Doppelschwert

You can get injuries from scripted interactions, so having more than 3 should be possible. After all, its not about the amount of injuries alone, but also about getting knocked out while having them.

Unless there will be some epic feats or specializations, or we'll be getting access to next tier spells at even levels, 17/1 is indeed likely to be better than 18/0 in majority of cases. Also there is one more sweet spot at 14+10 power_level, which corresponds to 12/6 lvl split Although it's also very important: - at what levels exactly will we be getting some key spells and abilities (think Dragon Thrashed, Sacred Immolation, Shining Beacon, Minor Avatar, Kalakoth's Minor Blights, etc) - and how the damage will scale with source_points. Agreed! Thanks for pointing it out, but I saw the bonus of the 12/6 lvl split, I just thought the ratio is somehow really strange and doesn't look appealing for builds. E.g. 9/9 seems to give the broadest access to abilities, while 17/1 and 15/3 are relatively low sacrifices in the first class compared to what you get in the second. 12/6 seems like a bad trade-off - looks like you should focus on the first class, but you are only a bit better than the second one. Dunno. You're right about the key spells and abilities though, they will certainly be the deciding factor. And in case they decided for DnD2 multiclassing, this whole table is moot anyway, since this would imply we end up with 9/9.

Meh, I was excited for all the stretch goals so far, but not for the current two. The localisations going in parallel is nice, regardless of language, but UI and VO are pretty unexciting to me. On the other hand, all the other stretch goals have been really exciting so far, the AI being the biggest pull for me, so thats fair I guess. I'd like to see more subclasses though - certainly more than 2 specialisation per class are possible. By the way, I think the cleric types and paladins are actually subclasses on their own already, so it would be nice for them to focus more on the other classe instead.

If I understand you, I think it's (17,6) and (6,17) inclusive or else 18,0 (for a single class)? Essentially, a single level at the end would need to be worth approximately 6 levels in a second class for single classes to be competitive with grabbing a level in a second class. Yeah, thats how I understand it as well, I just wanted to simplify the notation. The available range for 'fractional' class levels at character level 18 is either [18/0] or [18-2/3x / 6+2/3x] or [0/18] where x are the levels in the second class and range from 1 to 17. I'd hope that these fractional values go into scaling abilities (multiply them by 3 and you recover the advancement points, which would make abilities scale linearly with those) while the rounded down values govern access to class abilities, and represent class level. If they only used the rounded down version for both, that would make the scaling pretty uneven, and you would lose out by not taking a multiple of 3 levels in each class. So letting x run through 1 to 9 we end up with effective class levels 18/0, 17/6, 16/7, 16/8, 15/8, 14/9, 14/10, 13/10, 12/11, 12/12 As you can see, when x is a multiple of 3, we have effectively 24 combined levels, while the others have 23. If the fractional levels don't scale at least, then it's probably strictly better in some situations to go with a multiple of 3. The sweet spots seem to be 16/8 and 12/12, which correspond to lvls 15/3 and 9/9. I'm not sure if 18/0 would really be better than 17/1. I also beat you to it if you go some further posts back

Stronghold replaced by a ship, and ship combat. That's all I would add. What's a pirate-sequel themed RPG without ships? Anyway, YMMV. Well, I'm already convinced that a ship will be the new stronghold. Don't know about ship combat, but to be quite honest, I'm not so big on pirate settings in general. I can enjoy them, but I prefer fantasy much more. We still need the details, but I think the idea is more like the power source being used to buy class abilities, e.g. number of spell slots for a wizard. Having more arcane power gives more spell slots but damage, area of effect etc. are still controlled by the stats. I agree that we need details, but from what has been posted so far, I understand the system to work differently than you describe it. From what josh said, there are two things for each class, ressource and power level, where the later is a function of the former: The strength of abilities will be influenced by both attributes and class advancement. Thus the wizard would get both more spell slots and increased effect of their spells. The posts about the power source tables basically describe that while dual classing, everytime you get one level in a class, you get the third of a level in the other class, both in terms of unlocking things and ability scaling. So if you make a split 1 Rogue / 17 Fighter, your unlocked Rogue abilities will have a roughly comparable power to those of a pure Rogue at lvl 6, while your Fighter abilities equal those of a lvl 17 Fighter. The sum 17+6=23 is bigger then 18 of course, but the question is whether the Rogue abilities will still be competetive in the endgame, lacking 12 lvls of scaling compared to a pure Rogue. The system is nice since it promotes a more even split between classes (according to josh, using all abilities when you split 50:50 feels right powerwise), but if you only care about some cool ability that rogues unlock at lvl 4, a single level dip may very well be worth it for an overall built. The implication is also that you will get one class at least to lvl 12 in terms of progression when you hit lvl 18, and that you can basically decide where your effective class levels will roughly end up on the line segment between (18/6) and (6/18) (without those endpoints). That is, if they deliver a well balanced implementation of the concepts that josh described.

Wow, I feel like winning the lottery. Looks like josh decided to set z=1/3. Interesting news overall, and the system is set up to not go out of control too much. Looks like it will finally be feasible to explore all of the 121 combinations available and make them work into interesting builds without the need of some prestige classes to patch them up. I'm really impressed with PoE2 - I'm getting to the point where I can't think of anything that could be improved in the first game that they did not already adress.

Also got them just now, backed via paypal.

Final Fantasy 12 was by no means the first game to do this - Baldur's Gate 2 did, for example - you just did the scripting out of game, and I know it wasn't the first. The gambit system in FF12 was pretty great though. Pity FF13's character programming system wasn't as good. I very much agree that it's a great feature. But I would be leery of it doing too much - FF12 was designed around the gambit system so the characters basically playing themselves was "gameplay as intended", but some BG2 scripting went too far, as did mod'd DA:O scripting. While I agree that it was possible prior to FF12 to edit scripts for games or even make custom ones, I'm not aware of any games besides FF12 and DA:O that let you do this explicitly in the game itself, which is what I wanted refer to. I'd be interested if you know other titles that allowed for this.

Interesting... what does 75-85% of power mean... no idea what 75-85% actual means, particular for a spell caster. am gonna be patient and wait for details. HA! Good Fun! My guess would be that they let most abilities scale with class level, in order to evade the powergaming issues that arose in DnD 3.X with abilities scaling only with attributes (for example, the charisma bonus to saves of paladins at lvl 2, which is a common dip in powerbuilds). Then it would make sense to introduce a scaling parameter in order to convert class levels from a different class into this progression (think raising the effective class level/ caster level in DnD 3.X). I imagine something like a parameter z between 0 and 1 that does the following: If you have a levels in class A and b levels in class B, then a+zb is your effective class level for determining the strength of abilities from class A, and az+b is the same for class B. Choosing z=0 gets you the situation in DnD 3.X: If you take 6 lvls wizard and 6 lvls cleric, your caster level in both will be 6+0*6=6. z=0.5 yields a caster level of 6+0.5*6=9, so about 75% progression of the single classes at lvl 12. Setting z close to 1 yields the situation of DnD2, where due to exponential exp tables, you would only lack one level behind in both classes during multiclassing. This makes sure there is a trade-off in power in abilities, besides the trade off in available abilities, which probably works like you would expect it to.

As far as I remember, the AI system from DA:O is mostly a copy from what Final Fantasy 12 did 3 years earlier already. The interface in FF12 was pretty clear, so I hope they will do something similiar. I'm honestly impressed with this stretch goal - in my eyes, the addition of this feature to the first game would have been the best possible improvement the game could have received.

Can you copy the text? I disabled tumblr permanently. EDIT: My phone had still access. Looks like sawyer came to the same conclusion.

That would be great, but I somehow doubt it will happen. Let's see!

I'm still waiting for my coupon from backing PoE, the addition of paypal and the announcement which tiers include a potential add-on that will most likely be a stretch goal further down the road. However, unless its the only way to net me the expansions, I won't buy another CE this time. My CE arrived 2 months after release of the game because I live in europe, and by that time I already completed the game. I can't justify the additional expenses if the materials are not even here when I want to use them, and the delay really felt like being shown the finger at that time.

I'm pretty sure the subclasses work like class archetypes from pathfinder. Those merely exchange/modify some core class features with a variant for a different styles of gameplay, and thats exactly what the examples given by josh sounded like. Personally, I hope they introduce additional subclasses as further stretch goals. I want to play a monk, and I find the drug-subclass pointed at in the write up to be really off-turning already. It's nice that they put some effort into making a variation of monks for their setting, but I'd just like to be able to play a traditional martial artist without any drugs or mortification of the flesh stuff. Except for the paladins, the lore of the other classes support their traditional concepts much better. A monk subclass that generates resources for their abilities by dealing damage instead of receiving it would be much more interesting and enable cool concepts, and it would be much more in-line with replacing a permanent ranger companion by a summon with different properties.

I looked up some lists of powerful builds for both NWN and NWN2 to see that the maximum number of classes was 3 for NWN and 4 for NWN2. Now that I read it up, it makes sense: I always wanted to make a Monk/Dragon Disciple/Pale Master to have visible wings and a skeleton arm for punching, but its not possible due to needing bard/sorcerer and a cap of 3 classes. Regarding DnD2: There was also multiclassing there, but it worked yet again differently from dual classing and DnD3.X multiclassing. You choosed several classes and then your experience was just evenly split among all of them and they leveled up individually. And for some reason, dual classing was only available for humans. I theoretically like this concept of leveling up two classes in parallel, but this doesn't work well with the linear exp curves of DnD3.X and pillars. I wouldn't even know at which level the two classes should be compared to a single class for balance - both at n/2 seems too weak and both at n-1 too strong, when n is the level of a single class with the same amount of exp. Bottomline, having it work similiar to DnD3.X multiclassing is probably the best way to do it, although I think a cap of 2 classes at most makes things more stable powerwise.

No, it means her first level needs to be in priest or in class monk, your choosing. Afterwards, you can level her up in whatever class you want (the first or a new one), although I suspect that you can only have 2 classes at most, so the decision between priest and monk will be important. For Eder its the same, only with Fighter/Rogue instead. Aloth does not have this choice for his first class, he is just locked into wizard, but can freely choose another class for multiclassing afterwards.

That's a good list! I also think that they will feature an uneven number of single class characters and some with two possible starting classes. It all probably boils down to where the split is: 3 single + 4 dual seems the most likely, but there might be a slight chance for 5 single + 3 dual I'd be surprised if they choose the classes in a way that there is overlap between possible starting classes the characters. However, if they went with 3/4, that would mean that Xoti is the only companion stretch goal. Given that the campaign will last longer, that seems unlikely as well, so don't know what they'll come up with there.

My guess would be that dual-classing invokes memories of DnD2, but what they called dualclassing works differently from multiclassing on a mechanical level. Afaik, in DnD2, dual classing meant: - starting with class A - at some level n, start dual classing into class B: lose everything from class A, start at lvl 1 in class B - once your level in class B is n+1, get back everything that class A gave you - proceed to level in class B for the rest of the game? This is vastly different from multiclassing two classes from DnD 3.X, where you choose one of the classes at each level up, and how they will probably handle it here. However, I might also be wrong, and they just used examples that they deemed sensible. Regardless, there will be some cap on the number of classes - NWN1 and NWN2 imposed 3 and 4 as a limit, although I can never recall which one had which limit.

Looks like they won't feature one companion for each class, but cover the classes with two class options for some of the companions. We have 6 companions now, and I don't think the stretch goals will include 5 additional companions. Since it seems like you can multiclass them freely after a semi-predefined first class, imho, there doesn't seem to be the need for each class to be represented anyway.

The newest update might imply that there are at most 2 classes available for multiclassing. All the examples they used involved 2 classes.

The level cap is the same as for PoE with WM, so 16, and the new stretch goal pushes it to 18. Looks like there will be enough room for epic content, despite starting at lvl 1.

I don't quite get the joke here. In case you think that Eothas was inhabitating the stone titan (its actually adra) for millennia, the millennia refers to the titan being buried there for so long, not for Eothas inhabitating it.

I agree on the power curves. One problem in DnD 3.X were low-level abilities that scaled with attributes independent of class level, like the paladins Divine Grace (bonus to saving throws equal to his charisma bonus) at level 2. Classes that were designed later introduced a cap on these kind of bonuses in terms of their class level to solve this problem, which made the dipping much less attractive. For example, the duelist prestige class has Canny Defense at level 1, which lets her add her intelligence bonus to armor class, but only as high as her duelist class level. The other problem in DnD 3.X were the dead levels (that were removed by pathfinder): Whenever a class neither improved an existing ability nor learned a new one, it was much better to choose a different class to level up in instead. The step-like progression of base attack bonus and saving throws had the same issue of dead levels due to being lines rounded to integer values. However, both of these issues can be more easily evaded in a CRPG, since they can use rational numbers in progressions and let you increase your stats throughout every class-level. It's a bit generic to have everything scale with levels, but this shows that a proper trade-off is possible at the very least. I'm sure they can think up some other mechanics to properly balance things without making everything scale, and I think they are able to do it properly. That being said, personally, I would actually prefer if they locked us down to 2 classes at most per character, and I wouldn't even mind if they forced us to level them up alternatingly instead of having arbitrary splits. With 11 classes, 121 combinations would be plenty to roleplay any concept sufficiently both in the narrative and mechanically, since you can still choose among subclasses and several feats in addition. Regarding the exp progression in DnD: As far as I know, DnD 3.X used a linear increase of exp (to next level = current level * 1000), but gave some multiplier like 2^d to exp gained where d is (enemy lvl - your lvl). DnD 2 used exponential tables.

You are right, thanks for the head up!

Doesn't work for me either. Guess I'll wait for a hotfix before I grind again...