Lephys

I dunno if you're joking, but, if you aren't, I also didn't get it for a while. Then, I realized, it makes a lot more sense if you use, say, money, instead of cake. If it was "you can't spend your money and keep it, too." It's saying that if you want there to be cake available for noms, you have to leave the cake there. If you eat the cake (because immediate satisfaction), then you no longer possess it. Anywho... I think aside from the fact (I'm pretty sure it's been confirmed?) that P:E isn't being designed with multi-classing in mind at all, I just don't think multi-classing fits super well into the rest of P:E's particular design/lore/etc. as well as it does in a lot of other games. Also, this is necessary to say: LEELOO DALLAS, MULTI-CLASS!!!

I think there's almost sort of a balance to strive for with the results of endings. If it's "too happy," for lack of a better descriptive, then it kinda sucks. It feels silly. "Don't worry, no one was really at risk, since this artifact we recovered granted a single wish, and healed the whole world, and everyone gained telekinesis and there was world peace! 8D!". But then, if it's too unhappy, it's a bit ridiculous. Like the game's telling you "LOLZ! No matter what you do, everything can still go completely to crap. Everything! HAVE FUN WITH THE LESSON! MUAHAHAHAHAHA!" Now, I don't mind the ASPECT of something going to crap despite all your effort. But, I'd like to think that at least something ELSE will go to happiness, or at least go far less towards crap, because of your efforts, as well. You know, "Well, that city was destroyed, but at least we saved the world!" Or "Well, the world was largely destroyed, but we did manage to save that city!", for a realllllly simplistic example. Sure, you can't save both. Maybe there's something really important and/or personally emotional regarding the inhabitants of that city. Or something really terrible has to happen to them (as opposed to simply being killed/destroyed) to save the rest of the world, whereas to save THEM, the rest of the world is simply destroyed (quickly and painlessly). Maybe there's something really valuable in that city, so it's a tough decision aside from the people numbers. *Shrug*. I think that a certain amount of saddy crap that can happen should bear definite happy results in some way (that couldn't happen without that specific saddy crap happening), and vice versa. A certain amount of happy stuff shouldn't be achievable without the sacrifice of some other happy stuff. Basically, you can't have your cake and eat it, too. A lot of times, this gets WAY overly simplified to "if this character dies, their life force will power this thing that saves everyone else," etc. I don't think they need to be quite that simplistic. And it's not always a 1:1 thing. Sometimes, just plain sad things should occur. Whether it's something you had control over, or something you were powerless to affect. Once all's said and done, at the very end of the game's narrative, you should have the opportunity to change SOME things for the better. If you can't, it's purely depressing. What I really hate (related to endings) is when some main character scriptedly dies for pretty much no reason at all. Like "Oh, you decided to go with THIS plan instead of THIS plan? Then Sara dies. No questions asked." First of all, if someone's going to die, it should MEAN something to the story and the gameplay experience (if they're going to STORY die... not talking about "you took too much damage in combat and had perma-death activated in the options" here). It should significantly affect things, as opposed to their remaining alive, or some other character dying instead. Secondly, you should probably generally, at the very least, get to AFFECT who has to die. You know, kind of a "everyone's not gonna make it out of this, probably, but you still have different plans of attack on getting out of here, with varying amounts of risk to various characters." I just hate it when the story just seems as though the writers said "Welp, at this point in the story, I think we really need an important character death. Things have felt too un-sad/dire for a while." Anywho, I slightly digress.

Sounds a bit like the "Look, aliens! They're probably going to be a threat... NUKE 'EM!" way of thinking. Name one animal in existence that's INHERENTLY a danger to all other living things, just because it exists. Like, it's going to scour the earth and murder all it comes across. Why would dragons, just because they're fictitious, be any different? And if they're sapient, how would their threat probability differ at all from that of humans? Some would decide to be crappy, mean entities, and some would voluntarily strive to be splendid individuals. I mean, if a human baby is born at 10 lbs, do we say "man, he's probably gonna grow up to be like 7-and-a-half feet tall, 280 lbs of pure muscle. If he decides to be a criminal, it's gonna take an awful lot of doing on the part of law enforcement to take him down. Threat level: ASSESSED! Cleared for termination!"? That would be like... the opposite of Spartan policy.

You technically are, if you go back far enough into your lineages.

In The Last of Us, they utilized the typical "places you're supposed to go/things you're supposed to climb on are color-coded" trick that so many games use now. Only, it was very subtle. Only the couple of times I actually got a bit turned around and thought "Man, I really don't understand where I'm even supposed to go here" did I remember to look for yellow. Lots of games nowadays just make that ledge or ladder BRIGHT yellow, or, even worse, make it flash at you. Basically, you don't even have the opportunity to figure it out, because the answer is shouted at you, with color. I'd usually notice, only after the fact, that a ladder was actually worn-down yellow-painted, or that a dumpster had a yellow label on one of its sides, or that that ledge had a little strip of caution tape draping along near it. I know it's not exactly the same thing as the hand-holding versus sink-or-swim range in an RPG (there aren't multiple ways to get through a level in a game like The Last of Us... well, not when it comes to which ledge to climb to progress. It's more linear puzzles.), but I just thought it was a comment worthy example of a very very similar exercise of light-handedness in gamily guiding the player.

That would be AWESOME, though elaborate in design; having different available branches for your reputation (and or other factors, like soul status, etc.) to go depending on how you started. Maybe if you pick a trait that has you starting with some crazy negative reputation, how you work your way into people's good graces is a unique process with unique results as compared to simply starting without that trait and doing the same (think a trait such as "Hideousness" or something... gaining trust and admiration of others wouldn't really work exactly the same as if they weren't overcoming your hideousness.)

I guess technically you did touch on that, now that I look back at it. You seemed to only be emphasizing the "more prep time = takes longer" idea, so I didn't realize you were trying to also point out the less = shorter aspect as well. My mistake. Isn't that what I said? Well, except that you seem to be ignoring what I said about soul power manipulation possibly justifying the longer prep times for Fighter-type abilities. I don't think readying to use an attack takes 5-7 seconds, so I'm not disagreeing with you there. Then, that being said, maybe the Fighter has 5 total abilities that have long cast times, and the Wizard has 37. Does that make sense? I dunno... just seems like you looked at the fact that a given ability used by a Fighter COULD take the same amount of time as a given ability used by the Wizard, and decided "Great, everything the Fighter does is going to take an unnatural amount of time, to make it all comparable to Wizards casting spells." I think the point of the structured cast times is that, IF an ability is going to take a moderate amount of preparation, you automatically know how long it's going to take. You don't have to say "Okay, is that going to be a 3-second ability, or a 4-second ability, or a 5-second ability?" and learn them all individually. Simplifies the timing. I don't think the goal is in any way to mandate that all abilities, regardless of class, are all the same types by quantity. Again, the Fighter could have 80% instant abilities, and the Wizard could have 80% long-cast abilities. *shrug* That just doesn't seem to me like an "Oh no, both classes are going to take the same amount of time to do everything" situation. That's all. So, if that's what you're worried about, I'm just trying to encourage you to not be worried, and point you to some hope. If that's not what you're worried about, then I honestly apologize for missing your point, and gladly welcome clarification.

You know, you've got to admire this forum populous. The declaration of a debate stalemate merely results in the shift to an informative discussion about stalemates, especially in relation to the specific chess term that was used to declare it. ^_^

I certainly hope we have access to epic levels when restoring our stronghold to its former glory (and beyond). If the masons and engineers use low-quality levels, stuff could be crooked. I want that bubble sight-glass to be made out of friggin' magic crystals, and the body of the level to be crafted from earth-golem flesh (which everyone knows is best known for its ability to hold a perfectly straight edge). Seriously though, I just second (or third... seventh, at this point?) the idea of the narrative and setting (and threats, conflicts, etc.) maintaining consistency. If we're to become gods, then so be it. AS LONG AS we're presented with scenarios gods would actually be challenged with. That being said, as fun as it is to progress and wield lots of power sometimes, it would be quite nice to actually maintain a much more vulnerable, blatantly mortal form throughout the game and be forced to make intelligent use of the tools at your disposal (which will become more numerous as you go along) to generate the greatest effect in a given situation. Especially in the midst of a world rife with soul magic. That's one of the most interesting things to me; taking a fantastical world where you could just ignore all the common, everyday problems and shortcomings of reality with "because magic and fantasy! 8D", and yet make it seem like a world full of real people just trying to get by and struggling to do what they can amidst a plethora of limitations, magic or no magic. I want to see someone who forges magical armor at a magic forge still toil all day and grow fatigued by their work, and inspect their results only to say "Ahh, crap... I missed a weakness in the metal here. This enchantment won't hold properly. Guess I'll start over tomorrow." Instead of "Well, since you can make equipment with magical properties in this world, and magical properties are so nice compared to the lack of them in reality, everything's also really easy and difficulty/trickiness no longer exists! 8D!" That's one of the problems I have with overly specific spells. I'd rather see a world in which a magic-user actually has to shape and wield magic, and can screw up in a plethora of different ways, to various degrees. "Oops, I did the magic equivalent of letting go too early. The path of that fireball was a bit wobbly, and it might hit an unintended target." Or "Woops, I didn't quite form the orb correctly, so it's too small and the explosion will not be as large as intended." Not "Behind this door is a perfect Fireball. If you have the key to this door (know the spell's words and movements), and you use the key properly, the door will open and out will come that perfect Fireball. If you mess anything up, the door stays closed. You're not actually CREATING a fireball. You're just calling its cell phone, and giving it GPS coordinates, like its an airstrike." *shrug*. I digress a bit. I think it's not too difficult to maintain the struggle-factor with things, and I think it's what makes achievements and obstacle-overcomings so great to us as humans. I want to know that my character skillfully used his nice sword and soul powers to great effect, not just happened to have used a sword that, if a gust of wind were to pick up that sword and carry it towards a group of enemies for a bit, it would destroy 17 enemies just from being dropped onto the ground. The sword does all the work! Just set it, and forget it! 8D!

I "said something else." AKA you misunderstood me. It happens. That's why I clarified. I'm not sure what calling me out on "muddling" it up does, when I've already acknowledged that I was very much to blame for the misunderstanding. If it makes you feel better though, *shrug*. I'll take the lack of complaint about the point I'm claiming to have made to mean that you don't actually have a problem with anything about it, and the only problem you have is with my lack of perfection in presenting points. My apologies. I'll try harder next time. But, I warn you; I still may "muddle" things up with lots of words that could mean hundreds if not thousands of different things, and you still may believe it was somehow deliberate. I apologize for my powerlessness in that regard, as well. Truly? So, here, when you non-chalantly mention slower weapons having higher base damage than faster weapons, and how the application of bonus damage as a percentage of base damage works wonderfully because of that very relationship between base damage and weapon speed, I guess you were just pretending to be totally fine with it? Or, you just like to wait until someone asks about a specific concern to actually point out said concern? @JonR: I very much like that idea. I see the purely-gameplay-balance demand for certain things that don't necessarily make much sense, but it's always great when you can make them actually fit the lore. I mean, if the frequency with which you "attack" has no impact on the potency/duration of an on-hit(touch) effect, then people who lived in the world of such enchantments would simply abandon swords and switch to large, entangling nets. Have fun dodging a net. It deals 10 lightning damage every infinitely-small increment of time! 8D! So that's... infinite damage per second? That might even add a whole 'nother dynamic, if the effect/damage is met with any kind of defensive threshold. Maybe your dagger consistently does 5 lightning damage (every second), but, if you let it build up to full capacity before discharging it with an attack, it actually deals something like 25 damage. So, certain enemies could, potentially, consistently ignore/negate 5-or-more incoming lightning damage, thus requiring you to attack less frequently to actually break through the threshold. Of course, without some sort of defensive stance, this would result in a very silly "click click click, run away! Okay now turn around and attack!" pattern, heh. Still, it's interesting.

I do understand that percentages accomplish this "problem" I described (which, I don't really understand why it gets demoted to an alleged, quotation-mark problem, *shrug*), and I never said that they didn't. That's fantastic that the percentages of the base damage are some how magically automatically adjusted, completely free from adjustments based on speed -- OH WAIT, the base damage was already set based on speed. So, I honestly don't understand what point you're trying to make that goes against anything I simply observed. I also never said that this is a problem that is obviously existent here, in P:E's design, and that it needs to be fixed. I merely pointed out that game developers usually make adjustments to weapon damage/effect-potency based on the speed of the weapon, so that such a problem never arises. As for not-elemental-bonus-damage on-hit effects and their durations being "distorted," how is this any different from base damage (that you're apparently fine with?) being "distorted"? Or, as you put it, why is it okay for base damage to differ purely because attack speed, but not for any other quantifiable effects to differ for the same reason? If I can hit you every second with a dagger (look, no over the top example, just for you, because I care), and every hit can instill a 5-second debuff, or I can hit you once every 5 seconds with a greatsword, with a chance to instill the same debuff, then you run into the same thing as you do when you don't adjust base damage. ESPECIALLY if the debuff effect doesn't stack (another hit always adds 5 seconds to the duration, rather than resetting it to 5). If it just keeps resetting it to 5 seconds, then you're inherently "distorting" the effect based on attack speed, because the farther the attack speed goes below the duration time, the lesser of an effect each hit is causing. The greatsword, even if it proc'd its effect on every single hit, would never be wasting a single second of redundant effect duration, while the dagger could potentially waste 4 seconds of duration time every hit. Then, of course, you could just let the durations stack, but then you wind up with the dagger being able to generate 50 seconds' worth of poison or slow, and the greatsword only being able to generate a total of 5 seconds' worth. @McManusaur: I'm not saying all the classes and abilities are flawlessly as distinct as they can possibly be, but it's very very easy to start thinking of everything as re-flavored clones of other things. I mean, damage is damage, right? Spinning sword or fireball? They're both an AOE circle of damage, right? But, even two abilities with the same radius and the same damage number (and cast time, duration, etc.) can function quite differently. Obviously, their goal is damage, because damage is the abstracted great equalizer of combat effectiveness. Even if you're not doing damage, you're doing things that help yourself or your party members deal damage more efficiently/effectively to things that are trying to kill you. To be honest, I think they're on the right track with functional differences. I mean, look at the Cipher again. Just the fact that you can't target yourself but can still generate beneficial effects for yourself is a pretty big difference. You're still doing damage, and altering protection, and inhibiting the capabilities of foes, but you're doing it in completely different ways, and under a different set of rules. So *shrug*... I don't know how you could really go about things much differently than they're doing it with P:E. You can only go so far before you've got unnecessarily different roles (such as "you don't deal damage, you do something else entirely"), which don't seem very feasible in a game that demands combat effectiveness.

I remembered something being said about that, but couldn't remember the specifics or where it was, so thanks for the actually reasonable, informative response. I just meant that "you get hit with a sword, and when you get hit, you also get shocked" is technically an additional, "on-hit effect." But P:E's considering an on-hit "effect" and on-hit elemental damage to be 2 different things. Got it. I really think you misunderstand the reason I make examples like that. If I use 3 seconds and 5 damage versus 4 seconds and 7 damage, I ALWAYS get puzzling responses about the specific numbers, because there's so little difference in them. People think I'm saying "this is really how much time I think should go with this much damage, because these are so specific of numbers." So, I usually just go with "obviously a really high number" and more damage, versus "obviously a really low number," in an effort to point out that it's the relative difference I'm worried about, and not the specific values of the numbers. So, sorry about that if it causes confusion. But, I didn't want you to think I was just trying to be over the top for no reason at all. That's just what I do, because of my experience trying to use realistic, subtle differences in my examples leading to confusion. There is a reason, but it's not what you're thinking. I'm in agreement that there's no reason for an actual dagger that magically delivered lightning jolts with every attack to deal less damage than some other bigger, heavier, harder-hitting weapon. But, once you're in gameplay, you've got weapon styles and balancing to deal with. If you give someone a dagger that does 100 lightning damage every hit, or a 2-handed maul that does 100 lightning damage every hit, they're going to use the dagger. Why? Because you can get so many more hits in with the dagger than you can with the maul. The maul will be quantifiably worse (overall) than the dagger. Sure, against certain enemies, the maul would be better. But, to anythings susceptible to lightning? It'd be no contest. "Do I want to deal 100 guaranteed damage every second, or every 4 seconds?" So, yeah, in gameplay, there's a reason for scaling such things to weapon speed. That's all I was getting at. That's why so many games have daggers that do 7 damage and swords and hammers that do 20. Of course, a lot of the time, that's overly primitive DPS balancing, but... still. I'm just pointing out why they do it, not commending them for their work.

I can't tell if you're being silly by ragging on WoW, or if you're 100% serious in response to what I said. Just in case, I'll clarify by pointing out that I said "even in WoW." WoW being the least-likely thing to look to for... integrity, for lack of a better word, and yet STILL bearing this same specific representational aspect of the Rogue class.

Fair enough. However, I've always found that such an idea of magic (it's always super time-consuming and requires ridiculously elaborate amounts of precision efforts and such compared to non-magic actions/attacks, but is always super powerful) to be a bit silly. It just seems so needlessly narrow. If it takes 8 seconds (game abstraction time) of waving my hands around and reciting incantations to mold some kind of fictional energy into a fireball, then SURELY I could produce roughly 1/8th the effect with 1/8th the effort, right? I mean, a physical Fighter can either draw back and swing his sword as hard as he can, OR he can jab you in the face with the pommel (or just his gauntleted fist clutching the hilt). The distance between his fist and your face is FAR less. Or, if a Fighter isn't doing it for you in that example (I was just trying to stick to the context of the game and classes), think of a boxer. It takes longer to throw a haymaker than it does to jab. That's what I was getting at. So, why shouldn't magic work the same way? The longer you build up potential energy, the more energy you deliver when you release it. In whatever form. *shrug*. That's pretty preferencial. I don't really have any evidence as to why that "should" happen, other than "It seems like everything but magic works like that, but magic arbitrarily doesn't." Anywho. As for the Fighter... you could think of his "cast time" as an abstraction of simply his building of focus to perform the elaborate maneuver. In other words, he might be a master of passive form during combat, and so swinging just so is second nature. But, performing some kind of combo (especially a circumstantial maneuver against multiple opponents) would require, probably, at least a second or two of focus/calculation to perform. On top of the normal observe-and-react of regular, ongoing combat against a foe. *shrug* Now, I will say that maybe it makes sense that the Fighter continue defending and using footwork, etc., while "casting." So that, basically, if you have a 5-second cast time, it was 5 seconds spent not attacking, to build up for an elaborate attack, rather than 5 seconds standing around like a doofus. Whereas, the Wizard might need to focus (hence the typical Concentration seen in almost every game since DnD came out, ever), so that his 5 seconds is actually just standing there and/or performing somatic components and such that prevent him from performing standard combat defenses/actions. That, and a lot of the Fighter's abilities will probably rely upon the manipulation of soul energy, which makes a lot more sense to require cast time than simply physical moves (as it may actually require some duration of energy focus/buildup/manipulation). That's all I've got on that. *shrug*. Between that, and the necessary abstraction for gameplay balancing and the like, it doesn't trouble me much, personally. That's just me, though. Oh, and, as Sabotin pointed out, just because all abilities are going to draw from the same handful of cast/use durations doesn't mean that Fighters won't have mainly instant/short-"cast" abilities, while Wizards (for example) have mainly long-cast abilities with a sprinkling of short-cast and instant ones. In other words, yes, if a Fighter has a short ability, and a Wizard has a short ability, then those are going to be the same. But that doesn't necessarily mean "a Fighter and a Wizard's abilities are all going to take the same amount of time." You're not necessarily going to be standing around for 5 seconds every time you want to use a Fighter ability, but SOME might take that long, and I'd figure it's going to be the ones that most heavily involve soul power.

This is not about elemental bonus damage. Bonus elemental damage just so happens to be an "on-hit effect," as it could have both duration and power. Which is why I used it as an example. Sure, it would've been crazy of me to limit this to ONLY elemental bonus damage. Luckily, I didn't do that.

All they have to do is copy Mass Effect 3's ending, and everything should be wonderful.

The very concept of a Rogue (in any combat capacity) has always been spike damage, hasn't it? The Rogue is the class who tries to get the most done with the least amount of effort. It's just like thievery and all that that typically (but not always) goes with the territory. You don't beat someone senseless, then forcibly pry things from them. You either steal it without anyone even noticing (whenever the best opportunity comes), or you maybe kill them very, very efficiently (while no one's looking/noticing), then take what you want. Hence backstab. Not frontstab. Not "You know I'm here, but this is just a really, really strong attack to overcome you"-stab. Backstab. Sneakity stab. Sneakity-yet-well-placed-stab. 8P. Even in the context of WoW, they still get the most crits and single-hit damage. Which, in the numbers, basically creates spikes.

That's why I said "Unless." That means, "If she's not, then the rest of this doesn't apply." I was merely pointing out that, in P:E, you can't necessarily judge a book by its cover. Actually... even not in P:E... Illusion Magic disquises... Didn't think of that. *ponders* Anywho, I agree with you about regular children. I do. I'm just trying to assess the best way to handle potential situations in which it wouldn't be arbitrary and/or ridiculous to need to or at the very least be able to attack children. Well, without all these situations being blatantly obvious, and crossing out all the interesting possibilities (such as ILLUSION MAGIC DISGUISES! 8D!).

Well... I don't know exactly how all of this is supposed to work, but, I'd honestly like to see a lot of on-hit effects be a completely separate thing from the weapon's physical strike damage. Shock, for example. Even if you graze someone, I'm pretty sure the lightning effect can conduct itself into the target just as well as it could if you had stabbed them through the torso. Also, it would probably target the same defense a spell would, instead of Deflection (like the physical force of the weapon). This way, sometimes your weapon would be effective against an enemy, but its extra effects would have more trouble (you could get a crit with your sword and only a graze with the effect... or maybe the physical hit would influence the effect, so that a crit might mean you can't get worse than a hit with the effect, *shrug*), and vice versa. Soul Whip could even work like this, so that your hammer of justice might do 7,000 damage (foe has low Deflection and DT), but your Soul Whip only drains like 5 Focus because of the foe's high Psyche. Inversely, you could do crap damage to an opponent, but drain a lot of Focus. Instead of every single time you run into a heavily armored opponent resulting in your being crippled in TWO ways (damage AND Focus), you'd only be crippled in one. Unless, of course, the foe had high Deflection/DT AND high Psyche, which is another possible combo. So, if you couldn't do very good damage to something, but you needed Focus, you could opt to draw Focus from that foe at the cost of very inefficient damage dealing (those strikes against a different enemy would've dealt good damage AND given you good Focus, but maybe other enemies are far away at the moment). I'm much more a fan of these types of obstacles, than the "Oh well, this target isn't even a viable target for ANYTHING you're trying to do with this character, at all!" ones. IF that were the case, then basing the effects on speed would make a lot of sense. You can hit someone 73 times in 3 seconds with this dagger? Well, then it's probably not going to deliver 20 lightning damage per strike. You can only hit them once every three seconds with this big heavy maul? Okay, you're probably going to get more lightning damage out of that per go. However, if the effects are linked to damage (Graze with sword = 50% lessened effect, etc.), then yeah... not seeing the reasoning for the Speed basis. Which, I'm pretty sure it was at least briefly mentioned that the effects of spells and abilities would work on the miss-graze-hit-crit system, but I don't know that this was confirmed for weapon effects or not. Info would be splendtastic.

What, specifically, don't you like about such an idea, if I might ask?

Well, for what it's worth, P:E will not be using rounds. Honestly, I support this decision. The problem I have round-based stuff is that you don't really know when the round starts each time. Sometimes, you'd go to cast a spell, and by the time you've actually clicked on your target, you missed the beginning of the round by a millisecond, and now your frail Wizard just stands there for 3 seconds, THEN tries to cast the spell. This is especially bad when it's one that relies upon positioning (like a cone effect or something). See, all the decision-making and movement is still occurring real-time (unlike in a turn-based system, which is where the rounds started... in PnP rules), but many of the actual actions/results are somewhat arbitrarily limited to rounds. About the only benefit is, sometimes, if you happen to be lucky and the rounds don't screw you over, the enemy can't get the jump on you before you get to fire off YOUR ability. It's like a mish-mash of turn-based AND real-time, with added detriments and minus many of the benefits of either system, individually. I'm not so sure about some non-round-based similar aspect of randomness, either. *shrug*. It just begs the question: "Why?". What good does it do to not have any clue what your cast time or effect duration is going to be? I'd much rather allow things like casting interruption/setback (a la WoW and other MMOs) and debuffs/criticals/ability-effects/etc. produce this dynamic you seem to be looking for. Critical hits are already going to affect effect durations, in the current P:E design. And equipment weight/encumbrance affects cast/action times. I'm sure plenty of spell effects will throw even more dynamic results into the mix, and they could always allow certain types of hits against most non-instant abilities to simply delay your cast/usage time (as in MMOs). There are plenty of reasonable ways of preventing monotonous, machine-like ability timings than to arbitrarily throw randomness into the mix.

I think the dev team would be remiss not to tie the lore of soul states into character creation options, somehow. 8P

^ Unless Little Suzy is a soul prodigy, and can snap people in half with her giggles.

Selecting "I don't care" as an option within the poll kind of contradicts a lack of caring, doesn't it? "I couldn't care LESS about this poll... than by actively participating in it!"

Let's see... - Attack-stun ability with secondary, position-based directional cone effect - Ally-targeted AOE radial burst - A "the more, the merrier!"-style (it seems?) target-alternating mind-blade ability - A pulse of agony based upon the specifics of a previous attack, but still differing in its effect on armor - A MOBILE PONG STRIKE! - Fantastic lore *droooooooool* So much tacticalness and amazement... @_@