hairyscotsman2

OP. Having Int increase both damage and AoE and duration goes against the design intent. Character building should create a stat divide between varying builds for each class, not enforce any one stat to a class. For intents of their design, the current system is much better than your suggestion.

Not really. I see that they've grasped an opportunity to encourage players to keep to the main story unless they're given a reason to deviate from it.

Give someone a magic sword in a high fantasy world to gain bonuses and combat abilities and everyone's fine. Suggest that someone can tap into the inherent magic of the high fantasy world to gain abilities as a melee fighter and everyone loses their minds.

When you try to reinvent the wheel there is a good (actualy a 100%) chance that your new hexagonal wheel will not work as good as your traditional round wheel (see guild wars 2 for reference) This is the part where I remind you guys that they don't have a D&D license and as a result can not copy the systems of the Infinity Engine games and as such had no choice. This is the part where i remind you that D&D do not have any royalty over every d20 system baesd on strength,dex,con,int,wis,char. Am I alone in having an opinion that goes something like: No way on this earth I would have backed any RPG tied to the awful, unbalanced and soul destroying systems of early D&D? I played that way for 24 years, lost potential players to the inherent and undecipherable class progression and balance differences and there's no way on this earth I'm going back to it, unless its the last game in town, which it won't be if I have any say in it whatsoever. Maybe the reading comprehension of the nayser isn't high enough. I never wrote that i wanted D&D system but a d20 system with canonical stats Lol pretty much incredible how the cornerstone of RPG gaming (BG1&2,IDW1&2,Torment) sudddenly became "awful, unbalanced and soul destroying systems" Canonical titles for the stats of the PoE system wouldn't make sense. Too many people would see strength as a purely physical statistic, not a damage booster for all classes. No part of my disenchantment over those 24 years was sudden

The items and money (to buy items) gained for some combats make up for the lack of xp. Both serve to increase the character power and durability.

Now our characters can raise their charisma by chopping off an Ogre's head for objective XP. Makes so much more sense, even though it is the same thing. +rep not +cha surely?

When you try to reinvent the wheel there is a good (actualy a 100%) chance that your new hexagonal wheel will not work as good as your traditional round wheel (see guild wars 2 for reference) This is the part where I remind you guys that they don't have a D&D license and as a result can not copy the systems of the Infinity Engine games and as such had no choice. This is the part where i remind you that D&D do not have any royalty over every d20 system baesd on strength,dex,con,int,wis,char. Am I alone in having an opinion that goes something like: No way on this earth I would have backed any RPG tied to the awful, unbalanced and soul destroying systems of early D&D? I played that way for 24 years, lost potential players to the inherent and undecipherable class progression and balance differences and there's no way on this earth I'm going back to it, unless its the last game in town, which it won't be if I have any say in it whatsoever.

Blame this on D&D 4E which Josh is a big fan of. Nope. I've played loads of RPG systems since 1984. I think it would be incredibly naive to call Josh a big fan of any one particular system. He strikes me as someone who picks systems apart and picks what works best for the story and setting it needs used in. I have no problem whatsoever with other people being able to build fighters and rogues and any class at all with nothing but point and click usage. I don't believe they should expect everyone else in the gaming community to share their point of view, to the point that no other play option is available. 4e just balanced in a far to rigidly structured way, to the point where combat ground out and RP was stifled. For D20 PnP play, 13th Age does a far better way of balancing classes without rigidity or slowing combat or stifling RP. 13th Age just wouldn't translate to PC very well, nor do earlier iterations of D&D. D&D is not a good system for a computer game at base usage. The sheer number of auto-win options is just plain silly. Difficult fight? Reload until the big bad fails the Death save vs your auto-win ability. Very few PnP systems are good for PC. The Runequest use of skill to increase skill idea worked well for Morrowind etc but the rest of the system wouldn't translate well. Warhammer FRP 1E and 2E is a great, gritty PnP game but would be naff on PC as well (imagine a RPG with enforced translation of RTS spells). The Dark Eye is probably about the best on PC but even that needs tweaked for optimal use on a PC game. I'm incredibly glad that Obsidian are doing their own system with a mix of ability use and recovery options.

Nope. There will be no and low maintenance abilities for your style of play (buffs, auto-interupts etc). The current active use abilities suit the style of myself and others just fine.

Magic! Make the stick magic. Make the arm that swings it magic. Give up a spell level casting per rest to make the arm even more magical. Give options to prevent stagnation and boredom. You can have the boring priest, I'll have the interesting one.

Oops. Grimoire. Got it now. That was not intuitive at all

Made a new wizard and leveled. Only 1st level spells showing.

The rest limited characters should have a small something else at-will. The wizard's staff attack is really uninspiring/not engaging. If the priest even got a very small and minor healing burst on a successful combat hit it would be something there too. As it is, it feels far too rigidly Vancian for my full enjoyment.

The rest limited characters should have something else at-will. The wizard's staff attack is really uninspiring/not engaging. If the priest even got a very small and minor healing burst on a successful combat hit it would be something there too. As it is, it feels far too Vancian for my full enjoyment.

Sometimes after a fight I lose control of the fighter. I can highlight/select them but get no power/selection pop-up and they cannot move. Save and reload resolves it.

Godlike Cipher Godlike Wizard Human Chanter Elf Ranger Orlan Druid Aumaua Monk Undecided Rogue Dwarf Paladin

Nope. Divinity: Original Sin has turned-based strategy combat and has implemented random loot in a pretty well balanced manner. They have some fixed drops, mostly random. I'd like to see PoE have some random and mostly fixed for the good stuff. When done in a balanced way, with good methods, random loot can certainly add to replayability. It's when it's done badly (as it frequently is) that there's a problem.

Kickstarter is what's made it possible. Shadowrun Returns, Antharion, a new Torment and Divinity: Original Sin are other's that Kickstarter have given us the ability to fund (D:OS was in development anyway but wouldn't have nearly as much content or features without it). I was speaking to my other half about how good the Original sin Beta has been and that it's made me think it could be my fave game of the year, even over PoE which surprised me and then I read Josh's recent interview with PC Gamer and they've made me so stoked about both these games now that it may just be a very tough call when they are both out. Roll on the PoE Beta! and Welcome, enjoy your stay.

I'm seeing a lot of people being unable to look beyond class titles here, it's a common problem. It's not the class title but how it feels in play. If you want a 'high damage' fighter feel, you're going to want to play a Rogue here. They never promised us D&D. They promised us a game heavily influenced by the Infinity engine and that's what we're getting. They aren't even allowed to make it too like any edition of D&D! I know people who don't like WoW at all and are excited by this game (not a fan of MMO's myself). A sad truth is that D&D has never actually suited being a video game. I've hear it's part of the reason 4e was designed the way it was, so a good video game could hopefully expand the tabletop market, but Atar* killed that dead. As someone who's switched to 13th Age due to 4e's flaws and really not liking Next, I'm really happy to see a game take a small part of the good ideas from all editions of D&D and build them into something new and innovative.

And again you're not quite getting the whole point. I apologise for not explaining myself better. There is an inherent problem to older d20 game and class design that flaws the game by making spell casting classes disproportionally powerful and making all "lesser" classes less interesting to play. And the flaw is that anything cool a player character can do is almost always implemented as a spell. Not a power, not an ability but a spell (I know there's some exceptions, quite a few but there's a HUGE amount of spells). I was reading a p&p rpg forum earlier about how to make fighters more interesting at higher levels. What some of the people posting came to realise was, that in both 3.x and 4e, the same idea for a power/spell was put in both systems. The shared basic concept was that you could temporarily Dominate someone by Grabbing them and holding a weapon to their throat. 4e implemented it as a power available at 9th level to the Escaped Slave theme that any class could take. 3.x implemented it as a cleric spell, because it had to be a spell because it was 3.x. based and everything great has to be available as a spell. (I KNOW 4e has it's own failings PLEASE do not derail the thread) What I am also pointing out is that in-built class imbalance is a design flaw inherent to older d20 systems and one that IMO cannot be fixed from within. Hence my admiration for Obsidian in creating their own system.

I thnk you've missed the point Stun. I think Eiphel was referring to those games that expect you to take a Wizard or give an inherent advantage to having a sword and board warrior in your party. The more imbalance is encouraged the more likely encounter auto-wins occur and all the effort that went into designing the other classes loses significance. It reduces the value of parts of the design. Now I was referring to seeing those same class design flaws resulting in characters that steal the show at a game table. It's more annoying there but the same principle applies. Having one class significantly more powerful at higher levels that the other classes in the party makes the other characters less significant to the gameplay. I don't expect classes to be 'exactly' balanced but a degree of parity is important to me. LWQW does not a pretty picture make from levels 1 to 20. Some d20 groups only played levels 7 to 12 to avoid the worst of the imbalances created, thus the entire 13th level+ rules for characters may as well not have been printed as far as those groups were concerned.

Meaningful character death is important. One game i don't understand the love and devotion expressed for it is KotC. I'm not sure why ppl praise KotC so much. Why have a strategy to kill an over-powered dragon early in the game when you can reload a few times and insta-gib it with a dragon slaying arrow that you can only get by unintuitively allowing someone who is clearly evil go free? Poor plot design on a poor base system IMHO. Reminded me of the poorer quality adventure game books that would kill you just because you turned right instead of left with no cluing. Now if a pen and paper games master made an adventure like that I'd have expected critical feedback from players, I'd have expected that GM to improve. As old GM'ing guides I've read advised me and experience has taught me: Player character death by chance or arbitary DM choice should be avoided. Players should experience failure by their own mistakes. That way they will have learned something to bring over into their new character (or resurrected body). The mistakes can be a lack of information gathering, a strategic error, saying the wrong thing to the wrong person, failing to spot a danger there a long list of mistakes that can lead to death but fatal events should never be 'just because' and there should, ideally, be multiple ways of overcoming the challenges. RL has quite enough pointless, arbitary, meaningless and reason defying deaths of those we care about, the last place we need more is in a game we pay to escape reality in.

IE games had inherent in-built class inbalance due to being tied to the old d20 system, because that's the only way d20 pen and paper games were then. TBH inbalance doesn't wind me up quite so much in a computer game with party control but it really wears me down at a gaming table and it's not a desirable design goal.

I'd like to see class balance and an end to those save-or-die instant win spells. I greatly admire Obsidian for making a game that steps beyond the limitations and inbalances inherent to the older d20 rules set. I had 24 years at games tables with fighters with linear power progression and wizards who gained power exponentially, until the wizards became the gods who do everything and all other classes were there just to keep the gods alive so they could do all the interesting stuff.

With enough well thought build types, there should be a build available to suit everyone. Dual wielding DPS Sneak attack Wounding (or DPS) Skill focused/support Ranged Combination of types