Lephys

*Admiral Akbar voice* "It's a TRAP!" Guys, their company name is "Paradox"! Sure, they're going to keep their word... AND they're going to break their word! It's just their nature, to impossibly do both at the same time! I jest. Thanks for the reassuring words, and we look forward to glowing amounts of synergy pouring fourth from the collision of both yours (Paradox) and Obsidian's efforts of collaboration. ^_^

Yeah, they're both pretty awesome. I love wild magic when it doesn't get too crazy. A lot of magic systems, though, just kind of lack that aspect of metamagic control. D&D has it, but the whole differing spell levels thing was always a bit much to keep up with, for me, relative to the benefit you're gaining. I'd almost rather have something more on-the-fly, like a stamina cost (especially in PoE's health/stamina system) added, and/or an extended cast time or something. Or, maybe even just a "re-shaping"/equivalent-exchange system, in which if you boost the potency of a fireball, for example, the AoE radius shrinks by a proportional amount. Same amount of fireball, just more focused into burn intensity instead of spread. Or maybe it does less burn damage, but more forcibly explodes to knock everyone down. Even if it's simplified to branches, those options are always nice. I know it's mostly a preference thing, but I'm always a fan of that idea of some level of direct control over the shaping/flow of magic, instead of just the rigid "This is my Fireball! There are many like it, but this one is mine!" kind of set-in-stone spells. I mean, sometimes you get feats/talents and the like that say, boost your spell range, or increase the damage of a certain type of spell, etc. But, then THOSE are still just kind of rigid. If you take one, then now you're an "all my spells are more damagey" wizard. You just kind of specialize across the board. It doesn't even just go for spells. It'd be kinda nice if the idea behind metamagic manipulation applied to Fighters and such, as well. Obviously not every single ability or anything. There's a lot of design specifics to nail down with something like this. But, maybe you have a "strike the nearest 5 targets in quick succession" attack, and, you can shift it from 5 down to 4 targets for a critical hit chance bonus or something. Ability versatility. It eez nice, no? Even if it's pretty subtle (which is understandable -- if you just let everything shift around however you wanted, then every ability would just be a certain "shifted instance" of the same ability.)

Yeah, I think it's just that they've got so much going on right now, and it was such a task just to get all the pledge/order confirmations in and processed, etc. People asked about that pretty early after the backer portal went up, 'cause they had actually added some new add-ons, if I'm not mistaken. One of the developers basically said "We're working on it." So, dunno exactly how long it's gonna take, but he made it sound like it wasn't something they were expecting ASAP, exactly. Sounded like the 2nd thing in priority on a list or something. Like I said, seems like they've just got a lot going on right now. And they're a pretty small team, really. Maybe having Paradox around will help alleviate some of that stress,

Heh. It's a common thing, nowadays. I don't know why it's so prevalent. Assumption. You point out something like "even if literally every piece of DLC that ever got released, ever, was horrible and crappy and just a money-grabbing afterthought, that still wouldn't change the fact that the very nature of DLC is not begetting the badness," and people act like you're crazy. Like that doesn't make any sense or something. "What? But it's NEVER NOT-HAPPENED!" Annnd? *sigh* Annnnywho. I just don't get it, to be honest. I can't blame people for not really thinking about it. But then, when it gets pointed out, how do you just pretend it's false? But yeah, there are plenty of bad things that don't need to be done with the expansion, regardless. However, so long as it's just an actual expansion upon the fully-created original game, in whatever form, it'll be fine. Whether it directly continues the story, or is set 100 years in the future with all different characters, or is on the other side of the planet, or under the ocean, or is a friggin' prequel for that matter. It's still all expanding the original game. Whether or not that expansion is good must be judged on its own. It has nothing to do with its existence as a digitally distributed extra component to the game.

I'm fairly certain they're currently working on getting add-on management working as a separate thing, even for already-confirmed orders. They said they'll let us know when there's an update on that front.

Wait... that's NOT what a cat boomerang is?! o_o No no. Close, but you're thinking of the cat bolas.

That's a really lovely list of things that have nothing to do with what makes the insta-death effect different from any other effect that's available to the player. Thanks for that. I quite literally referenced the fact that the variety of actions/effects at your disposal at any given time exists regardless of whether or not insta-death spells are in the mix or not. Also, chance exists in almost every single ability/action that you can perform, so that's ruled out as some unique factor, too. Thus, what we have left is an effect option that's functionally "maximum damage for significantly lower accuracy/chance-of-success." Tell me that's wrong. For once, actually respond to what I'm saying in-context. Explain to me how a spell that instantly kills something is different in so many other ways from a spell that simply deals 10 damage. I can't wait to hear it. I'm not sure why you think that's the "ultimate" argument that my side has (you've attempted to counter it a bajillion times on this thread). It isn't. I'd argue that even if these spells always succeeded against everything, they'd still fit perfectly in a tactically deep RPG. I'm not sure why you think I think that. I said nothing about anyone's side, nor did I attribute that argument to anyone at all. You're so blinded by the idea this is a competition that someone's going to win, somehow, you can't fathom my not pointing that out as some kind of "and so I beat your side, HA-HAH!". At least, that's how it seems. No, I don't mean its variety. Thanks for contradicting a claim I didn't make, though. Why would you even ask what I mean by something if you're just going to answer your own question with an assumption? That's productive. The only thing stemming from what you quoted is your inability to comprehend the function of an example. If I say "100 hitpoints," you would say "there are things in the IE games with more hitpoints than that," because you wouldn't understand that the number was just an example of "something with a lot of hitpoints that you're obviously not going to kill with ease because you simply don't do that much damage." So I said "3,000" in my hypothetical, because there aren't many RPGs in which you easily deal 3,000 damage with a regular hit (not ones similar to the IE games, anyway). So, you knew what I meant, and I've pointed this out many a time, and still, you get more enjoyment out of correcting some example number that's technically infeasible than you do out of actually caring what the hell the point is. I'm done with you. Seriously. You're ridiculous. You put 0 effort into discussion. Possibly less than 0, since you actively make discussion difficult, voluntarily. Responding to you is pointless. Have a good one, *wave*

Microsoft Office paperclip appears. "You seem to be having trouble not getting your arse-handed to you. Have you tried trial and error?"

Yeah, the term "DLC" has gotten a really undeserved connotation now, just because of precedent. Like, if a bunch of big companies started cooking meals and burning them, but burnt meals was all they offered, "cooking" or "meals" would suddenly be a bad thing (as if there were no non-burnt ones in existence). DLC is just content that you download. It can be a perfectly legit expansion, or it can be horse armor. The fact that it costs money and can be downloaded does not make it somehow bad, or instantly "money-grabbing" on the developer's part. Also, continuing a story with expansion-type content was a perfectly viable and oft-used thing well before DLC became the norm (before we even had/used the internet at all, really). It is in no way some kind of cop-out. You can only make so much game in one go. Whether or not additional content is an afterthought has nothing to with the fact that it's provided/sold as DLC, and everything to do with the particular design of the content in question.

"Look! A chest full of gold! We could really use that to fund our stronghold development!" "Yeah, but I can't fit it in my pocket, so let's just leave it here, forever..." "But, shouldn't we maybe send word for a team with a wagon to come collect it or something? I mean, we have a whole stronghold of people, friends, allies, etc..." "Nah... just leave it. If we can't fit it, we just don't get it. That's our slogan, u_u..." Really, I can think of oodles of ways in which that stuff reaches your stash. There's also the possibility that I've mentioned before (and I think someone else did, too?): That you've got a Bag of Holding type bag with you, so it limitlessly holds all kinds of stuff in it (that will fit into it... you can't put like... a castle in there, o_o), but how do you just reach into an inter-dimensional bag like that and pull out just the one little gemstone or armor piece that you want, when it's full of 200 different items? It's probably a bit of an extensive process, so you just "can't" (i.e. your characters won't 'cause it's infeasible/dangerous) rummage through it except when you're safe and aren't as pressed for time, namely, at camp spots and in towns. The stash is always with you, the whole time. It's just inaccessible. Makes sense.

It's not even really "problems." More just, effects, factors, traits. Feel about them as you please. Maybe they're not a big deal to you, or maybe you just plain like the abilities and their functions enough that you don't really care. That's all fine and dandy. The only issue I have is with people pretending I'm making up stuff. If people would just say "that's great, but I still like them," I'd just say "cool beans." But, for some reason, everything is friggin' Highlander with some people here. EITHER they've got a point, or I've got a point. There's no way we could both have feasible points and/or perspectives on the same thing! My goodness! It's downright silly. We're not deciding whether or not such things are going to be in the game, here. They've already decided they aren't, according to Josh. Thus, all I've tried to do in all of the discussions regarding this is point out the reasoning behind the decision. That doesn't mean there's no reason whatsoever to decide to put them in a game. It just means that there is, in fact, a reason to not put them in a game. I don't understand why it's gotta be some kind of war or something.

My bad. Fair enough. 8P I will just say that I do think that the best approach for such things is "this fight is going to be really, really tough if you don't know/figure out how to handle this creature," instead of "you're all going to totally, absolutely die in 3 seconds if you don't figure out how to handle this creature." In general... Those few ridiculously tough fights could be like that. In fact, when you get to those, I think that probably makes a lot of sense. The thing should be pretty tough even when you're "doing it right," so that added "you're doing it wrong" penalty should probably amount to death. But, yeah, I definitely don't think "this thing casts 'mass petrify' in the first 3 seconds of battle and you all basically die if you didn't know to protect yourselves from it" isn't nearly as effective as "this thing will petrify someone, and there's not really any way to fix it quickly once it happens, so they're out of commission, leaving you a man short to fight this fight." Just for example. I'm not trying to say "that's how an actual foe works in a certain game" or anything. It's just a hypothetical, for the extremes. That being said -- and this probably needs to go into the suggestions thread -- I've just thought that it might be interesting if more extreme status ailments (like petrification) were "healable," but not instantly. What if they required a channeled spell to undo? *shrug*. Just a thought...

That's just plain wrong. You either don't understand the comparison, or you're intentionally disregarding it. You already have a success chance factor with anything else that causes damage, thus potentially produces death (a state of 0 HP). So, the only functional difference between a "this kills you" spell and a "this just does some amount of damage, which could or could not kill you depending on other factors (this is AFTER it's already "succeeded" in hitting you, and hasn't failed to hit you, so that's completely moot in this matter.) When one hits, you die. When another hits, you take damage that does not automatically equal death. That is what it's functionally bringing to the table. Along with an alteration in the success percentage scale (it's typically a lot harder to get it to hit than it is for a regular attack or offensive spell to land). Thus, as I pointed out, the reason that's all fine and dandy is because the more "OP" it would be against a particular enemy, the less likely it is to work (possibly even impossible). And the more pointless it would be to use on a particular enemy, the more likely it is to succeed. Which... kinda cancels out its uniqueness. Which is why I made all the other comparisons that we're apparently going to pretend are nonsensical. If you have a big, AoE fireball, and you run into a situation in which there's a huge group of enemies, that's the most desirable time for you to use that spell instead of some other action, in order to maximize its effectiveness. The game's not like "the more enemies there are grouped together, the worse decision it will be to use this AoE fireball that would probably be your best bet in that situation, if not for the horrible success chance." That's what it comes down to, really. The entire idea behind tactics is to use what resources you have in the most effective manner possible. But, the entire idea behind the balancing of insta-death effects is that the chances of their success is directly inversely proportional to the potential of their effectiveness in a given situation. And if it's not done that way, then, in isolation, the ability is at least more tactical, but now it's just super over-powered. "Oh, a big scary dragon that has 3,000 HP and hardly anything we have can hit it? This death spell has an 80% chance of killing it instantly!" So, you either get like a 1% chance of it working on the dragon, or it's just-plain immune, in which case, why is there even an ability whose effectiveness is maximized primarily by the general "toughness" of the foe you're fighting? It's a bit of a self-defeating design, really. I realize gambling is fun, and instantly killing things is fun, but I really don't mind that not-being in, and that time and resources being spent on other things. What I've found is that you're imagining I ever claimed I was accurately analyzing BG2 and its spells, specifically, and that my examples were supposed to be in some game. I do not know why. Also, I don't understand how describing how something works is "theorycrafting." If you put a flame to some paper it will catch on fire. Therefore, I think it is problematic if you build something out of paper when it's going to be exposed to flames. See. That's not theorycrafting. That's describing how paper reacts to fire. Insta-death effects possess a certain dynamic within the overall system, whether you like it or not. They just do. It's perfectly fine to simply like them anyway, and point out their virtues. But, to pretend that I'm just making up nonsense is simply preposterous. I find it a little funny that I acknowledge just about every single thing presented in counter to my arguments, and yet, somehow 99.9% of everything I type is completely nonsensical and doesn't even exist. "Noooo, that's not a difference between regular damage effects and insta-death effects."

Methinks you're thinking that a "GM suckerpunch" is simply a situation in which a player happens to not-know something, for whatever reason. And/or that, if the game doesn't make it so that you can't ever be ignorant to anything, it's producing suckerpunches.

The insta-kill ability didn't require a sacrifice that wasn't already present with all other abilities (the sacrifice of not using a different ability). The only difference is, debuffing something doesn't defeat it. You can debuff to change a factor for when you DO attack that creature, OR you can attack that creature (amongst other options). If you got to pick between two debuffs, one that made your target take 20% more damage on hit, and one that made him take 1,000,000% more damage on hit, would that be fine? Because, that's the same concept as "this ability kills instead of dealing some finite amount of damage." Obviously there are abilities that do more, and abilities that do less. An AoE attack does more damage IF you hit multiple targets with it, but a single-target attack probably does more if there's only one target. However, as I illustrated in example, they don't offset AoE's by chance. They don't have to. IF the enemies are grouped in a radius, you can strike them more effectively with an AoE. If they aren't, then you cannot. Etc. The ONLY balancing factor an insta-death spell has is "it's not likely to work." There is no support from oodles of combat factors, because it's just an absolute effect comparison to a lesser effect -- death versus just some finite damage. The very nature of that is to simply promote gambling instead of just tactics with some chance thrown in. I don't know how else to describe it. The relationship is what it is, whether you like insta-death spells or not. I'm not pointing out why you shouldn't like them. I'm simply pointing out the inherent design dynamic. The entirety of combat victory is designed around taking your foes from whatever HP values they start at, to zero, before they do the same to you. If an ability's inherent effect is "takes an enemy's HP value to zero," then you're just ignoring the whole "Here are your limitations, and here are the factors you've got to deal with to accomplish victory" notion. No, killing one enemy doesn't mean you win, but, as I said, either that enemy was DESIGNED to be killed instantly (in which case, why isn't "death" magic just another magical type that's highly effective against that creature?), or it isn't. If it isn't, then pure chance is allowing you the opportunity to slay that enemy with little to no effort. Then, you have only to face the remaining foes, with only a single character's one, lonely action used. Chances aside, you're being given the choice between chipping those 300 hitpoints away, or skipping that entire process. Even without an insta-death spell, it can take one hit (potentially, not necessarily in any particular game system/encounter), or it can take 100 hits to get those 300 hitpoints down to 0. That's literally the nature of combat. By the very fact that you don't have the ability to just kill that thing, you can only damage it in a limited capacity, and you use factors to your advantage to eventually cause its death. Saying "here's a spell that just does that for you" is giving you the option to gamble (no matter how you alter your odds) in order to skip the previous process. In your example, "Tactic A" encompasses a plethora of individual tactics and factor values, so I don't feel too bad "forcing" everyone to use Tactic A. But, that's up to the devs.

Luck is a factor in ALL attacks, as you've pointed out. So, how does luck somehow justify an ability that deals death instead of damage? What's better than the death effect? Nothing. There is no "maybe I don't want to death this guy to death" in terms of the effect. Whereas, with any other attack, you can say "Hmm... even if I have a 100% chance to hit, this may not be the best choice here." That's the difference. Like it or hate it, that's the objective difference. It honestly just seems a bit silly to put in some "crappy odds, but WIN BIG!" gambling and call it tactical. This, on top of a system that already has a perfectly feasible amount of chance in it. If "Well, it's not very likely to work" is justification for an effect of that potency, then you could just put in ANY effect with a small enough chance to succeed. "I just killed all the creatures in this entire forest with one dice roll! Don't worry, guys! It took a lot of buffs and strategic planning, and a REALLLLLY lucky dice roll to get it to work! (I had to roll 1,000 out on a D1000!) 8D!" Not to mention, all regular attacks would be devoid of chance, since they wouldn't need it. "Oh, you just want to do like 7 damage to the enemy with 80 health? Go ahead. You can't even fail. Oh, you want to do infinite damage? You have a 1% chance to hit." How is that not just a slot machine? No, killing an enemy isn't victory, but it's like sub-victory; you just completed an entire task toward victory that you couldn't complete with anything BUT a death effect. That enemy had 300 health? Any other combination of abilities would've required multiple abilites, and probably some tactical factors, to be at-play. The Death just required that some number on the dice actually be success for you, and that you landed on that number when you clicked the "kill that thing instantly" ability icon. As others have said, either the encounter was designed to factor in the difficulty of slaying that particular creature non-instantly, or that creature would've been easily slain without the use of death magic, in which case, why even use it? The more useful it would be, the worse chance it has of working, and the more useless it is, the better chance it has of working. Yeah, real strategic. Maybe we should apply that to all spells that have better effects. AoE fire spell? If there's only 1 enemy, it has a 100% chance to hit him. For every additional enemy within its range, the chance falls by 10%. Man, that would be tactical and awesome! Don't worry, it's not too powerful because it balances itself out! See, if there are like 50 enemies, you pretty much can't even feasibly hit them with it! And if there are like 3, you can! It's a GREATLY designed ability! 8D!

True, but that's based on a pretty heavy assumption that stuff that no one else (the "non-dumb" people) likes is the ONLY thing that the "dumb" people like. To me, it seems a lot more similar to the use of a bomb to take out a bunch of computers, instead of an EMP. Thus, taking out a bunch of stuff you didn't want to take out, as well. The other problem is... you can keep on assuming this is the right way to go so long as no one really puts forth a full effort making a "smarter" product. The masses tailor themselves to the lowest common denominator, too. It's like tabloids: People want to read them because they've got all the "important" celebrity news that people want to know about, but that's news that people want to know about because people want to read them. Literally anything could be a story, and you could still sell those magazines to the same people. Britney comes out of her house in a bikini? "BRITNEY IN BIKINI! WHAT WAS SHE THINKING?!" Britney leaves her house in regular clothing? "BRITNEY WEARS BUM CLOTHES!" An elegant evening gown? "CHECK OUT BRITNEY'S HOT NEW LOOK!" It doesn't matter. The story is the very fact that Britney exists and you get to read about anything at all that she's doing. Basically, a movie can have action and explosions in it, and STILL have lots more to it that neither appeals to nor deters the "dumb" masses. It's like a kids movie: The best kids movies are the ones that their parents can enjoy, too, because there's a lot of stuff in them that goes over the kids' heads, but the kids still get their animated animals and fun-venture and such. When you make a kids movie that's JUST dancing shapes and colors, all day, and ONLY appeals to the child, the parent goes crazy and becomes sick of it, because adult minds don't want to just hear from dancing shapes and colors all day. Just because more people bought Angry Birds than Baldur's Gate doesn't mean all games should be like Angry Birds. There are a number of reasons Angry Birds is so popular. Most people just don't want to take the time to actually evaluate all the factors at play before making such a decision on what their product should be like. Thus, the design is just as lazy as the designer assumes the majority of the populous to be.

A "reputation"-fueled item, for lack of a better word. I like it. Fable 3 sort of attempted this, but it was pretty basic. "Kill 50 innocent people and gain fire attack" and such.

That's why the best magic systems (imo) are actually worked into the rest of nature/physics, instead of just arbitrarily separate from it. For example, I think it was mentioned in some Animancy lore that different metals/materials held differing affinities for effective animancy, and that bronze was one of the best? So, you don't just get "ULTRA TITANIUM ALLOY STRONGEST ARMOR EVER, + SOUL!". Imbuing your construct with a soul comes at a cost. In this case, a material cost. Also, for what it's worth, I've always been very interested in the very specialized nature of certain armor/equipment designs of history. Really any and all specialization aspects, like "these guys almost always fought in marshlands, so they had armor that, while not ideal in a non-marshland setting, was especially suited for that." Etc. I like when that gets applied to a fantasy setting. "These guys are mage hunters. While their armor offers less protection from physical attacks, they are especially prepped for a lot of common mage stuff." That, and like, Geralt's gear from The Witcher, etc.

They're actually just going to take bland squares of cardboard, write "Pillars of Eternity" on them (with magic markers!), then forcibly fold the square of cardboard into a box-like form around the physical goods, taping it together with masking tape. Worry not. It's gonna be MAGICAL! 8D How can it not stand the test of time? It's called "Pillars of Eternity"!

"Godlikes" with an "s" is back... *cringes* ... Just sounds like upvotes from The Almighty on Facebook. Please, please let the s-less form be the official/true form.

Yeah... it also sort of undermines the cohesiveness of their design. It reminds me of trying to pick a color to paint something. "Well, we could go with blue, but some people don't like blue. We could go with orange, but some people don't like orange. Let's just go with ALL THE COLORS, TOGETHER!" Then they end up with a muddy grey, and wonder what went wrong. "We should've gotten all the people with each individual color as their favorite! Why didn't we?!"

I shall pass it along, Asmodean. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!

Boy Brandon, you must HATE our resident punmaster, Lephys. All this time, I've been inadvertently torturing him. "Man, today sure was a great day! Let's see what we have on the forums today... *reads Lephys's terrible, terrible puns*... ... SOMEBODY GET ME A KITTEN TO PUNCH!" Okay, okay, but seriously, if you throw in something that forms the acronym LEG, you can include both that and the ARM in a new add-on at the Backer Portal/store, and charge some astronomical fee for it. Also... do things start to make more sense if you know that April 1st is my birthday? (I can't ever tell anyone that ON my birthday, because then everyone thinks it's just a really lame joke. "Lolz, TODAY'S MY BIRTHDAY GUYS! HAHAHA!"). Seriously, I had a lot of empty parties as a child, because people didn't believe me. Thanks for the Update, Rose! I'll have to check out the videos as soon as I get home. Just from the still shots, though, it looks like everyone's hard at it! ^_^

I'm more worried about the nature of the gradual increase than the specific values. Of course, I suppose they could go pretty heavily down the "5 damage is still 5 damage, and you're just harder to hit/better able to hit others as you progress" route, such that being able to cast the piddliest spell you can get at Level 1 multiple times per-encounter, suddenly, is actually quite useful. I guess nothing really requires a 5-damage Firebolt to be obsolete later on in the game. Weaker? Sure. The other spells will trump it in time-spent-vs-effect-achieved ratio. But, Everything at level 7 doesn't have to laugh off 5-damage being tossed at them 5 times per fight or anything. Like I said, it'd just be nice to get an example from Josh and co., on specifically how they're addressing things if not by any gradual improvement of spells as the player levels, like in D&D.