.Leif.

I believe they hinted that they might do something like that after the game had shipped.

I'll take your advice. What is interesting to me is the ways Obsidian might display dialogue and the ways skills will be involved. Please don't tell me if a choice is going to "work" or not.

How so? Perhaps we might not be able to select the exact dimensions of our house/tower/fortress or the color of every stone or floor, but I feel we'll be given a reasonable amount of control over the aesthetic choices and layouts.

Helping Nalia in BG2 retake her family's keep and restoring it. Building it up and fighting off some vile bastard's army was really satisfying. Storming Solitude and kicking the Imperial scum out of Skyrim felt rather satisfying insofar as I knew my character's political opinion changed the power-landscape. Leading the slave rebellion in the Pitt, the FO3 DLC was really fun. Any opportunity to be Spartacus I is fantastic. Sometimes the best quests are those we make for ourselves. Like surviving and flourishing in Dwarf Fortress or liberating all of the slaves in Morrowind.

I would be glad to see the bagpipes featured in PE to go with my chanter's kilt I don't really think they qualify as a weapon. I love Monster-Hunter for what it is, but I don't think the JRPG-sized weapons would fit in well. The closest we may get is the Claymore, high-powered magic weapons or weapons used by giants.

So this cursed talking sword should be of dubious quality until a certain objective is accomplished (kill X humanoids, wash the blade in blood, find the Planar being who cursed the item and 'convince' them to change it...etc) thereafter the blade ought to be one of the better blades in the game. It might be a drag whenever you first get the blade but after some quests you might be glad you found it. Other cursed items might be worth it to use just because of the effect they have not only on you but the surrounding environment. Think of Jinxed from Fallout. Sure you might frequently screw up simple tasks, but the enemy does as well!

I can dig the shovel being in the game so long as it's not any more complex than the shovel in Fallout.

I'm still hoping for the Chaotic Horde troupe. Demon-blooded masses with a lust for slaughter and loot. At worst they are paragons of massacre, at best they are Noble Demons.

I feel this is an important start. They may be taking a lot of inspiration from Dungeons and Dragons along-side many historic or fantasy sources, we don't need a copy+paste of SRD logic. I feel it would be useful to use other games (Such as D&D) as a good comparison for scaling. I'd like a Background trait to give me bonuses and slight changes because of my character's history as well as one for his or her personality. Charming Adept, cunning merchant, shy thief... etc. That said, I like where you're going with fleshing out the sort of Pathfinder-ish tree for the Thug. I don't feel classes should have a racially or culturally named final talent though, unless it was special to that culture or race.

Fantasycraft, World of Darkness, Call of Cthulhu.

The conversation we should be having is what sort of familiars the mages should be able to get and what sort of abilities they have. There's always the classic Bat, Cat, Hawk, Lizard, Owl, Rat, Raven, Snake, Toad and Weasel from 3rd Edition. Other favorites of mine from 3rd edition are Pseudodragons, Small Beholders, Spiders, Squids and Planar Imps. What other familiars would folks like to see included? Like any proper pet of a mage, our familiar should talk. Talking with your familiar should yield some great dialogue and some plot development. -edit- I forgot floating Eyeballs, homunculi, skeletons (of all sorts), Chocobos, Velociraptors (Philosoraptors !!), mechanical beasts, dogs, ravens, faeries, goats and Miniature Gigantic Space Hamsters.

Should we include an arch-lich inspired by Lo Pan? Indeed!

+3 Strength, +3 Constitution, –3 Intelligence Strong penalties for fighting in sunlight Strong social penalties (racism) Anyhow that's assuming that PE uses the traditional D&D stats model, which I have a feeling they aren't going to be using given they're making the game system up from scratch.

If your PC's faction happens to embrace arbitrary fires, gargantuan ziggurats and heads on pikes, cities you 'save' might look a lot more brutal after your 'help'. If you embrace the Gods of Nature, healing and rejuvenation, battlefields and arid areas may begin to sprout small plants and sustain a larger biome. If you're an Elf or a Dwarf and your faction controls X, Y and Z cities, they might get a great deal more Dwarven steel to craft into weapons to defend themselves with (presuming they weren't Dwarven to begin with). Pious players may construct alters to the pantheon/deity of their choice. The vain may create statues of themselves cast in gold adorned with precious stones with magical enchantments to ward off thieves. The sage may spread centers of learning as the magical scrolls of the chosen one (or whatever the PC is named) are disseminated to the local populations. Let the player decide if they would like to create economic, military, magical or trade buildings outside of the keep's territory (and inside the territory too, of course).

I am very much behind this sort of reasoning when it comes to faction combat. To a certain extent I would like my faction standing to have some part to play in the plot without dominating the story entirely, similarly to the civil war in Skyrim. Decisions to aid one group or another should have a slight butterfly effect on the rest of the world. Even righteous deeds done for homeland and glory can yield ruinous effects for others. Given that it's been stated in the stretch goals and a great number of times elsewhere that we'll be given a house and a keep, we know the player will control land. I forget the interview, but someone at Obsidian stated that your house might become the keep through carpentry and mason-work. In the sort of Post-Dark-Age pre-Rennisance setting of PE it would be out of place for someone with a rather large holding of lands and a keep to not be connected to the area's politics one way or another. To have a keep is to be connected to factional politics. What interests me is if the player will be able to start his or her own faction with variable goals, interests, abilities and aesthetics. What happens after a territory has been cleared of any direct enemy's influence but you are unable to hold the position for yourself? Would the next group or faction to reside in that spot be just as repugnant? How much effort does it take to turn an area from hostile to neutral or even friendly? Using your keep to be an anchor in the deep wilderness from which your faction could grow would be really interesting game-play and different than the typical "big stone walls and plenty of heads on pikes" design. It'd be nice if morale played a part in these larger political conflicts. When you're fighting with all you've got against a dragon so you aren't someone's dinner is one sort of basic primal motivation, but dying for some arrogant bastard noble to replace another heartless coward as the king of the land is a very different motivation. If the player, or another faction, is able to properly destroy certain capabilities for another faction, that faction might functionally cease to exist. Sure there may be a new faction born from the ashes of the dead, but they will be of greatly diminished resources. If I clear necromantic cultists out of a large underground ruin I might want to make sure that no other group ever uses that particular Necromantic Magic Node for fowl deeds again (or so long as the PC lives.) Or perhaps I want to claim the magical site as my own. More depth in politics and factions will only mean greater replayability. Give me a ton of factions to play with.

There is a lot more about the lore of the game I'd like to learn about. How many subtypes of Elves and Dwarves will there be? Can Dwarves, Elves and others be Godtouched like Humans? Also There are quite a few holes in the divine mythos that have yet to be filled. Who are the gods of war? Who is the god/goddess of farming and nature? Also any update the finally confirms the presence of Weresharks and Orcs.

Forget Noble savages, I'm completely down for Orcs to be savagely Savage. But my opinion matters quite a lot less than whether Obsidian decides to include Orcs in the lore or not.

I think one is enough. One well fleshed-out talking weapon is sufficient. It could be a bloodthirsty sword imbued with the soul of a lower planar being. It could slowly corrupt the user, eventually changing the user's personality or alignment. It should also be cursed, for I can think of no greater curse than a chatty sword.

If we can find Cryticus's post reasonable, what other sub-types of priest could we find agreeable? Could there be an elementalist sub-type of cleric? A paragon of fire of water or what-have-you and able to not provoke the wrath of elemental creatures. What sort of non-combat subtypes could be useful for a cleric? Specializing in healing is what the class is often known for anyhow so I'll take that as a given. Could a cleric specialize in concepts like order versus chaos or light versus dark? I am keenly interested in what happens to the Cleric class. Seeing a BG2 style subclasses for the cleric would really add replay-value to the class rather than simply being a necessity in the group merely because you can heal

He could wave it threateningly if an enemy should happen to wander his way. Or use it akin to a Spellblade, channeling his spells through his weapon. Axe-Wizards are oft underestimated.

I was just talking about classes requiring you to have 14 Wisdom (or so) to start level one. Sometimes you might want to play a character blessed in his or her core skills. Sometimes you play an Orc Bard. Since the conversation has shifted to Clerics and their weapon use I'd like to chime in that perhaps different classes could get a different amount of weapon category unlocks. The Warriors would get to adopt and specialize in a wide selection of weapons and the Mages would get to select what sort of weapons they could defend themselves with. What must happen is an improvement over the 3.whaver system of Basic, martial and Exotic. I don't believe that priests should categorically be denied the ability to use bladed weapons. It's too Second Edition for my tastes, it feels dated.

I believe there is a case to be made that it isn't a true BG-style game unless there's an Orc equivalent.

Howdy Riseofbane, I'm glad you joined the community here at the Obsidian forums. I think this video would be best suited to the Off-topic or play-by-post forum. Good luck on your IWD run-through! -edit- It seems the mods have already switched the forum. Perfect.

No, in my Fantasycraft game there's a Troll named Tok who is a martial artist going for the monk advanced class. He was once an enforcer in the Oni Empire but fled . He also uses a No-Dachi, but it isn't crafted from bone. I was channeling all of the shudder years of bad Anime I've seen. Also can anyone pull an example of a double-bladed sword from history? If those can exist IRL so should they be able to exist in the game, which could lend support to the double-axe.

Of course it is! I think if Orcs are included or the Amumua are large and beastly it wouldn't be completely unrealistic for them to use large double-bladed weapons.