Doppelschwert

That's what I expected from the game as well, that they scale it in the way josh described. It doesn't change my argument, however. If you want a linear increase in damage, that is, you want the DT system to maintain its implication with regards to weapon styles, the only thing you can do is adjust attack speed. It works on TWF because it just further improves the inherent bonus to the style. If you don't want to water the distinction between these styles down, then I think you can't just improve attack speed on two handed weapons. On the other hand, any change to damage will shift the usefulness of the weapon versus various values of DT, so if you just gave a 20% bonus damage or +5 damage per hit on a two handed weapon, it would shift the usefulness with regards to DT. I'm not arguing that they shouldn't do that at all, I'm arguing that I think this is the rationale behind it. When you have a system like DT, the crucial point is how much damage you can make with a single standard attack at most in order to balance the values. If the numbers become to inflated, you will have balancing problems, so it's probably not sensible to let them scale through the roof. Because there is no increase in actual damage across all talents, the DT system stays intact. Personally, I'd like two haned weapons to give a better chance at interupting, since you have less overall opportunities to interrupt with them in the first place, given the slow attack speed. On an unrelated note, what does 20% graces convertes into hits mean? Do you convert 20% of the actual graces range or do you convert at most 20 points of the actual graces range?

What's official about the wiki? The wiki is maintained by people from this very forum, or am i wrong? That's hardly an official statement without a quote in the article, you know as much as before. I also don't think the disengagement radius depends on weapon reach, but basically we still don't know.

I think deflection on two handed weapons is fine. Two handed weapons have the greates damage values and are therefore best at penetrating DT. So in particular, they already have the consistently highest DPS and have this far proven to be the most useful weapons overall if you disregard the DT bypass of some weapons. It's true that the other talents enhance the benefit of the given style even further, but I think it would be too strong on two handed weapons if you gave them more damage. If you wanted to buff their offense without making DT even more trivial, you'd have to give them a bonus to attack speed. But then you'd need to give two weapon style something different, for the sake of asymmetry. Giving two weapons a bonus to damage again compromises the DT mechanic, so I wouldn't know what to give them. So in conclusion I think that two handed weapons already are the upper ceiling on damage you should be able to output. If you want to balance their role, you can get the deflection, otherwise just take another talent that helps on dealing damage. The talents are competing with the other talents as well, not only among themselves, so I think its fine.

I like both mockups, great job. However, I think that displaying the class ressources for monks, chanters and ciphers looks kind of bad displayed as numbers. At least on my native resolution of 1280x1024 in the current game the numbers are way too small to see them at a glance. For monks, I think it should either be a bar that is broken up into segments, depending on the maximal number of wounds you can carry, or wounds should just be displayed as buffs/debuffs because that is actually exactly what they are and how they are treated as a mechanic. For ciphers and chanters I guess it would be nice just to have a bar where by hovering over an ability, the cost would be highlighted on the bar. I suck at doing mockups, so I hope it's clear what I mean with this verbal description.

Yeah, I agree with that.

I just quoted these as an example of a more interesting percentile armor formula the devs could look at as a reference. But flat DR may be easier to balance / understand. I also stated that if damage bonuses were integers rather than percentages, the current system would be fine - as that's how it worked in the Fallouts, so we know that it can work in that instance. I don't think there will be a range of ACC-DEF where there will be proper numbers. Since content in PE does not scale, the player will be able to attempt said content at basically any level they please, if it is not crit path content. This creates situations where player ACC/DEF will be either way higher or way lower than enemy ACC/DEF and in those situations, the player will either mow through the content getting consistent critical hits and lollerskating away at the difficulty, but when they try and go up against higher level content, they'll be one-shotted by enemies scoring critical hits very often. Making crits normalized to the dice roll would help alleviate these extremities. Changing attributes from the 10 to 8 range is not an arbitrary change. It gives players more headroom for positive bonuses, while still keeping the plus and minus system. Yeah, I recognized the formulas. But to be honest, I think from a mathematical point of view, they are pretty boring. Basically, the formula just describes just a linear growth of effective health. For example, you can interpret a 50% DR into 200% effective health, and if you make DR dependent on armor like in the dota formula you quoted, then you get that basically every point in armor increases your effective health by const% (if anyone cares for the details, I could deduce this fact). You could make armor grant constitution and the effect would be exactly the same from a mechanical point of view. I don't like this kind of armor because its a sham in a sense. It's easy to balance, but hard to understand what is actually going on. I also don't think the fallouts were properly balanced, especially regarding armor, but YMMV. Regarding the difference in ACC/DEF, that is certainly a problem, but DnD can pull it of as well, so I don't see why it couldn't work with some proper balancing. If over the course of 10 levels, your ACC only increases by 50 points, then there is a lot of room for actually tweaking. If you have a range of -15 to +15 around a baseline, which translates to 6 levels in this scenario, then the crit chance is ok. I think the problem lies more in the inflated numbers of accessible buffs to accuracy. But yeah, your solution with caps is fine either way - I'm actually asking for both, not for one or the other.

Thanks for the write up, although I disagree on many levels. I'm not sure on the attack resolution. Capping critical hits and misses is a good suggestion, but I think with proper numbers one should be able where it is not necessary. So I don't think it's a systemic issue, but you're solution takes care of it anyway, so that's fine by me. Regarding the armor system, I think that using DR all the way through is possible to adress the issue, but it is as infinitron says, its pretty boring from a mathematical point of view. Again, I think proper scaling is a problem here which could be adressed instead. At the moment, I feel like DT is not properly balanced against base damage of actions in the first place, which is a problem in itself, regardless of damage bonus. One way to adress this is to make DT chance based, like in DOTA2. You have a certain amount of DT, but only a 75% (I'm guessing here) chance to actually use it. Quality of your armor increases the chance, but not the DT itself. Give some talents in armor usage that increases the chance further. You still have an incentive to use larger weapons instead of small ones against armor, but the smaller ones don't suck so hard anymore consistently. The effect is that the DT range is smaller (as it doesn't scale with quality of gear) so you can make the damage values of basic actions smaller as well. I think this would help while still having tactical choices. Shields can stay the way they are, but be buffed. I agree that attributes need more impact, but I think the actual system is fine when they properly buff the numbers. Making 8 the baseline is an arbitrary and not useful change imo as you can just shuffle the base values around such that the effect is the same while 10 still is the zero point. Given that we live in decimal world, I think 10 should remain the zero point. That is all for now.

I also think the problem lies more in getting the right feedback from the game and the actual speed instead of real time per se. If you have access to proper auto pause conditions, a way to queue up actions and better UI feedback, then the amount of pausing should be getting much better. Also, if the design goals regarding balancing are met in the way they should, you should be able to build some of your characters in a way that they require much less maintaince. At least I know that I will build my non-magic characters in a way that they will only have a few important active abilities and will concentrate on passive abilities for the remaining available talents.

Nice work! I think the bottom line is that every class can benefit from athletics, as everyone suffers from fatigue. I don't think that this was the reason why they put the skill on so many talents, but I rather think that they did it this way because they tried to assign the most fitting skill to a talent, which most of the time falls back to athletics, because it is so general. Personally, I think that this system is bad as it ties combat to non-combat skills, in contrast to what has been announced way back. I don't think there is a way to make the skillsystem more interesting without tying it to combat skills, but I'd prefer a straight forward system if it means I can freely customize for combat. The big question is whether there are supposed to be a lot more talents to cover up the lacking variety, or if the skills will be reassigned.

By now, I seriously hate the quote mechanics in this forum. I'll just snip out some stuff of your post, give it a number and adress it below. Did you read my previous posts in the thread? The Enemy AI is completely manipulable. If you have two characters guarding a corridor and there is a gap, no enemy is going to get through because they will attack your characters at the front of the corridor due to the AI targeting clauses. You need to PAY ATTENTION to who the enemies are targeting. Here is a glorious mspaint demonstration I have to ask you, when was the last time you played an Infinity Engine game? What do you do when your melee characters are nearly killed for whatever reason - let's say they got Held and nearly killed from automatic hits, your Cleric cast Remove Paralysis and they are now not stunned, but on a few HP - what do you do? You have two choices - let them die, or move them away. In the IE games, you micro them away from the enemies and make them quaff a potion, or get the Priest to queue up another healing spell etc etc In Pillars of Eternity you can't move a character away from melee combat when they are on the brink of death - they will die from a disengagement attack. Disengagement attacks eliminate something which is the bread and butter of in-combat unit movement in any game with RTS style gameplay whether that be an Infinity Engine RPG, an RTS game, or even a MOBA. In fact, not only does it make trying to move your character away from combat a bad choice, but it also makes the fact that you cast Remove Paralysis a bad choice, because they can't move away from combat anyway - that is a load of garbage in my opinion. This doesn't make sense. Enemies won't disengage ever, the only disengagement attacks you will ever score will be from your own spells causing enemies to disengage. You already have 'the power to engage' without engagement due to the way the AI targeting clauses work. All the Engagement system does is give the player a penalty from trying to move characters in melee away from melee combat. That is literally it. It's supposed to be a no brainer, that is what you are supposed to do when your characters get low - move them away from combat. It is up to the enemy AI to try and stop you from doing it, such as casting disables and crowd control spells making it difficult. Enemy Fighters could be scripted to cast their Knock Down spell when a character they are attacking is reduced below 25% health - that would make it tough to get away, providing they hit. There is no need for some retarded automatic system to punish you for making the best tactical decision. Like wtf is that? In that case it seems like you're arguing just for the sake of it. You wouldn't play any differently whether or not there was an engagement system. edit: I also play games the way that is fun for me. I don't rest spam or do anything insanely cheesy when I play the Infinity Engine games, and I have a whole Icewind Dale LP to prove it. But I do understand how the enemy targeting works and use that information to position and move my characters optimally in combat. You might believe it, but I don't think it would be true, especially considering your last statement. I honestly don't think it would affect how you play the game - especially if you never thought to micro characters back before. 1) Ask yourself this question: Assume the roles are swapped and you control the right party trying to get the backline of the left party. If the AI would try to block you like this, would you change your target to the blocking unit or would you just go around the enemy and hit the back row anyway? If you wouldn't change your target but just go around the enemy to the backline anyway, as there is no penatly for doing so, then you just argued that the AI of the IE games is exploitable and stupid. In the same situation, with a disengagement mechanic, you probably wouldn't just jogg past them because you get hit in the face, making your behaviour more similiar to the AI, but for a proper reason. 2) I have to ask you again as well, why can't you do this just some time before you are actually at the brink of death? What's pretending you doing the same maneuver at 20% of HP instead of at 5% of HP? It's way harder to back up with the disengagement mechanic, because you have to anticipate just how much damage you will take until you moved away (Will you take a crit? can you survive another attack while still being able to back away? That is risk vs. reward decision making). If you adjust the numbers of the attack properly, thats the only thing that changes, so I don't understand the butthurt. 3) Why won't enemies disengage? Because the clauses that are in the game at the moment suck? What argument is that? I don't care how bad the game plays in an unfinished state, I care about how the final game ends up. That the AI shouldl be able to disengage is even something josh announced. 4) It's not supposed to be a no-brainer, you want it to be one. It could be made to a no-brainer, but there is absolutely no reason why it should be, apart from personal preference. You can design a perfectly fine game around the assumption or without the assumption. Don't tread everything the IE games did like dogma. It's exactly as I said: The disengagement system makes positioning a nontrivial decision, as the only thing it does is putting penalties on actions which would otherwise be only beneficial, so that you have to weight the advantages and disadvantages. You can like or dislike that, but that's exactly what it does. If you feel like the penalties are so high that it becomes a non-decision, then that only shows that balancing is way off, which can be changed with a patch anytime. 5+6) There is a fine line between abusing and using incentives. I would certainly not play the same way if the mechanic is in or out. I also withdrew units in the IE games when they were low on health and beelined for enemy casters if given the chance. I have no clue where you get the idea that I would've never thought about moving characters back. What I wouldn't think about is pushing enemies into a corner such that their attack clause forces them to attack my units, which is illogical any way given that they just could run around me as I could with them. I think at this moment, we can just agree to disagree. Personally, I can live with both the disengagement system and without it, but I would prefer it. I still think it's very narrow minded if you just dismiss the idea that people see merit in having the mechanic, whether you personally agree with it or not. No one is arguing that it's good at the moment, at least, but I think it could work just fine with the proper tuning.

How does moving a character away from melee when they are damaged imply "skillful to carry out" ? You pause the game, you select your character that is injured, you click the ground away from combat .... it's not rocket science. Apart that this was meant to be a general sentiment, you're picking a trivial example. Remember the example given by PJ in this thread, where one tries to guard a corridor with two chars where there is a gap between them that only one enemy can fit through? You told him automation of this kind of stuff sucks and that you should hit them yourself. Problem is, as you point out yourself, that this probably won't align with recovery time and that you have to pause at the exact moment which needs you to recognize this first. It's not hard, but a lot more tedious to carry out than the automation. The tactic is to block the entrance, and if you make that decision, it shouldn't be hard to pull off. I agree with PJ that one could expect this to be doable more easily. Go ahead and say that this automation sucks, but that's your opinion and not an actual argument. No, because moving away gives the character a free attack independent of recovery time. Even in the IE games when damage was pretty well balanced, you keep your characters at the front line until they are in danger, because their job is to tank the damage/keep the units attacking them occupied while your other units do other things. Even if disengagement attacks didn't do huge damage, the fact that they exist makes moving away from melee combat against multiple opponents a non-choice - move away and suffer a serious blow to your character's tactical (Endurance) and Strategical (Health) resources AT NO REAL TIME COST TO THE ENEMY, or stand still and take it. So moving them away while taking a hit and healing them succesfully afterwards is now considered an inferior tactic to letting them die there, just because you have to move them back a hit sooner? Or why is it all of a sudden a non choice, when it was perfectly fine without getting a disengagement attack in? The main message you give is that it's not a proper tactic to have one single tank take all the damage, but I think that is perfectly fine. Besides, you get the same benefit if the enemies disengage. Maybe they don't disengage, but then they give you the power to engage them wherever you want. It's not like it's a giant buff to the enemy. It's not harder to pull off, it's easy to pull off, it's just a bad choice. I agree, they are not harder to pull off, that was wrong. However it's not that it becomes a bad choice, the point is that it actually becomes a choice in the first place, because it was a no-brainer before. Are you serious? This is how you beat AI in every single game, you learn their patterns and exploit it. This is also how you beat people at things too. Learn their weaknesses and exploit them. Maybe that's how you play games. In a RPG, I never search for exploits in AI, I just try to do stuff that works and feels fun to me. I feel cheap when I abuse AI to get a benefit that the enemy can't cope with. No there won't be. So what? Difficulty does not need to be achieved by adding in un-fun mechanics to hurt/restrict the player because the AI is not a human. Encounter design can bridge the gap. I'm fine with being restricted in order to have increased difficulty and think that it is worth it, that is all. I believe the AI with engagement will be objectively better than one for a system without it, and that would make it worth it for me.

Incorrect. Strategy is 'how clever you are at planning'. Tactics is what you do in the moment - your reactions to in game events. Granted, I worded my post in a bad way. I know the difference between tactics and strategy, I meant to plan what you want to do on the go, which is tactics. I thought it was clear from context, but what I meant to say was: Tactics should depend on how good you are at making proper decisions, not on how skillfull you are to carry them out. Also, for the rest of my post, pls tread 'planing' as 'proper decision making during fights'. Wrong. Generally the reason for wanting to disengage combat is because you are on low health, and if you stay in melee, you will die. Disengagement attacks make it almost certain that any attmept to disengage will kill you. So, whats the issue here? I'm not arguing that the disengagement attacks are not badly balanced at the moment. If the attacks are properly balanced, it's just a matter of when you disengage. You can estimate how many attacks your character can endure and disengage early enough that the disengagement attack does not kill you, then engage the attacker with one of your other characters for a safe retreat, heal up and head back in. If you plan around the attack and the attack is properly balanced, you still have all the options you had before. By removing options from tactical gameplay, and making it revolve solely around strategy (the decisions you made that determined your initial movements) Again, I think this point is moot. The tactics are still available, only harder to pull off. No, it does not change the amount of planning involved. The amount of planning is the same. It gives the player an extra layer of tactical options to consider, rather than restricting them. It might make the game easier for the player, but that difficulty can be compensated for elsewhere. Again, I don't see where the options go missing. Not needed - you just move your characters. Like I said, for the player all that is required is for the AI to have the right targeting clauses. Many RPG players are "lazy" and/or do not like tactics that requires them to micromanage and would prefer more emphasis on strategy and planning. The game does not need an aggro mechanic. I agree that there should be no aggro mechanic. Still, abusing proper attacking clauses seems like some kind of metagaming trick. And I argue that there will never be clauses that make for actual clever tactical decisions on the enemies part which you can't abuse.

Assumption: Tactics should depend on how clever you are at planning them, not on how skillfull you can micromanage. Proposition: A disengagement attack that does not reengage you lets you do all the stuff you could do without it, only without being a no-brainer as there is now a cost associated with it. Question: How does increasing the complexity of a system (without stripping options) make decision-making less tactical? Corollary: Removing the engagement system makes the game easier, as there is less planning involved. Challenge: Design a mechanic around holding the lines that is not dependent on having crowdcontrolling spells or aggro mechanics, such that frontline classes are actual somehow selfreliant.

Actually, I think there is a reason to make the enemies this hard - the community will work some way around it at some point by abusing the system, which is a good way to get feedback on which mechanics/talents/abilities are OP and need some rebalancing. Either that, or the balancing is coming along very slowly.

Just started up the game and leveled my character up to lvl 5. I really like the new progression with being able to choose something every level and getting less talents overall in exchange. Turning a monk into a kensai seems easier to do now, for example. Then again I agree that there are too many talents doing different stuff competing for your attention at the moment. At this rate, they might as well put the talents into categories and let you choose one from each category just in order to have some balancing between them. However, the talents that give you a plain +4 bonus to skills are the worst offenders of the new skill system, as they completely disregard anything ever said about separating combat and non-combat skills before.

I almost never comment when I agree with you and only pick out the things where my opinion differs, but this time I want to emphasize just how true this is. Due to timezones and slow internet, I'm only downloading the new patch at the moment, but tying skills to talents is one of the worst changes I can imagine. Granted, there is still the philosophy of not choosing between combat and non-combat skills as you can only choose both, but the dependence shown in this thread is something I really don't like. At the very least, I think its stupid to tie skills to the background, as this really takes incentive away from roleplaying if you want to be good at stuff. I don't consider myself a powergamer as I'm too lazy to do all the maths involved and like to have some consistent character concept for role playing, but I do care for optimizing stuff I want to do a lot in the game (even if it is worse than alternatives). I wouldn't care if it was just stuff that I apply like mechanics, but getting locked out of dialogue because you want to have a specific fighting style sucks big time.

I still think this discussion is somehow meaningless, given that the mechanic is not properly implemented. Yeah it sucks, but it's also not working and mostly everything in the game is not balanced. As for the gameplay, I think it boils down to whether you think its more fun to have micromanagement or if you think it's fun to have a bigger emphasis on how you initiate a fight. I also think that the potential AI will overall act worse if the mechanic is removed and that this will be critized by many people that are for removing the mechanic at the moment (this game is too easy because enemies can be too easily kited, stupid AI, etc). My suggestion would be to have the mechanic as it is, but with less accuracy bonus on the disengagement attacks and with the ability to get away (no reengagement) if the disengagement attack graces or misses. Then there should be some optional talents that basically allow you to play like the mechanic is not in the game by increasing the defenses for disengagement attacks. This way, people can have both with minor accomodation, and it's closer to the vision the devs had for the game. This is similiar to the way attacks of opportunity where handled in the NWN games, which really was not a problem if you slightly went out of your way to get some feats or ranks in tumble if they bothered you too much.

I think PrimeHydra made an excellent point regarding micro management versus planning, and I think that is also where josh is actually coming from. Now that I think about it, I actually agree that the outcome of a fight should more depend on playing than actual micromanagement and that tedious micromanagement (evading every hit, because its possible) should not be rewarded.

No need to apologize. As I've said before, with a new patch the enemies are hopefully more balanced in a way that a normal attack graces your fighter most of the time, which is his role after all. With this assumption, imo getting a grace while disengaging would be acceptable, if you have a talent that brings the enemies accuracy down on a normal level and I could see the ability work. I think you did a good job at explaining the motivation for attacks of opportunity in turn based games sensuki (now that I search for it here, was that in another thread?) , although I also get the feeling that the devs motivation for the engagement mechanic is also about separating moving from fighting in the sense that you are supposed to arrange formation and location before the fight actual starts. Regarding the damage spike, is that the work of the infamous petrification effect? It applies the damage directly to health instead of stamina and reduces your defenses heavily.

I'm surprised that hard difficulty is that unforgiving, as I have no experience with it and alyways thought the difficulty was only supposed to change the composition of enemy groups instead of attribute modifiers, which this sounds like. I understand your argument then, but then again I'd argue that these effects are because of inproper balancing instead of poor mechanics design. When I was playing on normal, my fighter in defender mode converted almost every hit into a grace, so I think you shouldn't expect such a great shift in accuracy and damage by going from normal to hard all of a sudden. Maybe we can shed more light on this if they release a new patch this week.

Apart from the remark concerning engagement, I completely agree with sensuki. I'm also not sure what you want to accomplish with these radical suggestions - it's not like they are going to completely turn the tables and redesign every other system from scratch, just because you are not satisfied with the way it is designed now. And even then, a lot of your suggestions are so biased that I don't even know what to say as almost every game you've been comparing in these threads is highly polarizing the backers on these forums in terms of quality, direction and overall enjoyment. I'd guess its more constructive if you focus on suggestions that are somehow realistic to implement and don't bend the mechanics we already have too far. The way I perceive most of your threads is just the subtle, indirect message that 'PoE sucks because it's not like many other games I enjoy more'.

Don't act like he is not appreciated enough. There is not much on this forum that he is actually not constantly applauded for. I think lephys has a point here, some people here behave like almost every positive change of the game was done because sensuki or someone else complained about stuff. I'm sure that sensuki has a lot more influence than the usual backers (and that is justified, since he adresses a lot of important issues) but I also think that the devs come up with many of his conclusions on their own. It's really puzzling to me how people implicitly assume the devs are incompetent morons when they talk about stuff that is not already fixed when someone points out a flaw. I understand the fear of receiving an unfinished / subpar product, but come on, these people have experience and an internal QA team as well. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, in spite of you directly quoting me, that you're not accusing me of implying that the devs are incompetent morons. Because I've made no such implication and certainly hold no such belief. My very specific statement about the inclusion of "targeting reticules" in the next patch would be a totally inappropriate basis to make such sweeping generalizations. You are correct, that was not directed at you. All that was directed at you was the first paragraph below the quote, because I was really confused how you'd get the impression that sensuki should be appreciated 'for a change'. I was just too lazy to quote lephys for the other parts, so we're cool. I won't call out people, but if you look at any discussion involving the devs changing something, you can often observe the behaviour I described, incosistent as it may be.

Don't act like he is not appreciated enough. There is not much on this forum that he is actually not constantly applauded for. I think lephys has a point here, some people here behave like almost every positive change of the game was done because sensuki or someone else complained about stuff. I'm sure that sensuki has a lot more influence than the usual backers (and that is justified, since he adresses a lot of important issues) but I also think that the devs come up with many of his conclusions on their own. It's really puzzling to me how people implicitly assume the devs are incompetent morons when they talk about stuff that is not already fixed when someone points out a flaw. I understand the fear of receiving an unfinished / subpar product, but come on, these people have experience and an internal QA team as well.

The problem is the damage, the free extra hit they get, not the stagger effect. If you look at the the screenshot i posted before you will see that the beetle hit me for 23 damage with a simple normal swing. So you have a minimum of 2 opponents that can hit for about 23 damage on average. (there's no reason to reposition if you only have 1 opponent) So each one hits you with an auto attack for 23 damage so thats 46 damage. Plus 2 disengagement attacks that would also do around 23 as normal damage, so thats together 92. So 92 damage that you can get under a second on a heavy armored character with a shield. Even if you have full stamina you will get floored in the next 1-2 hits. You just can't heal that damage that quickly. And this is against simple trash mobs. If 3 of those attacks are crits you're going to instantly die even if you have full stamina. I know you're dismissing it because it's on Hard difficulty, but why make a talent or implement a mechanic that can't be used with Hard difficulty or above? The Hard dificulty will have more opponents (and smarter AI i think), so that's exactly where you would need this mehcnaic. Not the other way around. But I took care about the issue with the feat that negates the accuracy bonus for the enemy? Given defender mode and everything, a fighter should be more than able to convert these hits into graces as he should be able to do that with the normal hits anyway. I think it's fine to pay for the extra movement with getting a grace in, and if the enemy is overpowering you with normal attacks, then it makes sense that you can't easily walk away. The issue with staggering is that the way the mechanic is supposed to work, the staggering lets the enemy reengage you instantly, resulting in unlimited disengagement attacks if you move on. The way it's planned now, you can never break free of engagement without an explicit escape ability, so my change is mandatory if it is supposed to be resolved by pure walking. Again, if you don't invest into talents, then my suggestion plays the same as now, but if you do, then you get a chance to break free proportional to your chance being hit, which is balanced, as my starting point was that one wants to keep the mechanic while finding a compromise. Also, if players don't feel restricted by the mechanic, they are free to skip the talent to pursue something which is more worthwhile to get in their eyes. And don't get me wrong, I don't automatically dismiss arguments from a viewpoint of hard difficulty, I'm just feeling like these kind of mechanics should scale with difficulty as well. In fact, my suggestion does this, as it depends on the enemies hit chance. Personally, in general, I'm more in favour of having gradual mechanics instead of binary ones so I would prefer this to binary engagement as well to abilities which basically turn off mechanics completely, as in your suggestion.

Well there's a reason i'm going for such an easy ability to use. You will see that some people on the forum have also been complaining about the high maintenance of each class during combat, as they already have lots of abilities that you can and have to use. And i agree with them. Even though the AI is fairly stupid now you already have quite a lot to do controlling 5 characters (+ 1 more when you will have a full party) For instance there is already a level 1 druid spell that can knockback (not knockdown) enemies, so you could theoretically use it to slightly reposition the enemy. It doesn't push very far though. Yet it's very difficult to use and most of the time just isn't worth it. There are a lot of other useful spell you could use if you want to waste spells. It's even easier to just nuke enemies separately as they at least will go down faster individually and stop doing damage to you. I don't have a good overview over the spells (I'm more interested in the martial classes), good to know. I'd miss a spell that constructs a temporary barrier of some sort if its not in the game at the moment. A lot probably also boils down to level design. I'm wondering what compromise we can come up with if we take the engagement mechanic as given for the final version. I came up with the following (convoluted) compromise: Keep engagement, but only reengage if the disengagement attack scores a hit or a critical, that is, if it graces or misses you are free to go. Make a general talent that lowers/negates the accuracy bonus for enemies on a disengagment attack on you. Also make a talent that increases engagement accuracy, such that you can still have special enemies whose engagement can't be broken without escape abilities. The result would be that engagement is less binary, although the inherent accuracy bonus still gives enemies a high probability of re-engaging you if you don't have any talents. Even if you have talents, your chance to break free scales with your ability to properly defend yourself, such that the fighter is actually best suited to evade engagement. Wild sprint is not invalidated and people can have some kind of kiting if they invest into it, without it being necessary. Which flaws have I missed, apart from being convoluted?