illathid

So, I've been thinking about the health system and how Josh Sawyer took inspiration from D&D 4e healing surges. While ruminating about this I thought of a system that would get this idea across and be visually appealing as well. I don't think this would make it into the game, but I like it want to hear thoughts on it. Here's what I was thinking: You have two stats: Health* and Recovery Power* Health is analogous to Endurance in PoE, and Recovery Power is analogous to PoE's Health. All damage to Health can only be healed by expending the characters Recovery Power. This would be done automatically at the end of combat at a 1:1 ratio. Recovery Power would likely be a multiplier of your Health based on class (like the changes being made to the PoE health system). Healing spells would use recovery power as well, but offer a better ratio (e.g. cure light wounds would heal 20 damage and cost 10 recovery power). Resting would be the only way to refill your Recovery Power. If you have any recovery power your are knocked out when health reaches zero, but would be killed if you have no Visually, these would appear in hourglass shaped meter, Health at the bottom and Recovery Power on top. You'd see the level of "sand" in the Recovery Power meter go down as "sand" in Health meter goes up every time a heal occurs. Benefits: Like the PoE system, every character would have a stat that shows how many times they could be knocked out before death. While this would be functionally equivalent to the PoE, I think many of the complaints would be mitigated. This is because it will feel more like you have a resource your expending rather than a stat that is constant falling. I'm sure there are problems with this is missing so feel free to point them out. Anyways, I just thought this would be a cool way to do things. TL;DR - Rename Stamina to Health, Health to Recovery power, and make recovery power a resource you expend to heal. *Name subject to change

Looks good. Definitely makes the mechanics of building a character a bit clearer.

Simulationist! Kill it with fire!

But it's not a 1:10:100 exchange rate. It's like a 1:3.33:5:6.66:10:20:30:60 exchange rate. And your comment on point difference shows exactly why they aren't doing that. If the game allowed dice rolls everyone would Errol until you got 108 points worth, which defeats the purpose of rolling. Point buy is better.

There's a lore reason for this. There are many different types of silver, gold, and other types of coins each worth a different amount. Everything is converted in copper so you don't need to remember that a x silver coin is worth 10 copper and y silver coin is worth 15. The reason is to prevent you from resting after every encounter. By keeping camping supplies a limited resources, you have to pay better attention to when you should rest. If you want dies rolls, just roll 3d6 yourself and assign the points according to those rolls.

Well the obvious response us that not all quests are worth the same amount of xp. Some quests may only give a very small amount of XP, while others will give a lot.

Well, I'd argue that the NWN prestige classes don't do a great job of really showing off different Archetypes. I'd maybe go about doing it by listing all sorts of different archetypes you think would fit under a given class, and go from there. For example, here's a few character archetypes for the fighter: Gladiator Mercenary Duelist Bodyguard

Hmm, I did try leveling up a bit; however, there didn't seem to be enough enemies to fight near Dyrford Village and Dyrford Crossing to level up. Perhaps I'm reading the map wrong, but it seems there are only two very small areas we can visit beside Stormwall. I did find quite a few lions and other enemies near the entrance to the Stormwall dungeon. These were challenging, but I managed to beat them. Do enemies respawn if you keep wandering around that area? Quick thing: Fighting enemies will not help you level up. You only get experience from completing quests. Maybe you know this, but your comment that there "didn't seem to be enough enemies to fight... to level up" would suggest otherwise.

Stay back everyone! It's an RPG simulationist. It won't die unless we cut off the head.

Your issue is likely with the lack of content. There were plenty of encounters in them but not enough quests. BG2 didn't really have Wilderness maps. There were like four of them available after you exited the Underdark and they had roughly the same content density as the BG2 ones except there was one that had a pretty large vampire encounter. Yeah, I don't think I ever went to those maps when BG2 was released. I did check them out in BG2EE, with everyone hasted to the gills. I think part of the problem with BG1 wilderness maps for me was I couldn't find any in character justification for the exploration. I did because the game was actually pretty hard, and it was a decent way to increase your power before taking on harder content (a fair amount of magical items, decent combat XP, etc.).

See this is something I have trouble understanding. I absolutely hated the wilderness maps and exploration in BG1. I vastly preferred BG2 in that regard. I'm mean different strokes for different folks, and all that, but it was all just so boring to me.

I can see how some companions could be a potential spoiler(I.e. Sarevok), but most of that is due to already having skin in the game so to speak. Since I really know nothing about the story I'm not really sure any of the companions could be a spoiler, unless they're currently NPCs in the backer beta. I really just want to know race/classes so I can start planning my party since two of the known companions are a no go for me.

Well to be fair, the new build is much better than the old in this regard. Is it perfect? Probably not, but It's good enough where I'm not constantly thinking about it.

The obvious response to this "Ok." Obsidian isn't getting more money from people logging more hours in a game, why does it matter if people stop playing the game? This is assuming the narrative content is strong enough for people to enjoy finishing the game?

So after making a few characters and leveling them up before heading into town, I realized I had no idea what effect leveling up had on my character except giving me skill points and access to new talents/abilities. I also knew I was getting HP, but iI didn't know how much. So I started to pay attention, and I saw my accuracy was raised each level. However, there could be other benefits to leveling up that I'm not seeing. Shouldn't there be a summary screen while leveling up that shows all the benefits we're getting. i.e. +10 HP, +2 Acc., etc. I think something like this would really help make advancement seem meaningful, especially for otherwise "dead" levels*. And while we are on the subject of leveling up, I might as well express a pet peeve of mine. Right now a level one character will attack at the exact same rate as a level 10 character. I'm sure there are arguments for why this is, but it just doesn't feel right to me. I think giving all character a small bonus to recovery time at each level could help this a lot. If you wanted to get really fancy, you could give additional recovery bonuses to certain classes (e.g. Fighters have reduced recovery time for heavy armor, Paladins get reduced recovery time for using shields, etc.). Anyways, just thought I'd put this out there and see what anyone thought. *Pretty sure there are no actual "dead" levels in PoE, but some of them sure seem like it. "Lay on Hands 2" yay. Awesome.

While on the subject of saves. Could we have saves sorted by character rather than character name? I tend to name all my characters the same thing, and I'm pretty sure all my saves were in the same folder last I checked.

As a neutral on the whole XP issue, I don't think either side can claim to have the moral high ground.

Yeah, any game with grid hotkeys is a big plus in my book.

Love the Eder and Aloth portraits. Dislike Palegina's, and I hate the Kara one. Actually that'll probably decide who my companions are; everyone but Palegina and Kara. Also, Monte just post the damn pic.

One thing I would like is a tool tip explaining what a talent does on the character sheet once taken. I took Soldier weapon focus for greatswords, and couldn't remember the other weapons it helps when I was looking for a second weapon.

I'm in favor of a spoiler tag as well. PM's are too much hassle.

My understanding is that Oblivion believes "Per Kill" XP promotes degenerative game play. Where people will choose to take the non-combat route for XP, and then go back and kill everything to gain additional XP. I know I have done that on more than one occasion (The sahuagin city in BG2 comes to mind as a notable example).

The Loan wizard is able to re-mortgage your house with a wave of his wand.

F.A.T.A.L. was a tabletop RPG system released in 2002. So far as I know it never has had a computer game made with it's rules, nor should there ever be. I'm not really sure where you got the idea about a command prompt type game. I'm assuming English isn't your first language, but as it stands many people are having trouble understanding what you are try to say. Regardless, as PoE has entered beta, there really isn't a lot of major changes that can be made to the game.

Just a question, has anyone tried doing some modding with the beta at all? I imagine interface mods would be pretty popular, and with the beta out people could get a head start.