Somna

That depends; think we can cap the thread? >_>

I'm not even sure if undead would even fit into the Eternity world. Then again, It may be that the first group of skeletons you run into are really a lich and its huecuva servants.

Or target someone in melee with it.

@Lephys: From what you've described, are you looking for something like what Pathfinder did to races? Basically, you have the default "vanilla" traits, but there's a listing of alternate traits you can swap in to customize the character. For example, an Elf character could have Woodcraft (+1/+2 bonus to Knowledge (Nature) and Survival), Silent Hunter (reduce Stealth penalty and can use Stealth while running) or Envoy (minor SLAs if your Int is 11 or above) instead of Elven Magic (+2 SR checks, +2 Spellcraft checks). It also gives Favored Classes an alternate option on level up besides the +1 HP or skill point. You can't modify the stat changes like that though. Edit: Adjusted link to jump to more appropriate section of that page.

See Pathfinder's take on Arcane Archer. Especially the Imbue Arrow option. It's really not that huge of a deal imbuing ammunition the way it does it.

Good question. I'm just trying to think of how Barbarians and Fighters might have subtle but poignant differences when it comes to combat knowledge. You could argue that fighters are trained to fight, by and large, against other fighters of the same racial type. In most cases anyway. I suppose a Barbarian could also learn to fight against their own type, but at some point, whether through trials of adulthood or whatever, will have to fight against beasts also. And I'm really just making this up on the fly here, I haven't had time to think this through just yet. This is a fantasy world and I'm thinking in terms of distinguishing class features that give an advantage over another class. So to answer your question, maybe their favoured enemy could be expanded to "Man and Beast". Which would preclude creatures like undead, constructs, and all other magical or unnatural denizens of the world. Remember, history and logic aside (????), we're trying to decide how the Barbarian is *different* to the base fighter class, and other fighter sub-types like Ranger and Paladin for that matter. Edit: Meaning that if we apply history and logic too much, we might find that fighters and barbarians have almost no difference, which is a rather inconvenient answer. Barbarians could simply be masters of improvised fighting. That is, they can still use any weapon a Fighter can use, but their specialty is in using what's available, figuring out how to use it effectively very quickly, and doing so. If there are penalties for Improvised Fighting, they should be bonuses for the Barbarian instead.

Considering it before the first game is finished makes it easier to mesh if they think it's a good idea though. It would be an excellent casting style for the Cipher, for example.

I know I'd love to be able to do "assemble your own spell" kind of magic, but a lot of games seem to shy away from them. The only ones I can think of that are close to this are the Words of Power variant spellcasting for Pathfinder and an old Playstation game called Kartia, The Word of Fate, which basically took it to 11 and made it so that spells, items and a lot of your army was created by the runic (i.e. Kanji, given the game origin) magic system.

Hmm, only AD&D class other than Thief that might have Hide in Shadows that I can think of is Bard, which is, as you imply, also a Rogue. What else was there? Ranger? I know Clerics and Wizards definitely did not, unless it was a non-weapon proficiency? Non-Detection, lead-lined cloak and so forth shouldn't be needed if there's no reason for them to look at you in the first place, but Hide/Stealth is not working as intended in 3.0+ settings as written anyway if this thread can be believed. (Edit: Whether you believe the guy or not, I did find it entertaining though!)

Now to wait the several years and see if the core question of this version is "What does one life matter? … and does it matter at all?"

I would say that if anyone should be able to sneak to some degree, then anyone should be able to achieve some degree of greater concealment within shadows (unless, of course, the thing they're hiding from possess infrared senses, like some snakes and such.) I was actually under the impression, for what it's worth, that in at least one of the editions of D&D's ruleset, all classes had access to the "hide in shadows" ability. Or, if they didn't, they could still literally hide in shadows, and "hide in shadows" was simply the name given to the Rogue's superior ability to hide almost anywhere (and it was just implied that he always found the best shadows... naming style, really). [...] AD&D, rogues were the only class able to actually hide using their class ability. Everyone else depended on Invisibility. 3.0 is where the general "Hide" skill came in, and high level Rangers and Shadowdancers became better at hiding than equivalent Rogues due to their "Hide in Plain Sight" ability. Rogues were simply more likely to succeed with their "Skill Mastery" ability if they chose to use Hide as one of their Skill Mastery skills. So in a sense, they actually took most of the stealth superiority away from Rogues and gave it to anyone who chose to specialize in it.

There really isn't a problem. It's just a "Ew, DIFFERENT" reaction that people can have to something Pen and Paper campaigns can do all the time.

No. Awarding loot is not systemic. So loot is uncommon or what? In other words it is quest based and not quest and combat based? Which means that mobs only drop weapons and armor? And what if someone sells all of the armor and weapons he finds on mobs? How will you try to balance out a pacifist's disadvantage in this case? You sound like you really need to read (or re-read) the information they've already released. That would probably trim half of your questions before you even post them. Here's Marceror's thread stalking compliation on Sorcerer's Net. He also includes sources for things mentioned on other gaming sites/reddit/etc: http://www.sorcerers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=58186

P:E was not billed as a RTS on kickstarter. I feel quite secure in saying 99% (margin of error: 1%,) of the people donating were not donating to see a RTS game result. I agree. ...However, that pause-start-pause-start-pause-start did annoy me on some fights at times--especially ones with lots of things on the screen--so I can see a point in the slow-motion option at times. But this is the exact reason why you DONT want slow motion. You have lots of stuff going on within the screen you don't want to be having to rush orders, potentially missing stuff because when you queued of your first cast and moved on to the second/third and then fourth member of your team to do something then you completely missed the fact that your first player has now cast said spell and/or died. It's going to depend on the lots of stuff too though. Also, pause-unpause ad nauseum waiting for stuff to get to the right distance can get very annoying.

I don't mean spell sequencers, where you "pre-cast" them so that a chain of spells all trigger at once, although that would be cool if we could develop that too. I just mean having a UI button (or three) that you can assign a sequence of buff spells to, with specific order and target location, so that when you start reaching higher levels, and your spell pool increases, so does (often) your preference for buffing yourself with everything you have right before a battle. So instead of buffing your party manually, which gets tedious if you're having to do the same long sequence many times over, you just assign your preferences to a list and click once, and it tries to resolve it for you, while you relax for a moment and ready yourself for battle. We'd probably have to see how the buffs work for that thought. If they're always-on passives anyway, it may be a moot issue.

Readied actions would end up being a kind of optional AI settings, actually, since things like standard and move actions aren't going to translate well. The only limitation is that you can only ready against one situation at a time, however. It isn't, but I think I understand why you are bringing it up -- it's because it's an ability that also tries to counter things, right? 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. I had forgotten about DA. It could be interesting if Grimoires could also act like a mini Spell Sequencer for buffs. If you're using temporary buffs in it, however, it's might be too powerful if it removed the need to actually cast them -- especially if it's a lot of buffs.

P:E was not billed as a RTS on kickstarter. I feel quite secure in saying 99% (margin of error: 1%,) of the people donating were not donating to see a RTS game result. I agree. ...However, that pause-start-pause-start-pause-start did annoy me on some fights at times--especially ones with lots of things on the screen--so I can see a point in the slow-motion option at times.

I'm quite sure this is exactly what they want you to do, instead of killing every thing that moves (and some things that don't) along the way to milk as much XP out of it as possible.

I know the IE games had options where you could pause if a certain situation happens, so it's definitely not a stretch to think something like Readied Actions could be built in. Readied Actions (in case someone isn't familiar with the term) are from 3rd Edition D&D (and onwards) when you spend a significant part of your character's turn preparing to react to an action -- for example, readying an action to attack the first opponent who tries to cast a spell, or readying an action to move around a corner if someone takes out a bow. I could easily see a party readying actions to scatter from a central point in the party formation when someone not in the party starts spellcasting. The catch is that the ones readying would be moving around at half speed. (So someone readying an action and moving quietly would be moving at 1/4 speed.) It's potentially open ended and obviously useful to some degree, but it's also how some automated stuff work as well (like the Gambit system in one of the later Final Fantasy games), so it could potentially get to the point where the game is playing itself if it got out of hand. Other than that concern, anyone have any thoughts?

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. I remember that. It never showed up at high levels in Pools of Darkness though. :/ I'd hazard a guess that iit only really happened if you could potentially one shot the target, which just does not happen in the later versions.

More Friends, More Benefits. I'm not against in-game romance in general, but I want to play a game, not build a harem.

D&D has been on a decline ever since TSR was bought out. Quite sad. 3.0 and 3.5 were still popular enough for Pathfinder to get spun out when 4.0 got shoved out the door, at least.

Ultima Online had awesome treasure chests like this. In fact it had an awesome treasure hunting system overall. I don't remember anything about UO anymore except the need to constantly cut down trees. Could you elaborate?

They are putting forth the possibility of making the main encounters scale to the expected party level range to accomdate people who like to go side-questing. Most of the 10 pages is ad hominem attacks and sniping about what level scaling is and isn't, so you really didn't miss much by skimming.

I know where you're coming from on that, but it's moot with the inventory system they have already thrown out as an example. Where it could get interesting, however, is if there's multiple currencies that are being kept track of. We know there is going to be two big cities, so you can have two different currencies just off of that. Dungeon delving and killing stuff from a different age can produce its own currency as well. Currency in one area doesn't necessarily convert to an equivalent currency in another area, especially if the two areas are not on friendly terms, and depending on what background activity is going on in game, could cause events to happen for the party. For example, if the party went to clean out an elven burial site and spent the money found there in an elven area, that could cause a bounty to be placed on the party by the elves after a couple of days to be brought in for questioning...dead or alive. Or spending money from one city at the other city when they are not on friendly terms could result in the party being contacted by the local thieves guild for possible jobs. If they put in spending/buying caps in locations, given that the party can get a stronghold, what might be really interesting is if you can put found items to use gearing up your stronghold people instead. Found a bounty of Fortified Plate Mail that no one can afford to buy? Equip some of your stronghold soldiers with them instead, so they have a higher survivability.