UncleBourbon

Sounds good to me. I also liked how it worked in System Shock 2, though that was a bit more toned down.

Fixed it for you. The problem with most game portrayals of magic is they never really consider the unintended consequences of magic compared to the body of literature on the subject. Also I really dislike teleportation in general. It allows poor writers to get away with the poor writing. Take NWN2 and just see how many times a villain teleports a bunch of creatures into the room (more than the rules of the game allow) and then teleports away. Teleportation takes away the difficulty of travel and when taken to the logical conclusion become the ultimate weapon. Teleportation needs to have tight limits and consequences. Otherwise, it is just a lazy trope. An interesting variation would be to allow teleportation, but every time someone teleports it creates the opportunity for an undesirable creature entry into the world. The book Master of the Five Magics by Lyndon Hardy was built upon the concept there was consequences for summoning creatures into the world -- both for the summoner and the world in general. Each branch of magic had some drawback or limitation to it that created an interesting dynamic. To quote Terry Pratchett: “That's what's so stupid about the whole magic thing, you know. You spend twenty years learning the spell that makes nude virgins appear in your bedroom, and then you're so poisoned by quicksilver fumes and half-blind from reading old grimoires that you can't remember what happens next.” There is also a bit in one of the discworld novels about how most mages never use magic because each spell inevitably ends up costing more than it is worth, and only fools go around using magic to accomplish something that they could ever accomplish without magic. Then again, discworld is a rather unique fantasy setting - at least, unique in some aspects, and rediculously cliche in others.

I can see the logic in your post - and there is a great deal of it. I do think there should be exceptions in the "sliding" requirement - perhaps only for companions/NPCs. Charisma wasn't only personality and appearence, it was a sort of strength of personality - see the paladin's save bonuses, and a few other instances (turn dead). This is different than wisdom's strength of mind in that personality is like self-belief or self-worth, and wisdom is more like strength of belief in something else. I think pinning one attribute to another works better with more attributes rather than less - a lot of jRPGs have dexterity and agility, one being coordination the other speed, both needed to be an able rogue. I think less may be better, but it depends - I liked some of the feats in D&D like spellcasting finesse and weapon finesse - both thirdy party, and very hard to balance, but they opened up a lot of doors. Basically, one allowed you to change your spellcasting attribute to any other mental score, and the other worked for subbing dex for strength (to an extent). In our games, the DM always made us get to level four before taking it, and make a certain number of skill investments and roleplay uses of skills attached to the desired attribute - but a CHA based wizard makes a really good liar. These meant that even though you have the same number of attributes, the number of variables in builds was great. I also wouldn't mind an inclusion of a "luck" attribute, if it is done well. I am more a fan of skill symbiosis - that set trap and detect traps give a bonus to each other so long as they are nearly the same - though this depends fully on what and how many skills we end up with. I think whatever the case, the increase in attributes should be scaled to however many attributes we have - with four, we should only increase them very rarely, as they would likely dictate a good bit.

Rolling is stupid. Options about your character's background / culture followed by point buy. THAT is how character creation should work. Why not work it the other way around? Roll, end up some weak bodied, seductive smart allick, and build a background around it? As I said, I think the best solution would probably to allow point-buy and roll-for-stats. I'd expect that if it were the case, it would be enabled for adventurer hall companions. too.

"Rolling for character attributes doesn't involve any element of choice or risk. You have a choice of where to place the stats after the fact, but it's not something you can opt to do or "gamble" on. The same goes for hit points. When you advance a level, you're going to roll hit points. Because of this, I don't think either should be rolled. Rolling for such long-term effects does not reward or penalize player skill or choice in any way, it simply rewards and penalizes dumb luck." - J.E. Sawyer The problem is that there are essentially two possibilities: you can roll higher stats than you can buy in a reasonable amount of time, or you can't. - Grand_Commander13 Well, the major reason an addition of point-rolling would be enjoyable for me - like the adventurer hall - is if I want to play PE in basically a different "ruleset" in that instead of building a character and a party, I might instead choose to roll my stats, no more than twice, and run with it. Likewise, I might rely completely on NPC companions. I've played some very enjoyable D&D campaigns wherein it was established at character creation that we rolled for stats - no re-arranging them, first roll was STR etc, - and only after we chose a class. Afterward we could either re-roll a single stat, or change class. It made for some interesting characters, but they were pretty short campaigns. In the case of just having a stat roll option, I don't think it would take much to add in (I honestly have no programming knowledge, so I am sorry if I am wrong). I think it could work either fixed or changing, but I would like for the increasing of base ability score equivalents to be difficult and rare - I don't want the starting stats, be they rolled or bought, to be trivialized.

I actually like rolling for stats a lot, but I think it should be optional. Rising or fixed I am not so sure about. I think persistant bonused should be earnable - especially through certain actions (like going an training with the military or something).

In most tabletop rules, the check to identify the item as cursed is more difficult than the check to identify it as magical - meaning you could mis-identify a cursed belt of gender change as a belt of ogre strength, slip it on, scream in anger, then find it impossible to remove. That, or a fighter has his sword knocked away, and unthinkingly grabs the sword in the hands on a corpse in the hall, only to go bonkers and start killing everything. It sometimes doesn't carry over well into cRPGs. I like the idea that you have no idea that a piece of equipment is magical until you have some basic "spellcraft" equivilant skill level, and thing a higher level (or NPC help) to determine what it is.

To be honest, if OE follows all the advice in this thread, there won't be much of a game... "Ok guys, we need a boss for this dungeon level." "No bosses, the community thinks they are cliche'd." "No bosses? Ok... How about... hmmm... what kind of game are we making again?" "We don't know." The End. Dungeons are also cliche. As are adventures, quests and dragons.

In many D&D rulesets, curses are when trying to craft a wonderous/magical item goes awry in a bad way. Some villainous NPCs can make cursed items, but players can only fail so spectacularly so as to make a cursed item. Of course, if you failed terribly at making that helm of commanding or something, and it turns out to be a cursed helm of blindness, it isn't like you would want to just bury it or destroy it necessarily - it probably cost a lot to craft. So maybe you deceive someone into buying it, or you find some sheriff/king who wants to use it in a dungeon/bedroom/prison or whatever, and you recoup some of your losses. Then somehow or another it falls into the wrong hands who knows what it is, and either tricks or forces others into equipping it, and there you go. I also like the curse sort of thing you're talking about. Pathfinder and some D&D codexes have items like those - I recall a helmet that alllows perfect vision at all light levels, but also makes the wearer sensative to bright light. The Robe of Eyes is another fun one - it is basically true sight all the time, with some reflex and dexterity bonuses, and in all directions - only you can't even attempt to avert your gaze or avoid gaze attacks. Also to that point: In one homebrew campaign, we happened upon a few pieces of artifact armor (gauntlets, boots, and a breastplate) each with major bonuses (DR on the breastplate, stoneshape and strength for the gauntlets, and spiderwalk and haste for the boots) but acted as cursed unless you were evil aligned and a worshipper of this "dead" god, and imparted several penalties (especially charisma and wisdom) if you were not. It was kind of neat.

I'm sure an aristocratic variation of the rats could be implemented. And I'm sure you could make a Skaven inspired race good as well. The NWOD has a autocractic rat race from India in Changing Breeds, well wererats, but still. They relate them to an Indian Goddess who favours rats. I've seen her temple on TV in RL, rats everywhere. Really cool. Still my bet is on a sharklike race. A rat-king could take a sharkman any day of the week.

The people you're talking about are basically liches - and in Faerun, the Pale Master wizards (aspiring liches). I imagine necromancy might have a presence, perhaps even more so as it has been revealed that ressurection/returning the dead to true life is virtually nonexistant, if not completely impossible. It would make sense that some curious magic users might still pursue the matter. Paladins have also been revealed to be less holy champions and more champions for the common good. It might work, but the differences would be so subtle that it would be hard to differentiate from many other roleplay settings.

I really like this concept, but I imagine the coding for it would be a nightmare. Maybe a few unique/artifact items could be coded to trigger a dialog with certain companions when acquired, hinting at them wanting to use it, and getting upset if refused.

Alternatively, bashing a door could alert whatever is on the other side - if possible. Otherwise, I think you're pretty spot on.

Why walk when you can ride?

As Zapp Brannigan put it: With enemies you know where they stand but with Neutrals, who knows?

Taken from: http://forums.obsidi...gn/page__st__60

I think that cliche could well be twisted by being able to use persuasion/influence to convince many people you're a "chosen" person, when you're really not. You know, maybe start a little cult of devotees, get in trouble with the actual gods/religions.

Are you worried P:E is being developed by RPG hipsters? I don't mind killing orcs so long as I can do so ironically. Killing orcs ironically? What, you mean walking through a forest, juggling knives and an orc flies out and gets stabbed? Really, orcs make find meatshields, but Icewind Dale did well in taking a commonly underestimated monster and making it a serious threat. Heck, I wouldn't mind seeing a menacing sub-society of half-eves out to destroy a society that villainizes them.

I wouldn't mind a dyson sphere setting... In fact, that would be pretty cool.

But cliche is also synonymus with things like "platitude" and "truism". I think it depends on the cliche and presentation - after all, enough small, detailed differences can make a large-scale cliche still important. One cliche I'd certainly like to see would be a slime/gelatinous cube/pudding/ooze type monster - seen in many rpgs, but still cool if they're presented right (a huge block of jelly oozing toward you down a hall, and no real way to fight it without magic.

Thinking of it, the equipment/treasure taken from bandits might be confiscated/demanded by the law in the area - either for proof of crime, or just government corruption. Maybe give characters a choice of handing in the equipment, or paying a "fee" to the official to keep it. Though this could get annoying.

Taken from: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61958-crossing-from-fun-to-frustrating-by-design/page__st__60 I don't know that I like the trade off of running meaning lower combat survivability - and exhaustion mechanic might mean something simple like reduce accuracy or something,

I'd prefer a logical arrangement of landscape and biomes and such. This does not mean they would have to be consistant with our understanding of things - there could be magical springs sourced in another plane, or deserts created by a magical cataclysm. That, or an ongoing storm system sustained by some angered deity. I'd also hope for more gradual transitions - none of this panning from a jungle directly to a desert or something. Obsidian hasn't done poorly in this regard, to my knowledge. Faerun was a bit of a mess - in one campaign we spanned an entire river's system, and according to the maps and location books, the river flowed both ways toward a midpoint, and climbed up a hill on one side. It made traversing it in a folding boat tricky, to say the least.

To be fair, there could have been other Olaps in town. I do like more subtlety, however.

I'd like the walking normally, shift-click running. I don't want it tied to stamina or stats, though, especially if the party is trying to run away together. I could see there being some "tired" quality attached after running too long, though.