TRX850

And we were so close to Stockholm Syndrome kicking in.

Time limits on quests. The first time I recruited Minsc and agreed to rescue Dynaheir, I took a while getting to the gnoll stronghold (resting a lot) and just as I'd killed the last band of gnolls at the entrance to Dynaheir's pit-prison, Minsc spat his dummy and attacked us for taking too long! We were *right there* ! About to talk to her, and he went berserk on us! Took me another 5 attempts at reloading the game and speeding up the last battle by 2 rounds just to satisfy him. So er, time limits I can do without, unless they are made adjustable for proximity to quest completion.

I was thinking more of an actual plot point when it happens, but is not something you have prior knowledge of. You just stumble upon this person in your travels, and then BOOM. It's clear you must work together. At least to achieve the next stage of your quest, whatever that may be. Personally, I wouldn't want it to go into romance territory. I think it could be so much more than that. If there had to be an element of romance, I would vote for something like the sexual tension between Mulder and Scully, or the awesome bromance between JD and Turk in Scrubs. Any more than that and we're verging on synchronized vomiting I'm afraid. Hopefully by this point, new players will have a pretty good idea of how party dynamics work, but the possibilities now become increasingly complex.

I've been thinking a lot about programmable buffs recently. There may be certain battles or areas in which you want to pre-buff your party or yourself multiple times, or with different buff chains, so having a Buff1, Buff2, Buff3 option in the UI could remove a lot of hassle. Provided you have the correct spells in your current spell pool when choosing which buff chain. And if you didn't have one or more of them prepared, then maybe it could just skip those and cast whatever remains in the list at the time. So Buff1 could be: Bless Bull's Strength Haste Buff2 could be: Mirror Image Shield Summon Monster II ...and so on. I don't know what would be a reasonable limit to the number of spells in each chain. There's no real advantage or disadvantage to having as many as you like, as long as they are available to you. When you "program" them, you might have to also select where you want it cast. On the caster, center on the party, the party leader, in front of the party, etc.

Fear and Loathing in Project Eternity. "We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like 'I feel a bit lightheaded. Maybe you should drive.' Suddenly, there was a terrible roar all around us, and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, and a voice was screaming 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" Sorry...couldn't resist! Interesting idea though. Sounds like something that would need to be handled carefully, as with a lot of the community suggestions so far.

Or if you wanted to shapeshift into something totally badass, how about a Grave Elemental? IIRC, alignment won't be a factor in P:E, so this whole thing of neutral druids needs to be rethought. The Grave Elemental (or Skullbriar) seems to fall into the evil camp, but it could also represent the cycle of nature, so not totally out of bounds. Or maybe you could summon one at higher levels?

Couple more Druid ideas. Camouflage while Resting Depending on how they implement the "Resting" function in P:E, if you have a druid or ranger in your party while resting in wilderness areas, what if being interrupted by wandering monsters has a reduced chance? Possibly by an amount that scales with character level? Could make a Wilderness Lore skill check, or apply a scaling luck modifier to the die roll (even though it's not strictly luck, but a natural talent for remaining unseen in natural surroundings). Infuse Herbal Remedy - Class ability (or feat requiring min value in Alchemy) - Not the same as Brew Potion - Concoct vials of Neutralize Poison (different strengths), Cure Disease (specific diseases?), or other remedies that remove certain "states" like fatigue, intoxication, enfeeblement etc. - Requires ingredients (found in residential homes, forests, looted from other druids/clerics/fey creatures etc). If traditional potions were made just that little bit scarce, and you had no current spells to counter certain effects, then a druid could be your best friend. EDIT: Of course, you could also imbibe them preemptively to protect against said effects.

Did you just imply wonder twins incest? Who knows what they get up to off camera? But they did come to mind because of the synergy they create when combining powers.

This is where it could get really tricky, or really interesting. They wouldn't need to complement the main character necessarily. There could be a complex decision tree that determines the resulting build. One that won't overpower things. Either way, it would most definitely impact the overall story design, to cater for different outcomes. Imagine the anticipation though, with each playthrough, trying different builds and adventuring choices.

Amen to zapping political correctness. I understand why it's implemented in some games, but I think most sensible RPG-ers know when something is obviously designed to be "off colour" because of the setting and time period. It doesn't mean the game devs or its community condone political incorrectness.

What if you could discover an NPC that was created dynamically, and designed to be your Kindred Soul? So that he/she were a different class/build each playthrough depending on your own class/build. And only once you found them, together you could perform super awesome abilities, either in combat or spellcasting, or both, or in other ways. Or maybe there's a trade-off? And depending on your future actions, you either bring them closer to you or drive them away. It could cover some elements of romance/bromance and other complexities of party make-up. A power shift in companions, jealousy, or even treachery. Thoughts ????

I applaud him for stepping into the fray like that and providing insight to design decisions. With limited time like his, I honestly don't know how he puts up with all the flak so well. I'm really glad they've decided to scale certain things, and they didn't just look at it from an all-or-nothing perspective and toss out the idea all together. But then, they're smart people, those developers. They're crafty like that, That awkward moment when you realize you've misspelled someone's name and you can't edit the post.

Reading through the other forum threads here, I've noticed ~95% of them come with personal opinions. The rest are either a statement of fact, or a statement of...I don't know what. If you read Chris Avellone's excellent article on Characterization http://forums.obsidian.net/blog/1/entry-168-project-eternity-and-characterization/ you will see he addresses many of the points that players talk about when discussing game characters. But it shouldn't end there. Maybe some of you have had ideas brewing for a while on what YOU think would make a great addition to an already established RPG franchise. Because, you know, sometimes amid a sea of rhetoric, a pearl of wisdom emerges.

Ladies and Gentle-hobbits...Saywer has left the building.

At first glance, I like the idea. My worry would be party members scattering in an area of the map I haven't fully explored yet, and possibly running into traps or other enemies. If they had an "auto-pause" function like in regular IE games, that would alert you to sudden attacks from ranged enemies or spellcasters etc who appear just on the edge of your vision radius, and you could then decide where exactly you want your party to scatter to. Maybe character movements wouldn't be *as* useful to say, readying a counter-spell (like dispel magic) when an enemy attempts to buff themselves or debuff the party. If a player *didn't* want to use an auto-pause function, that's when things could get "interesting".

What about "Frankenspiders" ? Horrid creations of some Necromancer/Vivisectionist using them as tower guards? They might not have been bred by natural means, but still give that uneasy, icky feeling when you dispatch one in a torch-lit corridor with their guts splattered everywhere.

If they merged Cleave with Sweep in P:E, it could add value to the Fighter class. The question is how it's triggered. Currently if you kill one opponent with the Cleave feat, you gain a free attack at one enemy within melee range, which seems to imply two separate "sword arm actions" rather than a single clean "Sweep". I wonder if the sweep radius is something that could increase with level? Start out at say, 60-90° to give it some visual impact, then add 10° per level up to a radius cap. I think 360° is way too much for a "surefooted" attack like this. Whereas the Whirlwind Attack is another step up again. Maybe "Sweep" should be a prerequisite (or one of them) to Whirlwind Attack?

Sarcasm aside, you could post that comment on every other P:E forum thread and it would have the same meaning. You do realize that the purpose of these forums is for RPG fans to discuss ideas and bring a range of experiences to the table so that it might provide insight to the development team, don't you? Of course they know what they're doing, but our "job" is to help by providing feedback. Otherwise what is the point of these forums? Now, is there anything you'd like to add about characters that you found amazing, or not so amazing, and tell us why you think so? I'd like to hear it.

Another way to offset the off-balance dependence upon loot-selling is to have the loot be situationally valuable. Examples: Maybe instead of all those generic longswords being worth piddly money, they're only worth crafting materials (IF you need the materials of which they're constructed) to you, OR even worth the crafting materials to a blacksmith. However, maybe, instead of giving you 3 silver per longsword, he gives you a free equipment upgrade or offers a free single crafting service because you did him the favor of supplying him with some much needed metal to melt down for some big order he's got. Maybe that's even something that changes as time passes. What if characters received payments for certain successful skill checks (the 3E kind) that provided a small service? Such as crafting goods and items for the common man (i.e. not blacksmiths or temple wards). You enter a back alley to find Fergus the Pilferer has just nicked some trap ingredients, but the silly sod doesn't know how to craft traps. So you oblige, for a few coins. Mrs Miggins' the local florist has a "delicate issue" so you offer to apply your herbal skills to concoct a remedy, for a fee. A few rowdy "pub hounds" are milling about the local square, so you entertain the crowd with your performance skills. Punters toss a few coins at you then head back to the bar. Or you use your diplomacy skills to quell a potential bar fight, to which the landlord shows his appreciation with a few silvers. And so on. It may appear menial for not much reward, but the actual doing of the deed wouldn't take long, and the roleplay value would be there. It wouldn't be limited to just cities. Other areas where unsolicited payment for skills might be available.

It's a fair point. And it harkens back to the days of PnP AD&D. And besides, what kind of store owner buys stinky goblin armour from complete strangers?

I'd like to know more about the geographical size of the game world. That and character development.

If currency was made harder to acquire and therefore less common, why not include it in encumbrance calculations? Now before you shriek "God, no! This is one of those abstract mechanics we've grown to love and depend on!", what if it allowed you to be more strategic with how and when you cashed in your loot? Say you looted a dungeon and came up with some cool items and a bag of gems. In regular RPGs, you'd trek to the nearest "Ye Olde Adventuring Shoppe" and exchange all your loot for gold, right? What if in P:E it just meant you carried that bag of gems around with you and only cashed in what you needed when you needed it? The value-to-weight ratio of a bag of gems would be far superior to a metric shed-load of gold.

Or not. If you tweak them you lose the people that found them interesting as is. You gain no one, the other types already had their interest. If another form doesn't exist you don't have that additional audience. Your take on this sounds like everything that is wrong with board room game development. Not necessarily. Consider a henchman that 50% of players preferred just the way he is, and the other 50% thought he was lacking because he didn't have any particular goal or purpose in the game and was just there purely as a henchman. That's fine, the people have decided. But what if you introduced a side-quest that opens up possibilities for him to discover something about himself or the game world or even about the main player character? You've preserved the initial interest in him from the original 50%, but have now given the other 50% a "compelling or intriguing" reason to play him. Honestly, I am not, nor was I ever, trying to force players to like or dislike henchmen based on someone else's personal preference. If that came across, it wasn't meant to. You know what I would like to see, is if we asked 100 people to look at this link http://www.gamebanshee.com/baldursgate/strategies/npcguide1.php (and click through to the other pages in that list to see what they've done), then consider all the assessment criteria for those Baldur's Gate NPCs and come up with their own list and final scores, and then compare them. I would expect there to be some wild variations based on personal choice, but there's certain criteria like class abilities and related quests that are more reasonably quantifiable using logical deduction rather than an emotional process. All I was hoping is that where the perceived % values differ wildly, we could tweak that NPC to appeal to both sides without losing anything in the process. Improving something doesn't automatically mean watering it down. I didn't mean that. And for the record, I actually do like reading through character assessments like the example given, and making my own judgements. I'm not against them. If anything, they provide a useful template for how you might plan your next playthrough. But you certainly don't have to use them if you prefer to "forget" your previous playthrough and re-experience the game afresh. I've done that too. What bothers me about those lists though, and I've mentioned this before, is that over time, people start to believe them as absolute truth, or at least that's the impression I get from reading other forums on player preferences. If we can give the game reviewers who assess these things some "compelling and intriguing" reasons to increase a low % to a high %, then everyone's a winner, and we've lost nothing in the process.

Fighting while surrounded is a good point. In the early SSI game "Pool of Radiance" and its successors, a fighter learned to "Sweep" while surrounded. It was a bit like the current Cleave ability but it basically attacked all adjacent enemies regardless of whether you felled the previous one or not. So a tactic was to allow yourself to become surrounded for that very reason. I think it may have only triggered if the level difference between the fighter and the enemy in question was above a certain value though, so a 4th level fighter could Sweep a 360° circle of say, goblins, or skeletons. And it really sped up battles when there were 6 party members and 60 enemies all trying to surround you.

The Expert Tactician feat in NWN2 gave me the idea that "Combat Synergy" could be something developed further for the Fighter class. http://nwn2.wikia.com/wiki/Expert_Tactician The idea that IF [ combat condition = true ] THEN you and all your allies gain [ combat bonus ] for one round. I like this idea because of what it represents mechanically and for roleplaying, i.e. when your fighter character does something awesome in battle, it inspires the entire party in a meaningful way that scales with level advancement. It could represent other party members observing the fighter's technique and briefly copying him/her for that round, or the fighter shouting out combat tips "Swing from the hip more! That's it lad!" That kind of thing. So now, just being near an allied fighter has clear combat advantages. The question now is, what sort of group combat bonuses would be appropriate as the fighter become more powerful?