Somna

I only know you should't do that with random women on the streets. You mean grappling? The joke with touch attacks comes when the caster is shorter than the target. Touch attacks ignore armor, so it's easier to hit the target. All you have to do is touch them. Somewhere. Hence my comment about groping. Examples of D&D spells that require a touch attack are Shocking Grasp and Vampiric Touch.

...what? Groping ignores armor. Of course, it doesn't stop you from getting thrashed in the process either...

It sounds like the Chanter will have a system where you assemble songs together that might interest you. Probably falls under "needs more info!" though.

Well, in D&D it's reagents, although they were't implemented in IE. However, there are still things like time and concentration. A spell is something which generally requires verbal and somatic components, as well as time: wizard stands there, waves his hands, shouts magical words, all that while praying noone will hit him with sword while he is doing his stuff. For a wizard acting in melee, that would just look silly (because he will be hit). Which means a melee build should either work on buffs or instantaneous spells. Something like Warlock's eldritch weapons, maybe? Buffs are just passives. Passives are boring. Magic which is instantaneous and uninterruptible means that magic can be used without concentration, focus and challenge. Magic which can be used without those is boring too, because it's not mysterious anymore, but something you can do on a whim. And so on. [...] Sawyer has previously said that a wizard casting spells in plate mail is going to take longer to finish casting. So the armored wizard playstyle is probably going to be more around buffs or hit-and-runs with Touch spells, assuming the "holding the charge" concept is valid in Project: Eternity. A wizard wanting to stay in melee range is probably not going to be casting spells at all once in melee. A mechanic I've found interesting in something I've recently playtested as a player has spellcasters being given a "concentration" slot that is used for buffs and some effects with duration. (Example: Imagine if your cleric had to choose between having Righteous Wrath of the Faithful active or Blade Barrier.) The spellcaster can only have 1 "concentration" slot and can lose the effect of the spell if damaged. However, there is an option/feat/talent/whatever to not lose spells due to combat damage. You were still stuck with only one slot though.

The weapon familiarity idea itself as presented in the OP, if implemented, should be a relatively minor benefit at most. For example, getting used to the weapon's quirks could allow something as nice as an automatic reroll (once) each time you get a 1 (which is actually pretty nice), to reflect the familiarity you have with the weapon to not accidentally flub using it. Anything above that should still involve magic or a feat chain. A possible enchantment example would be adding a "Resonance" enchantment that significantly reduces the cost of creating the magical item, but requires the user to build up familiarity with the item in order to unlock the full power of the item. The cost reduction would be reliant on what the weapon is normally treated as (since you shouldn't be reducing the cost of the parts that it's always going to have). A feat chain example would be introducing feats that allow you to use the power of your soul to imbue your familiar item with additional abilities, like being able to damage opponents who would normally ignore damage from that type of weapon or being able to attack from a longer range than normal without penalty. Otherwise, I'm really not seeing any reason why weapon familiarity benefits should be a free extra, just because you don't want to change weapons.

Or, to put it in a more succinct summary, they chose to make the XP reward system resemble more how tabletop games grant XP -- chunks at a time rather than on the fly as they come in. Razsius: I saw your previous -- very long -- post with the multiple path examples, but I don't see how it was a compromise of...anything. I didn't even realize you were considering it some kind of compromise until you mentioned it in here. Could you deign to clarify what, exactly, you were trying to compromise?

Now that's an interesting thought, but seems rather over the top depending on what you define as an 'NPC' in terms of what elements it needs to consist of to be an 'NPC' rather than just a 'Intractable game object that has extra behaviour associated'. Wouldn't mind knowing what you had in mind to warrant considering making doors much broader objects than say just permitting it to be attackable object of a type that has some variables like sturdiness/lock strength/connection nodes. Really peaked my interest personally in what you may be thinking of. Sentient magical doors you can engage in conversation? Unfortunately, it was for more mundane thoughts like making doors attackable. The reason why is because of the damage threshold/armor type update a few updates back. The thought is, by treating it like an NPC (non-player character), it wouldn't be as much of a stretch to assign it its own damage threshold or armor type to simulate the (possibly lack of) difficulty in bashing it open. If the door is really big, it could even be divided up into sections to attack. On top of that, you couldn't run through NPCs anyway, and I'm not seeing any indication that this has changed. As a "live" NPC, the door will look normal. Interacting with the door could move it as normal. If an NPC wasn't dead, you couldn't move through it anyway. Then if you attack it and "kill" it, the corpse look of the door is a shattered door on the floor. If you wanted to, you could give it its own loot (shattered pieces of wood and metal or something...). You could also do the same thing with a treasure chest, except possibly give the "looted" results a different result than if the lock was picked and the chest opened the normal way. And of course, you'd have to shut off the ablity to pickpocket these NPCs, if that's an option. I have NO idea how awkward this would be though.

How awkward would it be to introduce locked doors in the game as immobile, attackable NPCs that only move on successful opening/lockpicking?

Knock auto-succeeded on mundane locks and weaker Wizard Locks because it used a precious spell slot -- which meant a lot more in PnP than it did in BG. This just gave me a different thought though.

I think that, for once, dragons should be extinct if they are ever mentioned, although having draconian races descended from them would be fine. It'd be more fun if there was an unknown kind of awe-inspiring creature than dragons, simply because the player will know nothing about the creature other than what is presented to them. For example, let's say there was a some sort of forest boogeyman that gets whispered about. It's dismissed as random exaggerations until the player gets to a map named after the creature and keeps walking around giant pockets of devastation dotting the forest, with some of the smaller ones (that take up the entire screen) almost looking like... footprints.

the degenerative gameplay that is being removed is not looting everything thats not bolted down, its removing the act of walking back and forth several times? Pretty much. Why it's such an issue...who knows? Admittedly, not having to care about encumberance is nice.

Pretty sure they will use tags in case the player is color-blind. Sawyer says he is red/green colorblind, for example.

The term "Challenge rating" is 3rd Edition terminology. This terminology most certainly has NOT been around since the beginning, which can (arduously) be verified just by pulling out the Player's Handbooks and Dungeon Master's Guides and reading them. If the party had zero risk in killing an opponent, the party got absolutely no XP, regardless of the level of the opponent. Anyone who has actually had to DM those systems knows this. No, the termininology has not been around since the beginning, even though it fits. Other than that, you just repeated what I wrote. Seems we have a misunderstanding here. No, I wrote something that sounds similar to you. That does not make them the same. With Challenge Rating, if you have a MacGuffin and use it to annihilate a rampaging army in safe circumstances, by how Challenge Rating actually works, you still get SOME kill XP out of it because you did something, but it is heavily ad-hoc'd. With the original D&D/AD&D, if you have a MacGuffin and use it to annihilate a rampaging army in safe circumstances, you get ABSOLUTELY NO kill XP from it by the rules because your party was not at any risk. You might get story XP (a.k.a. what is being referred to on the boards as objective XP) attributed to it by the DM instead, or the DM may have an alternative reward in mind for the party, but the DM is not supposed to give you any kill XP for it at all.

The term "Challenge rating" is 3rd Edition terminology. This terminology most certainly has NOT been around since the beginning, which can (arduously) be verified just by pulling out the Player's Handbooks and Dungeon Master's Guides and reading them. If the party had zero risk in killing an opponent, the party got absolutely no XP, regardless of the level of the opponent. Anyone who has actually had to DM those systems knows this.

I seriously doubt you were granted experience on the fly, in the middle of combat, though. And unless your DM was playing with house rules (which is highly possible), you didn't get any XP for being level 7, finding a 1 HD orc and killing it, which is part of the unspoken "kill XP" package as well.

I was under the same impression, that multi-classing was a no go. However when searching for place it was said, all I found was this way back in Update #12. So maybe we're wrong? Odder still, I didn't see anything mentioning multi-classing after November, making it look like the question was settled. Perhaps my google-fu is just not up to the task. It basically means you shouldn't start expecting an answer till much later on, because asking now is way too early to make a decision on it. If they address it earlier, then great.

Rust monsters aren't bad. Just think of them as creatures that like to sunder your equipment more often than others. :D

Saying "there wasn't a whole lot I did like about it" implies that while the overall feeling is negative, there are things about the game he did like. In addition, Project Eternity isn't based off of just Baldur's Gate 2. It's based off of all Baldur's Gate games, Planescape:Torment and the Icewind Dale games. So he confirmed that he didn't like a lot about a game he didn't work on (or at least hasn't been credited with). Whoop-de-doo. It's just another case of people taking a grey response as a black and white answer to start up pointless drama.

It was really annoying having your weapon turn to scrap in Baldur's Gate.

I had a similar idea. The initial decision might take some thought, but if we automate it to that degree it turns into "why have the mechanic in the game in the first place?" To have (at least) three weapons to keep upgraded instead of one uber weapon, probably? I could easily see "Use best weapon for circumstance" being a checkbox difficulty option, with a warning in the text that tells you if the party recognizes the opponent's defenses enough to switch weapons. This idea is sort of reminding me of the Mythology skill from Wizardry 7, where all you'd get is something like ?MOTH? if the skill was low; it could have been a Glow Moth (weak moth with a sleep spell) or Glow Mothra (Glow Moth on steroids with a beefier Sleep) since the model and attack animations were the same between the two types.

That chart started a cascade of thoughts. First thought: How would weapons with multiple damage types be handled? I'm assuming they're going to have two separate modes that need to be swapped between? Second thought: The apparent attributes of the damage types appear to be: Slashing - +25% base damage Piercing - increase DT- and -25% base damage Crushing - 2x MDTDT (In the sample chart, Piercing damage is ~75% of Crushing damage which is ~75% of Slashing damage, and the difference in values are NOT arbitrary) So will there be magic that exists to enhance each of those attributes, and is it restricted only working if you use that specific type of attack associated with the attribute? For example, if you use some sort of magic to enhance base damage on a weapon, will the effect only work if you make slashing attacks with the item? Third thought: If there's a concern with magic increasing DT causing confusion on what to use, why can't it cause the beneficiary to simply look like he/she is wearing a special version of the new tier armor? For example, Leather armor wearing also wearing a ring that gives +5 DT would look like someone wearing ghostly scale mail. (And if it isn't enough to bump up a tier, it doesn't need a graphic.) Fourth thought: If the same overall ranges were used but the individual ones were narrowed and based on the Piercing numbers, how would that turn out? The tiers seem to be cleanly divided based on when Piercing starts losing effectiveness and when Piercing hits are not reduced any further. For example, using the chart's numbers, instead of every 5 being a new tier of armor, it'd be more like 3/6/9, 20/23/26, 35/38/41, and you adjusted as needed based on what numbers Piercing attacks had. Fifth thought: How are firearms and regular magical protections going to interact with this? Is Firearms going to be kind of a Crushing/Piercing hybrid in terms of stats? Do magical barriers just artificially flatline the damage to the minimum amount so that the normally weak armor a traditional spellcaster wears is sufficient to stop the damage? Sixth thought: Is it really that bad that increasing your DMG multiplier means you have an increased range of effectiveness? They start overlapping more, but then maybe any adjustment to DMG multipliers should be in the realm of really powerful talents then.

Dungeons and Dragons. Or if you want cRPG ones, every single Gold Box game out there, and I think a few of the early jRPGs. Also, if you run, you get 0 XP regardless of how many things you kill. However, all their battles take you to a separate interface from the main one you use to walk around -- which is probably part of the reason why XP on death will feels more natural to people in a game that doesn't do that.

And hence why Experience Points is normally EXP for us, and not XP.

With that "Cipher powers often gain intensity as they maintain focus" line, I'm seriously getting a poison theme out of it for offense now. Kind of like a mental Warlock. (The MMO kind, not the D&D one.) I don't know if I like that or not though...

I thought Piercing weapons were supposed to have the capability to ignore some DT. And crushing ignores more of that DT: hence why MDTDT is higher for crushing than for piercing. I could be seeing this whole thing wrong though...Not in the same way. Piercing flat out ignores DT up to a certain point. On the other hand, there's a cap to how much Crushing damage gets reduced by DT. Using the chart's examples, Crushing's damage getting reduced by DT caps out at 15 (20 for the "Fast" category), while Slashing just keeps going downwards more and more. Piercing, on the other hand, doesn't start dropping until 25 DT, but when it does, it drops like a rock.