a great idea if that brings no benefits. 2) Stamina is not temporary HPs. They are not drained on attacks. 3) In a way this does prolong the day, but yeah, it is going to leave you with a choice: Shall I use up important resources like e.g. emeralds or XP to prolong it? Or today I have had enough and it is time to rest? That is the difference. You will have a tactical choice. And healers are a must have enen right now, except that they "heal" stamina. Which makes little sense as I pointed out. 4) It is not only semantics, although I would say that in a story heavy game semantics are important. It is also what the mechanics do to make the system rigid and repetative that bothers me.

Alright. Fair enough. But I assume that you find the reacson why a consumable stamina is tactical satisfactory. Right now the situation is that if you are "damaged" both HP and Stamina are reduced. Always. I am suggesting that this is not a great idea for two reasons: 1) Stamina measures the ability to perform amazing feats in canonical sense. When you are pumping adrenaline the effect of wounds would not harm your stamina in short period of combat (order of mins to seconds). On the contrary if you exaust stamina and still try to perform such acts that would be hard. 2) As HP is always drained when you are attacked and hit, and there is no way to heal it, it enforces only ONE solution. Rest. Which somehow magically cures everything from diseases and broken bones in 8 hours. Which is faintly ridiculous and enforced. Replacing this with stamina as a resource would make the entire process much more intuitive and make healing viable but not over powered, which I am guessing was the original reason why the HP/Stamina divide was put into place.

1) Why add then: Makes physical sense. One you are seriously exausted it takes toll on your body. 2) Priest is not a healing battery because he can not heal non stop like in DnD. His casts are restricted by the game. 3) It is tactical because it manages resources in a sensible way. You can actually make choices in this scenario to sacrifice one thing to gain another. HP/Stamina coupling you have no choice. You take damage. Period. 4) "I haven't understood." Gee. 5)" What is wrong with the current system?" It makes no sense in game and is degenerate.

I think right now the stamina / HP divide is not only confusing but also kind of pointless. It conveys no real meaning, as you can "heal" stamina but not HP. This makes little sense since stamina is also physical attribute. This simply acts to enforce a playstyle that is nothing but rest-spamming based on the HP of the tank. I would suggest an easy fix: Add healing magic back and to keep the component of tactics alive in the game use stamina is a conusmable resource instead. Make healing a bit difficult, like requiring resource cost to it, either XP or other non-economically-broken resource like emeralds or soemthing. This will allow it to meaningfully compete with resting and then players can rest easy knowing that the priest is not a healing battery after all. What to do to make that happen: Add stamina to HP as Total health. HP is the component that is NOT touched when you fight, but stamina is drained if you use speicial abilities. When stamina is finished your stats drop and you take penalties. HP is ONLY damaged if Attack score > defense && Damage > Armour. The advantage of this mechanics is that it is way more tactical, meaningful and useful all at the same time. Comments?

I am sorry but this is a pretty retarded way of doing it then. The easiest way would have been to simply make it damned hard to get: 1) Make the spell immensely hard to learn: Is actually reasonable as the kind of effect you need and the disinclination of people to spread it. 2) Make it ingredient based: And make that ingredient damed hard to find. 3) Make players pay XP for healing: Lol, yup. Like that's ever gonna happen... Instead if they made a HP/Stamina system, then I would sadly say that then the designers need a new set of frontal lobes.

Inns right now are magical. Broken bones? Curse of mummy rot? Rest here for 8 hours! All fixed! 1 silven coin only!

This was my suggestion against the regenerating health/stamina ages ago.

I have doubts: Let me explain. The current speed of enemy chars is too high for a reason. If it were too slow, the game would be dman straight easy. You would be able to run circles around the beetles and the lions and they would never be able to even scratch you, just like in NWN2. The problem is with the entire idea of simultaneous action and real time. In these categories the abilities than stun or slow are just plain over powered if the game speed is low. They allows stunlocking anything in place while party members pelt enemies with everything they got. Combine this with per encounter abilities and you get the perfect "degenerate mix". Don't belive me? That is exactly how you are finding the game easy when it is slow.

I personally feel that combat difficulty should not come from how HP laden/Armored the enemy is, but rather from how encounters are designed combined with how good the AI is to actually use the skills it has and interact with the environment. To be honest I doubt if there is enough effort into designing a good AI in any gaming enterprise so I would generally scratch that option out. The encounter design can definitely be done well though. To give an example of a reasonablely well designed game, one should think of the latest Turn based masterpiece, Blackguards. The game has amazing set pieces where you are strongly encouraged to interact with the environment to combat the odds. It really creates tactically interesting situations although not as often as wold be possible. People developing games should definitely take pointers from there.

Except that battles are n't hard. They are a custer****. There is a difference. The AI is crap, the beetles are Usain Bolting and the AOEs for spells are hampeting instead of helping.

I think the OP is talking about how to play the Beta without most bugs. Not about enjoying the game. There is no reason why someone should suffer through the process, if the pain can be minimized.

Sometimes games have to be designed to emphasize fun over balance. Whowoulddathot?

No the red on the portrait would still fill for Stamina damage The bottom is Health number, which would heal your stamina from healing spells / out of combat Not really, it's similar to 4E Healing Surges though I suppose. I don't mind the current mechanic but there's a lot of people that don't like it. The most important thing to keep is that there is no way to heal your strategical health resource, but the actual mechanic could change as long as that fact is kept. Actually in PnP DnD if you take damage and then rest, the amount you heal = 1 + Con modifier.

You mean like old CON from DnD? *Horror*

All I am pointing out that is that the duality between Stamina/HP is just bringing healing to a technical level of incrementing HP that is not HP .

I don't know dude. I see where you are getting at. But do hear me out. A physical fracture ought to hurt and make you weaker making your efficiency go down. In PoE it does not until your Hp drops to zero. Which would imply that stamina somehow counteracts the damage to the skull and the stamina healing spell also does that; which should reasonably mean that it is actually doing "healing". This is also not painkiller stuff, as that would only be temporary relief . Stamina healing gives you permanent relief (i.e. as long as HP>0) independent of time between two fights. So it is really healing you in medical terms. Now that would mean that either the lore is wrong OR that Stamina is just a mechanic without support from lore. I tend to think that it is the latter. Does that sound too bad?

My feeling is that MIght simply measures a GAMEPLAY mechanic called damage and not a real physical attribute. Sawyer wanted to streamline the system by taking away indirect physical attribute->gamplay attribute conversion like in DnD. So he invented "might". I assume that its oroginal role in DnD is now probably only played in dialogues. I wonder... :D In PnP if the chars encounter a heavy boulder the fighter makes a STR check to see if he can move it. Do chars make Might check in PoE? Or is this degenerate like lockpicks vs breaking doors ?

Did you just change your argument? never mind. Of course. If either drops to zero you do get knocked out. Back to my original point: HP is PoE just a second passive health bar that needs to go. May be replace with something like an injury system if the developers are so intent on forcing no healing magic for god alone knows why. Any one with half a brain knows that stamina also measures physical attrition. If the spells can cure that there is no reasonable argument why they can't cure injuries unless of course the developer is trying to prevent "degenerate" gameplay with tacked on reason.

I am unaware of any such thing. Is this silly mechanics really in???

I don't know what HP in DA was, but it didn't have much to do with the IE games. Your hp was fully regained after every fight, and as long as your HP > 0, without consequences, even if you had only 1 HP left after every fight, you could fight on with the same efficency endlessly. PoE is more "granular" in this, as you get your "injuries" (health damage) for every stamina loss, not only when you're knocked out. You can fight with one hundred percent efficacy in PoE as long as you have Stamina>o and no maiming. Just saying.

Stamina is absolutely HP as HP was in IE games or in most RPGs. Take Dragon Age Origins for example: You fight till your HP drops to zero and then you get knocked out with injuries. Guess what, HP regens after every fight there too... The only difference was that HP did not regenerate in IE games. HP in PoE games plays another role where it measures your ability to fight on and on after every encounter. Which as I was trying to argue is very very tacky. It is unnecessary addition that just does not make any contribution to the game. If the designer really wants to simulate some kind of model where the party is exhausted after an encounter there is the Injury mechanic, which could be more tactical: For example the Opponents can inflict certain kinds of damages which if not resisted would cause semi-permanent debuffs. This would make the mechanics much more active instead of the current two passive health bars which make little sense if any. Dragon Age Origins pulled that off quite well ages ago with their injury system. It is not exactly similar to what I am proposing but does create the feeling of combat-attrition without leading to ridiculous rest spamming.

It is hopeless to argue this. Please let's drop it.

You cant be objective about taste and factions is not the same thing as aligment. All those debates are about personal taste and/or preferences. Their is no right or wrong. This is one of those few instances where objectivity is in fact possible. They are just giving us more where there was less and it is not bloat like the 12 armours crap.

Actually Immortalis is pretty just objectively right: Obsidian did take a one/two dimensional system with just ALIGHNMENT and turned into multi faceted mechanic. That can only be an incline.

I wonder what aspects of the Updates are actually similar to the IE games. The description you provide is just a wrapper for a lot of possible directions that has nothing whatsoever to do with IE games. So I am curious. I wish some one would sit down and make a real list of actual IE features (not just tags like RTwP which are not IE specific) that got into the beta. I say this as someone who HATED IE combat/encounters outside of spellcasting btw.