Somna

<Insert game city or location name here> Hey, it worked for at least 2 of their IE games!

Personal thought: Discovered items -> Use your Lore score. Instead, crafted items should require an identification at the end of the process, which tells you if you made what you were aiming to make or if you have a critical result/failure that is slightly different. Critical results tell you that the item is a critical result and may be better than the expected result OR cursed, which you unlock after several uses. You can then decide to sell the result or take your chances and unlock the critical effect.

Well, they were talking about us "getting your Psylocke on" for Ciphers, so it's possible that we might get melee options like Psylocke's psychic knives. But I imagine this means you'll have two main options for Cipher -- melee and ranged. If Psylocke is an apt comparison, melee would most likely be like a psychic monk -- extremely mobile with weapons created with the power of your mind that can be thrown for emergency ranged attacks. However, I would not be the least bit surprised if Ciphers could do short range teleports on their attacks either. We don't have a comparison for a ranged Cipher (yet), so that's much harder to go into.

Well, another part of the appeal of the Power = Worshippers concept is that it's really easy to fit in on top of anything else. It's not necessarily mutually exclusive to power independent of worship, and can easily be subverted to something else, as your example gives. For example, you can also have situations like these: Deities are set at particular levels of power naturally but have found a way to artificially boost their power by having lots of worshippers. (This may or may not be ... healthy ... to the worshippers.) Deities feed off of the concepts they represent, so a deity having more worshippers doesn't automatically grant them more power. However, the worshippers are far more likely to engage or cause an activity that would give the deity power, so there's reasons to have the worshippers anyway. Deities don't draw actual "power" from worship, but having worshippers gives them access to more directly influence the world. People just know it as more worshippers = more power because it is a simple, easy to understand explanation. (This needs a reason why the deity even cares about influencing the world though.)

Right, but if they're better than you at everything...

Well, there are also many interesting story and lore possibilities that become available thanks to this very mechanic. It opens up a huge (and credible) source of conflict between gods and between groups of believers, and conflict makes for good stories. And these things are automatically excluded because we remove a straightforward correlation between worshippers and power? Why can't some gods and some worshippers vie for more influence because it's a common motive. People with money still long for influence. The President of the United States isn't made superhuman by the number of votes he receives. He's made more powerful by his influence over the apperatus of government. Some people do like assigning numerical values to things as a unit of measurement because it makes more sense to them that way. So if you don't understand why More Worshippers = More Power makes sense for other people, I doubt anyone is going to be able to convince you why to any satisfaction because you're probably not in that set of people. That being said, depending on the campaign setting involved, they do specify that PC character classes (Clerics, Specialty priests) DO count more than the generic layperson. Some may even give you numbers, like Clerics being 10x more and Specialty priests being 50x more, or something like that. It's a justification for why Clerics and Specialty Priests are favored with spells in the first place.

Okay, so this more of a personal revelation that you are sharing with the community than a concern that P:E will be pirated enough to really hurt the game. That's a rather large sigh of relief. I couldn't imagine it, but I do miss a lot of threads. I also did(and do) my own fair share of pirating. My thought process revolves around the 'you're stealing sales' argument. Before I pirate something ask myself whether I would ever buy it. If my answer is no, I would not buy this and if I couldn't get it for free I simply wouldn't have it, then I'll pirate it. If I enjoy it and discover that I would have bought it had I known this, then I buy it. I don't think this makes what I do morally sound, but does make it acceptable to me. The gist of the "stealing sales" argument is that while there are some people who will never pay for software anyway, there is also a subset of people who would normally pay for software but will go for the lowest possible deal. THOSE people are the lost sales if it is easy to get a pirated version, and the effort to get a pirated version reinforces knowledge on how to get more (if they've never done it before).

People are fixated on it because it's something that actually makes sense. Just because it makes sense doesn't mean it is about trying to stick to realism. I do agree that it shouldn't be the only possibility though.

This is the majorly important part. Unless they have an open beta, the only pirates for this game are going to be your fellow Kickstarter backers, and "well I spent money on this, what I do with my copy is none of your business" is an excuse I fully expect to see. As a side thought, having the Kickstarter granted copies also personalized with our names would be nice.

Random thought: Tiax, god of lawn ornaments.

People only throw out one or two gods because the original request asked if people had any ideas for gods they wanted to volunteer, not entire pantheons. Edit: For clarification, I'm not saying people can't or shouldn't throw out entire pantheons, just that people are only throwing out one or two because the original request didn't specify they want entire pantheons.

Hmmm... Given the background in place so far, I think it might be interesting to have a deity of Inevitability that governs fixed events. This would NOT be the exact same thing as Fate, merely a subset of what fate is. Fate can name both the cause and the event, and also implies that you can stop the event by preventing the cause from happening. (example: X is fated to kill Y, so killing X prevents Y from dying.) Inevitability can only say that the event itself happens, so only the result is set in stone. (similar example: Y dies today). So a god of plot points, pretty much. As a result, trying to actively stop the event from happening at all doesn't work well, because it would shift the cause of the event to more disastrous (and harder to stop) possibilities. It would be more favorable to eliminate causes that are unfavorable to you or use the fact that it will happen to try to take advantage of the situation. This kind of deity would probably not give out a lot of events, however, and would probably focus on more world-wide issues, contrary to the examples. Alternatively, have the deity of Inevitability also be the deity of Lies. This kind of deity is more likely to give out events, and the problem would be trying to tell which events are the real inevitable ones and which events are just to advance the deity's interests.

I basically picked the following: Rogue Wizard Monk Cipher Rogue and Monk I picked because I am curious how they will implement their ideas for the classes without getting too close to the feared "Specialized Fighter" routine that people worry about. Wizard, on the other hand, I picked because with what they've given us so far, I suspect that any other information about it is going to require some explanation of the magic system that they are thinking about putting in place, which is one of the main things I am curious about. Cipher, however, was picked because they just sound awesome so far. And with Cipher in the lead (at the moment), I think quite a few others agree! :D

I predict people trying extra hard to go for the eyes of their opponents.

I think I know a good place to put in a mini-game, actually. Cutscene magic. If we are stuck with Cutscene magic -- either getting smacked by it or mowing down others with it -- I know I'd like to have the option to either amplify the damage or mitigate the damage instead of sitting there annoyed watching it go off.

Since we are going to find out more about up to four classes soon, I was wondering which classes are the ones people are the most curious about. On one hand, we have Druids, Monks and Rangers where we have very little information to work off of. On the other hand, we have others classes like the Cipher, Rogue and Paladin where even though there is released information, there are at least some of us who want to know more MORE MORE because it has piqued our interest, or it is our favorite typical class, or some other personal reason out there. So in short, if you could pick which 4 classes had information released this week, which ones would you pick? (I will, however, be very amused if they are released before I even finish posting.)

Gotcha. I do feel that I should re-analyze what they've stated before though. Otherwise, hoping that they'll turn out one way when they've cleared stated something to the contrary is asking to be disappointed.

I'll reread the descriptions I can read, but I'm not completely drawing the connection on some of these conclusions. The only thing I've ever seen mentioned about the ranger, for example, is that the fighter isn't as good as the ranger with ranged weaponry.

LOL. Troll category?

These are the conclusions I was drawing from their announced descriptions so far. (Wiki is blocked at my current location so I can't reference it.) Rangers - Ranged weapon specialists Paladins - Martial Cheerleaders--basically group oriented support characters. Wizards - Will be storing their prepared spells in tomes to use for the day instead of D&D standard of using tomes to prepare spells for the day. Priests - Narrowly focused battle-casters with a penchant for buffs and guns Druids - ??? Fighters - Jack of all Trades for weapons -- Some offense, some defense. Not as effective as a specialist when dealing with a combat situation that caters to the specialist, but better at things than a specialist when the specialist does not specialize in the combat situation. Rogues - Hit and run shadowy assassins Barbarian - Raging warrior that can mitigate stamina damage taken while raging Ciphers - Soul puppeteers and mind mages. Think Enchanter/Psion, only more so. Chanters - Bards that don't have to concentrate on singing/playing to do so, but are limited to one AE buff at a time. Monk - ???

Despite the fact that this is the first time they're doing it outside of D&D classes, they haven't stated anything functionally different yet other than that Barbarians will probably have some kind of damage reduction for Stamina. Cipher, on the other hand, is brand new to their IE game package even when you consider what it's likely to resemble, hence the interest.

I'm pretty sure some people pick Cipher as an option because they want to see how Obsidian handles a class that is potentially similiar to a psionic-based class.

Re-read those links... Well that was exactly the thing I was worried about. It could replace wizard and cleric in most important their fields (damage dealing, buffing, cleaning negative statuses, resurrecting), has different, much less rest-dependent mechanics, avoids common save throws and resistances (ability to add more power for higher saving throws, or no throw at all, pure and energy damage), has many non-standard (exploitable) crippling effects... More so, in non-combat situations also: environment awareness, any interaction with living creatures, transportation, lore checks, stealth even. So, psionic could not only substitute both wizard and cleric but excel them in most situations. Not to forget, that sole counter for psionic is another psionic. So he is the deadliest and the most useful member of party, others are mere shades on his greatness. And the most effective team is the team of psionics. Don't want a class "more and better of everything" to be in PE, I'd want to vague on who I want to play, not to be forced to choose the overpowered one to be effective. But cant tell how exactly to cripple the psionic for it stays itself and not stays OP. More restrictive cast mechanic and less psi-kinetic manifestations mb? you're over thinking it... A Psion doesn't get all these powers and *poof* is suddenly better than all the other character classes. The Psion is empowered and limited by which discipline(s) it specializes in. In essence having all those disciplines and powers available to the Psion class only means he has the option to develop along one or 2 of those paths, not all of them. TL;DR - having more options as a class doesn't mean you GET all options as the class. Pretty much. What it does have is ease of use, in the sense that it's MUCH easier to use a Psion than, say, a Sorcerer. That is because of the mechanics being compared to the standard D&D/Pathfinder spellcasting system though. I definitely don't expect to see them apply Cipher-magic using a system completely different from other spellcasters, considering how much extra work that would be. If they do adopt the point/augment system for everything though, people might like it.

Pretty much. The Paladins in P:E sound more like a different form of group buffers, and the whole inspiring deal sounds potentially like AE stamina recovery is a possibility with them too.

I see, thanks for making that list! Although it sounds like psionics should be restricted to settings where enemies use psionics as well for them to not feel out of place (I guess you can counter psionics only be means of using psionics yourself). Most descriptions seem really nice but powerful at the same time (at least if you apply them to real life). Also, I'd rather like wizards and ciphers have mutual excluvie spell effects, as opposed to DnD where they overlap. Overall ciphers seem like a fun class to play if they are modelled with psionics in mind. However, I'd rather not give them so much cool effects in their spelllist that other classes appear to be boring in comparison. They certainly should have some unique and powerful stuff, but not everything should be screaming awesome - or else they should be at least hard to play in order to reach that full potential. Given what they've described about the Cipher so far (which isn't much), if it was based on this as well, I'd expect Ciphers to have abilities that are similar to the powers in the Psychometabolism, Clairsentience and Telepathy disciplines.