Alexjh

Many of those are FR staples sure, but some are basically staples of the entire genre - Tolkienesque elves, Orcs, Golems and definable wizards are widely present, and sympathetic villains are a staple of general fiction now. The thing here is not only do I trust Obsidian to have good justification and mechanics given their track record, but furthermore, I have seen monk mechanics before that did work before, by the people who made P:E. This gives me good faith that P:E will make them worthwhile. If there was a lawyer class that made sense in a combat heavy game that'd be fine, but obviously the difference is that monks are an established combatant and therefore work in a game. If you wanted to have a regular non-magical laywer in your party (though maybe not in this game, this is a game about souls after all ) if they had a) sufficient "value" for your party, b) could be made to fit the setting, c) were fun to play as and d) were sufficiently differentiated from the other classes then I don't have an objection at all. These are the four requirements of any class, and I believe that monks fulfill them amply. You made that last point more complex than it is and it boils down to the fact that Medieval European History and development is entirely bound to Christianity in a colossal way. However, fantasy literature is based off of a Medieval setting but very very rarely one that includes Christianity. This is simultaniously problematic and giving room for massive amounts of flexibility. Why does the Forgotten Realms resemble a monotheistic Middle Ages when its really weird jumble of polytheism? Why is Middle Earth apparently far less religious than Europe of a comparable technology level? The closest to as is I can think of offhand would possibly be Hyboria (as that is vaguely analagous to Eurasia anyway) where there are mixes of polytheism and monotheism, but even there, these are religions with very different tones to Christianity. Both Hyboria and Middle Earth are far more coherant settings than Forgotten Realms. So the net result of that: if you are going to include religion at all in a pseudo-medival setting, its best to do one that invokes a vibe of christianity while having its own flavour. Flavour such as martial monks for instance.

The appearance of which figure in a Euro-centric tale like the Arthur myths would give the reader pause, most likely: Lancelot, Merlin, or Forton? The character art we've seen so far looks somewhat Caucasian, I'd argue. Enter mermaids, scarecrows and bonobos as playable races. It's for diversity's sake, silly! Right, skimpily clad hermits in the middle of nowhere enhanced the dales by a good margin. Your first point is a fairly poor analogy - you know what would be even more utterly out of place in Arthurian/Nordic/Gaelic mythoses? Eldritch Horrors. Drow. Mind Flayers. Tolkienesque Elves. Rakshasa. Sympathetic Bad Guys. Orcs and Half-orcs. Gnomes. Guns. Psychic powers. Mithril. Yetis. Golems. Common enchanted weapons. +1 Weapons. Clerics who cast spells. Cyclops. Gorgons. Minotaurs. Sphinx. Slimes. Halflings. Giant Scorpions. Giant Rats. Harpies. Aboleths. Wizards with actual definable powers. People who ascend to being Gods. A City between worlds. Djinn. The fact that seemingly civilizations can exist when they are outnumbered by monsters 500 to 1. There are plenty more that appear in every aspect of modern fantasy. Modern fantasy is not fundementally linked to any one mythology, and indeed, many of the things which are now tropes of the genre were created by authors of fiction. A guy who is supernaturally good at punching things is way easier to fit into a setting than any of the above. For your mermaids, scarecrows and bonobos, if they fit with the world then sure. It'd be a fairly strange world, but if it made sense in context then why not. As Monks already exist as a thing, and we have established this isn't based on one specific real world location or mythology they slot in fairly easily. But this is still missing the point I am making - races are not (usually) a playstyle choice - claases are. If I was suggesting I wanted guys with lazers or I wanted a Mecha class then I could see your point. This however is a technologically contemporary class from a different part of the world. Hermits tend to live in the middle of nowhere last I checked, and the "skimpily clad" you suggest was as far as I recall the standard character models for the infinity engine which amounted to a tunic, not sensible dress for a mountaintop sure, but not exactly skimpy either. There is a good history of (western) Monks making their homes in remote places (see St. Cuthbert for example) and this archetype also ties into the concept of asceticism which has been a bit thing in Christianity (and therefore to a degree I add, the Arthurian Mythos). The only difference is that we are bringing in (eastern) idea of physical training into that setting, which given the whole Christian thing about protecting the weak is really only NOT a thing because Abrahamic religions are ostensiably (if not in practise) claiming to be pacifistic ones.

Noone wants to dilute their stories by going off on tangents though. And you don't want to destroy your audience's belief! That's the entire goal of a fantastical story! Any good storyteller would leave out an element that adds neither flavor nor enhances believability nor adds different options of storytelling. That's why I was asking, why is this [monks] in there? I'd say it does enhance flavour, and really, if something is going to destroy belief in a fantasy setting, its probably going to be something other than monks - psyc. There is nothign anywhere that says that P:E is a fundementally Western setting anyway, I'd be surprised if it wasn't a mishmash of various cultures formed together into something coherant. Besides, if we were going with Monks as an opposite to mages (one believes in manipulating external energies, one belives in mastering internal ones) they do fit into a Western setting far more logically than in a setting with no magic. Plus this is a game and the inclusion of a class which is arguably furthest removed from the "core 4" is a good choice for diversities sake. But for Monks that I thought worked well in a game, see the Black Raven monastary in Icewind Dale 2, I felt that worked well within the setting despite being an Eastern themed monastary in a Nordic-themed setting.

I would definitly go with guns as a tradeoff weapon - a high damage weapon with a reload time that means in standard combat you are more or less dead once your shots are used up. Definitly would work on the assumption that you use guns as an opening volley before switching into something more practical, or save your guns for shots against high value targets or to finish fights quickly when someone is in trouble. I wouldn't say it has to be necessarily a minute reload, but certainly at least fast as a crossbow which in turn should be slower than bows.

I'd say the key is making buffs not a chore is making sure that the pure statistical ones aren't the important ones. Things like haste, invisibility, shields, blur etc are very visual powers with very specific purposes, but something like bless is far more nebulous. If you are going to have things like that the key is to give them a specific role rather than just "I summon my Gods to make my numbers go higher!" On average, I'd say that any significant amount of buffing should at most be required for one fight in four, it certainly shouldn't be a prefight ritual every single time. One option actually perhaps would be an ability to prepare a preset routine of pre-fight spells that you can cast the bunch of them automatically, that way you don't have to manually do loads of buffing every time when you know what you want.

While I think that the "protector of the wild" concept is part of the ranger, I think the class is a bit more broad than that. For me, rangers don't necessarily have any particular love of the wild even if they know it well. Many do, but I don't be any means see it as a prerequisite. A man who guides merchant caravans over a treacherous range of mountains while fending off monsters using his knowledge would be a ranger, but he might only do the job because his family has always done it, and would quite happily get rid of the mountains entirely if that was an option. Similarly, a man who has dedicated himself to killing all harpies, might know their habitats really well, and use tracking and survival skills to hunt through the wilds, but he only cares for killing those harpies, not the wild itself. Lastly, the big one, people who are indifferent to the wild beyond the tactical advantages it provides, guerilla fighters who live in the deep jungle that no one else knows to strike at random on targets out of their element before disappearing back into the woods definitly fall in this category. If there was no occupying army or whatever, theyd be happily at home next to a fire, but choose to be out in the woods to give them the upper hand against a foe that has better weapons and/or more people. This is basically what Robin Hood was and he is one of the originators of the class. I don't mind the noble guardian of the woods whatsoever, but the class is so much more diverse than that.

Well if it was going to be a proper infinity engine game successor, it has to be named after the place its set/the setting eg. Icewind Dale/Baldurs Gate/Planescape.

I think for that to work you'd have to have a system whereby a monk would have to get between the caster/shooter and the target to intercept. This then ties into the maneuverability role again. I'm not sure if the way the programming is set up will allow that, but if it would that'd certainly be an option.

That was not my main complaint, no. I an actual shaolin school, noone has flaming fists, noone is immune to poison and noone can facepalm a dragon. My point was that in this game, monks are simply superfluous; if the game was set in the ancient Far East, I wouldn't say so. I think we can approach the problem from the rear, too: why should monks be in the game? What do they bring to the table that other classes can't do, or shouldn't do, and why is it relevant enough to implement them? Well going from D&D monks, the answer would be that they have a very different playstyle to the other front liners. One mechanic I think would be worth building into them would be something about a stance for deflecting/redirecting ranged attacks including certain spells. In addition to being a solid front liner, this then puts them in a position of being a defensive aspect of the team. I'd also include a superhuman leap ability, allowing them to pass over barricades and formations that would force any other class to fight through them, and while they would presumably be a softer tank than barbarian, fighter and paladin, this then allows them to be by far the most manouverable class on the battlefield able to respond to problems that no other class would be able to respond to it time, whether it be leap forward to hold the line against a wave of enemies suddenly attacking your flanks until the rest of the party can get into position or leaping over a rank of ranks of skeleton knights in formation to engage the necromancer summoning them. I can't remember if it was this thread I said it in or another, but I see the monk as something of a troubleshooter in terms of combat, using their movement speed to move around the battlefield to hotspots. Yes they'll hold the front line fine if that's all they are needed to do, but its not their specialty.

As actual shaolin monk schools exist, (unlike wizard schools) I presume your complaint here is that we're mixing eastern and western themes and ideologies together? I think we have to work on the principle that most modern fantasy in games and films at least is more broadly drawn from various global mythologies other than the Scandinavian ones of Tolkien. Going the purist route, Chimeras, Centaurs, Sphinxes and Gorgons never shared a mythology/part of the world with say, Trolls, Elves or Dwarves. Let alone when you start adding in things like Rakshasa, Djinn and Coautl. Not to say those will be in PE of course, but just to demonstrate how broad a source material Fantasy draws from. If PE is building a whole new world, it would be, in my view, a mistake to draw it purely from Northern European sources - this is a world with 6 different sentient species - of which it is suggested that humans and elves at least are recent arrivals. If you suggesting it's impossible that any culture in a multi-species world would develop differently to western societies as that seems fairly conceited. I really don't think that Monks are any more removed from western mythology than (D&D style and by extension, general CRPG) clerics, who have little to no grounding in reality or mythology. At least with monks we have monastaries of people dedicated to purity of self and enlightenment, and orders of devout warriors, the only thing missing is combining the two.

Nop. A character who is defined by his wearing heavy armor and using heavy weapons is p. different from a mage in terms of mechanics and make-belief, especially when they're not relying on abilities that have a limit-per-day use Yes that's unfortunately what they do. They tank like a boss but without any explanation based in reality, and that is a very striking similarity to a mage (his powers are just as inexplicable) I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that high fantasy isn't the genre for you. Out of 11 classes in the game, arguably only four at most are "based on reality" - Fighter, Ranger, Barbarian and Rogue. While there may be/have been real life Druids, Paladins and Clerics they don't really share that much in common with their fantasy counterparts. The rest are based on folklore or mythological characters which monks fall well within the remit of. Given that we already know that each of the classes uses their soul energy to become supernaturally good at what they do, learning what is effectively an exaggerated version of (cinema) martial arts with fists glowing with presumably chi isn't unreasonable, and more than the "unrealism" of being able to kill a 200ft dragon with a sword.

So what you're saying is that a monk is basically a crappy mage who has to hit stuff with his fists to be effective rather than bringing AoE flaming ranged death. I guess that nails it, but that also reinforces the point that monks are a bad idea. By that logic every class is "basically a crappy mage", and that's not even what he's suggesting. The role of a monk in a party is not the same as that of a mage. Monks are front line fighters who have focused their souls into making their body a weapon, mages are artillery role combatants who turn their minds into weapons. Both discipline built classes with some magical effects but that's where the similarity ends.

Except when they don't of course. You have to consider than different animals are better at certain things than human - most four legged animals are faster than an average human, many are far stronger than an average human (things like tigers and bears for instance) many have poison and so on. If nothing else, lock a fully armoured knight in a room with a polar bear and see what happens. The knight might win certainly, but he is facing a creature that can break his neck in a single swipe. Combine that body with a human intellect and it's not an opponent to take lightly. This is of course to not neglect the out of combat uses like scouting etc.

I have to say, contrary to a lot of people here, I much prefer non-magical animal companions in contrast to magical ones. This doesn't include sentient animals, but more ones that are pets etc. The reason is that I find having magical animals as pets quite garish - they're too obviously trying to be "cool". This isn't to say they should be real animals necessarily, but certainly not hell-hounds or miniature dragons, but if you wanted, say, a fictional bear species or even something like a sabre-tooth tiger that'd work. If heroes with animal companions were real, having a tiny dragon companion would be the equivalent of walking into a room covered in excessive "bling". Generally just faintly embarrassing. Plus then the coolest thing about you would be your pet, not your heroing prowess. I'm all for dogs, big cats, wolves, giant versions of smaller animals, hawks, owls etc, but just not silly things.

While I see the general point of this, and I do love Brienne of Tarth, the primary problem is that it creates massive amounts of work in terms of a female PC if all of society is dismissive of women. Which isn't to say a largely different set of dialogue for women wouldn't be worthwhile, but I don't think it's necessarily the most worthwhile thing that could be done with equivical time and money. At a compromise, I'd suggest the best option would be to have certain environments where it is an issue, perhaps in certain tribes or in certain courts, but not be something that it pervasive throughout the entire setting. I do definitly think it is a worthwhile set of themes to explore, but it's realistically have to be instead of multiple sentient species if you wanted to explore it enough to do it justice and not have completely insane quantities of dialogue options.

I'd perhaps suggest some form of "semi-full" looting. I'm not against full looting, but it's logistically problematic, and really there is only so many everyday objects that you can be bothered to pick up. I really strongly dislike "MMO" looting, where enemies only ever drop a preset batch of things, and never, for instance, the weapon, shield or armour they are using because because it feels really artificial. What I would suggest would be something like: (Non-magical) Weapons are always dropped. Magical or unique items are always dropped. Lingering ammo and potions always drop (Non-magical) Shields may be damaged when you kill an enemy, so have a 50% (or whatever) chance of dropping (Non-magical) Armour is almost always destroyed during the kill, so only drops 10% of the time. Enemies may then drop various other things by random generation, ranging from generic (gems, gold) to specific to a certain enemy (holy symbols, spells, thief tools etc) Unless it has some specific value or function, in regards to armour this only applies to specifically human scale humanoid characters - for instance, there's no point in centaurs dropping loads of centaur armour you can't actually wear, or when the armour isn't a specific thing, like a gnoll wearing a load of random hides and chunks of things. That isn't to say the centaurs might not have useful helms and bracers or a boss gnoll might have a suit of stuff that holds together enough for someone else to wear it etc.

I think the key is definitly having important characters voiced and some general background noise, I'm quite happy to pad it out using a fake language as it gives the setting some tone. I think Icewind Dale 2 got it more or less right, though I seem to recall one or two characters who could have maybe done with being voiced (Islebah, Shawford Crale and a few more) but in general it got the gist right. I'd actually go slightly further and say I'd quite like a few Infinity Engine alumni to lend their talents, not in anything too self referential, but these were games with really good voice acting so I'd like to hear some of them again.

Certainly, but we aren't using the IE engine to make PE. So... they have to program these things in intentionally. They won't just be there for them to utilize. Sight radius, movement speed, level layout all need to be consciously chosen to create the best tactical experience possible. I would argue MOST of DA:O/DA2's tactical issues can be attributed to its camera system - accomodate the console version, BioWare's camera system encourages playing the game in first-person. In DA2, they completely removed the ability to get an isometric view. This grossly hurts accurate positioning. I do agree there is a time and place for ambushes, but, if you are ambushed constantly - you have no tactics. I mean, there are things you can do in the midst of an ambush to save your hide, but I would argue such maneuvers are not tactics. Tactics are about careful though and planning, if you're reacting like you got sucker-punched in the chin, that's all you're doing to save your skin. Perhaps there are mechanics that can be added to make dealing with ambushes more tactical, but tactical games are not known for their speed. Tactical games are about planning, positioning, execution, timing, et cetera - they aren't about thinking on the seat of your pants. That kind of thing should be thrown in every once in a while so that pacing is less "methodical" or "boring". In the real world, I'd say an ambush is the antithesis of tactics - if you get caught in an ambush in real life, you're ****ed. You have no recourse. Bang bang bang you're dead. Most strategists plan around anticipating or avoiding opportunities for ambush. This applies the same to games I think, though I suppose you could make a game about properly dealing with ambushes in a tactical manner... it does seem contradictory to think of them that way. I trust Obsidian to do their best, but the purpose of the threads I make, although some of my points may seem like common sense, we simply cannot take them for granted. Obsidian cannot mess up this game. I'm not doubting Obsidian's understanding of how and why the IE games work(ed), but I don't see the harm in pointing it out here. These are kind of subtle points I'm making, you wouldn't notice these things on your first time playing DA:O I think. Or at least, I didn't until I started analyzing the game more seriously on my second run. One of the most notable things I think, is enemy movement speed. It's way too fast. Monsters close in so quickly you don't have a lot of time to react to the non-ambush encounters, where enemies aggro a short distance away. You have enough time for cone of cold on the group of melee enemies, and that's about it. Cone of cold (and other fast immobilization spells) buy you a lot of time to set up, to the point where such spells are basically "required" to handle most encounters on nightmare (to the point where I no longer play on that difficulty). You'll notice that aside for some, most monsters in BG are pretty darn slow to react and slow to move. Though, they are no less deadly, distances and movement speed are pretty sweet and give you just enough time to land spells that require a small amount of channeling to complete, or they give you just enough time to re-arrange your party's positioning. And yes I agree that the threat/aggro system in DA:O is pretty awful. It's very, very weird. If you have a group of 4 warriors, it seems as though they all pile up on the warrior using berserker rage instead of actually attacking the tanks I build and use all the +threat persistent on-hit abilities. And if you try to run away, they never break aggro. You simply cannot lose them until you exit the instance. I can understand why they chose it - for some degree of "realness" - but it just hurts the game too much. I kind of dislike agro mechanics in general principle, it doesn't really reflect anything in the real world as there is no such thing as "tanking", strategically, there isn't usually reason to go for any target other than the weakest or the most dangerous, which realistically means in fantasy squads the mage should always be the primary target for intelligent enemies. But this of course varies with your opponent, and they should behave differently. Lets take a classic D&D squad (lets say.... Fighter, Wizard, Cleric of some Sun God, Rogue and Barbarian) and a selection of different monsters to demonstrate this. If you were fighting a pack of wolves, they shouldn't just agro to the most powerful, they are hunting for food, so the obvious thing isn't going to be to engage your front line fighters, they'll want to separate your wizard or your rogue from the pack because they are seemingly the easiest kill, Incidentally I'd actually like to see wolves treated sensibly in a game for a change, perhaps following you for a while and only attacking once you'd been weakened from another fight, and retreating if they started losing. They aren't stupid animals to always go into all or nothing charges. If you were fighting an evil version of your own party, they should realistically have similar tactics to you, the mage and cleric would be the the primary targets on both sides although the barbarians and the fighters might well end up facing each other down defensively to protect the cleric/mage. The rogues will in turn be trying to take out either the mage or cleric or their opposite rogue, depending on which is a bigger threat. If you are fighting a mind-flayer they might go for the fighter or barbarian to put them under their controll to take out the other 3. A vampire-lord on the other hand might well target the Sun Cleric purely out of hatred but if the sun cleric wasn't there, they'd probably behave far more tactically. Things like that, none of which is based on some magical taunting ability. If you are fighting a stupid enemy, say goblins, then is when agro mechanics might play in as they'd assume the biggest guy on the field was the biggest threat and go for the barbarian either because they think they need to take him out first, or, because they want boasting rights if they kill him. But really, apart from goblinish things and particularly stupid gangs of bandits, this should be the exception rather than the rule. An enemy like an ancient dragon however of course, might be the opposite of either of those, and literally just pick opponents utterly an random because it deems the whole party equally insignificant. Unless of course someone gives it a reason to focus on them, like weilding a dragonbane sword or wearing dragonskin armour etc. I'll also add that I wouldn't mind one or two instances of wave fighting to time limit rather than enemies killed, if you have been tasked with holding a bridge against an army for instance, but it certainly shouldn't be a regular thing.

I kind of disagree with the basic premise of this thread, yes certainly we don't want DA2 fights, but equally, part of playing a tactical combat game is having to come up against fights that you aren't prepared for, and you should only ever be prepared for them if you went ahead and checked. If you just run into a room, there should be no way of knowing what is in that room beforehand and you should have to deal with the consequences. If you take the time to scout it with a rogue or scry with a mage, you should generally know, but even then not necessarily to detect invisible foes or hidden ones or ones standing out of view. Certainly this shouldn't be a regular thing, but preparation for a fight should be the only thing that makes you prepared for a fight. On a more specific note, I agree with most of the more specific points you make, but as this is based on the Infinity Engine games rather than DA:O I don't think the same problems of those games are likely to be an issue: perhaps its more the problems of the IE games that should be issues, ie. enemies who are vanquished by the concept of a closed door (and a cloudkill...)

I think if they were going to implement something like this, it'd have to vary from character ti character and to not that great a degree and within limitations. Obviously a character has to function in the same rules, and if the player is going to be able to level them up (more or less a foregone conclusion, as was a recurring infinity engine thing) it wouldn't make sense to have an entirely different way of setting up a character for the party members. What I would say is that I would allow some characters to multiclass while others would not be able to: from a roleplaying perspective, it's probably fairly unlikely that a quiet reserved monk character should get to multiclass to a barbarian, but perhaps a front-line fighter who is a bit rough might be able to go towards barbarian, paladin, rogue, ranger or perhaps even some of the more martial cleric disciplines. So I'd say, perhaps just give each of the companions a preset bunch of classes they can go towards, with the options ranging from lots to none depending on the character. If you are going to have the player effect the backstory of a character before you meet them, that should be the only way to do it rather than just random origins on a dice role, because to do the examples as pitched in the original post would mean writing loads of alternate dialogue effectively for different throws of a lucky dip. On the flip side, if it ties to the plot, say, whether you save a village earlier in the game or not, and you later meet a guy from there as either a fighter (having saved the village, he trained up as a solider) or ranger (as a refugee was forced to live off the land) it could create a lot of replayability.

This is actually a fairly difficult question, I've read a fair selection of fantasy authors, both ones I've liked and ones I've disliked, but I think that tonally game writers and book writers are fairly disparate mediums to the point where authors I generally find fairly middling (David Gemmel for instance) would probably actually suit games better as a medium than books, while some of my favourite authors don't tonally mesh well with the sort of flow of a game. I'll skip out the current most obvious pair, Tolkien and Martin as the former permeates the entire genre and the latter is so in vogue right now as to be unavoidable, and both are worthy sources. Instead I'll just bring up a few of my favourites. For ideas, though I admit that many of them have an unfortunate Fan-fic-ish quality to them in the character writing, there are some really nice ideas in Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books which I think could transfer well to a game setting. Particularly the specifics of the abilities and limitations of mages is a fun take on things while keeping mages within limitations eg. drawing magic from one source into another, overuse of magic sends them into shock which will prove fatal if not treated etc. Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea books (at least the first three) are another of my favourites, unlikely material for a game as there is very little in the way of fighting that'd transfer well, but an interesting setting nonetheless. Robin Hobb could be a interesting source, particularly with Project Eternities focus on souls: the books include several concepts that'd transfer well to the concept - the "forging" of people - removing their souls (won't spoil why) leaving people feral but still kind of intelligent, or the Liveships, produced by the deaths of 3 generations of a family while aboard a ship constructed of special wood, giving them sentience. I can definitly see the idea of souls being transfered into objects being a possibility within P:E, whether they retain any sentience or just to power them. Lastly Tad Williams, particularly his Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series if nothing else because it has an entirely different take on Trolls, interesting angle on prophecies, and manages to be very evocative of the locations it visits, while retaining a "mythic" quality that most fantasy struggles at. I'm mainly obviously saying these because I like their work for tone and ideas, the degree to which they'd transfer well to P:E is debatable and varied.

I as of now own 4 copies of Baldurs Gate, but the main reasons I bought this more or less boil down to a)BG2 improvements in BG1, b) a multiplayer that'll (hopefully) actually work without having to battle it, c)new content and d) I feel if I support it it's, more likely that well get more isometric RPGs in the future. Played through both icewind dales in coop with my girlfriend using my disc copy for me / my gog copy for her, but trying to get baldurs gate to run in the same manner has been an exercise in futility...

I think for me I prefer to have Gods with fairly broad domains on the basis that the smaller the domain, the less reason people would bother to worship them in the first place, but this can be achieved through having two or more aspects to them. These don't have to be obvious pairings, for a campaign i ran I designed a new pantheon, and the one I liked the most was fairly day of the dead inspired, being the god of death but also things like music, dancing and drunkenness. It adds a much different tone to the traditional obviously evil gods. Infact on te subject of that, I don't think there should be evil gods at all per say. There should certainly be deities with unpleasant domains and have the kind of personalities that in a human would make you want to hit them, but realistically, there is fairly minimal reason to worship a moustache twirling deity without a very good reason. The other thing, is I'd like to see a mixture of religions, not just the traditional d&d omnipresent polytheism, where everyone believes in everyone, but they just choose specific deities to focus their personal worship on. For a start, it'd be nice to have a monotheistic religion in there somewhere even if they aren't a huge thing. Another similar thing would Be to have a situation where there are two branches of the same religion, perhaps the difference only in their entire pantheons are identical, but for the domain of say, the sun where on side worships a fairly archaic deity but the other worships a different one, perhaps they both believe in both but regard one as a minor figure each. I think a lot of this boils down to the nature of deities in project eternity, there are certainly various models for this, most obvious of which is the real world scenario where gods do not exist in and proveable say and the power of clerics comes from themselves. Then there is the opposite end of the spectrum where gos very definitely do exist, created everything and muck around people's lives in a day to day basis, up to and including wandering round incarnated. I'd personally shy from this, as while it works fine for Greek and Norse mythology, its fairly hard to pull off your own importance in a world where Zeus could just decide he doesn't like you and zap you (and knowing yZeus, seduce any attractive female relatives you might have). The other options are somewhere inbetween, the Pratchett model for example, where gods always exist as insignificant spirits, but if one manages to get people to believe in them, they begin to be elevated to an actual god. A similar one would be where deities are created from nothing by belief, as sentient beings - this might make a lot of sense for project eternity as soul energy is such a potent force, people going around dedicating their souls to beings might do more than they know. Indeed, on that model, perhaps cleric spell casting works by essentially using the belief of others as their personal power battery and it would then follow that certain pantheons would literally have more potent clerics than others. Lastly, there is he option that people might believe in one guy/lady so much that they then become a god as they reach some sort of belief critical mass hat allows them to ascend to god hood. Designing pantheons has always been on of my favourite aspects of world building, so many possibilities to choose from! (sorry for any weird typing, not used to writing on an iPad with its weird predictive text)

In a pen and paper roll playing game, classes tend to spend a lot of time out of combat and be able to make use of their flavour more. Rangers can help the players find where they are going, avoid dangerous areas and the like. Druid's control of animals and shapechange adds a lot of possibilities. I find that is CRPGS alot of this is missing,mostly because combat is predominant, and noncombat situations and options limited. In the Icewind Dale games, for example, you spend most of your time in tactical combat, and don't use your skills so much. This makes the combat role much more important and the differences between a druid and a cleric much less than they would be in a pen & paper game. I'd really like to see each class offer more than a cosmetic difference. Certainly, although I think in Icewind Dale 2, the differences were decent enough between cleric and druid to justify separate classes, clerics were heavy armoured front line fighters with healing and defensive spells, druids were more lightly armoured, had wildshape which was actually quite useful, particularly in the first half the game, and had far more offensive spells but fewer defensive ones. I think the main issue, which we've discussed in this thread a bit already, is just taking it that bit further - making wildshape stay as a fundemental vital class feature rather than becoming more of a gimmick as you level, and just pushing them apart that much further.

I don't think most of these are entirely workable though for an entire species though, let alone an entire sentient one. Perhaps Elves tend to be these things relative to an equivical human, but the idea that there are no overweight, ugly, clumsy, shy or poor elves just doesn't have any internal consistancy. Even in Tolkien, where the Elves border on demigods you are only seeing the elf nobility, you just don't see the Elves whose job it is to, say, farm or empty all the elf-privies. I do think that you have to have the possibility of at least some of those or it brings up some weird implications for elves reacting with the other races; you could go a weird root and make Elves an entire species which is the social equivelant of gossip magazine culture, eg. anything that doesn't look like a supermodel is considered fat and ugly, so in general, they regard 99% of humans as ugly and common, and as for dwarves... You could bring in the idea of Elven glamour which is a staple of the species, so Elves aren't actually all of those things that much more than normal humans, but they produce some sort of effect (psychic? magical?) which makes everyone else think they are...