Doppelschwert

If you feel like you have to spread out your stats, then I'd say that's mission complete, considering the design intent. The more you feel you have to sacrifice something to gain something, the more useful is every stat overall. By the way, regarding the debate concerning how AoE should scale (mousewheel / no friendly fire at the edges): There is stuff you can do with the latter that you can not with the mousewheel variant, like correctly targeting the enemies (X) if they are positioned around one of your guys (O) like this: X OX X I think that situation should be fairly common if someone tanks and there are a lot of enemies. For the most part, I also agree with ganrich.

Nice work with the paper, although as a mathematician I always die a little inside if this stuff is treated as maths when it's basically engineering. Josh also had good ideas, so I'm sure the game will turn out great. I disagree on renaming intellect just because of the dialogues. They have been written with 'intellct' in mind, not cunning, and cunning doesn't make sense most of the time when you're just smart and know a lot of stuff. In other words, don't dare to kill off the concept of my academic monk. On a related note, I prefer joshs suggestions as it makes the academic monk more viable, but that's just me wanting to be able to slice people into bits with Prof. Contemplation.

I was not asking whether its different from traditional stuff with the intent that it should be, just for making sure I actually understood him correctly. As for the rest, I agree with silent winter.

I think the assumption that it's unrealistic is off here. Even if an attack hits your armor, you'll feel the blow, regardless of how much damage that put to your ripcage. That can interrupt your momentum during swining your weapon or mess with your concentration during spellcasting, and that is actually the condition on when an interrupt can incur - on not being missed. I understand why someone would be against the system, but IMO realism is not an argument here. Tabletop and PnP games have easy rules because people want to play the game when they sit together around the table instead of doing maths. The computer does the maths for you, so that is one issue. The other issue is, that the feedback is independent from this. You'll see a roll in your log when it's implemented. Interruption against 67 - success. That's not any different if you went with another system to come up with the numbers. I don't think the numbers matter, as long as you understand how they come about. Was anyone who is complaining about interrupt now complaining about the way saves are calculated on spells in DnD 3.5? That's even more arbitrary, because the saves don't fall into only one of 7 categories, like interrupt does, before applying stats. As I said before, this is a question of flavour. Tying more stuff to damage done makes the attributes watered down and linked to each other, while they are independent right now. I don't want to need points in might in order to make my points in perception worthwhile. The people liking this suggestion are ironically also the people that wan't more diversity in the attribute system.

Ok, but is your system any different from traditional RPGs? The way I understand it, you want just have normal HP and stamina used for abilities, or is stamina also temporary hitpoints? Either way, how are you not reintroducing the problems the system now is meant to get rid of, e.g. that a healer prolongs your adventuring day and is more or less a must have? I understand the gripes people have with this system from a semantic point of view, but I always ask myself what would be different if they just renamed everything by saying stamina is HP and health is some kind of obscure fatigue making you need to rest.

I'd still like you to explain your system properly. So you add health and stamina and get total health, ok. If you get damaged, it only gets substracted from your health, ok. Lets say I have 50 stamina and 100 health. Now I have 150 Total Health. I can spend 50 of these points for abilities because that's the stamina part? And then I get some penalty. Can I still use abilities to get into negativ stamina, reducing my health, or am I just punished for using up all my stamina? Then you go on how health is not touched in combatn and in the next sentence health is touched if you get attacked - outside of combat, or how am I to take the sentence before? What can be restored by resting / what can only be healed by spending ressources? Seriously, I have no idea what you are suggesting here, and I don't mean it in an insulting way.

Why would you add stamina to HP if they serve different functions at the end? How is the priest not a healing battery in your scenario? How are classes not dependent on a healing class this way? What is tactical about this? Why would I want a system that makes healing way more costly (exp, seriously?), making it actually more restrictive? Whatever you are getting at here, I haven't understood it the way you probably meant it to be, so I'd like to have a better explanation. What is so difficult about forgetting the actual names of the HP system and treat it as what it is - stamina is HP per battle and health is overall HP?

What exactly is unintuitive about interruption? When you hit someone, you have a chance to ministun them. Active stuff is resetted, the rest is paused. Different stuff ministuns you for different periods. You can influence the likelihood via stats. OH MY GOD CALL THE HOSPITAL MY HEAD IS GONNA EXPLODE - seriously? It's not even like you need to know the actual numbers, as the descriptors are all pretty self-explanatory.

I see what you mean now, ok. Nevermind then, I thought something stupid. Still think it's easier to do with the shop, but it hardly matters then.

Have overread that, so sorry regarding to that part. That you start with saying that you choose your culture based on gear and not on actual flavor wasn't helping that message to come across, however - that's what I had in mind when I started my earlier post. Still, I don't think it changes much in the argument - if you have a couple of sets per class per culture, the differences are washed down and the culture actually becomes less clearly defined and looses flavour IMO. In the end, it's convenient for the player to start with some specific gear he prefers, but it's not defining your character anymore than it is now, so I don't really see where more flavour comes into this. In both variants, you can say in the end 'look at my gear, it shows I'm coming from this region', but in your variant you'd need more custom art to make that feel distinguishable to have any impact at all. I don't think that should be priority for the artists at the moment.

I'm with gromnir on this one. In particular, I disagree that this choice is about flavour - to the contrary, this is more about power gaming and min/maxing than anything else. Your starting gear reflects the traditional gear that someone of your craft is wearing in the region you are coming from - that is flavour. Choosing your own stuff is nice, but it's basically as full of flavor as playing a drow and giving him a good alignment. It's mechanically legit, but it contradicts the usual setting for no reason except being the special player character, and it is not even permanent. In particular, there are way too many combinations of weapons that you could equip in order to display them all in some kind of menu. The number of weapon sets for dual wielding is quadratic in the number of singlehanded weapons alone. Choose your background for role playing purposes and/or the stat boosts if you are min/maxing, but leave the gear up to the shop at the beginning. If you want to be able to equip your characer with everything from the get go, petition for a broader range of wares in the starting shop.

Well, they can still make some kind of talent that gradually ups the ratio for the spellcasting classes, which IMO is also the better solution to class flexibility. If you play them defensively from the back, the talent is uninteresting, and if you play them upfront, there is your choice. Also, in a party with more spellcasters, there are also more ways to CC the enemy and stuff, so if you play your strenghts accordingly, it should still be viable without making the frontliners mandatory.

You basically only need firestorm, healing and one magic glove at the beginning. Later on, you should buy another magic glove (as there is one golem for each of the damage types of the gloves that is immune against it) and maybe get the crystal from the shady guy that lets you open locks with your magic. Sadly, playing a mage made the game way to easy, as you can stunlock everyone with the firestorm while bashing them with your glove. The healing on cooldown also trivializes all healing items in the game. Was playing without companions in order to have normaly difficult combat, but as soon as I got that healing magic the difficulty all went downhill. Took me about 30 hours to beat the game. If you find most of the stat increasing plants and make them to better stat increasing potions, you can easily get all but 2 of your attributes to maximum value, which shows again that the game is not properly balanced and that you don't need to hold back. Just don't level anything above a threshold of 70, as you can easily find at least 6 stat increasing plants for every attribute by just playing throughly and using the astral sights you can learn as soon as you enter a faction (which you should do ASAP, by the way). The only reason why my mage wasn't a good swordsmen was because I had to waste all my money on the ingredients for these potions so I couldn't afford the perks anymore, but that would've been possible as well If I had focused on getting the ingredients myself instead of buying them from vendors. They should've gone back to the combat system of Risen 1. The combat system from gothic is out by the way, one of the lead designers (Björn Pankratz) said in an interview that he doesn't think anyone would ever want to get back to this kind of combat system ever again.

I was more thinking about whether there are some logical dependencies in the patch process, like 'GUI has to be final before we can do some other stuff' or people only being free to make talents after they programmed the AI or something like that, or if it all runs in parallel. Anyway, thanks for your answers (especially to the second question)! When I'm at it, is it right to assume that there will be no more updates in the official anouncements until the game ships as you are all being busy working on the game, or is still something planned?

I'm with gromnir on this one. I too would like to have a lot of talents, just as anybody else, but it's a lot that is asked for. Given that combat and noncombat ressources are split, talents can only give you advancement in combat, and there is only so much you can do for combat. I think anybody that wants a talent every two levels should consider that you need a lot more talents than the available slots so that you actually are making a meaningful decision, just as gromnir already pointed out. Just try to come up with 10 talents that are genuinly useful to every class without being flat bonuses like '+X deflection' and you'll see it's quite hard to come up with interesting stuff. If you can't have enough class specific talents such that two characters of the same class can have a different set of talents at level 12, IMO it's not resonable to pump the number of talents up to 2 per level, especially if you imagine that the game might have 3 titles ranging up to lvl 30, where you should be able to do this as well. Otherwise, you might as well make them hardcoded class features. What would help however, IMO, would be to arrange class talents in a pool. You level up, some new talents go into the pool, but you can only learn one of them. Some talents will always be left in the pool, but you can decide on your priorities which one to choose. Now you have choice and it's always meaningful (given that the class talents themselves are useful in different situations/builds). Of course, abilities have to be set up in a way that there is incentive to pick up old ones even later in the game, but that can be acomplished. Alternatively, give choice of a small boost of some numbers for abilities every other level. Easy to implement while still responding to the agency of the player.

Well, if we can ask questions in this thread, can you give a sketch on how the beta is supposed to be updated? I guess you'll first continue on stability issues and stuff, but can you give a rough scheme on when, for example, additional talents could be in a patch? Also, is it still up to debate whether non-magic classes will be able to select their class feats from a pool instead of having a linear progression? I feel this would go a long way to make them feel more costumizable, as the magic classes already feel quite costumizable just because you can select the spells they learn after your personal priorities (at least except for the classes that have immidiate access to all spells of a given level). This would also remove some pressure on the general talents at every third level of being the only way to customizing after the attributes are set, without you needing to implement enough talents to be able to choose one every second level. Also, thanks for your work and taking time to explain your point of view.

Thanks. I know the DnD 3.5 rules pretty well, but I always struggle with the differences in DnD 3.0. In particular, needed that record to see how big the dual wielding penalty is. Playing a solo Aasimar Fighter 4 / Monk 1 'Kensai' dual wielding longswords at the moment, having a blast so far. I guess I'll hit lvl 30 even with the 20% multiclass penalty of playing Fighter 4 / Monk 26.

I will just link my thread on archetypes here and extract the actual talents I came up with. The thread is more detailed: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68432-talents-needed-for-archetypes-part-1-nwn2/ It's organized by prestige classes from NWN2 and tries to extract the unique abilities these classes added to the base classes. For Arcane Trickster, Available to: Rogue Spellthief (Active, 1/Encounter) Targets Will, on success steals an enemies buff and gives it to the user. For Blackguard, Available to: Paladin Nefarious X [Modal, Aura] Prerequisite: Zealous X (any Aura already learned, where X denotes the aura) Replaces Zealous X. Gives half the positive effect of Zealous X to the party and inverts the full positive effect of Zealous X on the enemies (on the opposing stat). Examples: Zealous Focus gives accuracy. Nefarious Focus gives minor accuracy but reduces enemies deflection. Zealous March gives +2 Movement Speed to the party. Nefarious March gives +1 Movement Speed to the party and -2 Movement Speed to the enemies. Motivation: Turns buffs into debuffs (on the same action) , inverting the role, so there is a parallel. Note that there is a subtle difference between „0.5 buff on the party, 1 debuff on enemy“ and „1.5 buff to the party“ as the effect is based on proximity to the paladin. For Gish / Eldritch Knight / Warpriest, Available to: Cipher, Druid, Priest, Wizard i) Battlemage [Modal] Get a minor penalty to accuracy. When using a spell, get a medium bonus to accuracy for the next melee attack. When using a melee attack, get a medium bonus to accuracy for the next spell. ii) Defensive Casting Prerequisite: Battlemage When Battlemage is active, get a minor penalty to deflection. While one of the bonues of Battlemage is active, get additional a medium bonus to deflection. iii) Concentrated Casting Prerequisite: Battlemage While one of the bonues of Battlemage is active, get a medium bonus to concentration during spellcasting. iv) Extended Arcane Veil Prerequiste: Arcane Veil Changes Arcane Veil from 1 Use/Day, 25 Deflection to 1 Use/Encounter, 15 Deflection. Motivation: There is a clear incentive to switch between casting and attacking, which IMO is the main principle of a gish and it boosts the stats neccessary. I feel that it's neccessary to tie the bonus to melee only, as it is pretty much a no-brainer if it's working with ranged weapons. What kind of gish you play depends on the base class you are picking. It's modal instead of passive so that you can play defensively with ranged weapons if an encounter demands that. Note that the boni don't stack, so after making 10 melee attacks, it's neither a 10 times accuracy boost on the next spell nor an accuracy bonus for the next 10 spells, the same for the melee bonus.

Deep down I know you are right, but I put quite some effort into the list and had a forum bug where my thread would be shown as '2 views so far' even when posting the second post, which got me a bit angry. Only after my second post did it update to the actual number of views. You know, I think this is probably the only way I can help the game somehow, so I'd like to contribute my part. Yeah, you are right. Listing archetypes was also my motivation, but I figured I should start with the ones known from other games. Will do that after this post, thanks. I implicitly assume that the attributes get fixed; on the other hand, attributes are not enough on their own as well, therefore the thread. There is definitely a problem to make these two work together. On one hand, everyone would like to have more customization, but on the other hand if you make talents too common, there are just too much talents if you interpolate this to be a trilogy ending at lvl 30 or something. I think the best thing to do would be to give general talents at lvl 1 and then at every third level beginning with level 3, while giving every fourth level the choice between some smaller passive upgrades for class abilities. This way, you have roughly 7 choices in 12 levels, so around every second level, without watering talents down by much. I agree with all other posts.

I understand that it's a wall of text, however, I'd still like to get some kind of feedback. Where do you agree/disagree? What character archetypes are not representable at the moment and for which reasons?

On a related note, where can I see my attack bonus? Can't find it in the menus.

Now I'm interested in playing IWD2 again. Going to try to solo it with a kensai kind of character

Selfish bump.

This thread is intended to suggest talents that specialize the gameplay of classes into more specific archetypes, similiar how prestige classes in DnD 3.X work. The guidelines I tried to follow during this write up are the following: - Work with what is in the game, e.g. no absurdly demanding changes to systems, so that it could be actually implemented - Ignore actual numbers (for the most part) as they would need to be tweaked anyway - Ignore upgrades to basic stats like 'Deflection +X' , focus on concepts - Try to give an incentive to play the class according to its subtype instead of boring flat out passive bonuses - Respect the design paradigm, e.g. avoid too much class overlap or having actual dual classes that can do what both classes do simultaneously without much of a disadvantage What's the difference between this thread and the other talent threads? It's organized by archetype. In particular, I mostly comment on prestige classes from NWN 2 in this thread where some KITs from BG2 will follow later. I suggest some talents with a short motivation when I think it makes sense or explain why the concept can be already realized (in theory) otherwise. Before I get to the classes, I drew a conclusion to the overall design of prestige classes: IMO, prestige Classes in NWN2 fall in one of four categories, relative to their base classes: 1) Dual Classes Examples: Arcane Trickster, Divine Champion, Sacred Fist IMO, are not applicable to the design of PoE as they give you roughly 75% progression in both classes, whereas PoE aims for something like at most 80% / 20% by customization with talents. 2) More of the Same, slightly different Examples: Assassin(Rogue), Frenzied Berserker(Barbarian), Arcane Scholar, Doomguide Most of the unique stuff is either already incorporated into the classes in PoE or the difference is systematic in DnD so that it'd hardly make sense to transfer it into extra talents for this. As for the talents that just make classes better at what they do, no one needs me to come up with them so I skip them. 2.5) Flavour without new mechanics Examples: Shadow Thief, Harper Scout Suffers from the same problems as 2) 3) New Concepts or some kind of twist to mechanics Examples: Dragon Disciple, Pale Master, Duelist, Shadowdancer These are things I feel should be included in PoE via Talents if possible, although special fighting styles (duelist, dwarfen defender) are already implemented in PoE in terms of equipment properties. I will skip some of the prestige classes I consider to be in 1) and 2) and especially in 2.5). So let's start with NWN2. 1) Arcane Archer Summary: Elven wizards that can deliver their spells through archery. Motivation: TBH, I don't think there is one. There should be more ways to play a dedicated archer other than the ranger, however, the focus of this class lies in the spells. It works well in PnP but didn't work that great in the NWNs because of the implementation of spells via talents. Too convoluted and gimmicky to apply to PoE, so passed. More on archers when dealing with KITs. 2) Arcane Trickster Summary: Spellthieves that combine their cunning and magical talents. Available to: Rogue Spellthief (Active, 1/Encounter) Targets Will, on success steals an enemies buff and gives it to the user. Motivation: That's basically all there is unique to this class, otherwise it's just a wizard and a rogue at the same time, so it goes against design intent. 3) Assassin Summary: Stealthy killers that use afflictions to weaken their target. Motivation: IMO, that's basically the rogue in PoE, so passed. 4) Blackguard Summary: Dark Warriors serving evil. Available to: Paladin Nefarious X [Modal, Aura] Prerequisite: Zealous X (any Aura already learned, where X denotes the aura) Replaces Zealous X. Gives half the positive effect of Zealous X to the party and inverts the full positive effect of Zealous X on the enemies (on the opposing stat). Examples: Zealous Focus gives accuracy. Nefarious Focus gives minor accuracy but reduces enemies deflection. Zealous March gives +2 Movement Speed to the party. Nefarious March gives +1 Movement Speed to the party and -2 Movement Speed to the enemies. Motivation: Turns buffs into debuffs (on the same action) , inverting the role, so there is a parallel. Note that there is a subtle difference between „0.5 buff on the party, 1 debuff on enemy“ and „1.5 buff to the party“ as the effect is based on proximity to the paladin. 5) Divine Champion Summary: Bastardchilds of Paladins and Fighters. Motivation: IMO, that's basically the paladin in PoE, so passed. 6) Duelist Summary: Dexterous fencer focused on parrying and making riposte attacks. Motivation: IMO, that's basically the fighter with a rapier and having defender turned on all the time. In particular, it's hard to come up with a defensive fighting stance without the concept of attacks per rounds that doesn't end up being too similar to defender. So passed in a way. 7) Dwarfen Defender Summary: Dwarfen Bollwerks on the frontline. Motivation: IMO, that's basically the fighter in PoE, so passed. The Gish / Eldritch Knight / Warpriest Summary: Magic wielders that go to the frontline, using weapon and magic alike. Available to: Cipher, Druid, Priest, Wizard. i) Battlemage [Modal] Get a minor penalty to accuracy. When using a spell, get a medium bonus for the next melee attack. When using a melee attack, get a medium bonus for the next spell. ii) Defensive Casting Prerequisite: Battlemage When Battlemage is active, get a minor penalty to deflection. While one of the bonues of Battlemage is active, get additional a medium bonus to deflection. iii) Concentrated Casting Prerequisite: Battlemage While one of the bonues of Battlemage is active, get a medium bonus to concentration during spellcasting. iv) Extended Arcane Veil Prerequiste: Arcane Veil Changes Arcane Veil from 1 Use/Day, 25 Deflection to 1 Use/Encounter, 15 Deflection. Motivation: There is a clear incentive to switch between casting and attacking, which IMO is the main principle of a gish and it boosts the stats neccessary. I feel that it's neccessary to tie the bonus to melee only, as it is pretty much a no-brainer if it's working with ranged weapons. What kind of gish you play depends on the base class you are picking. It's modal instead of passive so that you can play defensively with ranged weapons if an encounter demands that. Note that the boni don't stack, so after making 10 melee attacks, it's neither a 10 times accuracy boost on the next spell nor an accuracy bonus for the next 10 spells, the same for the melee bonus. 9) Frenzied Berserker: Summary: Ravaging Madmen. Available to: Barbarian i) Self Sacrificial Rage [Modal] Increased Attack Rate but Damage over Time. ii) Greater Carnage Increases the range of carnage. Motivation: Frenzied Berserker resolves around maximal hurt, both in absolute damage and splash damage, but the barbarian already does most of this anyway. 10) Invisible Blade Summary: Clever Fighters using Daggers. Motivation: Contained in the rogue, just dual wield daggers. Passed. 11) Pale Master Summary: Necromancers on a first step to becoming lichs. Motivation: Sadly, it's not really applicable in the setting. Either way, the chanter somehow has control over undead summons already, so passed in a sense. 12) Red Dragon Disciple Summary: Descendants of Dragons, invoking their draconic Heritage. Motivation: Should be in as a talent line for druids, with the third talent or so giving a dragon shapeshift. That'd be awesome for an expansion, as shapeshift forms are already locked for the main game. 13) Sacred Fist Summary: Monks using divine magic from within. Motivation: The unique abilities are already on the monk in PoE, otherwise it's just a cleric and monk at the same time, so passed. 14) Shadowdancer Summary: Artists of deception, operating on the border between light and shadow. Motivation: Given that there is no stealth during combat, a concept like hide in plain sight is not possible, and it would also go against the principle of mixing combat and noncombat skills. 15) Weapon Master Summary: Masters of a single Weapon, using them as if they were part of their body. Motivation: Given the focus on being able to switch weapon sets, I don't think there is much chance to get talents to specialize in a single weapon instead of a category, which takes the concept ad absurdum. More on KITs from BG2 on a later day. Please note that because the way DnD 3.X works differently from DnD2, there aren't actually a lot of talents that can be recovered from the prestige classes. The KITs in BG2 should be more open for special talents.

They track decimals, josh confirmed that somewhere. Being hit by 0.3, 0.3, 0.4 damage will result in losing 1 point of stamina, at least that's the intended modus operandi. I'd guess it's ultimatively for tracking health damage and all the percentile modifiers.