Lephys

True, but if there's anything the Umbrella Corporation has taught us, it's "perfect your research at others' expense, THEN use it on yourself, only to discover it's not quite as perfected as you think, and eventually end up as a boss fight." I dunno... whenever I'm feeling a bit undeath-ish, I find that a good decapitation tends to do the trick. Also, if my character ever discovers a fampyr, I hope the game will allow me to throw them a crazy tea party and sing "A VER-y Merr-y un-DEATH DAY, to you... TO YOU!"

I think people forget that "better" is a relative term. Just like when that whole "heavy hitters" update came out, and everyone started going "OH NO! NO ONE ELSE WILL BE ABLE TO DO ANY DAMAGE!" Or, you know, any other time anything was ever announced regarding anything at all unique to any given class.

We're actually going with nano-transactions. For 5 cents, you can hit a button that just clears a line for you, you know, for when the constraints of the actual puzzle gameplay become tiresome, but you still want to feel like you're overcoming something. And you can play it on your PAGER! 8D! The Shyamalan-ation is that you're actually the slab, and the slab was the character waking up on you. O_O

God... I can't tell you how SICK I am of that blasted cursor! Always there... taunting me... "I represent all the phenomenal control you have over this fantasy world before your eyes, and yet still you die to these mere kobolds! HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH!"

You've gotta have some rigidity to counteract the flexibility, or you'll just end up with goo.

Ahhhh. Much appreciated mechanic details. Thanks! (Also, I was totally calling them "lethal strikes." But I meant the deathblows. My mistake. The "sneak attacks on steroids." )

That's not kiting. That's just killing stuff while you're running away. If that's kiting, then so is driving away in a humvee and slaughtering people on foot with a 50-calibur mounted atop it while you do so.

There's your problem, right there. You're worried about a technical definition. I'm arguing the actual legitimacy of kiting as an actual, employable tactic that should be implemented into a virtual system of combat mechanics. If you wanna go by definition, a pine cone is food. But I'd still say it's no meal. You could eat a pine cone, and even get nutrition from it, but it's not really a viable option when it comes to meal options. If you have the choice between anything else, and a pine cone, you'd choose anything else. "Kiting" is a friggin' side effect of video game programming. "Keeping your enemy at a distance" is not kiting. Killing your enemy without getting hit is not kiting. Dodging is not kiting. Specifically taking advantage of the math involved with movement commands, inter-command delays, attack speed, and move speed such that your virtually programmed foe never actually gets to hit you over the course of a substantial duration of time while you hit him all day long... that's kiting. So, yeah, it's as much of a legitimate tactic as infinitely teleporting around at-will is. And that ties in your awesome magic example. In real life, people can't magically teleport around. But, that doesn't mean magic can't be put into a game world. Therefore, if we allow people to magically teleport around limitlessly, and live forever, avoiding the enemy until it dies of old age, that's totally a viable, legitimate tactic we should both put into our games AND support! 8D No. See how preposterous that is? You probably don't. Or, if you do, you somehow think it has nothing to do with the very nature of kiting as a gaming term. Hahaha... You do realize that the only difference between casting spells and casting stones is the thing you're casting, right? The act of casting magic spells is just what you do with spells. Therefore, "casting things" is a method. Spells is not a method. You said "Magic doesn't exist," then asked if that makes it illegitimate, in our discussion of kiting. What do you need to cast spells? Spells. What do you need to kite? The ability to move and attack, and some rather specific values, etc. Derp all you want, oh stubborn one. Whether it's a magic spell that you used to put those enemy soldiers to sleep, or a non-fictional chemical you slipped into their water supply, putting them to sleep is the tactic you're using. Magic is not. So, your magic example yet remains completely ineffective. Not to mention, I never even said "solely because kiting doesn't exist in the real world, it shouldn't be in a video game, BECAUSE!", so you're arguing a point you arbitrarily decided anyone else was even contradicting you on. A lack of the ability to kite in a game isn't doing the game any harm. Just like the lack of infini-teleporting and being immortal isn't hurting the game's tactical repertoire any, either. That's why it's silly to be in the game. Not because it just happens to not really exist. I said "you weren't asking me a question." Past tense. Unless you ask people questions by quoting other people? Maybe now you're asking me a question, very cleverly disguised as a simply clarification of your initial question (that's rather confusing, for the record, especially since, if you're asking me a question now, it's literally the exact same question you were asking Fatback). The answer is no, btw. It contains the act of dodging, and counter-attacking. Again, in RPG mechanics, the Bull would use an ability called "Charge," and the Matador would then Dodge and Counter-Attack. For him to be kiting, he'd have to constantly run away from the bull the whole time, always staying just too far ahead of it for it to even successfully attack him, all the while killing it with his own direct attacks.

You also weren't asking me anything. I was just commenting on bull fighting. I didn't say I was answering your question.

There's a 97% chance this is a silly question, but is it possible for the first attack a Rogue makes (within the first 2 seconds) to be a Lethal Strike? Also, does the "first two seconds" condition stack with Flanking in regard to Sneak Attack/Lethal Strike mechanics? I guess that's really the question I should ask: Does the "within the first 2 seconds" condition behave any differently than any other Sneak Attack condition?

It's actually EA's new Tetris reboot.

Bull "Fighting" is more accurately just Bull Dodge-Torturing.

So... stamina-based attrition is now kiting? The point remains... completely flawed and irrelevant. Magic is an entity, a force. Kiting is a method. You're not even comparing apples to oranges. You're comparing apples to harvesting oranges. Also, you don't seem to comprehend the nature of tactics. Throwing a firebolt at the enemy and firing a flaming arrow at them are not different tactics. The tactic you're using is to damage them, with fire, from a distance. Not "I'm using magic tactic" or "I'm using arrow tactic." That tactic is how you're accomplishing your goal, not the materials you're using. Kiting isn't a legitimate tactic, just like tearing someone's head off isn't; You could tear someone's head off, but, by the time you've done that, you could've already done 17 other things that owould've been way more efficient. If you can just run from something, all the while killing it (just you and your weapon versus a creature... not some trap/ambush, etc.), then it wasn't even a threat in the first place. That's not a tactic, because you're not actually fighting it at that point. You're just killing it while moving. So apparently we disagree. I don't really have anything else to say about it, and I'm not going to get into another 5-page "discussion" with you, so believe what you've want. I've merely presented my perspective on the matter, for what it's worth.

"Hey, I just flew in from Irvine, California, and boy are my arms tired." *BA DUM TS* I'm pretty sure you mean: "Hey, I just levitated in from Irvine, California, and boy is my mana drained." You're both wrong. It was: "Hey, I just rolled a Pun check versus this audience, and boy was it a 20!" Also, the first quarter-to-half of the trailer would have to be a bunch of extremely brief scenes of people saying stuff like "A storm is coming...", and "I know ex-ACT-ly what this world needs...", complete with "In a world..."-style text-slides in between, along with a slow-motion rolling die. Then, when the dice stop, cue the 2nd, mostly-explosions portion of the trailer. Just a bunch of people shouting "NO!" while dramatically outstretching their hands, etc., while stuff explodes around them. Orcs attacking a village, HOUSES EXPLODE! Cut to an Elf performing a 73-hit-combo on 15 foes surrounding him. Cut to a split-second of love-making. Cut to some huge army lining up. Cut to the "you don't really know he's the bad guy yet" bad guy slowly turning around to face the camera while simultaneously smiling. BLACK SCREEN! Some female voice calmly speaks some philosophically cryptic/thematic phrase, like "What can so few hope to do in the midst of such power...?", as some character lights a torch in the blackness, and it slowly burns up to full brightness, showing a hint of something in the dark. As he steps closer, it turns out to be a dragon eye. CUE DRAMATIC ORCHESTRAL HIT/CONCLUSIONARY MUSIC AS THE SUPER AWESOME 3D LOGO CONSTRUCTS ITSELF IN SOME AWESOME, MAGICAL FASHION! Annnnd that's a wrap.

^ Now if only Bioware could do away with armor so thick it could safely house a nuclear reactor.

It's not as if they go to sleep a rich noble, and awaken a ghoulish creature. They slowly start to need flesh, while knowing it (at which point, are you going to just go around telling people "Hey, I need to eat flesh, and it's all that doctor's fault!"? And, if someone discovers you're eating people, what incentive do you have to NOT murder that person on-the-spot? You know you need to eat people, and you're probably ashamed of it, or what-have-you. You're probably not going to go to some important diplomatic summit if you suspect your cravings'll "go rogue" on you, and you'll just start attacking people in public. And, by the time you start losing your mind, you're just a crazyman, and are either SUPER secluded in your keep somewhere (in which case no one really knows what's going on with you), or you no longer are capable of retaining your social/political status as a noble in your manor and flee to the woods, and/or attack someone, get publicly discovered and are killed, etc. In any event, it's not very hard to believe that it wouldn't be blatantly obvious, to anyone, really, that you took some super-experimental "elixir," and all this was the result of that. There are probably 7,000 other things in the world they could blame it on. In any event, who's going to know? So long as you don't just tell all your friends "Yeah, man! I'm totally going to live forever now! Just tried a bold new treatment that's totally frowned upon by half the world! 8D!", no one's going to see what's happening to you and immediately think "Man, must've been that super top-secret treatment he had. Better post on Facebook about it, so no one else ever tries that same treatment!" That said, yeah, the majority of "recruitment" on the part of animancers is probably going to be people who don't even know what it is they're getting, rather than just a bunch of nobles who all arbitrarily decide one day to roll the dice to see if they can live longer because they're bored and it sounds pleasant. "So I'm good to go, then?" "Why yes, Baron Shnessenhauf, you'll have the whitest smile in the court, now! 8D" "Sweeeeet! ^_^" *Animancer maniacally laughs*

I've become a proper argument mode! My life is complete.

So attributes and skills of individual party members are taken into account in group actions. ... YESSSssssss! *evil hand-clutchy gesture* >8D

True enough. I was not specific enough. Kiting does not require ranged combat, but it was literally born of hard-coded attack range. Thus, it is distance related. It's all about keeping enough distance between yourself and the enemy, such that he can never hit you. Yes, but boxers do it because of skill. They're essentially attacking and dodging. They aren't "kiting." They don't issue an attack order, then a move order. They're not attacking before their opponent's attack speed is capable of executing a swing. They COULD be hit. That one boxer just happens to be faster and more agile than the other. In RPG terms, that would be the one boxer attacking, then the other boxer missing. Hell, in PoE's own mechanics, they'd both still be "engaged" in melee combat the entire time; one isn't fleeing the other the whole time. Kiting was born of video game abstracted mechanics, and it wasn't on purpose. No developers thought "Hey, it'd be great if, like, you could just outrun this wolf, and shoot it in the face with an arrow, or hit it with a sword, then resume running away again before it can hit you, until it's dead, 8D!" In the boxing match, if that other guy wanted you dead, he could just take the hit and tackle you. He wouldn't just dance toward you and try some precise swing at your head, only to miss every time. Or he'd just stop and throw something at you, etc. So, no, kiting doesn't exist in real life, because it's a side-effect of primitive attack/move systems in video games (and/or inadequate AI). Except magic isn't a tactic. It's just a new entity. You're emulating the real world, and tactics. You don't just invent a new tactic that doesn't make any sense with the rest of your world you're claiming makes sense. "Ohhhh, these wolves are very deadly. Oh! No one's ever thought of just attacking them, then running away, with a very fast character! YOU ARE THE CHOSEN ONE, CHARACTER WHO CAN KITE!" Mithril doesn't exist in the real world, either. But, if I put it in a video game, that's fine. If people saw it into boards like wood, even though it's metal, then I'm going to call BS.

Erm... boxers don't used ranged attacks. o_o They aren't kiting. They're just moving a lot and good at dodging and countering. In an RPG, that's all represented by "dice" rolls. Kiting isn't having really good defense/evasion and just not-getting hit. It's successfully attacking your foe whilst preventing it from attacking you. It's not like you either stand perfectly still the entire fight, OR you're kiting, and those are somehow the only two options. There's plenty of movement to be had in combat that doesn't amount to kiting. And no, kiting isn't a "legitimate" tactic, in-so-far as that it does not actually exist in real life. It was born out of video game mechanics abstraction. No one in real life encountered some hostile thing, then utilized their superior move speed and ranged attack rate to slowly whittle it to death while just avoiding ever being actually attacked by it.

I sure hope not. If I don't even have to be precise with my damage anymore, and can just spill it in a big, messy pool, all over the battlefield, and my foe will simply soak it all up and perish anyway... that'd be terrible!

The key word there being "try." "Kiting" isn't "trying not to get hit while killing the thing that's coming after you." It's effectively doing so, because video game silliness. In real life, no one kites anything. You either lure it and kill it in one go, or you take it on. You don't outrun it, WHILE shooting it in the face with lots of arrows, for an extended duration. And if you're not doing it for an extended duration, it's just called a ranged attack, not "kiting." It's literally a metaphor for keeping the foe at a distance for a while, as one flies a kite. That's why people have a problem with kiting, FWIW. It's not "No, you shouldn't ever be able to get away and attack from a range." It's that you shouldn't be able to have the foe trail around behind you while you slowly murder it to death, effectively without ever having to deal with it in melee range.

It's not the chronological "size" of the access that counts. It's how you use it.

Armageddon, at the very least.

One thing, though... They could have checks in place that involve more than one skill. Like... to "unlock" some dialogue/interaction option regarding some ancient device, maybe the check is for both the Lore skill and the Mechanics skill. Someone with just 100 Mechanics wouldn't necessarily comprehend the device, since it's so ancient and different, and someone with just 100 Lore would know how and why this ancient civilization designed their stuff, but not really comprehend the technical aspects of it. Etc. Likewise, you could have checks to things like Athletics AND Stealth, simultaneously. Not to mention the stat checks. Even if a single skill is checked (Mechanics to figure out how a machine is stuck, let's say), maybe you need Might to actually dislodge it? Of course, back to what Junta said, this doesn't change the fact that SOMEone in your party (unless you're just playing the game with 3 or fewer people) is going to have high whatever-it-is-you-need, most likely. I mean, if you figured out how to dislodge a stuck mechanism, and you couldn't simply tell your Barbarian with 800 Might, "Hey, push real hard on this while I clear this out" or something, I'd be disappointed. And the same with skills. If there are 5 skills, and you have 5 party members, and they each max out one skill, you're pretty much not going to miss out on anything in any playthrough.