Alexjh

On the subject of detail, I give you two examples of games: This is a wireframe view from Skyrim, a game that cost £85 million to make. Here we see the wireframe equivalent from Project Eternity Note the MASSIVE amount of extra detail prerendering in isometric affords you.

The basic answer to this question: the whole point in Project Eternity is that its recapturing the feel of the Infinity Engine games, so an isometric viewpoint is basically a given, having project eternity as anything other than a fantasy party based RPG with an isometric viewpoint would kind of miss the point... There are actually advantages to this both gameplay wise and detail wise for what you can do with isometric - by prerendering out scenes you can actually have far beyond the details that even the top of the range graphics for the highest requirement game currently in development has. You literally can have levels of detail that takes a high end computer hours to render for the levels.

I think in terms of most character you mention here I don't think it especially matters - you can't presume to know the intimate life story of ever character you meet and the degree to which they are trained, Nalia for instance might have had loads of tutors bought in to get her doing magic. Similarly, Ashley may be a random grunt, but theres nothing stopping her being in the 5% best of random grunts, after all, she'd survived a hard combat situation longer than everyone else on the planet... There's also the possibility that because the protagonist is such a natural at killing things, people around them learn at an accelerated pace from watching you at work. The one I will agree with you on is Anders, generally speaking the whole RPG mechanic of "theoretically godlike, joins your team, becomes an average member" mechanic does break the suspension of belief a little. Perhaps a better approach would be to leave them all powerful but give them some enormous glaring weakness to counterbalance? Or just not include them at all.

I went with yes to multiclassing, 3.x rules and no prestige classes. Multiclassing I'm fine with though I don't do it a great deal, as there are some pairings of classes which naturally complement each other in a logical way (although the antithesis classes should be prevented from crossing over as they do in D&D through alignment - combining monks and barbarians for instance just doesn't make sense). Definitly something like the 3.x rules as the 2e were really unwieldy and clunky, I've still never worked out why there was a difference between multiclassing and dual classing for different races and levelling at a linear pace makes things a lot easier to keep track of.. On the prestige class front I'm against them though, much as there are some great fun prestige classes (Dwarven Defenders are one of my favourites, having an immovable, unkillable object in the party can be very handy) what I'd rather do is integrate the features of these as optional features within the classes themselves a the presitge class system can quickly become bloated when you start trying to take dribs and drabs of lots of different ones which are all within the remit of one of the core classes anyway.

Ability scores in D&D are 90% set before you even begin leveling up so more or less represent the character before any training. In the case of the wizard/barbarian, the barbarian is being specifically trained to be tougher while the wizard is not, however, while the wizard isn't being trained in hardcore brawling as his "prime school of study", he can take feats like toughness in his "supplementary learning" and will have training in spells that'll make him tougher and more suited to frontline stuff if he goes that way. I'm all for wizards being able to learn how to fight on the frontline, or multiclass into a class that specializes it, but it shouldn't be a natural vocation for them, and while they are learning spells (that the barbarian doesn't get taught) the barbarian is learning how to both give and take attacks and so it only makes sense that of a pair of adventuring twins who start out with identical attributes, if one becomes a barbarian and one a wizard the barbarian twin will become tougher, quicker unless the wizard twin specifically trains in such a way as to keep up.

OP: 1) I think part of the reason why Beastial races aren't usual is that they often require extra animations in addition to the normal ones because their physiology is different. In terms of actual in world realism though, if a game is going to include beast races, I'd much rather have it so they weren't *specific* beast races. So, no cat-race please. Sure have a bestial race which has certain cat-like features, but don't just stick the head (or worse, just ears) and skin of animal A onto a human body, maybe with backwards legs and a tail. Make something that captures the essence of the animals it's based on while not being too heavy handed, like something that could have actually evolved 9or been created) into sentience. 2) I'm all for that, but to a point - in answer to another poster, yes they weren't used in battle, but they were carried by travellers to protect themselves from attackers. As our party is presumably more like travellers than an army a lot of the time, I'd perfectly happy for staves to be a valid weapon - perhaps they dont do as much damage as a broadsword, but do offer some defensive bonuses. Besides, if you put some metal caps on the ends of a staff with a little bit of weight to them, thats potentially a mace with 6ft of leverage to magnify the power.... 3) I think the basic idea is that non-magical stuff isn't bad, but magical stuff may be better, which is fine by me within context. If you are using that rope to tie up a bandit that's fine, but if you are tying up an ogre, you might want to break out the magical one. Similarly, a more skilled fighter using normal stuff should generally beat a less skilled one with magical stuff (unless of course the magic enhances his skills..). 4) Sounds fine to me, though I'm not sure how much screentime it'd get unless you could develop your monk down a drunken master route

While that is a valid approach, the problem with that is that instead of promoting unique character concepts as it *should* do, you rather end up having people dabble a bit in everything and end up with rather bland fusion characters, which particularly in a party based RPG, kind of defeats the point of carefully planning your party. I think they are about in the right place right now, there are a couple of extra class concepts they *could* do (a spellcaster with the warlock spell style for instance) but I think this is about right. What I would suggest however is a really robust feat system that allows you to dabble a bit in some of the special abilities of other classes where there is some definite overlap grounds. The monk is an interesting example for instance as its a class that is very much focused on specific abilities that only it has and in a way that makes sense that only someone with monk training could access them. It wouldn't make sense for instance if some undisciplined rogue just learnt how to do the quivering palm thing that monks have in D&D. But looking at the "neighbouring classes" of a monk, which are arguably fighter (martial focus), rogue (dexterity focused combat) and wizard (unarmoured discipline based), you could allow a bit of too and fro between those classes if you are willing to invest in some feats to do so. By taking a feat tree based on fighter training, you might be able to use your ki though fighter weapons rather than unarmed, and the fighter in turn might be able to use the ki on their weapons. By taking a feat tree based on rogue training you might learn about a less powerful version of sneak attack techniques while the rogue might be able to learn how to do a flurry of blows with their daggers. By taking a wizard based feat tree you might be able to learn how to focus your chi into projectile energy blasts while the wizard might learn techniques for adding (some) of their wisdom score to their armour class while unarmoured. This would literally only apply to classes with some degree of crossover - for instance, monks and barbarians shouldn't really be able to cross over their skills as they rely on completly opposite themes - one based on complete discipline, the other based on complete lack of discipline. Paladins and rogues would be another pair. Perhaps limit it to one other classes discipline per character and give each class three choices so as not to swamp things. The tricky thing here is balancing it so no class has all its options available to another (as that then makes it pointless being the first class anyway) so this wouldn't include advanced techniques (quivering palm, druid shape changing, higher level spells etc) or, where it does take a primary class feature, make it a less powerful version of the originating classes one so as to not make the original one redundant (turn undead, lay on hands, rage, flurry of blows, favoured enemy, animal companion etc) but giving classes a chance to develop in logical directions without a clunky crossclass mechanic. This would of course be fairly complex to pull off and you'd have to have it so the core classes had merits compared to the hybrid ones, but could be an option if well done.

I think the key thing here is that party dynamics are a bit of a strange beast. Generally speaking, an average six man party often consists of something like 3 melee classes, 1 offensive spellcasters, 1 defensive spellcaster and 1 rogue-ish support class give or take a little. Now, traditionally, the melee classes are more suited for soloing a campaign than the magic lasses purely on merit of their greater survivability, and the fact that spellcasters have to rely on things like concentration for their attacks. Which isn't to say that it can't be done with, say, a wizard, just that its going to be more difficult, particularly at the beginning. What I'd say is that balance should be as such that a mixture of classes in a party is encouraged. Individual classes shouldn't be necessarily balanced against each other, but instead balanced in such a way to promote class diversity. If a player wants to have a party of six barbarians that should be viable to a point, but, a party where you swap out two of those barbarians for a cleric and a wizard should realistically be exponentially stronger because the classes are designed to complement each other. The ability to boost up the power of the barbarians and blow up the weaker enemies before they even engage is worth more than two more guys doing the same thing as is already being covered. Similarly, if you had a party of six wizards, you'd certainly be a powerhouse of damage, but perhaps a couple of those wizards would be more useful replaced by a pair of paladins in platemail to form a protective barrier infront of your mages. As far as skills go though, I'm happy for combat and non-combat to be mixed, largely because I see the whole RPG level up system as one of practical trade offs. It does certainly need to be maintained that all skills are sufficiently useful in the game so you don't end up with some irrelevant ones and some essential ones, but if you get that right, any skill should be worthy of consideration whether combat orientated or not, and it's up to the player to decide on the balance of what is a good tradeoff.

Hit points suck, because they are inconsistent and arbitrary. A blow, dealing -10 HP, dealt to a character with 11 HP is a hideous, devastating strike, leaving him on the brink of death. The very same blow dealt to the very same character, but 10 levels higher and with 100 HP total is nothing but an itchy scratch. Which raises a whole lot of hard-to-explain-from-a-logical-standpoint situations. This kind of problem is easily avoided in settings with fixed number of health level, like in World of Darkness. And I heartily concur that this kind of system is a lot better if it weren't suffering the terrible effects of random dice throws. However, if the random part is normalized (i.e. not linear like in dice with every result having approximately the same chance of occurring, but average results happening a lot more often than extremes), it could work quite well. Well it's no secret that HP is a complete abstraction of anything faintly resembling reality, but an Infinity Engine styled game really isn't the place to be coming up with a real to life system as the concept of HP (or stamina) plays a significant part in the balance of the thing. If everyone had realistic HP then more or less any attack has the potential to die from the smallest attack spell to a dagger hit which, particularly in the context of a fantasy game just would kill strategy. There would be literally no way anyone could survive, say, chain lightning or cloudkill for instance. As for dice, I love the dice throws, because the results (except at critical fail) are always modified anyway by your characters skills and attributes to the point where you have a realisitc idea what's going to happen regardless of your throw, and it adds a degree of tension to proceedings that you just wouldn't get if everythign were linear with a system that people can easily understand. Much as I appreciate some people would love a realistic combat RPG, project eternity is at its very conception, a spiritual successor to the Infinity Engine games and that's never been what those have been about in the slightest.

I asked Adam about the prospect of co-op during his Icewind Dale 2 session and he said they weren't intending to do it. But the reason I asked was because I've had some great times in Infinity Engine games in co-op, there's a certain level of unpredictability it adds to the whole affair when you only control some of the party and there are some moments I've had which were better in co-op than singleplayer because of it. That being said, I'd agree with the desire to get a solo game that works great and just leave the option open to add in a co-op later on, even if it's something as horrible to get working as the IE games.

A slight deviation from the traditional use of tactical terrain, I'd actually like to see some sort of effect on Druids and Rangers particularly as the "wild" classes. With Druids particularly it would be fun if their spells to be enhanced by their surroundings - plant based spells become more potent in a forest, water based ones more powerful when on a riverbank etc. If you were to integrate some "difficult" terrain, where characters might say, take longer moving across deep snow or marshy ground, rangers and druids could get bonuses in that situation where an intellectual indoorsy wizard or a knight used to the parade grounds might get bogged down and slowed to a crawl. Very tenuously related side note, if there is an animal companion mechanic I'd like to see the player befriend a wild animal who levels up with you rather than just picking one at a certain level up which appears out of nowhere. This is turn might have bonuses when in and for the habitat you found it in.

I'd very very happily see Justin Sweet work on project eternity (or anywhere else where I can see his art for that matter, he's been doing concept art since then and you don't get to see that so upfront), he's not only one of the reasons that made the Icewind Dale games great, but I'd say for me as an artist myself, he's one of the artists who has inspired me the most to push my own skills forward.

This would defeat the entire purpose of what he's proposing, and is actually almost identical to what DnD has done for decades. Before I go on, I want to point out that I see no problem with the HP system that DnD has used. It works, and balances out. But to give you the example of why what you're proposing is essentially the DnD system: Wizards get 1d4 hp per level, rogues get 1d6, clerics get 1d8, fighters 1d10. If you actually follow the rules, and roll the dice, the average hitpoints per level are: 2.5 Wizard 3.5 Rogue 4.5 Cleric 5.5 Fighter So you basically already get an average "bump" in hp of 1 per "hp class" you go up. Fighters get +1 over Clerics who get +1 over Rogues who get +1 over wizards. Well the one thing it would do would work out that a barbarian with 10 constitution (or whatever level is considered a "neutral" amount) would have the same XP as a wizard with a neutral level of constitution. It wasn't so much a solution to his problem so much as a slight tweak to the existing model that makes it marginally more in line with what he wanted (and I stress marginally). If the additional HP bonus/constituion/level was derrived from feats rather than innate, you could mean that some classes get those feats by default (barb, fighter) while everyone else can take then to get more to then equalize them out if thats how you want to develop a character. But it's a much messier system than DnD so I'd personally stick at approximatly that rather than this half baked thing I've just come up with

For the D&D scores when I first played it in tabletop version the friend who introduced it explained the attributes something like the following "Ten is the level of a completely average person in that ability, while 18 is someone who is world class in that skill, so for instance in the physical attributes Olympic athletes would generally be 18 in their relevant scores. A twenty or above represents the very very top of that ability in the world, so Stephen Hawking might have 20 in intelligence, while a top end doctor might be an 18. Charisma and Wisdom are a bit less demonstrable, but work on the same principle. Obviously people with very high scores are more common in fiction than real life" I think project eternity should ideally work on a proportional ability score system rather than a "to infinity one" where you can end up having 7 points in wisdom and 126 in strength because that just is very very abstract. So for D&D I'd say its something like: 4: Toddler 6: Average 8 Year Old 8: Average 15 yeard old / Below Average Adult 10: Average Adult 12: Above Average Adult 14: Gifted Adult 16: Greatly Gifted Adult 18: Brilliant Adult 20: One of the top few on the planet Perhaps some sort of indication ingame could suggest where this stands, or use the fallout system of havign atrributes capped and with each level of each one having a specific name.

On the subject of HP/stamina difference the real reason is a gameplay reason but can be justified by reality. The main reason would be that if consitution were the sole difference between a wizard and a barbarian hitpoint wise, one of two things happens: 1) offensive spellcasters (wizards and possibly druids) become overpowered - as they are dealing out large quantities of damage to large numbers of targets, say a powerful fireball that they throw at an enemy party. In D&D it's balanced so that while the fireball may well take out the "softer" targets (wizard, sorceror, bard, rogue) the tougher classes (fighter, barbarian, paladin, ranger) can potentially get through this attack to be able to counter them. Without the tougher classes become vulnerable to these high intensity attacks without the possibility of surviving them that high HP affords. The second scenario is that you see this and then go "well, perhaps if we make a point of constitution give 3HP level rather than 1HP" What happens then is constitution becomes overpowered as a stat and it debalances the game. The one alternative would be to have base HP gained a level remain constant, but have the constitution bonus vary per class. At the most basic 1 point of constitution for a wizard gets you 1 extra HP/constituon/level, 1 points of constitution for a cleric or rogue gets 2 extra HP/constitution/level and for a fighter it's 3HP/constitution/level etc. But this would potentially end up even more unbalanced. As for the real world precedent: take a pair of identical twins, make one of them do nothing but science all day every day and make one of them do nothing but boxing training all day every day, both for a year. At the end of this year, you've produced a hypothetical level 5 scientist and a level 5 boxer. Take a third guy and scientifically record the number of (equal) punches it takes to knock each of the twins out, and realistically, boxer twin should be surviving a lot longer than scientist twin. Now admittedly, being punched isn't equivical to being stabbed, burnt or electrocuted or axed, but there again if we did it realistically in that way the whole point of constitution, stamina etc wouldn't make any sense and the whole thing would be a lot more frustrating.

Well ease of balance/class differentiation would be one obvious good reason, and kind of makes sense more so with a "stamina" system than with a direct HP system. If you assume that the difference between one levels worth of experience for a mage (which is intellectual, learning things and generally not that physical) and a barbarian (involving lots of hitting things and and being hit) the latter is going to be fundementally better at taking blows and carrying on due to practice. Yes there will be tough wizards who can take blows, but they are the exception rather than the rule and that's what a high constitution score and feats like toughness are there to provide the possibility of. It seems like you really do want to stripmine the classes for differentiating features.... Problem is that "class differentiation" can be an excuse for everytihng. Like restricting weapons. Mages can't use swords. Why? Class differentiation. Clerics can only use maces. Why? Class differentiations. Only rouges can dual-wirld. Why? Class differentiation. This is one of the reasons I started liking class-based systems less and less. They are a set of unrealistic restrictions for the sake of fake diversity. I say fake diversity because such insular and restrictive classes are made for the sake of "diversity and yet they end up hurintg diversity and character creation freedom just as much. Yes, I really would like to see HP divorced from class. Tied to ONLY constitution. NO HP gain per level. They only difference beterrn a mage and barbarian in HP is in the attribute point allocation. Mages would still be generally weaker as they wouldn't put so much points into CON or STR. But nothing is stopping you from making a Arnorld-like of mage. I don't believe in restricting weapon types to specific classes (though specific magical weapons are slightly different) BUT this is where abilities, skills and feats come in. Image a simplified rudimentary system where there are five levels and at every level the player gets a point to spend in skills, a point to spend in attributes and a point to spend in feats and, where applicable, a spell. Levelling up in a class gives you predefined bonuses, so in the case of a mage that would be the ability to cast more/greater variety of spells, and perhaps some lore bonuses. The standard training for a level of mage doesn't include any weapon training. HOWEVER you can make your mage wear plate and a broadsword, but there will be penalties for doing so as he isn't trained in doing so. This is where those spells, feats etc come in. Now, you can then level up your mage according to the build you want. If you want a classic Wizard build, your 5 attributes go to intelligence, your five skills go in concentration, spellcraft and/or lore and your five feats go in something like "fire magic mastery", "combat casting", "greater concentration" and so on. You pick say, magic missile, fireball, mage armour, chain lightning and cloudkill. You have built a fairly standard mage who does traditional magey things. If however you want your "Arnold Conan mage" you go with 5 points in strength, mix points between concentration and some warriory skill, and take feats like "armour proficiency: loincloth", "weapon proficiency: greatsword", "improved imbue weapon" "armoured arcana" and "toughness". You then pick spells that compliment your build like "imbue weapon: ice" "enhance strength" "haste" "regeneration" etc. You are not as intelligent as traditional mage and thus your spells aren't as potent, BUT you are able to smash things up on the front line. The basic idea that a level taken in a class is the CORE training that anyone taking a level in that class recieves, but you use the feats, skills, attributes and spells to customise your class in the direction you want, but, if you can't have it both ways, if you do want to make Conan-mage, an Alchemy Master-barbarian or a monk that is a master of the banjo then you are going to have to not spend your points in a way that means you are spending them on fullfilling this character concept rather than the stuff that a traditional member of that class would. Which isn't to say you'll be a bad character, but you won't be as good at your core discipline as someone who has focused solely on developing that.

I'm all for encounter complexity going up rather than individual monster power, but I'd instead just suggest that complexity goes up in a curve on harder difficulties, but more specifically relative to party power rather than just an an overarching difficulty level. If difficulty level is a linear increasing line of difficulty of encounter, harder difficulties should be increasingly sharp curves. You could concievably automate the process a bit if you preprogram the "groups" so it's a bit easier, so one group might consist of "goblin warrior (w)" "goblin mage(m)" "goblin archer(a)" "goblin shaman(s)" and "ogre(o)". If you then have the encounters generated in a formula like where it generates encounters like: Very Easy: (2w + 1d4) Easy: (4w + 1d6) + (2a+1d2) Normal: (4w + 1d8) + (4a+1d4) + (2m) Hard: (6w + 1d10) + (6a+1d6) + (1d3 m) + (1s) Very Hard: (8w + 1d12) + (8a+1d6) + (1d4 m) + (2s) + (1d2 o) This is obviously a very simplified version, but it means you can generate mixed encounters (with manually added additions) without actually having to go in and manually create 5 versions of each encounter.

I'd go with all classes should have the *potential* to be equal in combat in a party situation, but some might require more work to get use out of than others. For the melee classes (fighter, paladin, ranger, monk, barbarian) it should at its most basic merely be a matter of pointing them at the right target and letting them go. The spellcasting classes and rogues however tend to rely on micromanagement more. Equally, if you mean equally suited to holding their own without support, not necessarily. As a rule of thumb, if you stick any one character in a room with several sensibly levelled opponents, they *should* be able to win, but it'll be less effort for some classes than others. The ones which do have to try harder to hold their own however should be exponentially more dangerous when someone else is holding the attention of their foes, whether it be through crippling sneak attacks, enhancing the whole party with a strength spell or raining down bolts of lightning. As for non-combat abilities, realisitcally, any class should be able to learn anything, merely some classes would gets bonuses for specialising in things which fall under their remit: tracking, potions and woodsmanship for druids and rangers, traps, locks, poisons and pickpocketing for rogues and so on. This would possibly be a good place to balance out the "soloable" aspect of things, having classes other than the frontliners (particularly fighters and barbarians) be on average better at skills as they've spent time learning things other that just the best place to embed a mace in a skull. You can have a barbarian with great arcane knowledge, but it'll be at slight detriment to his ability to beat people to a paste.

Well, then I take back my take back of the "Diablo" comment ;-). I was already wondering. All signs point to there being a level-cap and the continuation of the level-up progress in the expansion. How did IWD do that? Did they implement lots of levels above the first play-through to accomodate HoF mode or did it just get progressively difficult to play? In Icewind Dale 2 there were 30 levels. From my playthroughs, If you soloed the game you got to level 27. If you did it with a party of 4 you got to level 17/18ish If you did it with a party of 6 you got to level 14/15ish. As for the difficulty thing, in Icewind Dale 2 the versatility really does compensate for the higher level characters - of those, the 4 x 17/18 party made for a far easier final battle than the single level 27 or the 6 14/15ish. With the singular character you had 15 or so opponents including several spellcasters piling on you while you couldn't get to them due to havign to fend off being surrounded by melee opponents, and status effects like paralysis, or being held were a death sentence while in a party it was an inconveniance. With six characters, although more versatile, each of the characters was more vulnerable and less powerful and several ended up dying in the process. With four you were obviously a lot less powerful than the solo character so individual foes didn't go down so quickly, but you were tough enough that this wasn't so much of a problem compared to the six characters. All are valid playstyle options and none of them are necessarily better than the others. Heart of Fury generally required you to be at least level 14/15 to start it, but honestly I haven't got especially far into it, once you are facing multiple spellcasters it ends up having A LOT of reloading.

Well ease of balance/class differentiation would be one obvious good reason, and kind of makes sense more so with a "stamina" system than with a direct HP system. If you assume that the difference between one levels worth of experience for a mage (which is intellectual, learning things and generally not that physical) and a barbarian (involving lots of hitting things and and being hit) the latter is going to be fundementally better at taking blows and carrying on due to practice. Yes there will be tough wizards who can take blows, but they are the exception rather than the rule and that's what a high constitution score and feats like toughness are there to provide the possibility of. It seems like you really do want to stripmine the classes for differentiating features....

I think the question of resting does rely a lot on what spell system we end up with (I quite like vancian as it forces strategising, but there are alternatives I equally like, just not sure about them for this particular game) but if there is going to be external resting I'd suggest that it is tied to skills. For countryside resting perhaps tie it to a "Woodsman" skill which not only affects liklihood of being attacked, but also how much you heal, druids and rangers would be particularly good at it but it would be open to anyone. Equally something along the lines of "street smarts" for resting in urban areas with the rogue getting the benefits to it, though again, anyone could learn.

I'm not claiming that it's realistic about learning alchemy from orc slaying (tho you probably get a good idea of the properties of various orc internal fluids from them sprayign everywhere) but the point being that gameplay and the levelling process becomes more organic when you have a smooth XP progression of constantly gaining XP in small increments rather than in chunks which would mean you only ever level up upon completing an objective. As I said, mixing both objective and active XP gathering is the ideal because then you can literally level up at any point. From a gameplay perspective you want to feel like levelling is a constant process because otherwise you are giving the players an excuse to stop, levelling up is a "buzz moment" in an RPG, and if it only happens at specific points on objective completion you are saying "well, that buzz wont come until you get to the bottom of the dungeon, even though you are practically leveled now" which means you are giving the player a point at which to stop, whereas if they know that they just need to get past the first few skeletons in the foyer to "ding" that keeps them doing. This is not Diablo, but what it is is a game with not 1 but 3 hard settings, including an equivalent to Icewind Dales Heart of Fury which basically required you to reload a preexisting game completing party/character in because it was leveled that way. Has the XP thing been actually stated by Obsidian, because if so I'm not a particular fan of that choice, if the assumption is you are doing something with a party of six and you pull it off with a party of three, by definition each of those characters is doing twice the work and therefore should be getting twice the XP. Part of the playstyle options of the Infinity Engine games was letting you make your own decisions about party size, balancing greater power but fewer characters against more characters (and thus more tactical options) but individual lower power. As Obsidian has said they intend it to be soloable (can't remember where off the top of my head) that would seem strange as then your one character would be doing the work of six without any tradeoffs for doing so.

I think the best reasons for pacifism options are looked for in pen and paper and are generally more narratively driven than gameplay wise. There are various scenarios where knocking someone out rather than exploding them into giblets is more useful - you want to interrogate someone for info, you want to do the old "rob but don't kill to keep the money flowing" thing or there is a bandit leader who you are fed up of him hassling you, but he is too useful to kill. Maybe you just want a tavern brawl without having to go to prison for murder. From a gameplay perspective though, it is tricky - as you either have to have non-lethal be an option in all fights regardless of whether its beneficial to do so (and so you end up with a big pile of unconcious bodies who don't react) or whether it'd just be better to do it in narrative and have the fight turn to dialogue when enemy HP hits a certain level in fights where this is relevant.

I'd like to point out that that has already been confirmed as being included in the game. Other that that, I'd like to add trapping, alchemy of some kind (focused on poisons?) and mechanical tinkering versatility. Not necessarily in a same rogue but as possibilities. Maybe even as combinations: poisoned traps, mechanical lockpicks that make it faster, that sort of thing. Well I don't personally mind that as it's an abstraction anyway - but I think perhaps the difference is something like if using such a magical cloak was a specific ability that could be used, say, once a day, people wouldn't necessarily mind. I think the issue people had was more that a standard hide was literally having people be invisible in the middle of the open as a normal function of hide. As for those, I meant to imply them with the second point but I was trying to be fairly concise. I'd like to extrapolate on poisons a bit - I like the idea of them ingame BUT preferably under two conditions - firstly that they have to be made or bought (ie. no automatic poison abilities on level up, these things take effort if you want them) and secondly that there are different kinds, not just "poison". Different antidotes would also be preferable too, but possibly not worth including mechanics wise. But I'd far rather have a selection of various poisons to choose from along the lines of having various effects from stamina damage, ability point damage, status effects like blindness or paralysis, chance of spellcasting failure etc. The effects could be more severe depending on how skilled you were at making them.

I've completed Icewind Dale 2, which is the best model for total party creation, far too many times for my own good but I try to go for a different setup each time just to try - playthroughs I remember: Most Recent: Ranger (Wild Elf) (front liner, occassional magic like entangle) Monk (Human) (front liner, occassionally "sniping" certain opponents by running over and using quivering palm) Cleric of Lathander (Gold Dwarf) (on the front line but using animate dead to pad out the team, healing and some buffing) Wizard (Human) (buffing with emotion: hope and mass haste, using stuff like cloudkill and fireball to kill the weaker foes en masse, managed to disintegrate the black dragon) Co-op Playthough with my Girlfriend (who had a barbarian and a wizard) Rogue (halfling) (sniping mages/priority targets at range with bow) Cleric/Fighter (frontline backup, buffing/healing) Also Just "Gnomdar the Barbarin" a ridiculous barbarian gnome with no notable intelligence, charisma or wisdom who just chopped everything with an axe. Finished at level 27. Took over ten years of inworld time due to all the resting without a healer in the party. I don't really stick to one class, I think I've finished the game with every class at some point except maybe sorcerer?