Larkaloke

One way or another I intend to continue the party I finished the game with. Since that was all hired adventurers other than the main character, because I prefer playing with a party of my own characters, I'll recreate them in the new game instead of importing them if I have to... but I really hope that, even if it's not currently planned, we'll end up being able to import the whole party. If I can't, I'll just pretend that's what happened as best I can, I guess.

Money was a big issue for me early on, but that's because I go with the "create my own party via hiring adventurers and hire a new one any time one dies in a fight" model, which takes a large percentage of money to keep going towards the beginning. That was also when I was still buying up stronghold fortifications and such. After about halfway through the Endless Paths and having completed several other quests, Raedric's Hold included, that started to turn around. By the time I went for the White March (nearly finished with the main game) my party had so much money they couldn't have spent it all. I think that's fairly typical, having some trouble affording the items that one wants and all in the beginning of the game but ending up with ridiculous quantities of money by the end; at least, that seems to be what usually happens to me in any RPG.

I did find the travel time to and from Stalwart rather odd. The first time it says that it will takes weeks -- and the narration backs that up -- but after that, as far as I could tell, it actually did take the stated 24 hours (although I didn't have much time critical going on, since I did the expansion as the very last thing before the final area). Maybe there's a cap on the amount of time the travel window can display, so it just maxes out at 24 hours? Assuming I'm wrong and it actually does take weeks each time, mind; otherwise the script overwriting the travel time the first time would seem a likelier explanation.

Yeah, I really hope this is possible. I don't know how many people would've completed the game with one or more hired adventurers, but I'm guessing it's a fairly large number.

That would eliminate much of the point of making your own companions to me, and probably to a decent number of other people. If one wants characters with a backstory that one didn't decide on, and who will say things of their own accord, why not just take the NPCs? This idea would fill a completely different niche to player-created characters, which I believe are generally employed by people who want to create more than one player character in the game. If you want to decide that all your hired adventurers have lost their tongue or what have you, you can already do that. Nothing stopping you. Also, while I admit this may not be the norm, I've run up against the eight character limit numerous times in PoE (mostly due to the game not having quite realised that earlier characters were actually dead). If one isn't going to reload when a character dies and is instead going to hire a new character, that's going to end up with probably a good deal more than eight characters by the end. I very much hope that the extra companion creation will work much the same in the next game. If anything, I'd rather see a large limit on number of adventurers created, and some way to add more characters at the beginning of the game (which would be quite useful if one finished the first game with a party of hired adventurers and wants to keep those same characters, for example).

I happen to prefer the artstyle to that used on many newer games, and believe that it works better for RPGs -- especially party-based RPGs -- than modern 3d graphics often do. I also think that 'dated' is a foolish term to use to describe an art style or indeed anything that is primarily judged on (inherently subjective) aesthetic merits. Going by that definition, they may as well decry every game as having a dated art style, because it inevitably will become older and thus 'dated'. Artistic merit is considerably more important than rather or not an art style is the newest thing, and use of the term 'dated' (even aside from the other problems with it) doesn't reflect that. I find that Icewind Dale's graphics have held up very well, for instance, but many at-the-time bleeding edge 3d games haven't held up so well. Painted backgrounds are pretty timeless. If they're good, they'll stay good.

It is an overall minor complaint, but I always miss being able to name saved games when I can't. It's much easier to keep track of where you are and what you're doing if you can name them. It also leaves a more interesting trail when you're looking back on a certain time playing through the game.

1. Not only do I quicksave after doing just about anything, I also keep a long (often very long on the first playthrough) list of saved games with supposedly witty or cunning titles that don't actually tell me particularly much about what's going on. Inevitably, many of them will be jokes that I will not remember when I look back on them. It's part of the fun, somehow. (Assuming you can name saved games. You can name them, right? I don't recall anybody mentioning it for certain.) 2. Despite this large number of saved games that I will accumulate, I will not reload unless absolutely necessary (as in, can no longer progress, or all party members dead). The saved games are mostly insurance, and to look back on fondly. 3. I will steadfastly refuse to find help if I'm struggling to progress in a plot or solve a puzzle, until at least the third time I've played the game. 4. After so many years of playing Infinity Engine games with player-imposed restrictions, I'm not sure I'll be able to stop myself from doing that the first time I play through Pillars of Eternity. It might feel weird. I won't go full on no-reload the first time, at least. 5. Do nothing that my character wouldn't do, do everything that they would do, even if this results in skipping massive portions of the game or in extraordinarily bad decision making (I can always see those areas/outcomes later with other characters, anyhow). 6. Read every item description, every book, every journal entry, and anything else applicable. As well as all of these.

I'm interested enough to keep an eye on it, but only very cautiously optimistic at this stage -- with a dash of pessimism ready at any moment. I did, in fact, like both Neverwinter Nights and Temple of Elemental Evil as well as Dragon age: Origins (albeit none of those so much as, say, Icewind Dale or Planescape: Torment), so if turns out being like one of those I'll probably go for it. I'm not wild about 5E, but it's far, far better than 4E -- I wouldn't touch any CRPG made with 4E -- but if they're changing a bunch of the mechanics, that might not matter. Talk of cooldowns makes me suspicious. It always does. DA:O has thus far been the only game which I could stand the combat of that had cooldowns, but at that it had serious issues and the cooldowns were one of them. In the end, so long as it has a decent amount of story and roleplaying freedom and actual full character creation, I'll probably get it. There are few enough CRPGs that come along and look at all promising to me. I'd rather be choosier, but the pickings are still too lean. If the DM client is good, that'll redeem a lot of potential flaws as well; 1-4 players is, for me, actually probably more than I'll play with anyhow, so that's not a problem for me. Yeah... I'm not forming any sort of definite opinion, even preliminarily, until I see something about at least character creation and basic mechanics. The teaser and screenshots look good at a glance (I clearly didn't take sufficient time to analyse the trailer, since I missed basically everything people have pointed out already), but of course they will. That's their point. Eh, regardless, I'm at least glad that more people are trying to go for isometric RPGs again.

It depends quite a bit on the type of game for me. I don't outright hate multiplayer, surely, but I have a preference for singleplayer. I'll generally be leery of a game which I can't play singleplayer, but not one I can't play multiplayer. It also depends heavily on the type of multiplayer experience. LAN multiplayer is always cool by me. MMORPGs never are, and everything else falls somewhere in between. If we're talking, say, shooters or strategy games, it's nice to be able to play against real people. Multiplayer is a plus. I actually enjoy playing against the computer generally as much as playing against actual players (I can play against the computer whenever I want, and there's no expectation of me talking in game, and I don't usually like doing that) even in those cases, but the option is a good thing. I like LAN multiplayer for roleplaying games. I enjoy playing through Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, and so forth with certain people (my brother and I have always had a lot of fun with LAN games, and then the occasional friend). I don't like any other sort of multiplayer for RPGs in general, although Neverwinter Nights I think had a good idea there -- it's just not so much my cup of tea. I'm not enough of a people person to want to play with a whole bunch of people I don't know for long periods of time. MMORPGs always fail, to me. They have some promise, or would, if people actually roleplayed in them... but they don't, and it's just a bunch of people running around with silly character names shouting about what loot they've got for sale, the plots almost never work with that many people, and then the mechanics tend to be of a sort I don't like anyhow. There are ways I think a MMORPG could theoretically be cool (massive player organised battles, for example), but it would have to have a really great community and a sufficiently loose and player-driven, changing main plot. Generally though, I have to deal with masses of strangers enough in day-to-day life, and I don't need that in my gaming as well. I do enjoy LAN gaming with a few friends, or my family; I'm rarely in the mood for more than a few FPS matches against people as a whole.

Baldur's Gate is the only game I'm playing steadily at the moment, with a no-reload quest near the end. If the party should survive that, I'll go on to Baldur's Gate II. I had been playing Dragon Age: Inquisition, which didn't have quite as many or the same problems as I thought it would, but I finished that last month. Also still slogging my way through Mass Effect 3, because I prefer to finish games once I start them, even if it's making me grit my teeth fairly often. There's a distinct possibility I'll eventually give up on that one, though. I'm also planning on picking Rome II: Total War up again, having waited (hopefully) long enough for it to be patched to the point that it's not crashing every fifteen minutes. On that note, I'm still playing Empire: Total War every now and then, having not yet actually finished a campaign (the period simply doesn't appeal to me particularly much, nor do guns in strategy games, so it keeps getting shunted aside for other games). That's about it. I keep meaning to pick up Fallout again, but I haven't yet, and I keep meaning to try The Witcher (it's sitting on my hard disk, anyhow), but I haven't yet. I'll leave 'em until after Pillars of Eternity. Edit: Oh yeah, and as usual, Unreal Tournament 2004 and rogue as the mood strikes me.

In a perfect game, one might get not only a tight story and carefully crafted content but also infinite side content just in case. I probably wouldn't use that side content, or not very much of it, even if it were there. As it is, one usually has to choose between the two, and I far prefer the first. There's nothing quite like a nice, hand-crafted dungeon; volume does not make up for lack of quality. In short, I am happy with the way it is. Every game that I have ever played which has so-called infinite content (to me, it more often seems that the real content is actually even more finite than usual, as I'm not usually fond of the randomly generated stuff) has not compelled me to keep playing after the main storyline -- whatever that should happen to be for the character I'm playing -- is over. I'll pick such games up again in order to play expansions, if those look interesting, but that's the same for games that definitely end. I don't wander around in the world after the game is (to me) over. If I touch the procedural content at all, and whether or not I do depends on the character I'm playing, it'll be as side content during the game. I am all for sequels which let you import the character, especially when they let you keep the same level (it usually comes of very strangely if they don't) and expansions. I think you get more high-quality content that way than with a lot of largely random side content. Some random encounters are fine. I liked the random waylayings of Baldur's Gate. I'm leery of respawning, though; it's too often done in a rather questionable way. Procedural quests are an intersting idea, but are not yet to the point where they seem like anything but random filler. I suppose if you're going to have lots of filler sidequests they're a good way to do it, but I'd rather have a single really cool and unique sidequest than fifty generic-feeling ones.

I would prefer to get everything at the same time, because I strongly prefer to install games from disc instead of downloading them, and I don't mind waiting a few days. My internet connection is faster than it used to be, but it still takes much longer to install from the internet than it does to install from a disc. That said, the GOG download wouldn't be too bad since it doesn't have the problem of having to open up some distribution service every time you want to play the game, and I certainly understand why people who live farther away wouldn't want to wait weeks to get all of their stuff. So, while I would personally rather have it all in one shipment, I won't be at all upset if option #1 ends up winning.

I'm not sure. It depends on what character concept I have in mind at the time, the portraits I have on hand that might fit that concept, and whim of the moment. The problems that occasionally keep me from playing female characters in games (silly armour, voice acting that's annoying to me or doesn't fit the concept I'm thinking of) aren't going to be a problem here, so for that reason female is slightly more likely than male. Of course, I am planning on making heavy use of the Adventurer's Hall, so whichever one my main character is, I'll certainly have at least one or two characters eventually who are the other as well.

I intend to start playing the day it comes out. The only two ways I can see myself waiting to play the game are if I end up being too busy that week (unlikely, but possible) or if the game has serious enough problems that it won't run in a playable state on my computer (also unlikely). Minor bugs don't usually bother me, and I doubt I'll have the patience to wait for the first patch, so diving in is the way to go.

There's really only one thing that makes a good or bad RPG in my opinion, and that is how successful the game is at allowing you to create and play a wide range of characters with very different personalities. To be sure, there are many other considerations for whether or not it's a good game, but I count that separately. I tend to judge RPGs on three separate issues: how well can I make and play whatever character I want; how good are the plot, the story, the characters, and the world; how good are the mechanics and the actual gameplay. While I certainly value all three, the first is the most important to me, followed by the second, and fairly distantly by the third. I can enjoy a game that is very good at the first two but terrible at the third. Not so the other way around (assuming it's ostensibly an RPG at all, of course; if it's a shooter or possibly an RTS or something, that's a whole other kettle of fish). 1 -- The problem with NWN 2, and indeed NWN and KotOR and Kotor II, wasn't that it was difficult to figure out how to make a really good character -- it was that it was actually impossible to make a really good character due to the absurdly small point buy pool. Tons of options don't necessarily make things better, it's true. 3rd edition D&D has ended up with far too many classes and feats and races, in my opinion, and I ignore almost all of them when I play. On the other hand, variety is important. One needs to be able to differentiate their characters from other characters. 2 -- It does make more sense to design a computer game with new rules from the ground up, unless you're specifically trying to emulate a pen and paper game, I agree. That said, I think that 2nd edition D&D (and even 3rd edition D&D) work better as a CRPG ruleset than some that have been designed from the ground up for computer games. A ruleset for pen and paper is far less likely to fall into some of the common pitfalls of CRPG systems (absurdly wide number ranges, for instance). 3 -- Fair enough. No particular reason not to. 4 -- Really, hit chance, damage deflection/absorbtion, and damage taken should be three entirely different things that are not necessarily related to each other at all. Hit chance ought to be dependant not only on the character's skill but also on the opponent's skill at parrying, damage deflection/absorbtion should be entirely dependant on armour and interact with attacker's weapon, and damage taken ought to depend more on precision and where the character was hit rather than strength and the sheer power of the hit. Nobody should have particularly many hit points (or the equivalent there of). Crippling wounds and mortal wounds should be possibilities. All of this would be complicated to deal with, but easier in a CRPG than in a pen and paper game, as the computer can of course keep track of and calculate things better than any GM. Well, that's what I'd want, anyhow. I'm sure there are many who disagree; such is the nature of preference. 5 -- I disagree here. There are two main problems with random equipment, to me: the first is that it almost always means that there is very little unique or interesting equipment, and I like to find such things; the second is that I prefer for it to make some sense where you are finding things. If my character kills a bandit chieftain clearly wearing plate armour and carrying a glowing bow, I hope and expect to find plate armour and a glowing bow on his corpse, not a halberd and leather armour, no matter how cool that halberd and leather armour may be. It matters less for equipment that's found in crates and such, but sometimes random equipment can get weird there as well (oh, so this ancient sealed chest found in the tomb of a necromancer-king contains... a cool sword usable only by paladins?). 6 -- I've yet to see a crafting system I like. They usually err either on the side of crafted equipment being more powerful than everything else, or crafted equipment being nearly useless. Not sure what a better solution would be, though. 7 -- Yeah, I tend to agree here. The Drakensang example is a decent way of doing it, although really any system where you have a level and XP, and can in some way spent points/a pool of something to increase a variety of skills tends to be good by me. 8 -- Yes. Level scaling is annoying. I hate it. There's no sense of change, and it feels as though the world always keeps exact pace with your character(s) no matter how much they learn. It's very strange when you think about it. You also never get that feeling of running into something that's completely above your head, which is a feeling that I like to have from time to time in a game. 9 -- I agree with this... assuming that you're speaking of NPC group members. Those should befully realised characters that interact as much as reasonably possible with your character and the world around them. However, I also want to be able to make my own characters and be left to give them whatever personality I want. I get bored of the NPCs, if indeed I even wanted to take them along to begin with. 10 -- Yep. 11 -- Probably don't have to worry about that too much in PoE, considering Obsidian's track record so far, but I agree. If there is a choice, it should be a significant one. That said, if there is no in-game reason for it to be a significant choice or to be an obviously significant choice, it shouldn't be. Not everything choice needs to be fraught with deep consequences. 12 -- I'm not really sure that I could disagree more, here. What I want out of a stat system is the ability to create a wide variety of characters -- that's what I want out of every RPG in terms of character creation, after all -- and point buy systems almost always hamper this. They almost always do not allow you to create a character with any significant statistical flaws, and they do not allow you to create a character who has a high stat in very many things at all, both of which are things that I often like to do simply for roleplaying purposes. Take NWN, for example; your fighter really must have a decent strength and constitution. Ideally, they would also have a decent dexterity. You're never going to be able to even get all of those three stats up to being good with the point-buy system, so good luck actually putting points into anything else if you happen to feel like playing a particularly intelligent, wise, or charismatic fighter. If you're trying to make a character in a class which relies on more ability scores, such as a paladin, you're just flat-out screwed. If you want to play an actually significantly foolish, dumb, uncharismatic, weak, clumsy, or frail character -- rather than simply ever-so-slightly below average -- you're also out of luck. I'd rather spend a lot of time re-rolling to get a pool I can work with, or just take the roll and go with it, than have to struggle against the D&D point buy system. Granted, not all point buy systems are that bad, but still. There are better ways. 13 -- Yeah, interesting settings and good stories are indeed good. I don't think we have much to worry about in that department, here; Obsidian's usually pretty good at these things. That said, "ancient evil threatens the world" can be a good story, even if it isn't an unusual story. A story doesn't have to be unusual to be good. However, games in general could use more variety in the stories they tell. 14 -- Eh, yeah, if it's there it should be good. I'd rather just control them all, personally, but it should at least be good enough that they don't do something utterly bone-headed while you ignore them for a moment. Good enemy AI is more important to me. 15 -- Eck, achievements. They're annoying and useless. 16 -- Certainly agree here, and again, we don't have much to worry about in this case. PoE's definitely going that route.

I have essentially never made use of kiting in any Infinity Engine game (I say essentially never, because I can recall no instances of doing it, but it's possible that I have in one or two fights long ago and forgot about it), and I have played through all of them many times specifically ignoring my metagame knowledge as much as is possible -- including and, indeed, especially BG and BG II -- which is fairly completely, since I'm generally good at ignoring player knowledge. It's entirely possible to play all of the games that way, and indeed, entirely possible to win them all even with doing a limited reload quest at the same time (no reload is dicey that way, but still possible). I've actually found myself having to rely on kiting only in modern games with more action influences. I suppose I can't rule out that I'm simply worse at those games, having put less hours into them, but I honestly think that they often end up with worse game mechanics and encounter design. As far as these things go... They are all things that I either like or am, at worst, neutral about. Well, except for pathfinding. I think we can all agree that the pathfinding often sucks in IE games (often sucks in more recent games, too, but that doesn't mean that it was good in the IE games). Not being able to intercept a moving enemy is also clearly a flaw. Trapfinding I sometimes really enjoy, and sometimes am not particularly fond of. I like it in dungeons like Durlag's Tower and Watcher's Keep; I'm not so fond of it when it's random traps in the middle of the woods. I'm not entirely certain why that is, but there it is. I don't mind save-or-die spells or so-called win-or-lose spells (both in face to face games and in computer games, I've found that the efficacy of these are often exaggerated). That said, I'm also not particularly fond of them. I can take them or leave them. I'd rather have a variety of spells available, but if that can be achieved without the presence of either of those types, I'm just as happy. I actively enjoy permadeath. It's something that I really miss in games that don't have it. Granted, part of this is, I am sure, due to the way in which I am most fond of playing -- with an entire party of my own characters, ignoring resurrection, and creating new characters whenever I lose one -- and that's probably not something everyone does. I also find that it lends more weight to difficult encounters by raising the stakes. If your only options are "win" or "reload", well, that's mostly just some annoyance and lost time if you lose -- but if you have "win", "reload", and "lose one or more party members", that gives some extra incentive to strategise better. I do, however, concede that this is probably best as an optional thing for harder difficulty modes, because I know that some people get annoyed by losing characters (especially NPC party members, I guess). The weapon proficiency system has flaws, but I like it better than some other proficiency systems out there. I suppose all in all I'm pretty neutral on it. It's not very close to my ideal sort of system, and I've never been fond of the somewhat arbitrary weapon restrictions in AD&D. I haven't got any time in the P:E beta yet, since I've been too busy to devote sufficient time to really offer in-depth feedback on it, but it sounds as though most if not all of the things that I do like most about the IE games will be either always present or available (I'm surely not going to be playing on any difficulty setting without permadeath, will definitely be making extensive use of the Adventurer's Hall).

I think that it's a great thing to have both options, and I'm glad to see that they're working on the solid GUI. I myself strongly prefer a solid GUI, but I can see the argument for the other kind as well; it's simply not to my taste, and most of the potential downsides of a solid GUI don't bother me. I am not going to be looking much at the pieces of the game that can be seen around the movable UI bits anyhow, so I'd rather have those somewhat awkward looking gaps covered up with something. I'm also very fond of a UI that looks as though it fits in with the game world. It adds considerably to the aesthetic appeal of the interface, while a UI that looks out of place detracts from it a noticable amount. I'm much more bothered by floating numbers and status effects than I am by a solid UI taking up some more real estate, as those two things infringe more on the part of the game that I'm actually looking at and paying attention to.

Sorry, no insult intended, but those are modern games. For old school, look up Nethack, Rogue, Temple of apshai and the SSI rpgs None taken! I agree, in fact. I meant old school more as a different thought behind RPG design, mostly as opposed to recent action RPGs. I don't usually think of games as being old unless they're at least DOS games. I spent a lot of time playing Rogue, Nethack, and Beyond Zork -- I wouldn't count the other Zork games as RPGs, although I spent a lot of time with them as well -- when I was growing up (and still do sometimes), but unfortunately I never did play any of the others you mention. I played a fair amount of other text-based Adventure-style games when I was young, including Adventure, but somehow I never ended up playing anything in the way of RPGs inbetween those and Baldur's Gate. I do assume that most backers of Pillars of Eternity played at least Baldur's Gate or some other isometric RPG at some point, regardless of their age, but I don't necessarily assume that the younger ones played anything older than that. I remember that game! I don't remember when I played it, but it was certainly after I'd already read The Hobbit, which was why my parents showed it to me. I didn't get very far with it either, although somewhat farther than the first room. I think I was probably around six. Definitely long after it came out, no matter what.

Presumably level 8 and that area give you a representative sample of the things that they would like to have tested, so that doesn't seem odd to me. Higher levels generally have the same abilities as lower levels, after all, as well as others. I don't believe that it was specifically stated as such, aside from the fact that it is a beta rather than a demo, which at least to me would imply that its purpose is indeed for testing things.

Most of us appear to have started gaming fairly young, so we still ended up playing old school RPGs -- at least of the Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale era -- at the time they came out. I expect I would still like them even if they hadn't been my first introduction to cRPGs, but they were, and they've been stuck at the top of my favourite game lists ever since and I've been replaying them ever since. Granted, I'm even more fond of those games than many people I know who are somewhat older than I, and I tend to be a bit of an outlier in most other age-related preference statistics and that could be the case for many of the other younger people here as well. Considering that the latest trends in RPGs that I most dislike (voiced PCs top amongst them) have only really got going in the last six years or so, I think most people over the age of sixteen have experienced at least some RPG which would in comparison be considered old school. I value replayability and being able to make a wide range of characters in a game, and those are things that modern RPGs often don't do very well at. That said, I also would've expected the 31-35 and 36-40 ranges to be the largest section, although I'm not surprised that the 26-30 one is quite large.

Presuming that there are no issues so major as to be completely unplayable, I'd prefer it release as close to the same time as the digital version as possible. I don't mind downloading patches, if necessary (which I expect at least one or two will be); I just want to have a physical copy of the game itself.

I'm 25 years old, and have been gaming for roughly 23 of those years. The first game I remember playing was Commander Keen, followed closely by Duke Nukem, Lemmings, and Zork. I also played a lot of Nibbles and Gorillas, and kept trying to write my own Adventure-style games in QBasic, but never got very far with it (such an incredibly large amount of spaghetti code should not be seen). We always had a lot of computers in our house as I was growing up, so I went straight to PC gaming and have only ever even used consoles once or twice at friend's houses. I still have the floppies for all the Commander Keen games somewhere, even though I haven't had a floppy drive in my computer for eight years now. I didn't end up playing any CRPGs until Baldur's Gate came out, but started playing AD&D in '94 -- first edition; my mom started playing with the boxed set when it came out, and her group at the time was running mostly first edition with a few second edition bits thrown in. The first adventure I remember going through was Keep on the Borderlands. The first character I played in AD&D was a cleric named Nedla after a misreading of the intro to Duke Nukem II -- I misread "Neo LA" as "Nedla" the first time I played that game (I'm still not sure how in retrospect), and decided to use it as a name, since for whatever reason that was the first thing that came to mind when I was making the character.

Isn't that effectively how it often works? If, for example, you are getting +2 to attacks from your shortsword specialisation, and your opponent also is, that is cancelling it out. Or did you mean more than that? I'm not sure how difficult it would be to realise, but more interactivity between weapons is something that I'd love to see in a game system some day. Weapon type vs armour type is not infrequently taken into account, and that's great, but I haven't yet seen a case where weapon type vs weapon type is.

Currently ability scores are static, so it can be presumed they feel that it works better with this system. I don't believe they've outright stated their reasoning behind the decision, but I may easily have missed it if they did. It is a valid argument if one cares about realism (which I do), but it shouldn't be the only argument. I do prefer game mechanics that are believable and grounded in realism. Quite true. Mechanically, I tend to feel that very large numbers like that muddy the waters and mean that every item or bonus actually has less impact. I'd rather have a smaller range of numbers to work with; that way the difference between any given item is very readily apparent, but not so enormous that you wonder why anybody would even bother making the last item you got. My preference for static abilities is due mainly to it leading somewhat in realism, with the downside that you then can't change anything much about your character's stats later, but I also have a fairly strong preference for mechanics focusing on a smaller rather than very large number range. I believe that the number range should generally be kept to the range of differences you're actually going to make use of -- so if there is actually a noticeable difference between 45 and 50, great, but if 40 and 50 are barely different at all, you probably would've been better off with 4 and 5.