Doppelschwert

Probaly that animancer he kept in the basement, if I'm remebering his castle right. You can kill her without influencing his comeback though.

Since priests will already be revamped due to their new spell list/selection, I don't see why such a change shouldn't be incorporated as well. I'm curious though, what do you imagine the specialization could grant to godless priests?

This is probably unpopular, but I hope paladins don't get any orders added until every other class has at least as many subclasses. Paladins had the most optional talents due to their orders in PoE and the most opportunities for build supported RP in PoE together with priests: Paladins have 5 general talents and 2 for each order, making a total of 17 (!) optional talents. Monks, on the other hand, got 3, slightly more than the abyssal 2 of the chanter. Even if you discount the mutually exclusive ones, you still get 7 class exclusive talents for paladins, which is still more than double / thrice the amount the monk / chanter got. To be quite honest, I don't think they deserve any improvements with regards to new options before all the other classes are on par.

You have my axe!

So there are no dwarf companions around this time? Seems like an odd choice, given there are three humans. ... Dwarven Expansion confirmed?!

I don't have a quote handy but according to the lore, there are no half-races in PoE. It's not possible for woman to become pregnant from other races in the setting.

Yay, 3 subclasses is perfect. My fear of not finding an interesting monk subclass that I'd like went down considerably, so I care less about the inclusion of the Nalpacza now (not that I changed my mind on it, but this makes it much more tolerable). Personally, I really like that DnD monks are constructed as mage-killers, and PoE also has some talents that go in this direction. A monk subclass based around defying magic would be something I'd enjoy and probably pick, even if it turns out to be slightly worse on average in encounters. In general, I don't think that there should be dedicated classes that counter a specific class. Instead, they should counter more general concepts, like buffs / debuffs / ranged / spells / melee. For example, if there was a subclass that had notable bonuses against ranged weapons, that would be a fine addition imho - especially since the devs could also use it for enemies to make encounters more challenging for parties built around these concepts. The point is that the thing these classes counter needs to come up often enough to feel important, but not often enough to feel cheap. A counter for each class seems to be too situational, but a counter for certain categories of actions seems like a fine addition, but needs to be properly balanced to end up useful enough without being a no-brainer.

You forgot both of my (unanswered) questions in your tally, so the ratio is at least a bit worse than that.

I stayed up into the middle of the night for this yesterday, but I haven't recognised a single question from the first page of this thread being adressed. Did they just skip this thread completely in favour for twitter and twitch questions or did I miss something?

Can you ellaborate how the Nalpazca Monk meets your design goals for subclasses, when it mostly interacts with consumables that are actually class independent? According to the Fig Update: - We want each subclass to do something cool and distinctive that also has a built-in trade-off compared to the base class and other subclasses. - The Nalpazca gain greater benefits from using drugs, but their Wound threshold is increased while under the influence. This sounds like a Nalpazca Monk plays the very same as a normal Monk when not doing drugs, which are completely optional anyway. The other subclasses, however, sound like they will enforce necessary changes in gameplay. This does not feel very distinctive to me, and contradicts the lore of Zahua being the last of the Nalpazca. Can we expect the second monk subclass to move the monk closer towards the traditional unarmored martial artists that monks were in DnD? For example, something like getting a bonus to deflection when not wearing armor and generating wounds by dodging instead.

In my opinion, a subclass should work like the archetypes in pathfinder: Some class features are changed, or some class features are improved at the cost of other class features. Mechanically, they work on the class specific things, and necessarily change how you play a class. The Ghost Heart Ranger makes sense in this context, since you modify one of the main class features, the pet. The Black Jacket Fighter makes sense in this context, since most class features rely on weapons, and that is what is modified. Not much is known about the Assassin mechanically, but from the sound of it, the risk-reward is increased, which is also a concept of the rogue in PoE. Lets look at the monk: Drugs are not part of the class mechanics, everyone can use them. You get a bonus for using them at the cost of a class ability, e.g. gaining wounds. The rest does not seem effected. This doesn't fit either criteria - no necessary change in gameplay, and no modification of anything you could do anyway. If you can play a subclass just the same as the main class, whats the point? This would be the same as introducing the Trapper Rogue, which gets a bonus to traps at the cost of reduced sneak attack while a trap is lying around. You trade unique stuff from your class for something generic that everyone can do, and you could ignore it completely. I think thats super lame. I thought PoE was progressive by making all consumables and traps available to everyone, compared to DnD where there was class-skill gated proficiency with these things. In DnD2, mostly rogues were able to deal with traps or lay them, while in PoE, everyone could. With these specializations, they are making a 180 degree turn on this paradigm, by reintroducing classes that are strictly better at those things than others. Lore and personal disposition towards drugs aside, I hope we can agree that this does not sound like a compelling specialization from a mechanical point of view? In particular, compare these to the deities / orders of clerics / paladins. Each cleric gets a unique weapon specialization and a unique spell. Each paladin modifies either his Flame of Devotion or his Lay on Hands. That is what I would like to see for monks as well. Something that will differentiate them and I need to take into consideration when building the character. Regardless, I'll wait for further information. I fear I won't like either monk subclass at this point, and if it turns out like that, I'll likely multiclass to somehow get a martial artist or just scrap the concept alltogether for this game and play a magical swordsman instead.

Among other things, I think this system is meant to give incentives to go for achievements. This in turn will accomplish two things: - More feedback for the devs, since Achievements give them simple metrics about central gameplay elements and difficulty - More players looking into optional game-systems that come up with achievements. There is a simple reason why there are very easy crafting achievements and the trap achievement in PoE - to get people to try them out, and to get feedback whether these systems are actually utilized ingame. This stretch goal is an easy win-win for the devs - they benefit from better feedback, and players have been asking for that feature anyway.

I'm sorry if I'm coming off as overly antagonistic lately, that's not my intention. I think it's good that people are voicing their opinion, and this was not directed towards you in particular - I just took the word repulsion from your post to identify the general rejecting that this thread has to offer and wanted to put things into perspective. I think you would enjoy more difficulty options for testing the various builds you'll come up with.

I don't get the repulsion. The system will include ways to make the game harder, and as described, its just a more granular difficulty slider that you unlock by playing the game. Don't like playing the tutorial? You'll probably be able to skip it. Tired of making fill-ins at the first available tavern until you meet the companions? You get the option to start with them. Conceptually, this is no different from choosing your difficulty at the beginning of the game, and it has been something that a lot of people have been asking for for a long time (mind that I'm not part of that crowd). This is much closer to the grade shop of the 'Tales of' games than the new game plus modes from recent titles.

Thanks for the clarification, but I'm aware of that much - I'm just confused at this point what the individual terms mean. There are points for progression in the classes that equate 1/3 of a level, there is the actual level of the class, and then there is somehow a number that determines how strong your abilities are and which unlocks new abilities, and I'm kind of fuzzy on which is called what now. In particular, I'm not sure if adding 3 power levels on using empower means that you add 3 class levels or 3 thirds = 1 class level or if this goes into scaling yet differently. I understood the concepts, but I think the names are not very intuitive. When I think about power levels, the first thing that comes to mind is 'it's over 9000'...

I don't know why suddenly everyone is arguing how great/realistic drugs are in this thread - I do not want to ban drugs from the game, I want you to be able to invest into drugs independently from a subclass. There are a lot of great characters in fiction (the lists already posted, also Sherlock Holmes comes to mind) that are drug addicts or users, and there are also some very cool concepts to use them, as a barbarian whose rage is drug-induced. I don't want to play these characters, but that doesn't mean I want you to not be able to do that. However, and that is the point everyone seems to miss - most of those characters are not monks. Which means it would make sense to make such a specialization an optional talent, instead of basically telling you - if you want to be really good with using drugs, take one level in the Nalpaczla Monk Subclass and forfeit any ideas of a different second class. Apart from that, there is an important distinction between the words used to describe these terms. In my language, and that may be the issue here, drugs are almost exclusively used to refer to mind-altering substances, and that is also how they are depicted in PoE in context with Zahua. I wouldn't mind a herbalist using herbs for increased effect or an alchemist using some potions, but then again, why would you lock these things that interact with a general gameplay system (consumables) onto a single class, when you could have it available to everyone? You lose options for character building in general and also access to a second monk subclass that interacts more with the actual monk abilities. The way josh described it, it just feels tacked on. And again, how would it work with multiclassing? You take one single level in the nalpacza and drugs get much stronger, at the cost of generating wounds. Then you just don't use any wounds and enjoy your improved buffs for the rest of the game with literally no downside. This should be a talent with a general trade-off and not class based.

1. These are the drugs in PoE. Do you see Coffee, Alcohol or anything else which is legal in the western world? 2. I can't reply to this since spoilers are not allowed, but this subclass is very incosistent with regards to the lore. Apart from that, almost no class is changed from DnD: Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, Cleric, Ranger, Barbarian and Druid are almost the same in terms of mechanics and flavor. Ciphers seem to be close to psionic classes, but I don't know much about those. Monks, Paladins and chanters are the major changes to the original classes, where after much complaining, paladins got a lot of their original signatures patched. I'm not against having new interesting lore and options, but if someone wanted to play a traditional martial artist or a bard, they should be able to, and it's justified if they are upset because they can't. Also, playing a martial artist may not be super popular, but its still more popular than being the stoner guy. I know a few people that like to play monks in RPGs. I don't know anyone who always wanted to play some wasted guy being high. 3. That's true, and I can't say I prefer it to the DnD version. However, this is easier to ignore, since I can just pretend my character gets enraged when being hit, fueling his battle prowess this way. 4. One of the main draws for me of playing a monk is evading hits instead of taking them. I could play a kensai or a martial artist this way. This is not available as customization for a monk, and this is dissapointing - in fact, the wound system makes very compelling arguments to wear armor later in the game, the polar opposite. Everyone else gets to have their nostalgia, so I don't see why I shouldn't have my cake and eat it too. In particular if its in favor of being better at doing drugs, which would be probably better if it was available to everyone. If you wanted to play a barbarian that gets his rages through taking drugs, you'd also benefit from a talent that let you specialize in doing them.

Josh said this on SA: I'm confused about the terminology at this point, but making it procedurally scale seems like the right thing to do, since they won't need to balance empowerering separately.

I'm with gromnir. The only time I went through PoE and both parts of WM was with a full party without casters, e.g. Monk / Fighter / Rogue / Barbarian / Ranger / Chanter. I won't claim the main game was much harder this way, but I was not able to complete the optional high level content of the Add-Ons and some of the bounties with this party, whereas much of the content I did could've been done with casters much sooner. It would definitely not hurt to have the casters more in line with the rest with regards to full potential, and dismissing vancian is a necessary step in this direction.

This is exactly what I thought when I watched the stream, thanks for pointing it out here!

The actual quote from fig is the following: If that means duration or effect I can't say. I can say, however, that I'm very dissappointed in this subclass. I'll never play a character that does drugs from a roleplaying point of view, and since I want to play more diverse monks, this is a definite loss of options for me. I don't mind controversial themes on companions, but having specializations with controversial themes is a really limiting option. The other subclasses so far also represent popular fantasy archetypes, which is not exactly the case for potheads. And on a mechanical level, its also boring - following joshs description, if you never use drugs in the first place, nothing changes to playing that character, whereas every other subclass implies a necessary change of gameplay. The lore of monks has been changed massively from the DnD version, so I'd much prefer a subclass that lets me get back closer to the original martial artist. 1) Just turning the fist bonus into something for weapons would grant an easy DnD2 Kensai. 2) A subclass that increases deflection when no armor is equipped and lets you get wounds by evasion rather than being hit would be mechanically cool. 3) There are also a dozen of interesting archetypes for monks in pathfinder alone (Zen Archer, Sensei, Four Winds and Ki Mystic alone come to mind) I don't mind drugs being in the game, and I wouldn't mind having some kind of optional talent that makes their use more efficient. But why do we need to waste one of the few available subclass slots for something which is (imho) not really a popular archetype, with powers that won't necessarily change the way you play, and is tied to a controversial theme?

I am glad that priests and paladins don't get much of additional stuff with subclasses. Always felt unfair that they can get several variations while other characters had to suffer from much less choice. You should also note that the nalpacza monks only get improved usage out of drugs, and that their drawback is increased wounding threshold while under the effect of drugs (EDIT), slowing down their accumulation of ressources.

I'm sorry, but I was replying to the reasoning you started in this post: I'm agreeing that from a balancing point, this could be a problem in the setting of PoE. From a logical point of view, spells should not trigger on AoE (I think twin shot is valid though). But as others already said, you can still do this as a single class barbarian there, so it looks like its fine to them. And as josh already pointed out in SA, carnage, sneak attack and all the other low-level constant-benefit passives from PoE will be turned into abilities that scale with class level in PoE2, so the one-level dipping is already kind of moot. This implies to me that those effects are constructed from the original attack, so there likely won't be any procs. However, I'm not agreeing with the logic that even if it was like in PoE, everyone would suddenly grab a single lvl in barbarian. There are tons of players out there that stick to their character concept, then there is probably the majority of people that only play through once and miss out on these combos due to lack of planning (how can you going in blind?). There are also people like me that just ignore some mechanics on purpose to have a different experience. I think your complaint is justified in that build variety for min-maxing might suffer due to things like this, but making sweeping generalizations of the playerbase seems wrong to me. And just to clarify, I don't really want to agonize you in particular. I think you are a clever guy that contributed a lot to the build section, and I appreciate that.

How is that a problem? In particular, how is this any different to the 'temptation' of playing a stronger character in the first place instead? You'll either go for a roleplaying concept or a character build. Switching between the two is at most a problem for the discipline of the player, but not for the game. Pure classes don't need to be strictly better in every case, they just need to be strictly better in certain cases. It doesn't matter if there is some combination that makes level diping lucrative, as long as there is some other merit to stick to the class as well, and I bet that will go down to player preference.

Without checking, looks about right. I guess the important thing to remember is not only what those endgame levels are but also how do you get there. I guess there will be talents that improve on existing abilities, so the order might be very important if you want to use your talent slots for specific upgrades and even necessitate a non-optimal split. Also, if they turn out to use the DnD2 progression (where you'd probably just get 2 points for each power source on each level up), this would cease to be an issue. I'm almost willing to prefer this actually, since it'd probably result in a better balanced game.