Lephys

I think that, at the very least, fantasy expands the horizon of possibility. In reality, sure, there's stuff we haven't experienced. But, we know a much larger chunk of the experiences that can be had in reality. In a fantasy world, we get to experience things that are different, even about the very same experiences we've already had. It's like a hybrid of the things we think are great about reality, and the things we think COULD be great if they were real.

The old link would've gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!

Brewing for a year?! That's gonna result in some potent spirits...

He talked about it recently, in an interview (Chris did). He was saying that he really wanted to both fulfill the sheer "I'll totally play through this game, just because people want me to, and because it'll be fun times with the Let's Play recording and all and my shenanigans" aspect of it, AND put the playthrough to more constructive use by providing his commentary on the game's design. He did hint at a couple of possibilities: A) The idea that he might be actually done with playing through it, and that they'r simply editing all the footage up into segments for us to watch the rest of it, and... B) That he MAY do some kind of supplemental video (even if it's just commentary on his own Let's Play footage) in which he's mainly constructive instead of just goofily playing the fame for funsies and for the fans' entertainment. *shrug*

I thought that same thing when I inadvertently gave my-self the crazy mental image of that. But, be all that as it may, the variance in skill and the lack of all the things a Warrior can do (class-based abilities, etc.) is still all completely separate and supplementary to a person's inherent physical strength. In reality, and in the portion of reality that's being represented in such fictional settings, involving people with anatomically realistic bodies, and muscle cells, and a base of real-world physics, gravity, all that jazz. I was pretty certain I had spelled her name wrong, haha. No worries. Bad example for that particular point, but, even if I haven't conveyed it very well this whole time, I do comprehend that point, and it IS valid. I mean, there's stuff in reality that's just kind of "Because science," heh. I know HOW electricity works, but I don't know WHY it exists. Why are particles even able to become charged? Why doesn't stuff work a different way? But, the only thing I will say to that is, knowing that a fictional world was constructed for a reason, I don't see the real-world logic/value in constructing a fictional world thusly. It seems to arbitrarily merge two things into one thing. Forget about magic, for the moment, and just think of fictional marriage of real-world "stats." What if the usage of your muscles allowed you to utilize your thought power? Every muscle cell in your body, whenever used, actually gave you mental CPU power. How silly would that be? "You're either muscley and a genius, or you're feeble and an idiot." I dunno, even dealing with completely fictional energies and capabilities, like magic power, it just seems like an inconsistency in the world. Surely there are 1,000 other distinct features of people in this fictional world in which there are people and animals and plants that, while different in specifics, are heavily based on real-world earth's population of living entities. More specifically, in a fictional world (such as P:E) in which you're blatantly claiming to represent all of these factors as "human"(oid) stats for characters, why are there unique, independent fluctuations in EVERY other aspect of people (speed, perception, intelligence, flexibility, height, weight, voice sound, etc.) -- not to mention aspects of the entire plant and animal populous, as well -- but somehow physical musculature always = magical potential? Isn't that a bit disconnecting? That... I dunno. That seems to make doubly less sense. For one thing, it does have to do with physics, since it's the conversion of physical energy into magical energy. If you just had a bunch of cells in your body (or different properties of existing, realistic cells in your body), and didn't need to make use of mechanical muscle cell function to create magical energy, that would be a different story. It would be a completely fictional source (that happens to reside in your body) fora completely fictional power, all outside of physics. I'm really not trying to be nitpicky. Truly. I realize that it seems that way. It's frustrating just TRYING to pinpoint just what I'm getting at, without sounding all "well... technically...". But, as it stands, the operation of muscle cells generates physical force. So, if you contract muscle cells in order to generate magical force, then you're either making physical force, then converting it into magical force (why the middle man?), or you're always generating magical force equal to your physical force (why are you always physically fatiguing yourself by having half the energy you produce go to waste?). In a world like this, what would prevent ANYONE from becoming a Wizard, instead of a Warrior? "Hmm, I can either use my muscles to hurl fire at people and generate forcefields, or I can use my muscles to just do what normal muscle strength allows me to do." There's no trade-off. Hence the "Wizard telekinetically going all Star Wars Kid with a two-handed sword" example comes back into relevance, haha. Why would ANYONE try to physically throw knives at other people if, by the exact same token of their inherent capabilities, they could simply telekinetically hurl magical, flame-lectric knives at people? Or, people could just paralyze you, and now you can't do anything. "Silence" would be Paralysis. There wouldn't be a single person in existence who couldn't be "Silenced" from using magical ability. Not to mention, you couldn't have, say, Ogres, in the world, or any beast with substantially larger counts of muscle cells, or they'd be invincible. Everything would have to fall within the same rough size/musculature. And the only way to become more magically powerful would be to physically work out a bunch. Which you'd do every time you used magic, because you'd always use your muscles to wield magic. Do you see where this leads? It's not as simple as "Muscles equal both... *dusts off hands*... problem solved, because the lore says it makes sense." These aren't just simple, nitpicky things. They're at the very core of the functionality of the fiction in question. You can make a fictitious world in which 4=5, but all other numbers are the same, but... I don't even know how to fathom that. How do we even relate to a world like that? That's what I'm getting at. There's a disconnect there. And, no matter how many times you slide something into the gap to close it, you leave a gap where you just slid from. There's some kind of logical inconsistency there, like an unbalanced equation, and it radiates throughout the entire fabric of that reality's logic. I don't know how to describe it other than with all those questions/examples above. It's all of them, but I don't know what it is.

^ I will say, in regard to the "simply a second chance to recover the item" notion, this: It's possible for a branch to depend on the item recovery at that time. The inevitable recovery of the item wouldn't be as important as the exact TIMING of the recovery of the item, in relation to the actions and decisions of whoever possessed the item. For example: Quest 1 - Some people wanna do something bad with an artifact, and you need to recover it. Heck, maybe even the people for whom you're recovering it want to do something of their own with it. That's two things hinging upon the recovery of the item. Quest 1a - You successfully recovered the item, and now your people are trying to do something spiffy with the spiffy artifact, that's important for some reason. The people from whom you recovered the artifact are very, very unhappy and have sent their remaining forces (maybe it's a faction) to RE-recover the artifact, and prevent your allies from utilizing it for spiffiness. Quest 1b - You failed to recover the artifact, so now, those bad people with it got away. You know where they're going/where they will be, but you were trying to prevent them from reaching that place with the artifact in their possession, so as to prevent them from using it to their own spiffy ends. So, now your people must go after them, and possibly only recover the artifact after it has been used, already, to alter the state of things in the world/area/something. In this situation, the simple success/failure isn't magically generating an arbitrary second chance situation. It's simply how the story is organically playing out, depending on what's happening. *shrug*. Just thought of that while reading. Still, excellent analysis, overall.

Clearly, from his 2-sentence, mere suggestion of a hierarchy, with no mention of actual individual combat-threat-related power, the only possible thing we could deduce is that he was talking about tougher and tougher chains of bosses, and not, say, the hierarchy of a real-world drug-trafficking operation, in which everyone is of roughly the same skill/toughness, and the boss isn't necessarily any larger/stronger or better with a gun, or more capable of mitigating/absorbing damage than anyone else "under" him. He simply makes sure any investigation trails lead to people other than himself, so that he never gets caught. Thus, people think they've gotten to the "top" of the drug-trafficking ring, but really haven't. Also, apparently knowing "the genre" somehow means that we know they can't do anything the genre doesn't typically do. Man, I wonder how people first established the genre if there was no genre to go by at the time... o_o

That's my bad. I flat-out overlooked that, somehow. I know it was right there, in my face, haha. I don't really have an excuse, but I AM making these posts in between work tasks, so my mind isn't exactly 100% free of distraction. I try to take my time, and re-read things, but... you know. Only human. . Again, apologies. Who says the Wizard is required to suck at swordfighting? That's the thing. And "why telekinetically wielding a sword?"? Because, if he were physically weak, but magically not-weak, then he'd be most effective with magic, than with the physical capabilities of his body. I was talking about how if physical strength could translate into magical power, then the opposite would have to be able to occur, too. If so, a Wizard could have the body of an 11-year-old boy, and still go toe-to-toe with melee weaponry against an Ogre, using nothing but his magical power. Then, on top of that, he could ALSO cast spells using pure magical power, without converting it to physical strength. Just seems like AN inconsistency, to me, at the very least. But, look at martial arts: Even a 4-foot-tall man who my 6-foot-1 pansy self could probably throw through a wall if he was standing still can take me down with martial arts skill, but it's not because he somehow produces the same strength as a physically larger/stronger combatant. It's because he's more efficient. He's more precise, and uses my momentum against me, and dodges a lot, and strikes in such a way that a lot of force is not needed (throat, nose, pressure points, etc.). Strength and skill are not the same thing. Even with magic, a Wizard could have all the power in the world, and not be able to direct it or focus it worth a damn. He could be completely unskilled, so that he can either set an entire village on fire whenever he tries to knock over an apple from 20 feet away, or do nothing at all (refrain from magickry). A 700lb, pure-muscle person can swing a sword so hard he can probably snap the blade off in your pelvis, IF he hits you. But, he doesn't need to be able to hit you well to be able to swing the sword very hard, and vice versa. You see, strength/power, in terms of an RPG stat, isn't a measure of how effective you are with your power. It's SHEERLY a measure of your capability to generate an amount of power/force. Nothing more. That's what makes stats work so nicely. They are like your fantasy world biometric measurements. A super intelligent brain is kind of like a high CPU clock speed. But, the smartest person in the universe who doesn't know a language at all isn't going to be able to solve a riddle in that language. Meanwhile, a less intelligent person who DOES know that language could feasibly solve the riddle. The language knowledge is the skill. Inherent stat value plus skill = effectiveness. For a single stat to directly represent all power is just weird. Unless your muscle tissue literally produces magical energy whenever it moves (almost like static electricity), how can you even do that? How can I write down a dimension that's both my height and my weight at the same time? "I'm 73." "... years old? Inches tall?" "... Yes. I'm 73 hei-ge." What if tall people were ALWAYS older than short people? Always. You can write a fictional world in which that's true. Sure. It just HAPPENS to not be true in the real world. But, it also goes against the idea of unique distinctions between specific factors of living entities. It's... strange. In Avatar, Toff was tiny and blind. Physically, she could barely hurt anyone. Non-physically, she was ridiculously powerful. Her physical and elemental power were not one in the same. If you told her to just physically rip a big boulder out of the ground, without bending Earth, she couldn't do it. And yet, she could throw a friggin' small mountain at you if she bent. You see, unless everyone can't help but use magic (if physical effort/force and magical/fictional effort/force are LITERALLY the exact same thing), then you're dealing with two separate capabilities. And if these two separate capabilities are ALWAYS identical, that's WEIRD! Am I going crazy here? My arm's muscle fibers exist independently of any magical ability I could have. They need only a tiny electrical impulse from my brain in order to MECHANICALLY, PHYSICALLY contract in an elaborate fashion and generate raw, physical power that transfers through my arm into whatever I "use" my arm upon. Then, separately, I could generate some fire with my mind and some fictitious ability to use fictitious energy that is not inherently real-world physical energy (which my arm already uses, and still uses in fictional settings) to generate that fire. If I punch you, I can punch you AND burn you, or I can just burn you, or I can just punch you. It's not impossible to make a world in which I MUST punch you with a certain amount of might to be able to burn you, but... why? There's a difference between a somatic component and the actual application of physical, muscle-generated force. I don't know how else to describe it. Unless your fiction quite literally merges the two things (so that all physics is inherently re-written to become magic), the marriage of physical force's rating and magical force's rating for a given entity is purely arbitrary and prevents a lot of RPG character factor variety from existing for seemingly no benefit/gain at all. Well, apparently we at least share the same sentiment regarding such a system, even if I'm possibly just going crazy and there's not actually a flaw/disconnect in it. Yeah, I like the idea behind your proposition. And the problem I'm trying to put my finger on is almost the exact same thing as the tying-Intelligence-to-magical-prowess thing. Can it be done? Sure, it WAS done, for a lonnnng time! And I think it caused a problem: You couldn't make a Wizard whose intellectual capabilities weren't equal to his magic-harnessing capabilities. That would be like if Strength automatically determined a DnD Warrior's aptitude for combat strategy. "The more weights I lift, THE GREATER MY UNDERSTANDING OF WARFARE GROWS!!!". Haha.

I didn't mean to suggest that. I wasn't meaning to be defensive. Only to clarify. Yes. That. I couldn't think of the appropriate phrase, but "talking past each other" is quite apt a description, . See, I interpreted your use of "symbolic representation" a bit inaccurately. I was thinking that, since it was "vs realistic representation," symbolic was to mean the use of language symbols (characters and words in various languages) to represent things, again, with "realistic" being the actual "This guy's sad, so we're gonna show him frowning, rather than symbolically describing his thoughts and sadness, even though you just see a little character on the screen and cannot see a face that grows sad." *nod*. For lack of a better phrasing, it's sometimes much more useful to perceive the imperceptible ("see" into someone's mind, or know things that only the near-omniscient "narrator" knows) and deduce the realistic er... perceivable events from that (whether they're at all perceptibly represented or not). And vice versa; sometimes it's more useful to simply perceive an action/event, in detail, and deduce the imperceptible factors involved with it. If someone witnesses something that causes them to mentally snap, for example, I don't think any amount of textual description of what's going on in their mind is going to be as effective as a visual and audible representation of them ferociously throwing themselves at another person with sheer vengeance as their only focus, with their responses of "I'LL KILL YOU" interrupting any and all other words. At that point, we can relate that state of mind to the actions and the emotional response much more intuitively than we can with a calm, written description of that narrow-minded rage and almost involuntary compulsion. Agreed. No matter what, the player is a 3rd party, spectating on the action (to a degree). Perfect realism wouldn't even be achievable unless we were somehow fed the character's neural impulses and thoughts straight to our brain, regardless of the level of accuracy in the graphics and audio. In that regard, book-like text depictions have the advantage, and provide great benefit.

Which would constitute a need, IF there weren't alternatives (such as training), and if there weren't weighty risk factors (such as possible death). A character recognizes the need to improve, not the need to cause the death of all combattable things in sight, simply because improvement.

Whether or not someone could pass the check to hold up heavy things, in the given system, is not the problem. The problem, to put it the best way I can in this current context, is simply "When WOULDN'T someone be able to pass a check like that, and would that type of check even be of any significance anymore?" I mean, a character who's literally a completely weakling, both physically (with weapons and real-world physics force) AND non-physically (magically, mentally, etc.) wouldn't really be very viable. Sure, everyone doesn't have to be the strongest. But, anyone with any power in either form would be able to do everything (in regard to such checks). I realize it's still not an "Oh no, there's a hole in the space station glass and we're all eventually going to get sucked out of it" problem, but... I dunno. I mean, maybe it's just not a big deal? Maybe, in practical application, there really aren't very many situations/examples that are ruled out by a distinction between the two values. Something just still feels really, really wrong with it, and I can't quite put my finger on the exact spot of rot on the otherwise healthy fruit. Any amount of power, as represented by a single stat, automatically contributes to both pools, unless you restrict each character (by class or what-have-you) to access to only one pool (physical power or non-physical power). That's just... weird. And, never even needing to check one when you couldn't just check the other seems additionally weird. But, I can't really seem to come up with anything concrete here, so maybe I should just sleep on it for a while, haha. I agree with that sentiment, exactly, all the way down to "physical and mental power shouldn't be different." In respect to mental power arbitrarily being 100% useless in the given situations, yes. They shouldn't differ in that manner. However, if they weren't somehow different, then what would prevent them from being the exact same thing (Strong Warrior can just convert the force of his muscles directly -- 1:1 -- into quantity/heat/intensity of magical summoned flames, IF both Warriors and Wizards have access to both physical and magical means)? Or, if a Warrior can't really use magic like a Wizard (which is typical), then what would stop a Wizard from simply telekinetically wielding a sword with phantom hands with the same effective force as a strong, muscular Warrior, all day long, WHILE being an ultra-potent badass at magic spells that DON'T generate physical force? Just because a Wizard is very magically powerful, and can generate vast amounts of lightning, this doesn't mean that he can generate the same amount of telekinetic (physical) force as someone with the same abstracted numerical value in Strength instead of INT or Power or whatever. Nothing dictates that. Yes, a Wizard who can blast foes to the ground should be able to bash in a wooden door. But not a Level 1 Wizard, just because he has 18 Intelligence (DnD example). Maybe he can burn the door, or melt the lock/hinges, etc, sure. But what if they're enchanted or something? Oh, well, he's got Power now, instead of separate Strength and Intelligence ratings, so if magic-only is lessened in effectiveness, he can just physically shoulder the door down, since nothing prevents Power from representing his ability to do that. See... something just feels really, really strange about all that, to me. Maybe I'm just crazy...

I think the biggest source of the problem in RPGs (or at least in typical, prevalent fantasy RPGs) is the idea that anything other than pristine health/condition is imminently terrible. The enemies are designed to take your health down to 0 (like Captain Planet with pollution), and your characters are designed to literally COUNTER that and push your HP back up to full, or as far toward it as is possible. Heck, even shooters and the like used to typically make not-full health an okay, normal thing. You took some shots, you were at half health, and you had to actually be more careful now until you could find medical supplies. Sure, they abstractly instantly healed you, but still... they were at least scarce, and you had no instant-regen, because the game wasn't designed around you definitely taking 15 bullets every 3 seconds. I think that, at the very least, it would be interesting to see a healer role not vanish, but simply be repurposed from a "I do ANTI-damage to you!" role into a "I mitigate damage" role. If you get hit with a sword, and it gets through your armor, you get sliced and begin bleeding. Maybe you got hit on an artery, or maybe you got hit in some "meh" place that'll clot just fine on its own after not-too-bad of bloodloss, etc. But a healer could easily stop that bleeding. COUNTER negative effects into negation, so that you're still in a worse state than you were, but there are no longer effects constantly chipping away at your state of health. In other words, I do think it would be a refreshing change if healers simply kept you in the fight rather than keeping you in pristine condition. Combat could easily focus more on the effective use of your finite HP pool, and less on the finite use of your finite HP-replenishment pool versus the enemies' use of their finite damage pool against your finite HP pool. It's really a bit redundant, the whole "They do damage, but we UNDO damage" concept of healers. Annnnywho... potions. This KIND of has to do with potions, since they're typically bottled heal spells, among other things. If healing worked like this, I think potions would be a lot more necessary. And/or items-that-aren't-potions-but-sort-of-serve-the-same-purpose. Magical consumables, we'll say. They could be poultices/bandages, salves, etc. Wouldn't even have to be magical healing, but wouldn't have to NOT-be, either. Heal skills could determine how much bleeding is stopped (in the example of a bleeding wound; the effectiveness of the bandage), as well as how long the bandage/salve/poultice works (the skill with which it was applied and tied, etc.). Things like that. Spells could do the same. Spells could knit your flesh, even, without needing to fully "heal" you up and restore all your lost blood and vigor. I think it's pretty awesome how that works in The Wheel of Time. The One Power can be used to heal, but it basically uses your body's metabolism to do it. It fatigues the "caster," and it HIGHLY fatigues the healed/target. If you have a horrible, horrible wound, sometimes they can't even heal it without either the caster collapsing into a coma/death or the healee recovering from the wound, only to have all his other bodily systems fail from all the metabolism that went on to fix the wound. They'd typically only do what was needed at the time... typically just stabilization. They could also "wash away" fatigue, but it didn't actually make you less "worn" (for lack of a better word), it just made you not FEEL fatigue anymore. You were still accumulating further stress on your body, on top of whatever you had already done for the day, but you didn't have to deal with the weight of feeling it all. Kind of like overclocking your body...

I'm not against anything you're saying. I think the fact that so much of BG was symbolic language representation/context helped the game tremendously. I mean, a hi-res, Unreal-4-engine, top-o-of-the-line-tech 1st-person game with full voice-acting obviously benefits a lot more from visceral representation than symbolic descriptions, in general, but they also tend to cut out almost ALL of the latter and rely solely on the former, and I think this hurts them (relative to how effective they could be overall, as an entire game). Yet, there are still plenty of things in BG that are served well by audio-visual representation. Like the spell-casting. Some text elaborately describing the sounds and gestures coming from my character, and the behavior of the spell (colors, lights, sounds, projectile shape/appearance/speed/movement/collision, etc.) just wouldn't be nearly as effective as having the actual sounds and gestures, then watching the spell do its thing. But then, the text description comes in handy in the combat log, where it provides the details of smaller-scale things (like exact effects such as stun, daze, disarm, etc.). *shrug*... I just, I don't know what to say other than "it depends on what you're representing." I think that, in general, isometric cRPGs benefit more from the symbolic language overall, because of the style of the visuals and such and because the focus of the whole game is more on the details and context of what's going on, rather than on simple actions and events themselves. But, it's more of a ratio thing. That doesn't mean "realistically" represented visuals are rendered moot or anything. It's just more of a 70/30 thing than a 50/50. At times, the sights-and-sounds depiction of an ability or event or action might be of the utmost importance, with descriptives providing almost no purpose. But, most of the time, the accuracy of the perceivable representation takes a backseat to the richness of the symbolic language at work.

Perhaps during the cold, harsh winter, food will be scarce, and the dev team will be forced to eat Josh's musically-inclined interns. And there will be much rejoicing.

@Osvir: I'm gonna throw this on top of the pile... Amnesia. You either work to regain your lost memories (and reclaim your class/build), or you build new ones. 8P SOUL AMNESIA! (I'm only half serious. I started at full-joke, then realized "This could technically work, in the hands of a much more skilled writer/dreamweaver than I...")

It's not that I don't get people liking almost-full-body portraits, in general, as opposed to face-only portraits. But, I don't understand the reasoning behind knowing that we're going to have full-body, hi-res "paper doll" character models that match our character's aesthetics exactly, AND insisting that spending a bunch of extra time and effort on full-body portraits with completely fixed aesthetics that are almost never going to match our character's actual look/style is somehow not a bit contradictory and mildly redundant. Methinks maybe some folk are looking at things in a bit too much isolation? *shrug*. Or maybe people just plain love them some IWD-style portraits. Even if I was one of those people, though (not that I have anything at all AGAINST IWD-style portraits), I don't know that I'd be able to consider the circumstances and still vie for IWD-style portraits in P:E. The guaranteed increase in variety of shoulders'n'up portraits, plus the benefit of not having my portrait always show some super-specific stance/air/equipment, PLUS the fact that I'll get to see a glorious, full-body representation of my character every time I visit my inventory... all those things seem to override any feelings of "If I look at a face-only portrait next to a full-body portrait, I'll prefer the full-body one." Speaking of stance... as a low-priority supplement, it might be pretty cool if we could actually choose our character's stance. The whole "They're always going to be stuck in a fixed stance in a portrait" thing got me thinking about it. It could apply to the paper doll AND/OR the in-game model. It would just be a nice little extra tidbit of reinforcement of the style we get to weave for our character. That's how the art world works. "Oh, hey, welcome to the industry! What about art makes you love it so much? Oh, you like depicting animals? YOU'RE GOING TO DRAW THE ELABORATE MASSACRE OF ADORABLE PUPPIES FOR THE NEXT 72 HOURS STRAIGHT, SO THAT YOU CAN GROW AS AN ARTIST!"

Not necessarily. You don't have to redesign the whole game just to toggle timers on things. Unless your whole narrative campaign/lore/setting doesn't even acknowledge the existence or passage of time at all, you're still going to have urgency suggested in things. Functionally, it's no different from mutually exclusive outcomes tied to choices. But, instead of the choices being multiple options offered at the exact same time, the choices would become time-based, themselves. If you're not handling urgency with any kind of timers, then you're handling it in a different fashion. Doesn't mean the idea of it ceases to exist as long as timers don't exist. Obviously, you may assume as you please. I merely encourage the lack of assumption on this matter.

I disagree. So long as one attribute represents any portion of both physical strength AND magical power simultaneously, then the design is devoid of any and all just-magical-power checks (of any sort) or just physical power checks. At least, as far as I can tell (I'm not omniscient, ). It's not a huge deal, no. But it's a simple matter of "is it totally fine that the two are never actually separated, or is it not fine because we want stuff in the game that actually needs them to be separated?" When you just talk about damage and combat, everything seems dandy enough. But, there are plenty of typical PnP-inspired skill/stat checks and such that don't have anything to do with accuracy or damage, really (again, see holding up heavy thing so people can get out from under it example above). I'm looking for input here on something I have yet to see any evidence of being untrue. With all due respect, I don't think telling me that a single stat that represents both things (a la "Power") is somehow still allowing for the independent representation of both capabilities is helping anything. What would be excellent (and I truly mean this... I know text can be misleading with tone, but I'm not being sarcastic or snide here) would be for someone to explain to me how the things I'm referring to either don't have any reason to be represented in the game, and/or how tethering them together is not at all problematic. I honestly can't think of anything that suggests this, though, again, I don't know all things, so... *shrug*. The best thing I can think of, so far, based on the proposed systems above, is to separate it by class. You're a Warrior? Well then your Power = Strength. You're a Wizard? Your Power = Magical Potency. Then, any "strength" checks, for a Wizard, could (I suppose) go against physical strength-based skills. You know, "If you've trained to 50 with melee weapons, then part of that involves physical conditioning, so you're stronger than another Wizard with only 1 melee weapons skill." And vice versa with the Warrior. Some kind of magical aptitude skill or some such... Still, it's kind of weird to measure one character's physical state-of-being by a skill, and another's by a stat. And it's kind of de-levels the whole Strength thing by class. You can't have a 7-foot-tall, 280lb Wizard who just happens to not really hone his physical skills that much (maybe he is inherently large-framed, and grew up hauling heavy things about for some manual-labor overlord, until he eventually got into magic? But he still has no real knowledge or experience with swordplay, for example). So, I have no idea. It just seems very, very much so, that using any kind of stat to represent two distinct things wouldn't work well. I gave examples of this, as well (like a stat that governs both base Strength AND base Accuracy, or base Strength AND base Agility, etc.). A problem with either of those examples would be the exact same problem with Magi-Strength.

Ahh, but even staples can be easily replaced with paper clips, or punched holes and a 3-ring binder, or those little slip-on plastic bindings that, combined with transparency sheets, turn your stack o' papers into a sort of booklet. I hear you, though. I don't think a deeper damage system (wounds and injuries and such) is completely out of the question for a game like P:E, but I would definitely say that, for reference value, copying and pasting in JA2's system most likely wouldn't be the best fit. It would definitely need to be a system designed with more fantastical things in mind. Of course, what with P:E's "there's not really any insta-healing magic that will mend wounds and replenish your blood supply at the snap of a finger" approach, I would say that if any fantasy RPG could handle a more in-depth damage system, it would be P:E. 8P

Good point, Moridin. Hadn't thought of that. Thanks for the sincere, perfectly reasonable answer. I just figured asking briefly about it here was better than firing up a whole thread about it. I was just curious why people frowned so much on it, as I saw value in it in many ways as an alternative to making a whole new thread just because there was a lull in discussion of a particular topic. So, really, thanks again. ^_^

I don't think so, no. 8(

It's possible they had him go ahead and finish his playthrough, and they'll cut them up and edit them to release the rest of it to us in episodic format.

Point taken. I missed that bit. Of course, that means your character would either have to be allowed to wield a sword, but just stand there and never actually swing it (attack speed 0), or you'd just literally be incapable of even holding a sword while moving your arm in such a way that the sword actually touches something else. Which is mildly silly. I mean, a small child can pick up a stick and hit something with it. He can't really have 0 skill at Stick without lacking the ability to grasp a stick and move his arm at the same time. I would say that's probably an unintentional side-effect. If that's so (if), then to remedy that, the default skill in all things would have to be 1, not 0. Thus, the equation becomes additive, functionally, in regard to the skill that's "lacked," simply multiplying the rest by 1 (adding + 0), at the minimum. Or, obviously, the character could simply lack the sheer ability to even wield such a weapon to any effect, whatsoever. And yet, "power" would still be contributing to both physical and non-physical skills, simultaneously. So, again, it comes down to the example of the character with the minimum of any given skill either having ZERO functionality in that skill (if the skill rating can actually be 0) or a minimum of their Power value (if the rating starts at 1). Otherwise, the system works quite well. If you take much more complex meanings of "strength/power." Then yes. I'm merely referring to it's simplest, base meaning. An arm with more muscle is physically more powerful than an arm with less muscle, all other things the same. A weak arm can have maximum training and skill, or zero training and skill, just as a strong arm can. So, if you were to compare JUST the sheer strength of two people at shot-putting, then the stronger person would put the shot farther than the weaker person. All this really proves is that sheer "strength/power" does not equal effectiveness. That doesn't mean that there's no such thing as sheer power. The question, when it comes to a game, isn't whether or not sheer power exists. It's whether or not to represent it separately from other modifiers that contribute to effectiveness, or to simply abstract it all into one effectiveness rating and slap the label of "strength/power" onto that. It's not WRONG to do that. You're correct in that the terms often refer to more than just measured force. I'm not trying to argue against that at all. Strength, a la DnD, for example (even if it's not perfectly done), is meant to represent your raw physical power. This is why it modifies other values, most of the time. Sure, there are sometimes sheer Strength checks (such as maybe if a big chunk of debris falls, and a character is attempting to hold it up while others get out from underneath it). There's hardly any particular skill involved in pushing upwards against a bit slab of stone that's trying to crush you. Even if their was, like I said, two people with the exact same amount of skill and differing amounts of physical strength would have differing amounts of trouble actually holding up that heavy debris. That's the whole point. The only difference would be their sheer strength. See above example of ceiling debris threatening to crush people/seal off a doorway. I don't know that any amount of Unarmed skill, or any tool, would really have any significance in the success of such an abstracted check, since you're not trying to strike the debris, or utilizing any kind of accuracy, whatsoever. And, again, that system works very well. The problem isn't that system. It's simply that it doesn't change the fact that a single stat representing to completely separate things would still be a bit of an issue, in regard to the representation of those two things, individually. Also, I want to emphasize the difference between the direct representation of a character facet, by a stat, and a stat's modification/influence on a skill/tool/ability/etc. (I'm not trying to be snooty and suggest you don't know the difference. I'm simply trying to ensure the clarity of my point, as it lies with one and not the other, so as to avoid confusion as generated by me.) @Jethro: I don't argue against anything in particular that you've said, really. I'm simply referring to a baser meaning of strength/power than you are. So, while correct in isolation, the thing you're referring to (as I said above to PrimeJunta) is more total effectiveness than the individual, sheer contribution of Strength that only really makes sense to represent in a numerical quantification system of abstraction (RPG ruleset).

Thanks! I learned so many helpful facts from this: 1) If we're able to, in any way, deduce the probability that Obsidian's already made a decision about the topic of discussion (and that that decision is definitely set in stone) based on pure speculation, no discussion of said topic should take place. 2) If someone DOES want to start a new topic about something that's already been discussed a while back, it's better that the new thread potentially mimic the old thread without anyone being the wiser, since the actual review of existing discussion on the topic is pure folly. 3) If we feel that completely pointless discussion is going on, we should actually contribute to that discussion, ourselves, with argument against the discussion having any purpose whatsoever. *scribble scribble scribble*. *click*. Got it. *closes notepad*. Sorry about my ignorance of these things. Now I know, and knowing is half the battle.

Clearly, we're going to need to form up into either Team Polina or Team Kaz, and fight to the death using weapons crudely fashioned from office/computer supplies. That's the only possible solution, here.