Odd Hermit

You can make the same argument about wizard, chanter and cipher. I don't feel the need to "tinker" to be a very good justification. Tinkering should come from a new game and creating a different playstyle. An RPG is supposed to be about tradeoffs and meaningful choices. A better way to add spells is to give the player the option to have more spells available for a tradeoff somewhere else. (Ie talents) Ideally you would be able to create a druid with 50 spells or 0 spells. Depending on how you want to build them. Right now there is no choice. All druids just stand in the back and cast spells. Wizard can change around Grimoire pretty much whenever, so you can tinker - although you don't have the full arsenal available every battle admittedly. Chanter and Cipher are more limited, true, but they've got a different, more hybrid feel to them, having to build up to their spells rather than playing like pure casters. Versatility seems like an intended strength of the other casters.

Started up an IWD game which made me think of this, and I really like it. It gives a sensible purpose to buying drinks beyond getting temporary status effects and just adds to the atmosphere/immersion a bit. Perception could add to your chance to pick up relevant information, while constitution could obviously determine how much liquor you could hold before negative effects or passing out. Could still buy drinks as potions separately somewhere.

The thing about choosing spells as often there are a group of no-brainer, all-around useful spells and the more situational spells just don't end up getting used at all. Having access to all of them gives you more versatility, as well as letting you tinker with different strategies than you might otherwise never bother with. I can understand wanting a more personalized selection though. I think getting some buffed versions of your favorites would be interesting. Like 1-2 spells per tier have higher accuracy, damage, radius, duration or faster cast or whatever. Would feel more personalized than general meta-magic styled talents, plus I feel talent starved on most classes already.

I really want a "drop anything here" bar of quick slots. For my most used spells, or commonly swapped weapons, or whatever. Having to hover over individual spell levels is a minor inconvenience when I only cast certain spells of certain spell levels after a certain point anyway. I rarely used anything other than Slicken or Eldritch Aim for example, for first level Wizard spells.

"Everything you can do elves can do better, elves are much better at everything than you."

But they live shorter lives than humans Therefor I will never play one, 'cause that sucks. Elves always get all the nice stuff. Immortal slender graceful pretty people basically. It's hard to make other races appealing when you're going to include DnD/Tolkien-esque elves in there. http://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/76137431236/what-are-the-average-life-spans-of-the-races-in#_=_

I'd prefer a more elaborate racial system, with a few choices for each and then if desired the player can also simply trade a racial for an attribute boost. The racials would fit the races and have a significant effect mechanically, but if you wanted to avoid a suboptimal race/class pairing you'd just take the attribute boost. Maybe that's a bit too in depth/trying to please too many people though. Personally I like racials that both fit the race and have significant impact on the gameplay. I don't really like races being mostly an aesthetic choice in this style of game. It makes them less interesting to me.

It's Hearth Orlan not Wild Orland that gets this. Hearth Orlan - Minor Threat: When attacking any target that is also being targeted by a teammate, Hearth Orlan convert some of their Hits into Crits. Wild Orlan - Defiant Resolve: After being subjected to a Will attack, Wild Orlan temporarily gain a bonus to all defenses. And yeah, it's overpowered and/or bugged. And yeah Wild Orlan's racial is terrible.

I don't think being able to respec has much to do with this stuff. I'm pretty sure I will end up re-playing parts of the game because I'll choose things that sound good on paper, then find out they suck or don't suit my build in practice, and end up replaying parts of the game I don't want to replay - or at least not shortly after just finishing them. It has nothing to do with depth or strategy, or handholding, or anything like that for me. It's a convenience that saves me from having to start over, save scum, or whatever if I realize I've ruined a character. Taking this post into account I'd add - Perhaps I could still play through the game with that character I made a poor talent choice with or whatever and feel I've ruined. I'm sure I could in most cases, really. But I know myself, and I know I won't want to. It could be present as a console command and players could consider it cheating if they wanted. I'd use it to spare myself from the inevitable restarts because I won't accept/enjoy a suboptimal build choice - it will nag at me because I'm a perfectionist when it comes to character building in games. Maybe that makes me a "power gamer" but it has nothing to do with being overpowered for me, it's just an OCD thing.

I don't like it either. Per encounter could be replaced by cooldown system: X uses per every 60 seconds or something. I'm guessing it's too late for changes on this though.

Same, I thought they were Orlans honestly. I agree on consistency, it's why the Icewind Dale portraits were so awesome. They fit with the setting as well as with eachother. Baldur's Gate had consistency between the portraits as well but not quite as well matched to the setting and I preferred the IWD style. PoEs seem somewhere between the two but some of the portraits are just noticeably out of place.

Thing about IWD and BGII is that your wizard didn't have to start out as a crappy wizard. You could multi or dual class and be very powerful as a melee/caster. Dual class was probably a bit broken, as was the kensai/mage combo in particular but still. And long duration buff spells were fairly good on such builds. My fighter/wizard builds were the most versatile and durable character sans a high level cleric/wizard in BGII due to the craziness of cleric spells on spell contingencies. Even at lower levels a fighter/wizard using armor, cat's grace, mirror image is pretty decent. Then at level 3 and 4 spells you take off when you've got haste and improved invisibility and stoneskin and so on. Regardless pure wizards in general in IE games sucked at low levels, but PoE is a different game where wizards can't multiclass, don't have to suck at low levels, and shouldn't become as insanely powerful at high levels. I don't need wizards in PoE to be melee characters, I just want them to be suited for being a ranged/caster if they're not going to be good at melee. The problem is that too many of their spells don't fit that type of wizard so it ends up feeling like a bland class. If I go through and count the spells I used there's not much variety per spell level because of how many are duds and/or require me to position my wizard where I don't want him to be, or are simply unnecessary self buffs that just amount to a waste of time to cast for reasons Sensuki just gave. Anyway, power-wise wizards in PoE are still "alright" but they're held up by only a few spells out of many, and just aren't as interesting to play as they should be. As for Eldritch Aim, I haven't found a big need for buffing accuracy for spells which already have accuracy bonuses. I land most of my CCs. It has application and potential but at the lower levels of the BB you don't have any spectacular spells to buff that really needs buffing with eldritch aim. It's nice for getting higher damage maybe, but I didn't use wizard as much for spell damage other than a fireball here and there - mostly I used wizard for CC and let my druid nuke things. Although since they've tweaked/nerfed accuracy across the board, perhaps it's a bigger deal now.

I did on a ranger but I replaced the ranger as I felt I didn't really need to test it further after a certain point. And yes, they're bad. I used the DT bypass penetrating shot with a war bow and it was still pretty meh. Although rangers are "meh" in general so it's hard to tell. Everyone else was using crossbows or guns, or DT ignoring heavier 1h weapons w/shield for my melee engagers. I still preferred harder hitting/DT ignoring weapons in the previous build as well(sneak attack gibs with the whole party were pretty funny), but now it's a no-brainer choice. I'd say split accuracy on perception and dex - although maybe combined that might be too much? I'd also buff might to 4% damage/healing. Then buff constitution to a split between % and static bonus to health, so it's of more valuable to lower base/per level health/endurance classes. Right now con for me is a dump stat for even the more fragile classes - or perhaps especially for them as they gain less actual health and endurance from it. Might gives fort saves so I just make that loss up there.

This is a very fair point. I'm just feeling things out as best I can with the current build, and my feedback on some things has to be conjecture considering the issues with these stats.

Dex hasn't been working properly in any build, so how would you be able to determine that? Right now, bumping Dex actually slows down your attack speed with weapons (but it works for spells). Well, presuming it actually worked as advertized, some classes would have higher synergies with faster attacks relative to others. And some weapon choices emphasize this as well, higher damage and/or DT bypass weapons will benefit more from speed whereas higher might would help faster weapons deal with DT more.

I agree that if that solution was applied to all enemies it'd be boring. And in the BB it does apply to too many of the enemies, definitely. But in this case, we're talking about bears. Bears aren't exactly the kind of enemy I'd expect to be subtle and manipulative. I don't think giant bears should be the kind of enemies where you figure you can tank their damage. They could still have a knockdown, but I don't think that'd change the dynamic that much.

What mix is "ideal" for damage output is different for different classes. Some classes get more out of dex than might, some get more out of int, some classes aren't meant to be/aren't most valuable as pure damage in the first place. I've been finding a good balance so far that's not too min/maxy and the only big dump stat for me has been constitution because might makes up for the fortitude loss and the health/endurance hit is minor relative to the benefits of other stats including other means of survivability that are superior to just a bigger HP pool. I haven't found a template that I can blindly apply to just any class, personally. There are some trends but they're not as much about attributes as weapon/talent/skill choices. Chanters were overpowered too. Maybe in a more subtle way, but they gave some insane party wide buffs even at low levels. I'm not saying they weren't overnerfed, but they weren't fine as they were IMO. From a power-gamer perspective, I think almost every party regardless of class/build combos/synergies would still want a chanter if they'd have been left as they were in 392. I agree about Rangers and Rogues though. I'm still doubtful Barbarians are in a good place either, it's hard to tell with interrupt being what it is though. Mechanics wise, Paladin is lacking in things to actually do, but I think the Wizard class is the biggest mess, if that makes sense.

When an enemy monster can kill your character in 2 hits, that is a damage problem. Contrast to the Infinity Engine games, unless you were literally right at the start of the game, this didn't happen. Especially around the mid levels. Cave Bears are pretty deadly in Baldur's Gate, and you do have to watch out if you get hit by them, but in Baldur's Gate it was harder to hit and there were no grazes - so a Bear attacking one of my characters might have been miss, miss, hit for 15 damage, miss - something like that. Here, an Elder Bear with 97 Accuracy if left unchecked to attack any character will likely hit or crit for 50-80 damage twice in a row - that character dies, the end. If Engagement didn't exist then this may not be as much of a problem, because you could switch aggro around - but it's not like that. I phrased my point poorly. I should say that due to their limited control options as well as the player's abundant control options, damage ended up the only way for many enemies to be a threat to the player. Many enemies in the beta, if they didn't do crazy damage, would be trivial encounters.

One thing I've noticed is that my characters rarely get significantly disabled in PoE. While in a pure 1vs1 damage/mitigation/avoidance often my PoE party would get wrecked by many of PoEs encounters, when you're able to freely disable without much worry about disables yourself it definitely gets to feeling formulaic. Granted, many of the enemies in the BB aren't the type to be tossing around major CCs, maybe we'll see more in the finished product. But I breezed through hard mode every time once I learned/got a feel for the mechanics and classes. Even my first run through I only wiped on beetles a few times because I didn't expect I'd need to take them as a serious encounter worthy of spending serious spell slots on CC. Probably the most worrisome moment was when a couple of my party got proned by a Skaen caster, but I just as easily CC the whole group with my remaining characters. Perhaps the problem isn't really damage related as much as it is CC imbalance between players and AI. My only big issue is that combat / non-combat divide feels gamey, and hit/run is a legitimate strategy. That said, preventing abuse/cheese is something I support. I like being able to really optimize my group, strategies, spell / ability selection, etc. and not feel like I have to handicap myself to get a challenging experience. So I agree with/ can appreciate the "Sawyer approach". Maybe some unfortunate compromises had to be made but I'd rather have a genuinely challenging experience - on higher difficulty settings at least - when everything is factored in. I don't think their whole approach can be boiled down to nerf the powerful rather than buff the weak though. We'll see how some of the nerfed classes end up post-release but I expect they're still going to tune the classes more and we'll see some over-nerfing amended.

I used Arcane Veil just because it was on the BB wizard and might as well, but I wouldn't pick it for a wizard I built myself. When my wizard was in trouble I just had my priest save has arse instead. Usually I managed to keep him out of the fray though, once I'd got the right grimoire configuration to avoid any spells that are just too close range for comfort. I ended up playing Wizard similarly - mainly stuck to ranged damage and CC, rarely used any cones or self-buffs. Occasionally I used Eldritch Aim when I was just going to be blasting trash down with an implement but that was about it. I tried to play some different Wizard builds with a PC wizard including a gish, but there was just no way I could make it work in a way that didn't feel like I was adapting my whole party to babysit my wizard. You don't have the time to buff a wizard into a non-liability for melee. Plus monk or chanter have strong conal AoEs and just do the job way better without requiring buffing themselves with multiple spells. The class was mostly defined by a single spell when I really think back on things, and that was slicken. If it weren't for slicken I'd have no place for one in a party.

Another thing that'd be nice is some faceless portraits. Neverwinter Nights had some vague silhouettes, some class-related symbols, weapons, helms - or characters in full faced helms or hoods/cowls that shadow a face, etc. For people who just can't find something for their character, a sort of placeholder may be better than getting stuck with a portrait that looks completely different from their character.

My PC is a light blue skin, green bearded, pale elf and there's nothing that comes close to it, regardless of class. Our Godlike options are pretty limited too. There's only like one or two for each and they're fairly dramatic looking models so when they don't match well it's obvious, and many of them don't match the models much. And there are no Wild Orlan portraits at all it seems like. There's also an Aumaua portrait with a beard... but we can't put beards on our Aumaua character models. Really, there's a lot of visual variety with the models, and I think the biggest concern would be for races that aren't found in other games with portraits as players will have a hard time finding alternatives. I'm going to probably be putting some old resized IE game portraits in but that will mostly only cover Human, Wood Elf and some Pale Elves, Dwarf. I think Dwarf options are limited at the moment, but I can easily amend that, but I can't do much about my green bearded elf or my moon godlike who is you know... a glowing blue guy with a bizarre horn-like growth. There's one male moon godlike portrait and it doesn't look like any of the models.

Currently I look at this class and this is what I see - A grimoire that suggests this is NOT a melee-comfortable class. They are fighting with a book in one hand. A core aspect of the class that by descriptions so far suggests wizards are the dude you want hiding behind everyone else. Yet...many spells requiring the wizard, the most fragile class in the game, to be at close or even melee ranges relative to target. This was made worse with +range being removed from attributes. Many self-buffs that I'm never going to waste time casting because cost/time : benefit ratio is just not favorable. We don't get the DnD situation that made these sort of spells viable, with very long durations so we could meander about glowing from a pile of pre-buffs. Lackluster class-specific talents that add minor abilities rather than enhancing and creating synergies with what's already there. Arcane Veil and Grimoire Slam are pretty weak-sauce if you ask me, anyway, for example. So... what could be done about the situation that might be feasible before release date? I recommended some spells becoming passive buffs in a previous thread but that's a tiny bandaid on its own probably.

With the new intellect, I'm really wishing Godlike wasn't the only race with a +int bonus. I like getting my numbers rounded, 54% and 45% doesn't feel right, I want that 60/50! I think elves should get int considering their race description includes intelligence. Maybe Wood elves get the Dex, Pale get the Int or something. Or just give them +1 int/dex/per and -1 something else. Another small thing I hope they manage to include is ability to name save games. Just recently in 434/5 - Chanter needed a nerf though.

Speaking of ranger, anyone else have an issue where the ranger animal companion disappears? I'm not sure what caused it, and it wasn't killed in combat or anything - happened before I'd even gone into combat. I'm wondering if hiring another adventurer somehow replaced his bear? I can't find a way to resummon either.