Lephys

I would also just want the risk of injury to be a big factor, supported by gameplay and design. I think the injury thing sucks if they're just an extra bit of crap to deal with all the time, no matter what. You should be able to (and have reason to) be more cautious in some situations, and less cautious and more reckless in others. Even simple stuff, like "This person has Advanced Dodge, so they're pretty much going to avoid injuries from anyone but the most precise/speedy opponents," etc. So that you've got a matter of "if I want to avoid injuries, I'll make sure this person fights THAT person, but, otherwise, I may need to use them to better offensive effect to fight a different target, and risk the injuries." Etc. Honestly, I think a lot of the debuffing mechanics could pretty much be replaced with an injury system. Then Constitution could factor into healing time, etc. Plus salves, and a healing skill. You could still abstract it all. I mean, I wouldn't want to see some party member be out of commission for 7 weeks because they got 17 broken bones and cannot move, when that's pretty much unavoidable throughout the whole game (i.e. attacks non-abstractly inevitably result in serious injuries that put your people out of commission for weeks on end, and being attacked is unavoidable as well as frequent.) That's the only thing. I'd favor abstraction in the interest of softening the extent of the realistic nature and duration of injuries. That being said, if a MEGA serious injury was pretty rare (and quite avoidable with effort), it might be kind of neat if that party member simply had to sit out for a bit at the stronghold, and you had to use someone else or go without a party member for a brief duration. Of course... what happens when it's your main character? 8P Injuries are interesting stuff, though. I definitely think they're MUCH too avoided, because of some arbitrary "that's 'too' complex/simulationist" stigma that I don't feel they deserve.

^ That we are.

Honestly, if the game ALLOWS you to go on a killing spree, I think there's nothing wrong with that. You want immersion, and you want to actually go on a killing spree? Cool. Now everyone who knows about this hates you, and hunts you down. You can't complete the game, and you live out the rest of your life on the run from society as a whole. All your companions turn on you and/or try to murder you in your sleep. No "Game Over - Reload?" or anything. Just "I hope you saved some time ago, and actually go through the game NOT as a complete psychopath." I see no reason to leave children out of that awesome dose of immersion. Also, I second the idea of there sometimes being a reason to kill a child. Like... if some child is a magical prodigy, and he just becomes some kind of tyrant/murderer or something. Or some demon possesses a child, and you have no choice. No, I don't think the game should reward you in any way for killing a child for child-killing's sake. But, a child COULD be a threat. Especially in a fantasy world. But, yeah, if people want immersion, then they'll have fun when the NPC society shuns them for all of eternity for arbitrarily killing a kid for no reason at all.

Awwww, that's cute. He "let" you "struggle." ^_^ Hey, Valorian... what does it mean to "complete a combat"? If you only use one sword stroke, instead of 17, do you get awarded XP? How do you know how much experience you actually gained, based on what you did? What if you summon some ethereal wolves, and THEY kill the enemies? But you weren't directly controlling them. Do you only get ethereal-wolf-summoning XP, and not actually combat XP? What if neutral NPCs get the enemy down to 1HP, and you just go spit on him to get rid of that last 1HP, and he dies. Do you get a whole foe's worth of "combat" XP? Or do you get 1HP's worth of spit-that-happened-to-kill XP? Oh, right. Abstraction. Guess what? The death of something is simply an objective. If it dies, however such death was accomplished, you get an abstractedly full amount of XP based on the "combat difficulty" of that foe, whether you actually practiced your active combat or not. So, if you sneak to a rope holding up a chandelier, and you cut it, and it falls and crushes 7 enemies to death, you've just completed the objective "kill those foes" and gotten "combat XP," all by using your stealth skill, and no combat abilities whatsoever. And that fits in with the typical "things die and you gain XP" system. Want to argue for a "gain XP as you fight, and not as things die" system? Be my guest. Until then, welcome to abstraction that doesn't somehow cease to exist just because you're fighting instead of sneaking. The system's already objective based. It's just that killing is ALWAYS an objective, for some arbitrary reason, while other things aren't always. "Hey, Mr. Frodo," said Samwise. "I realize we're supposed to sneak through Mordor and get to that fiery mountain in the distance, but how's about we kill every single orc we come across? Because XP."

I would think the inability to complete the game would make people who don't ever want to engage in combat pretty upset. Also, I love that this always comes down to the ONLY possibility being scenarios in which there are things that could die, but you instead sneak past them. Would you not then get XP for every second you spend simply not fighting people that could be fought? Even if you're not sneaking past them, or near them. Just, there are things that could die, and you're choosing to not kill them, but you're still going about your business and doing stuff. So, you should either always get XP, apparently, or never get XP. Love it! 8D

*sigh*. I don't know what else to say, and how to say it. I believe it is nonsensical to mash physical potential energy together with magical energy, "because fiction." There's nothing WRONG with being nonsensical, no. There's just something nonsensical about being nonsensical. You could write a lore about a universe in which nothing exists. You could describe how much nothing there was, for pages and pages and pages. That wouldn't be WRONG. It would just be pointless. So, yeah, I'm sorry for suggesting there was something inherently wrong with magi-muscles. There isn't. It's just nonsensical. Even fictional things have a reason for existing in a world constructed by AND meant to be explored by reasonable, real-life people with minds that comprehend logic and can't make sense of a purely arbitrary entire world design. What's reasonable about magi-muscle cells? "Well, you see, only the people in the world who lack the PHYSICAL means of doing something would lack magical power. And all the massively muscled people would CLEARLY be the ones to worry about." Not to mention the whole "I'll just use magic to double my muscle mass" scenario I proposed. I mean, it's not like you'd have to prohibit magic from being able to do that or anything, right? Because it's magic. Why SHOULDN'T it do that? And people are just infinite power batteries.

It actually doesn't, but pointing out why would simply spark a whole 'nother pointless debate, so I'm really not worried about it. Think what you will.

This has obviously transitioned from discussion-related debate to just-plain debate. There's not really any usefulness in continuing it, unfortunately, since you already know all there is to know about RPG design, time limits, and the human psyche.

No... no it definitely HAD to be specifically about how Anomen was extremely likely to wear a dress. I'm pretty sure that was it.

Okay... I guess I can always get a new monitor... *uncaps hilighter marker*

I generally feel for you on the typed-post-disappearance. I know how that is (done it several times on these forums alone), and it sucks badly. So, sorry that occurred, 8(. I didn't say they don't involve timing. I said time efficiency is not what they're about. Though, that may have been my mistake. I believe I did use the word "timing," but I meant as in the gerund, like... "the game actively timing the player's choices, on a stop-watch." I figured all that context made it clear, because for me to suddenly be talking about the act of executing actions at the opportune moment, in the midst of my novel about races against time, would make be rather nonsensical. I'll see your fireball example that misses the point, and raise you one fireball example that illustrates it: Tell me about a time you saw an opportunity to use a fireball, and you had to not only decide to issue the "cast Fireball here" command to your character, but also had to actually affect the casting of the fireball so as to make it go fast enough to get the fireball cast in time to not be useless. When the player's skill was directly tasked with doing things faster, and not simply choosing to do things with set speeds in an efficient and well-timed fashion. You said you'd prefer time to flow while visiting merchants and healing up, etc. And you've pointed out all these "reality does it, why shouldn't we?" arguments in favor of time always flowing. Why not during dialogue? Can't people die while talking in real life? Also, you're completely ignoring my point about pausing. If you can ALWAYS pause the flow of time while you're making decisions and such, then what's the point of a time limit? "You only have 1 in-game hour to get through these battles! So, you'd better decide things quickly, because you're on the clock!... Except when you're paused between every single action you perform!" Hmmm? Not at all. I don't know why you keep jumping to such wild conclusions. I'm literally arguing that, if you're not going to have a very short, immediate time limit that makes you run like a madman, then there's no reason for it to be a super exact measure of constantly-flowing time. Not in an RPG, with oodles of different routes and orders to things and factors involved in getting from point A to point B. Add in random encounters to travel, that's another thing that makes an actual minute-for-minute time limit silly when it's something like two weeks. If you want to have a two week time limit, then cool. It's not pointless. It's just pointless to measure the hours, instead of just saying "Hey, you can only actively DO so many accomplishing tasks before this 'time limit' is up." See, I agree EXACTLY with you on the burning barn example. Yet, you'll probably come up with some mysterious way in which I don't actually agree with you, but only you know it and I somehow don't. You can do that, but I don't see the point in it at all. With the barn thing, it's actually a test of your ability to get to the barn, past whatever obstacles there are there. In complete isolation, it's a test. With "you have 72 hours to locate such-and-such," it's not testing JUST your ability to get through an isolated situation/dilemma. That time limit's applying to literally everything you're doing. Even stuff that you HAVE to do over the course of 72 hours in the game (like sleep, and fast travel, perform and deliver quests so that you can actually increase skills and defenses and whatnot so that you're not quantifiably incapable of performing further, difficult tasks, buy armor and equipment, etc.). It's way too big of a range, and it defeats the purpose of a time limit actually testing you. It's like 90% annoyance, and 10% non-pointless test. "Crap, over the course of those 6 battles between here and my destination, I took 30 critical hits and had to actually fall back and rest, whereas some other player only took 11 critical hits, even though we both had the same party makeup and everything. I had to blow 8 hours on resting, and he got to make it to the destination in-time." Stuff like that. It's applying all choices in the game (even ones that aren't meant to be time-sensitive) toward the completion of a goal over a however-long period. And, like I said, if it's actually so simple that it's just "we could go right now, and get there in like 6 hours of travel, yet we have 72 hours to do this (if not longer)," then what's the point in having a time limit? "Hey, if you literally waste days and days worth of time, you'll fail this quest, or bad things will happen at the very least." Isn't that the same thing as "who the hell would run around in circles for 7,000 minutes in town?" Because I think it is. Who the hell WOULDN'T make a 6-hour trip within a 72-hour period? That would be like giving you 8 hours to get to the barn and put the fire out, when it's just across town. It's either urgent or it isn't. Negatory, Ghost Rider. You're skirting "the" point (as in "the point I was making), and substituting in your own point, which you're then pretending is my point. See your version of my point is that HP and spells are the only resource you have. So you just proved that wrong. But my actual point was that HP and spells/abilities are the MAIN resources you have. If the game is designed to regularly be progressed through without ever resting or using any abilities ever again, then what happens when you DO use those things that are built straight into the game? "Oh, I can actually readily afford potions out the wazz, and grenades, and we have such good equipment that I can just passively kill everything to death." Sounds like it's time to turn up the difficulty from "Tutorial" to "actual difficulty" if the game's that easy without resting. "What? Clear out another forest? But we're out of health and abilities! Oh well, let's go, people!" Nope. Pretty sure that's not the game's intention. Obviously it doesn't want you to be full on health and abilities all day long. But, you go out, you do some stuff for a bit, then you need to replenish. Then you do the same thing again. Your finite MAIN resources are intended to provide a challenge for a given finite amount of obstacles you can overcome with them, consecutively. You just suggested that my claim to value choice is somehow false, without actually saying why/how. And when did I say anything about the problem being that you shouldn't be able to fail any side-quest, ever? You should be able to choose to go now instead of later, and that should be enough. You shouldn't have a list of factors that cause you to fail sheerly because you took too long WHILE you're actually hurrying as best you can. Time sensitive stuff isn't branching. If you go left, you literally can't go right, because you're going left. If you say one thing in dialogue, then you can't go back in time and have said something else. The situation's already affected by your choice, and it can't go back to it's unaffected state to be effected by a different choice. It can only now be FURTHER affected by another choice. But why? Do you need to be able to do every single side-quest? . Really, though... why does the clock wait on you to stumble into them to start ticking. Like, some kidnappers are waiting, waiting, then, BOOM, you walk through the gates, and they decide to kidnap a girl. Or, they then decide to set fire to a barn. Why did they wait for you? And why should other things NOT-wait on you, but those things should? It is as simple as that. So what's the point? It's either "super-precise" timing, or it isn't. Either every single minute you spend merely existing counts down toward some form of failure or negative change, or it doesn't. Even if it doesn't, you can still have urgency. If you were actually performing all the actions, first-hand, that the characters were, then time-ticking urgency would be an issue. You might fire your bow more quickly than you should, reducing your accuracy, or your defense might be lowered because of reckless decisions. The fact is, you can't make your characters actually "hurry." You can't make them run a little faster than they normally do, or take more risk in all their actions than they normally do. You can't do any of that. Everything is already internally constrained to time limits (attacks, move speed, travel time, how long it takes to say things in dialogue, etc.). So, a constantly ticking clock makes no sense. Because, no matter how much the player WANTS to hurry, he's limited by the time constraints of all other things in the world, as well as by needs that only exist in their specific occurrence because of video game system abstraction. Nope. I'm not trying to fabricate some super-formula, or make all timed quests the same. They'd all be different. And the enemy strength and time limit wouldn't be calculated. It would be the same, no matter what. Someone who spends 8 million hours literally doing nothing, then actually does something would still get to succeed at a quest that was urgent, and someone who spends no time doing nothing and immediately does something would also succeed. So, the only thing different with an actual timer would be that we'd weed out all the oodles of people who'd actually spend their time not doing anything of consequence whatsoever (running laps around town, browsing merchant's wares for entire in-game days on end, etc.). "The longer you dilly-dally, the smaller your chances you will make it." False. Whatever obstacles are there, and whatever distance you must go remain the same. So, the longer you dilly-dally, the closer you approach to an all-but-static threshold, beyond which it will be impossible to reach your destination in time. The only actual variable factor is the player's ability to overcome obstacles with speed. And even THAT is rendered moot by the sheer decision to either dilly-dally, or not-dilly dally. Again, if you have 72 hours to complete a task that only takes between 10 and 12 hours to complete, then you're either going to decide to go do it while you still have 12-or-more hours left, or you aren't. What lesson are you teaching to the person who's a little less efficient with their comprehension of the synergistic collaboration of all their party's abilities by saying "Lolz, you had time to do this, but you're just BAD AT THIS GAME AND YOU FAILED!"? "This SHOULD'VE only taken TEN hours, but you took THIRTEEN! What a MORON!" No one's going to accidentally take 73 hours to complete a 10-12 hour task. That's the nature of dilly-dallying; doing things you know aren't a priority, with the knowledge of what IS a priority. That's actually the difference between exclusive branches, as you referenced before, and straight-up timed things. Take the barn, for example. If you have like.... a minute and a half (real-world time) to get to the barn and rescue someone or start fighting the fire or whatever, then, before you even worry about speed, you have a simple choice of mutual exclusion: "Do I try to get to the barn, or do I go somewhere else and do something that isn't going after the barn?" If you choose to not go for the barn, then no matter what you do, you're not going to get to the barn in-time. Once you choose TO go for the barn, you have to hurry. But, the timer suggest that there's time in which you'll reach the barn before something changes, and time in which you won't. Yes, these are exclusive outcomes, but not based on choice. They're based on time. You already CHOSE barn. Now time is still an issue. Even aside from non-time-based obstacles (like failure to get around a wall, or failure to not-die to orcs), even if you accomplish all things and get to the barn, you might not get there in time, even though you chose to get there in time. If you fail to see any relevance or truth in anything I'm saying, then awesome. It happens. Doesn't change anything, but, we don't have to keep on with this if you aren't interested in anything but telling me how everything you said is true, and literally everything I've said is false. If there's nothing more to be gained by either of us, then the discussion is essentially forfeit.

The problem is, you're acting as though the fact that they're two separate functions, performed by different parts of the ear is somehow just trivial or inconsequential. But it's the absolute core of my point. Could you, or could you not, have good hearing but bad balance, or vice versa? Or does everyone out there with good hearing have AMAZING balance? Does your hearing literally fuel your balance? Or does it simply affect it? See, what you're getting at is influence/synergy, almost, in an abstracted stat environment. Having 2 STR and trying to swing a heavy sword might result in worse accuracy, for example, even if your Dexterity is awesome. That doesn't mean that your accuracy directly results in your Strength rating; that Strength and Accuracy should be the same stat. The amount of muscle you have dictates the amount of physical force you have access to. If it ALSO dictated how much magical force you had access to, then they'd either be the same thing, or would be arbitrarily linked in a maniacal fashion. It's like... burning fuel, and having it produce BOTH fire and heat AND ice and cold, at the same time. Doesn't make any sense. Two completely separate things. Let me simply ask this question, regarding a single stat representing both physical strength and magical strength: At what point would a stat represent too many things, and why? Just keep adding things to that stat, and tell me when it would actually be come a problem, if you wouldn't mind. See, it's the "why" I'm interested in, and not necessarily the "when." But the when might get us there, as I seem to be seeing something with just two forms of strength in one stat that others aren't yet seeing. True, the blood thing would make sense. But then, I would compare that to blood as it works for muscle strength, and blood as it works for endurance. There are some people who are very, very strong, but tire very easily. Then, there are people who aren't even very muscular, but have INCREDIBLE endurance. So, if you were going to have a single stat called "bloodflow," it would still be in a similar boat. There are multiple things that affect bloodflow, and your strength wouldn't equal better bloodflow, and therefore more magic. Also, blood can only carry so much stuff. Blood cells literally transport things, like tiny trucks. So, IF you're going to tie mana/magical stuff to the amount of some physical thing that blood can carry, then it would really be tied to blood cell count. Which, again, isn't the same thing as strength or even size or even blood flow. Plus, your blood cells would EITHER have to carry oxygen and such to your muscles to work, OR mana (or what-have-you). You can't fill a truck with corn, AND fill the same truck with hay, at the same time. You have to pick one. So, even if blood supplied your magic power AND physical muscle power (or at least the fuel for it), it still couldn't do so simultaneously. And how would you get mana TO the blood? Mana would still be a separate fuel from oxygen. Blood would just be the catalyst at that point. Not the fuel. Mana is the fuel. So, there'd still have to be a difference in people's ability to metabolize mana or something. Or gather it, etc. Anywho, a lot of that's fun to analyze, but is really getting into other points. Magi-Strength just makes a world full of muscley people who are all awesome at magic. And IF there's anyone who can't use magic, then they just won't even bother being muscley, because any magical people will be JUST as muscley as they are, PLUS they'll have awesome magical powers. And they would rule the world, and no one would ever even have any hope of besting them. Things need a balance to make sense, and even if DnD isn't perfect, its balance of magic versus Strength was that one was derived from non-physical efforts, and other was derived sheerly from physical efforts. Why? Because it already makes sense for some people to be 7 foot 4 and 270 lbs of pure muscle, and other people to be 5 foot 3, 115 lbs soaking wet. And the people who just happen to have larger frames and the potential for more muscle mass would rule the frigging world. What doesn't make sense is the constraint. Either your whole world based on that system destroys itself, or nature nonsensically constrains itself to only certain ranges of muscle for living creatures that can wield magic, for no other reason than so that your world doesn't conflict with your desire to tell a story in it.

Your comment made me think of it, as it used the phrase. Also, we're still both talking about the same concept, really. Does it matter if you catch someone in the act of raping someone, or if they happen to be reclining somewhere, not-raping anyone at the moment, but you know for a fact (and it is well-known) that they have raped hundreds upon hundreds of people? If you were to sneak up on that person and torture them to death, or castrate them and throw them in a dungeon, I'm pretty sure the people who were all wronged by that person (as well as their friends and families) would praise you for giving that bastard "what he deserves." Heck, it would be seen more as "the least you could do," as it probably wouldn't even be the full extent of justice, as you can never really make up for what he's done, there. Granted, yes, if you're talking about actual cosmic karma, and not just using the word "karma" as reputation, then it's a bit silly for it to go up there, because you're still just doing something that's "inherently wrong/bad." You're producing a good result, but encouraging vengeance goes beyond simply taking that guy out of the equation. Of course, you could get into all kinds of complex there. Your vicious punishment could discourage other people from doing anything of the sort, which would technically be good. Etc. But then there are things that still suggest that, no matter what, castrating a man and imprisoning him for life is just-plain bad/evil on some cosmic scale. I think that's exactly why most people don't like systems like karma, and innate forces of good/bad, and would rather see good and bad be derived from the world and its inhabitants (and gods and such, if they are existing entities in the lore), rather than from cosmically balanced forces that then influence and/or are tapped into by the world's inhabitants.

I'm sure if he makes enough treks through the mysterious forest and kills enough orcs and wolves, he'll gain enough levels to max out his Interviewing skill, Charisma, and he'll have sold enough loot to afford the legendary-tier recording equipment.

^^^ O_O... Best... weapon... ever. Now I want gauntlets for "Unarmed" type combat that simply have cast-metal fists fitted into them. Or a mace that's just a cast-metal beefy arm with a fist at the end, so it just looks like you're swinging a big muscley arm, made of metal. 8D!

Ring of Topical Influence: Dirigables. Really, silliness aside, such specific scopes of ring-power would be pretty awesome. I mean, maybe not THAT specific... but, you know, the general idea... 8P

*cracks knuckles* I'm gonna actually attempt concision, here (I know, right?! ): Exactly. What else could you possibly do, besides something the exaggerative "no one" would ever do, that wouldn't blatantly wipe away any uncertainty as to whether or not you're attempting to tackle a situation with urgency in mind or aren't? Yep, along with other aspects of the game, during which the player will have to consider lots of things that the characters would already know/perceive directly, thus resulting in the player being unrealistically held to the time constraints of the world. For no apparent reason, since you could just pause the game the whole time you're considering things. Again, you're either ACTUALLY providing a tough-to-meet time challenge for the player to accomplish something, or you're not. If you're not, then there's functionally no difference between approximations of time's passage, and actual constant time passage, so long as actions that would significantly pass time and/or actions that clearly say "I couldn't care less about the urgency of this given situation" result in some representation of time passing, and therefore result in time-passage consequences. The only difference is that consta-time limits provide the completely unnecessary ability to fail, not because you ran off in the opposite direction or wasted days worth of time saving cats from trees after finding out about an urgent situation, but because you, the player, simply took a little too long doing things that wouldn't need to be done if you weren't a disembodied master to the in-world party. Which is another thing that's completely unlike real life. In real life, someone doesn't take in a bunch of our experiences that get fed to them via a screen and some speakers, then make decisions based on our world's time constraints and their best evaluation of the information given to them. Time flowing in the shops in no way addresses the point. I was saying that their not-flowing contradicts the extra effort of having super-accurate constant-passage time limits for things, which is, by itself, unnecessary, unless the game's goal is to challenge the player to perform non-time-sensitive video-game-only duties as efficiently as possible, which it isn't. An RPG's about what you choose. Not about how fast you choose it. And yet, you know things that your PC doesn't know. You can click on someone and know that they have 17 intelligence, and how that affects what skills they can learn. Your PC doesn't know that. He just knows "*shrug... that person's pretty smart, I guess." Then, after they learn/use abilities, he knows they can use them. He doesn't know the requirements for using them, unless HE can use them, etc. He doesn't have any idea what potential things will earn him experience, or what things he'll get to pick when he levels up, or how his Persuasion skill might help him throughout the game. Yet, the player does. You're skirting the point, with a very isolated situation, and claiming to disprove the bigger picture. The game is literally designed with your resting and healing back up to 100% capabilities in mind. Rest spots aren't naturally occurring in pixel space. They're designed and placed by the dev team, for the sole purpose of granting you the ability to replenish your finite resources for different sections of gameplay. You're either just gonna have stuff happen whenever, because reality -- in which case you might arrive back at town from some long bout of fightin' and smitin', and you're all out of abilities (because they're heavily per-rest) and HPs, only to be approached with some urgent situation that needs dire attention -- OR you forcibly make sure stuff only happens when it's convenient. OR -- functionally the same thing -- you adjust the "timer" to accommodate the resting/purchasing, etc. The idea behind that completely contradicts the idea behind "reality doesn't wait on you, fool!". No, reality doesn't. You still haven't actually addressed that contradiction. You just basically said "nuh-uh," then pointed out your very own argument that wasn't actually aimed at mine. It was just chillin' in the same area. If you'd be so kind, please explain to me how making sure the player always has enough time to potentially go save a kidnapped girl doesn't contradict the super-precise timing of the player's actions in getting to the girl, because urgency and reality. Or how time flowing during shopping and simple resting fits into all that. Do you account for the shopping and resting, so that people who don't need to do that have all the time in the world and time isn't even a challenge anymore? Or do you require that they be penalized for actually restoring their party to combat readiness? And do you just throw crazy urgency situations around at random, arbitrary times, or do you make sure they're always conveniently occurring whenever the player wouldn't need to spend time in preparation in lieu of immediately acting? Riddle me that, Trashman. (Also... concision challenge: failed... -___-)

@Yonjuro: I... I think so? But, without arguing semantics or anything here, I don't know if that would be functionally much different from having just two separate "stats" (or whatever... two separately represented things). Also, no, we don't know for certain what the stat list will be, or how it will represent all character aspects. That's something I'm very interested in. To clarify, in case you or anyone else missed bits and doesn't want to re-read the entire thread history, someone basically asked "what if it was represented by a single stat?", because of Obsidian's talk of having stats that do the same thing for all characters (like accuracy, power, etc.). It's highly possible that, since everyone has soul "magic," that there will actually be a stat JUST for magic power that will actually benefit traditionally non-magic classes (Warrior, etc.), and a separate stat for physical strength. Regardless of how the game will actually handle this with its design (which I would like to know, but will simply have to wait for), I'm simply analyzing the potential consequences of representing both with a single stat (physical and magical strength/potency/power, in a single stat -- maybe "Power"). @Jethro: My argument is, once more, not against the intermingling of the physical world and the non-physical world. Really, for all practical purposes, magical energy COULD be (but doesn't have to be) a fictional addition to the physical world. Just think of theoretical stuff we don't know a lot about yet, like dark matter and anti-matter and such. No, I'm not learned in that and don't know specifically which terms are supposedly real things, or how much we know about them, but... Well, look at nuclear power. No one knew how to use that, 'til we discovered it one day. That's a crapton of energy in little tiny atoms. Some animals throughout the animal kingdom can essentially emit radio waves. Our bodies have electricity in them, in our nervous system. If you introduced the fictional ability to fire, what... electrons (or is it neutrons?) at atoms (inherent to a person), then a person could influence nuclear energy by splitting atoms without a machine. A human body is just a machine. It's simply got its own set of abilities, separate from other machines. Anywho... if it isn't just fictional physics, and it's a completely separate thing, it should still functionally make sense to us. And the only real thing we can draw from is physics and the real world. Things like proportions, etc. If you take 15 seconds to cast something, it's typically more powerful and/or affects a greater area (in games, I mean). Why? Because that makes sense. Whatever fictitious energy you're dealing with, it probably functions like any other energy. It just has different properties and different limitations/capabilities, etc. Why? Because why make stuff that DOESN'T make any sense? Literally no sense, at all. "Sometimes, when people blink, worlds are destroyed, and sometimes they aren't." How great of a story would that make? "Uh oh, someone blinked, and there was a 50% chance that a world got destroyed, and it happened this time, and it was this world we're all one, all the characters in this lore/fiction." No, that makes no sense. The only magic is fictional and designed, by real humans, who live in a world that makes sense. If the fiction doesn't make any sense, what's the point? Wouldn't the characters in that world want to make sense of things? Wouldn't they wonder why nothing made sense in their world? Or would they all just shrug it off and not really care why things were different, or why they happened? If they did that, then how can we relate to them? We being people who are curious and want things to make some modicum of sense? Annnnywho, it's hard not to get off the subject, here. I'm straying a bit, and I apologize. To answer your question, yes. If the quantity of muscle cells contracting didn't somehow fuel the actual production of magical energy, then there wouldn't really be a problem (or not the one I've been trying to point out for what feels like ages now). Someone asked "why can't physical strength actually beget magical strength?", and this was the problem. Sure, plenty of magic lores have somatic components to spells. But, a person's strength doesn't affect how well the spell works. The Incredible Hulk can't generate a spell any better than a frail old man who performs the EXACT same flawless somatic spell gestures. The somatic gestures are a bit like a key. Anyone can have a key, but only some people can actually access the lock. In the Wheel of Time world (I know, I reference it a lot... what can I say -- I'm a fan. ), the Aes Sedai (casters) constantly comment on how they don't actually HAVE to move their arms and do things to channel the One Power, but that's how people who don't know how to properly channel it go from not-knowing to learning how. Gestures and such help them focus and make sense of the manner in which they're forming and aiming otherwise invisible, intangible energy. And yes, DnD spells REQUIRE somatic components. You know what? I'm not defending DnD. My stance here isn't "Strength shouldn't produce magic Power, and also this game should be DnD." There's a lot of stuff in DnD that I don't think is ideal, like spells being so particular, and Wizards being able to do nothing that isn't already scribed into an ancient book by some older Wizard who somehow I guess just found the spell that's existed since the dawn of time. Or how Intelligence begets magic power, instead of some aspect of the mind begetting it. Again, was magic something that just existed, and only those who could comprehend very complex symbols and languages (that apparently existed since the dawn of time) could read and therefore academically learn magic? I don't really prefer that setup. That just makes magic a really, really complicated bazooka. Or Paladins drawing their power from Charisma. I understand why they did things like that, as far as building a ruleset goes. But, I don't really think it's the awesomest ruleset ever or anything. It's given us a lot of nice building blocks to draw from, and DnD sessions are quite fun. Long story short, the problem I'm seeing is with the generation of two different types of force/power, from the exact same source/engine (muscles). Not, the technical use of muscles to make movements and/or draw symbols in order to utilize magic. And it's definitely not with a single stat simply "doing multiple things." Although, ideally, you wouldn't have any unnecessary overlaps (like smartness and magic power). It's a hard thing, abstracting all factors of people into number values and categories. I get that. I just... I see a problem with having both a real AND a fictional form of power being entirely separate things, yet being generated in direct proportion to one's physical strength. Nothing that's been said so far even suggest to me that there isn't a problem with that. Lots of great stuff and evaluations all around that particular point, but it's still one PHYSICAL aspect of people, producing two completely different strengths/powers at the exact same time.

Now I'm just imagining melting down like 700 enchanted rings, then forging all that magical metal into like... a crossswordbracer. That would be a crossbow, bracer, AND sword/forearm blade. And it would be ludicrously magical. Sorry... That would be cool if ring crafting were cooler than "Do you have a gemstone?... Do you have a ring? Do you have magic?! PUT 'EM TOGETHER! WHAT'S THAT SPELL?! MAGI-RING!!!"

^ If I had to guess, based on the style of the rest of their design choices, the stronghold probably starts exactly the same no matter what, and it'll be potentially possible to upgrade it in various manners (actual mutually exclusive styles/upgrades, like you're suggesting), but they probably won't be tethered to class/race. Obviously I could be wrong, but, it seems like it would contradict their design philosophy to prevent an Orlan Warrior to choose arcane, Aumauan architecture for his stronghold. Just my two cent guesstimate on that.

Fearrabbit, I just wanted to apologize. We did have a pretty good discussion going on. And other people did, too. I just... got a bit overwhelmed. I don't know how to respond to so much stuff all at the same time. I wasn't meaning to suggest you, specifically, were ignoring my points. Or really that anyone is. I think several people are, at this point, getting off to the side of the original point with circumstantial, contextual bits of my clarifications and examples. And I know that either: A) The core of my point is actually being glanced past, still, by mostly everyone here. OR B) I'm actually not understanding that you guys are comprehending my exact point. Which is entirely possible. But, I'm not seeing anything thus far that, while quite intelligent, isn't somehow glancing past my actual point rather than taking it head-on and knocking it down. To get back into it a bit, with what you said above, there's a difference between fictional magical energy interacting with the physical realm, and the physical realm's workings creating fictional magical energy. I was trying to get at that, a bit, at one point. If magic didn't interact with the physical realm at all, then it'd be severely limited in its application. I just really don't know how else to describe it, without simply repeating things I've already said probably several times throughout the thread now. If you can think of any specific questions to ask me regarding what I'm claiming, then please feel free. Otherwise, like I said, I'm not sure how to point at it in a way I haven't already attempted.

Ditto.

Even if the main antagonist is simply an idea or force and not some individual person, yes. A story without an over-arching antagonist isn't much of an adventurous tale at all. It's just an account of some events at that point, with nothing really tying them together. No conflict, at least. And since the game will heavily be about you combatting things, I'd say that wouldn't work too well. *shrug* That being said, the existence of a villain hardly mandates anything cliche or simple.

Well, the spells would have to be designed with the possibilities in mind. You couldn't just take spells from some existing game, exactly as they are, and toss in the ability to shift and shape them as you please. That would almost certainly result in some unintended results.

*sigh*... This is so out of hand. People are arguing things now that are so far beside the point it's not even funny. Sabotin thinks (understandably so) that the point of all this is that magic needs to be logically explained in full detail. No... It's extraordinarily simple, really. People just don't seem to be catching what I'm actually touching on, exactly. I'm pointing to a certain spot on a wall, and people are assuming I'm just pointing at the wall in general. This is the simplest way I know of pointing it out, using what you said above, Jethro: You ask why magic would need to follow physics rules? It doesn't. But muscles do. So, why would you take something that is already within the confines of physics and physical laws, and make it simultaneously do things that are both within physical laws, AND outside of physical laws? That's what doesn't make any sense. What if burning oil makes fire (which it does, physically), and it ALSO makes mana? That would be sheer craziness. Why oil? Oil is both simple non-magical oil, AND magical oil? That doesn't make any sense. You're saying that the rules of physics somehow allow for the creation of magic, but that, once created, it exists outside the rules of physics. It's some manner of pseudo-paradox, at best. That's why people come up with things like mana. Mana isn't anything else that already exists. It's a completely fictitious energy, that exists in fantasy worlds in addition to regular, physical things. And creatures like wisps are made out of magical energies, etc. Not housecats. They don't go "Hey, housecats, just like from real life, AND also they're made out of mana, u_u..., even though they're regular housecats." Annnywho... the even simpler problem is this: If Stat X begets character factor A and character factor B, and ALL CHARACTERS have character factor A, but only some of them have factor B, then something's already wrong. Especially in a stat system specifically designed to "affect the same thing for all characters and classes." Power, in our long-running exampls, would provide TWO kinds of strength (physical and magical) for magical people, and only ONE kind of strength (just physical) for non-magical people. Either that or it provides both. The physical operation of muscle tissue within the realm of physics ALSO somehow generating fictitious energy which is in no way affiliated with the realm of physics is nonsensical, but, that's beside the point. 4 is 4 because it is, and because of the nature of things. The label "4" is our own doing. But anything is either partial or whole, and if it's whole, and it's whole 3 more times, then it is 4 in number. But THAT'S even beside the point. The point is simply "Hey, two blatantly separate things are going to be mashed together, and some classes may not even get one of them. So, do we just not care about distinguishing physical ability from other things anymore? Also, we seem to have a lopsided hypothetical stat, at best." If you don't have a problem with it, then fine. I was just trying to go beyond "I don't like it," here, but apparently everything must struggle in the realm of objective evaluation, and all points must be partially judged against subjectivity no matter what, and then we find ourselves back at "That was a nice wasted 4 pages of 'discussion'." I apologize for instigating so much unnecessary back-and-forth and confusion. From now on, I'll try to keep my objective evaluations and inquiries to myself, I suppose.