Alexjh

Truth be told, we don't know what they are or are not doing with regards to these classes yet, so this statement is a bit premature. Actually no, we know exactly what they are doing. This thread is based on the idea that these three classes will be lifted from D&D, there is one problem 90% of the posters on these forums still don't seem to get though. This game is not based on D&D. I can only assume you misunderstood my last three sentences, so what I am saying is this. The OP's problem with these classes is 100% based on problems those classes had in D&D. More specifically, a series of computer games created on the basis of the D&D rules. Thing is, this game, is not using D&D rules. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe any of these issues will exist in the game. Most of these issues are also a byproduct of D&D class design, and again, not D&D so it is unlikely to suffer from the class design issues of D&D. EDIT: I will go one step farther. Later on down the line it is very possible these classes, and others, may run into design issues. As of right now though we know basically nothing about character design in this game except that you have stamina and HP. That really isn't enough to start theory crafting on ranger design flaws. Now months from now when they start releasing details revisiting this thread may make for a viable discussion. Right now though it seems sort of silly since this game is not going to be using the ruleset that created these issues in the first place. I don't think that this game is D&D, however, given that the whole point in Project Eternity is that it's the spiritual successor to a set of D&D based games suggests there will be some significant influence, as does the fact that bar one, the class lists for this and core 3.x are very similar. This thread isn't about fixing up D&D rulesets, its about looking at what has been done with these archetypes before, seeing what didn't work for them and coming up with ideas for them that might be fun to have in this brand new ruleset. They might not have favoured enemies, wildshape or anything, but theres a fair chance one or two of these things will carry over. We do also know that monks will function unarmed and unarmoured though from the concept art of the NPC whose name currently escapes me. (The ranger and monk ones I'd add aren't even specific D&D problems generally, but fairly common in the genre of fantasy games in general.)

There is a difference between being a DPS class and being a "spike" damage class though. The base level of a rogue's attack should be below that of a fighter, I don't think anyone is disputing that, but circumstantially they should be able to do more damage in certain single attacks. Perhaps, if we seperate it down into three levels of things - facing, aware and unaware and this basically prevents your DPS problem. They don't need it. They will already be flanking the most of all classes, which means they will be getting the flanking bonus the most. Also, I don't see why for a class to be usefull on the battlefield it has to be a big damage dealer. No, I'd rather they get their insta-kill attack only outside of combat. I want my rogue to be like Sam Fisher - sneaking around and breaking peoples necks and sabotaging before the rest of hte party storms in. In my eyes there are fundementally only a fairly limited number of things a character can do in combat. They can damage an opponent They can heal an ally They can weaken an opponent They can strengthen or protect an ally They can add extra participants into the fight There are other things, but more or less, everything broadly falls into those categories. Rogues certainly aren't for healing, buffing or summoning, so that leaves us with damaging and weakening. Secondly, a class can either be mono-targeting (usually weapons) or multitargeting (usually spells). Rogues are weapons based. They are not a front line class, so they shouldn't be doing damage on a scale with barbarians, fighters, paladins, or and rangers in that context. I'm all for using rogue's Sam Fisher style, but firstly I would consider snapping necks or slitting throats to be grouped within the context of a "backstab" (or more accuratly a sneak attack) but your Sam Fisher approach runs up against an obstacle in the sabotage department purely because it would make them overpowered otherwise. If you were making a game just about being a rogue and there was a bandit camp ahead, you could sneak up and throw a little vial of poison into their stew on their campfire, taking out the entire camp without anyone knowing you are there. That is undoubtedly cool, as would be cutting the ropes on tents to trap enemies inside them knifing them in the confusion or just sitting in the woods nearby picking them off with a crossbow when they go for a pee in the bushes. BUT This is a party based game, and this means that all party members should be equally valid. What happens if rogues are played as you describe them, is depending on situation, they become like playing on god-mode OR they are a massive liability in a standing fight of any sort. That's not balanced either way.

I like that idea a lot! Perhaps when choosing your characters backgrounds (which I think were mentioned as being in the game?) it might give you a starting bonus for a certain selection of enemies to get you going, if you'd been an arctic ranger you might start off with a headstart against bears, wolves and giants or if your origin was tropical perhaps against snake-men and poisonous spiders.

I personally favor about 20-30 levels in overall level possibility, but with completing the game ending you up somewhere around 15. A lot of people here seem to favour fairly glacial levelling, but personally I like to feel like there is enough levelling room to make my character unique, less than 10 and it can feel a bit stunted as you don't get the options come up. With finishing at level 15 and supposing a 60 hour campaign, that's an average of every 4 hours, which seems reasonable to me, if obviously that'll be denser at the beginning and sparser at the end.

I can see where you are coming from on the ranger and druid, which is kind of why I made this topic on their behalf as thematically they are good class concepts but need a bit of coaxing out to be more fulfilled. Monks I'd strongly disagree with you on though, as of all the classes they probably have the most unique set of abilities. You could certainly make a fighter who wore no armour and fought with his fists but the difference between than and a (D&D) monk is really big - stunning attacks, wisdom to AC, chi attacks, hands as magical weapons, quivering palm, that thing where they heal themselves, flurry of blows, the thing where they stop aging etc is mostly unique to the monk. I don't think all of that needs throwing away, although obviously you want to produce P:E's own "flavour" of monk, but I'd certainly argue that traditionally, after the "big 4" monks are one of the most distinct of the classes. As for druid, thinking about it, perhaps trying to make them into something of a stealth based caster relative to clerics who are very much in your face. Clerics from the description sound very much in your face, smiting and healing on the front lines, whereas you can imagine people being killed by druids without actually ever seeing them after entering a protected wood.

There is a difference between being a DPS class and being a "spike" damage class though. The base level of a rogue's attack should be below that of a fighter, I don't think anyone is disputing that, but circumstantially they should be able to do more damage in certain single attacks. Perhaps, if we seperate it down into three levels of things - facing, aware and unaware and this basically prevents your DPS problem. If a rogue attacks a person who can see/sense them, they get no bonus and do sub fighter damage. If the rogue attacks a person who is not facing them but is aware they are there, then they get a partial bonus, say, increased critical range or slight damage bonus. If the rogue attacks a person who is entirely unaware they are there, they get the full backstab bonus, but this then sets the person they've stabbed into aware mode/possibly triggers them to turn around and therefore cannot be repeated against that character in the rest of the encounter. Basically, it only lets you get one full sneak attack in against each opponent per encounter, rather than letting you just stand behind them constantly getting backstab bonuses.

How about having the favoured bonus transfer to the entire group - so for example, the Ranger is great at fighting cyclops, the group encounters one and the Ranger starts calling out 'go for the eye! They're weak on their left sides!' and so forth and everybody in the group gets a bonus against that creature. This would make having a ranger around a much more useful role for the entire party. That could work, though I'd perhaps have the rangers advantages stay a little higher than everyone elses just as experience at doing something beats being told how to do it, you could also potentially add in automatic debuffs to sentient creatures after a certain level as they've heard of your reputation as a man/demon/vampire/goblin/ewok slayer.

I think that broad specialization is perhaps a bit too vague for my liking as it doesn't imply the same sort of focus, particularly when there is such a range of behaviour between, say, a zombie, a wizard, a minotaur and an angel for instance, there wouldn't really be that much in common between them that would form unified learning. I do agree they need to be structured in such a way as to make them useful throughout, but I think perhaps slightly more broad categories. If "human" "dwarf" "elf" etc were categories, they'd be worthwhile investments, as would probably a "wild animal", "goblinoid" (orc/goblin etc), undead, and depending on the story and setting, something like werecreatures or reptilian humanoids might be worthwhile and so on. What you really want is a situation where a favoured enemy will either be of use throughout the game, or, it'll very useful in one act. So for Icewind Dale 2 it was something like: Trolls and Undead were fought throughout, so were good choices. Goblins and Orcs were fought loads in chapter 1 when you were weak, so again fine choice. Hook Horrors were literally fought on only one medium sized map and as a very occassional summon, so bad choice. So in the case of this, if there was again a single area of not-hook-horrors-for-copyright reasons, it'd perhaps be better to bunch them with "invertibrates" so when you are fighting spiders, giant maggots and not-ettercaps it'd be a regularly useful skill. To make it a bit more powerful/worthwhile as a class feature, you could also add in extra benefits like increased crit threat range, bons ac vs that creature or in a a case like that invertibrates one, a special ability that'd make sense for someone who specialised like that to learn like immunity to web / resist poison.

For me, although it may be a bit boring, on average I'd say the kind of things you see in Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones more or less hit the mark for the tone I prefer, not necessarily 100% accurate but realistic looking enough while still having a lot of character to them. I'd also add though that if you did want to have a tiny bit of more dodgy unrealistic stuff in there I think there is room to have a little bit if it is statted out realistically and makes some sort of sense for why it's there, for instance if you go to the court of some sleazy king he might very well have equipped his all female bodyguard in something ridiculously useless because he is a pervert. All it means is that when you try to kill him off the guard's will be a lot less of a problem than if he'd given them sensible stuff. Similarly if someone gives all their guards giant oversized swords (within physical practicality) because he wants them to look intimidating when all they ever do is stand around looking dangerous and aren't actually expecting to fight anyone, I don't mind that either. Its only when people who are using it for non-ceremonial purposes are running round in the every day in chainmail bikinis with 8ft long swords that its really is an issue, and its the players own silly fault if they decide to loot those impractical things and use them rather than something of actual use.

While I'd certainly agree with you on the subject of "dead levels" I do like the the very basic principle of skills, attributes and feats, as in having various things to chose from in several categories at each level, you could easily change the regularity at which things occur so as to never have dead levels. For monks I semi agree, but I do think perhaps here should be some limitations on what weapons are considered "monkly". The most obvious pair would also be guns and crossbows as their premise is exactly opposed to the concept of the monk - ie. weapons which a peasant with little can use to kill anyone, whereas monks are all about honing skills to perfection. I'd also say that while a longsword or any polearms or a single handed mace are suited for monks, the big bulky two handed swords, axes, hammers and maces don't really work for me as they aren't "nimble" weapons that suit the archetype. One of the options I considered while making this topic was perhaps your monk has to pick a "school" at some point or creation or leveling which give different bonuses, one might focus entirely on unarmed fighting, one might encourage weapon use/specialisation and one might have short range chi blast projectiles. For the Druid thing I'm not entirely keen on that as a replacement, if it was as well as that'd be fine, but without the option to spend time as an animal and gain benefits for doing so, that attack on its own seems a bit "preprogrammed" for my taste. While the ability to bite someone is certainly a good ability, if someone could turn into a wolf, they'd want to use that for the other bonuses: enhanced speed, stealth, tracking, night vision etc, rather than just a single bite rather than just a single brief attack. Similarly with the spider thing, I'm happy to have a druid be able to cast web naturally, but I'd rather that they made that spider-form useful in several ways (poison bite? immunity to enemy webs? increased AC?). I definitly agree with the endgame problem, but I think that could probably be fixed so the forms scaled more in line with actual characters. For the ranger thing I agree on the spells thing to a degree, tho I wouldn't mind if he could take an ability to learn them later, but it doesn't fit with my normal image of the class. I can certainly imagine some rangers learning some basic druidic utilty spells like heal, disease or repel animals, but when your rangers can learn how to summon vines from the floor or summon flame strikes its getting too far from what the class is about. If Aragorn is the class codifier, you can imagine him having learnt a tiny bit of elven magic or having a wolf or dog with him, and certainly having learnt all the ways of hunting orcs as a favoured enemy, but not so much doing attack spells...

I like that idea actually, even if it was literally just the game kept track of what creatures you'd encountered in ticklist form and you could choose one from the one you'd "ticked" when the appropriate level up came around. On a similar note, a favoured enemy should really be something plausible for someone who is patrolling the wild orcs or undead? Fine. Werebeasts or humans? Great. But realistically unless you are in a very specific setting rangers aren't going to be tracking golems or dragons across the wild with enough regularity to gain them as a favoured enemy.

As these are the three classes which haven't really been talked about by Obsidian, I thought I'd bring them up for discussion, particularly as to some degree I think they are all classes which have had conceptual problems in some games, so more or less just opening this up to have a place to debate a bit at what these classes are about/how to fix the problems. MONK Issue 1: Monks as the loot-poor class. I think this is perhaps the most pressing issue of the class historically in D&D as far as IWD2, NWN and NWN2 had it - because the whole point of monks was that they are a class which relies on their own body as a weapon they don't really get to partake in looting in the same way as all the other classes. This can be fixed to some degree by having robes for their armour slot, but I found many of the robes from the Neverwinter games not very exciting, finding a robe with resistance to 1 point of slashing just isn't even the same as finding, say, a +1 suit of chainmail. You obviously don't want them to become too similar to fighters as part of their appeal is that they are so different. This is also putting into account that Obsidian have stated that they want to be able to have anyone wearing any armour if they want to. The weapon thing is similar. So how do you make them be able to get loot (which I consider a cornerstone of the genre) without ruining the class concept? Issues 2: Monks as a low choice/linear class. The other big problem I see with monks is how they were handled in the D&D games had very little "give" in their levelling up/character creation. You would level up and though there were certainly feats you could use, there weren't really any designed for them. You got lots of cool abilities but you didn't have any say over them. How do you inject some player input into the design of a monk, without either breaking the class concept or going the opposite end and becoming overly "move" based? DRUID Issue 1: Druids, wildshape and spellcasting. I think one of the biggest problems with any class is that Druids are a two focus class, and those focuses don't really mesh well in combat - a cleric can go whack someone with a mace on the front line and then cast a spell the next, but when you have wildshape it doesn't gel well with casting. Yes, there is the NWN2 solution of giving the player a feat to cast spells while in animal form but that didn't quite work for me - it felt a bit silly to have a wolf stop in the middle of combat to cast a traditional spell, and if you are going to do that it should have been built into the class rather than having to take a feat to make the basic premise of the class useable. So, how to balance shapeshifting with wildshape? Issue 2: Wildshape becoming redundant At this point I'd like to clarrify, I really feel like wildshape is something that really makes druids stand out as a class, sure wizards can do it too, but not to the same degree. However, I do think the focus should generally be on versatility - in the 3rd edition games there was a bit of an issue where really, only the most recent shape you learnt was actually useful, the rest became gradually more redundant. This especially felt a bit of a shame when you progressed onto the elementals, which although technically less powerful, felt less cool than turning into, say, a polar bear. Is there a way to keep the wildshapes relevant throughout? Issue 3: Wildshapes outside combat This has never really been addressed in any of the IE games/NWN, but one thing I feel hasn't really been done is use of wildshapes outside of combat. Even if it were limited to anonymously scouting as a fox or eagle or something that wouldn't arouse suspicion (with some risk of being detected from other spellcasters perhaps so as not to be too useful) or to reach a certain place quickly using the form of some fast animal, it's never really been explored. RANGER Issue 1: Making Rangers stand out. I do feel rangers have been sometimes treated as a bit of a generic hybrid between rogue and fighter, but how do you make them more unique compared to those two? This was done in D&D by use of favoured enemy, spells and animal companions, but are these things you want in the class? Could they be elaborated on more (having favoured enemy options including classes perhaps?) or is there some other feature that you think would fit the archetype? Anyway, I do have my own ideas on these but for the mean time I mainly wanted to see what everyone else's thoughts on these were?

Well in the case of project eternity, I think it refers primarily specifically to how an individual how each of the classes uses their soul energy differently, but I don't think even then at least as far as 3rd Edition was concerned the classes were fairly clearly differentiated. Some they've talked about and some not, but generally speaking its more or less the tone of a class, some like fighter and rogue are fairly broad with options of going down different specialities within that, whereas some like monk and barbarian are a bit more limited in scope but, but I think the general idea is that each class focuses on a different set of mechanics that are enhanced by their soul powers.

What would you all define as an "epic item" in the first place? I'm not quite sure where I'd draw the line between magical and epic. I like lots of unique items, but not necessarily epic ones. There's a difference between high end magical and epic in my mind but I can't quite place it. I don't really like it when there is basically a "correct" choice for your equipment at the end of the game. I think where epic items do kind of work is if they are very hard to get and they have a fairly specific role. The holy avenger in icewind dale 2 was a good example: it was hidden, required a difficult battle to acquire and had a fairly specific role in the party that you might not even have a suitable member for, wasn't just generic high end sword for anyone to use. While I quite liked that particular example, it would be completely ruined if every class had their own epic thingy as it'd feel too artificial. In general I'd say that if you are going to have things like that, make them fairly specific - an armour of a dwarven kind that can only be worn by a dwarf of the royal line, a rare spell of the great mage who can only be used by someone who has focused in a certain school of magic etc. Not every character should be able to get something that is specifically a legendary item, but there should certainly be stuff that is similarly powered for those who can't.

I do think the Blizzard bashing is a bit melodramatic, Diablo 3 isn't a bad game really tho it certainly has it faults, it just can't live up to it's hype. IT was fun enough that I don't regret the £20ish I spent on it and didn't buy anything in the real world auction house, and indeed sold a few bits and bobs so the game cost me even less. The biggest problem with it in my eyes is I get the impression they actually obsessively polished it too much removing so much of the "clunk" the overall experience ended up feeling more insubstantial than was actually true. The final result is certainly a disappointing game (particularly for the obsessive hardcore players) but I don't think you can fairly call it a "bad game" persay. If it had been made by someone else and called something else it would get a lot less flack.

I don't mind potions really, in the infinity engine I never really used them regularly apart from health/antidote potions, and to be honest I think that more of a problem is having them underpowered to the point of irrelevancy (which is what I read as the OP "under 5 second" proposal, there is very limited use for something which lasts 5 seconds). If it's really an issue, I'd say firstly perhaps the average duration should be about the length of one standard encounter. Secondly, if you really wanted to stop "potion chugging", perhaps some sort of toxicity mechanic, where if you drink lots of potions too quickly it causes negative status effects. If different potions had different toxicity scores, you can drink any combination of potions you like, but if you went greater than a certain level defined by your constitution, you get status effects such as lowered attributes, sleep, paralysis, slowed etc or if you go too far, even death.

What? I don't recall them stating that the only funds for PE will come from crowd-sourcing. There is no reason to believe that PE will not be funded in some part by Obsidian. indeed... it's not like they are broke, they just dont have the budget to make a whole game without aditional funding. and since pubblishers were not interested in providing the funding they turned to the pubblic. I'm sure a little of Obsidian's own money will make it in here or there but from my understanding of things, Obsidian/most developers don't necessarily have that much "free" money at a time. What will happen is that somehow the process of makign a game might get underway, either shopping their own idea to a publisher or a publisher getting them to work on a certain property, the publisher then gives them some money to do this (the equivalent money to the money we've given them through kickstarter) and then they make the game. Most of the profits them go back to the publisher as they are the ones who paid for production in the first place. So, in Obsidians case, while they might have a big lump of money in their bank account, that is specifically money for Project Eternity given to them by us, or money specifically for South Park: stick of truth, given to them by THQ and any "free money" would be more limited. I might be wrong in that, but that's my understanding of the matter.

The whole ranged of mixed, same as most of the other infinity engine games where you might fight anything from multiple waves of goblins to a single overwhelming foe like a dragon. Generally for an average encounter I'd say 2 or 3:1 in favour of the enemy with opponents being mixes of canon fodder and legitimate threats in any one encounter.

OK, here's the question then, what do you propose as an alternative? If you are going to take it out sneak attacking as the primary option, what are you adding back in to make rogues more than a cut rate fighter?

I'd say that melee weapons should all be the same speed, it's close enough to accurate to be worth it when the balance is already fairly even - two handed and dual wielding do more damage while sword and shields offer more defense. I'd actually also like a return of a system of feats which would allow you to focus on just wielding a one handed weapon without a shield with perhaps an offense/defense compromise between two handed/dual wield and weapon and shield mode. Just to add a few extra options to character design.

Good comparison. If he had to be one or the other, I'd say rogue(utility belt ftw). But under D&D formats, I'd say he's multiclassed into epic levels. I was considering the Batman example to some other point, but I'd go with him being some sort of a monk/rogue multiclass. But really there are a huge range of things which fall within the remit of rogue, I'd argue that in addition to Batman, some other inhabitants (or partial inhabitants) of that category include snipers, James Bond, Sam Fisher like secret agents, ninjas, classic "knives and poison" fantasy assassins, the non-violent characters of the TV show "Hustle", terrorist bombers and some thug who sneaks up behind someone to crowbar them in the back of their head to steal their stuff. That's a big range of archetypes, and about their only linking feature is "success through being unexpected".

Mostly fixed but with some very limited increasing like in D&D 3.x. If we had a six attribute system like in D&D, realistically there should be at least 2 stats for any character which can be considered worthwhile investments, and really, most should be of value to anyone. Strength should be of value to anyone fighting in melee. Dexterity should be of value to anyone with limited armour and anyone fighting at range. Constitution should be of value to anyone. Intelligence should be of value to arcane based classes and anyone who wants lots of skills. Wisdom is possibly the most limited one, useful for divine spellcasters or those with a poor will save. Charisma should be of use to people like paladins, clerics and chanters who work by enhancing those around them, plus anyone using diplomacy. The trick will be giving players a good reason to pick attributes outside the "core" class choice. Some classes are historically better at getting people to spread (bard (INT, DEX, CHA), Monk (WIS, DEX, STR) and Paladin (STR, WIS, CHA). The trick would be trying to get reasons to have that spread in other classes.

I actually kind of like 1hit KO spells within limitations. Certainly, I'd say no more than a handful of enemies in the game should have them (only act/endgame/optional bosses) but I think realistically by the time you meet them your characters should be making saves against them anyway if balanced right. Actually I found that 1HIT KO vs save spells/abilities were a tactical aspect I hadn't really used until my latest Icewind Dale 2 playthrough - if you use them against major bosses, 99 times out of 100 they shouldn't work, but for instance, I found them very useful for quickly taking out mages to the bosses (who had low saves against quivering palm) or miraculously managed to disintegrate the black dragon and I was getting pummelled by. So I'd say limit them to no more than 2 or 3 bosses, and for the player make them a bit of a wildcard option where you either succeed spectacularly or have just invested a lot of time and energy in something that does little to nothing beyond annoying your opponent.

If you are only basing this off Planescape: Torment, go buy Icewind Dale II; PS:T and Baldurs Gate 1 are comparatively ugly games because they were still exploring the tech and working with smaller computer screens at the time. For the most recent Infinity Engine game, go buy Icewind Dale 2 (also on Gog), and you can see both what a different higher resolution monitor support and a MUCH improved interface give. For the purpose of character sprites, go look at Temple of Elemental Evil, again on Gog, as I believe character wise that's more what they are going for. As for your clear reasons: 1) Most people don't think isometric games are ugly otherwise we wouldn't have $4million sponsoring the production of one. 2) Isometric is not equal to low tech - as I demonstrated earlier with those screenshots they are using super-high poly models as part of their pipeline to generate the backgrounds. They are then painting on top of the high end renders (which as you point out will not be to scale with the picture we've shown which likely represents a whole or a significant part of a whole area, more than one screens worth). This is far higher detail than even the highest tech games can actually render and with the overpainting produces a smooth painterly look you just can't get when everything is 3D models on current tech. 3) Isometric allows complete management of what is on screen at any time, so what the player sees can be designed to be beautiful/visually interesting 100% of the time. 4) Isometric is more financially efficient - they have stated in interviews that they cannot use their inhouse engine created for DS3 because some of the intermediary tools they use would be too expensive to license for a production on this scale. By using isometric, we get more areas for our money. 5) People love the isometric infinity engine. This is a game made very specifically for people who love the infinity engine. Ergo, this is going to be isometric. 6) The Infinity Engine games have aged FAR better than any of their 3D contemporaries, the character sprites are a bit clunky but beyond that if you compare Neverwinter Nights or (unmodded) Morrowind to Icewind Dale II which all came out in the same 6 or so months, the level of environmental detail in IWD2 is far higher than either of those and doesn't use repeated items. 7) A fully 3D game has to reuse assets constantly for efficiency, in an isometric game there is no reason why you should see the same tree twice (at the same angle anyway, and it'll look like a different tree if the angle is fixed).

I'd argue that Icewind Dale 2 looks (in terms of environment) better than Neverwinter Nights 2 despite being a far older game. The characters in NWN2 are undeniably better, no one is disputing that, but honestly the Infinity engine environments just had way more character. The characters are going to be 3D on the 2D backgrounds so they'll look better too. For fixed cameras in a broader sense, there are two advantages: ones that it makes tactical manouvering far easier than an adjustable camera as you can always see exactly what is going on without having to fiddle around. Secondly, even in a game which is 3D and fixed camera like diablo 3, it means that the artists can ensure the game looks great from every view, whereas realistically, games like Dragon Age and Neverwinter just look dull when not in the obvious beauty shot angles. Fixed perspective lets the designers control every shot.