Lephys

Yeah, they've already mentioned that any class can use any armor/weapons they want. Wizards can wear heavy armor and wield greataxes (as per your example), and Monks can even use all manner of weapons. I don't think you have anything to worry about,

A) That's pretty much how all games are made. "Hey, what if there was a game in which you had to talk to people, and they'd react in different ways depending on what you said. Also, there could be maybe a cool, tactical combat system, with swords and magic!" "Yeah! Sounds like a good idea" "Cool, let's hash out all those people that you'd use that dialogue system with, 8D!" B) I do seriously understand what there is to take from what you're saying, and, again, the only reason we're coming up with these in isolation from the rest of the game is because we cannot will ourselves to become Obsidian team members. But, they can still read ideas and be inspired to make up similar things in the context of all the other specifics of the actual game world that they know about and we don't. It's not as if they come up with a whole world full of 1,000s of NPCs, THEN they decide who should be what. "Hmm, maybe Steve should be a merchant, since he's very merchanty." "Yeah, but he wasn't merchanty until you made him merchanty. You could've just said 'Hmm, I'll make a merchanty person who'll be a merchant, and his name shall be Steve' and gone from there."

^ You can actually do that with anything. It's the context that makes it important. If your companions were all cubes devoid of personality, you could have the exact same quests and interactions in place, and they'd be pretty meaningless. It's the fact that they're well-written, "human"-like people with virtual psyche's to which we can relate that makes helping Zerich so much more meaningful than helping personality-less cube A with the exact same dilemma. I'm not saying you just insert names and go. You insert context. Hell, Lord of the Rings was really just "take Item A to Location B," if you wanna get down to it. It's what item A WAS and where location B WAS and what all was entailed with everything in between that made it more than that. The reason a fed-ex quest in World of Warcraft is even referred to as a "fed-ex quest from World of Warcraft" is because of World of Warcraft's lack of tying that quest into the world, not the fact that you're getting something at a location and taking it to another location. I really do understand what you're getting at. You don't want these isolated things to be created, then just jammed into the world of P:E without making them fit. But that's not what has to happen. Before you fit a diamond into the setting of a ring, you've got to dig up a raw diamond. You didn't need the ring setting for the diamond to exist. You just needed it to know how to refine the raw diamond so that it properly fits.

Those are very quality notions, Micamo, but I don't think anyone's suggesting that we implement completely standalone little events and happenings that have nothing to do with the rest of the game world and are poorly written. Making sure it ties into the world is a good thing to consider, so you don't mess it up, but I don't think anything about a lord's daughter being cursed with an aging disease and everyone involved having to figure out how to deal with that in real time in the game world, and the main character/party bumping into them whilst traveling, inherently fails to tie into the rest of the world. I agree that it would be better for us to come up with them in the context of the rest of the game's design, and not in isolation. But, this is the best we can do. And the general structure/idea behind such quests/events can easily be carried over into the specific context of the game world. The local lord can be any type of lord he needs to be, with any type of relationship with Sir Ederech that he needs to have, and yet his daughter can still have been cursed to age improperly, and the player can still choose how to react to such a situation.

I don't follow. Could you please explain how any of this is punishing someone, and/or restricting the stat-point allocation process? (Genuine question; I really don't follow what you're referring to).

They don't produce a static effect, so your question is moot. I refuse to answer silly questions you pose after ignoring my point this entire thread. Half those abilities have a duration (a variable one). Most of them grant saves each turn (in the D&D ruleset, at least) to the target, amounting to a variable duration (will I break out in 1 turn, or will I break out in 7 turns?). Also, you can still do things while Silenced, and while Slowed, etc. You're just left to deal with a changed factor. When you're dead, you can't do anything anymore. It leaves that character with no options. Therefore, ANY reaction on that character's part is wiped completely off the table. You're never going to roll a good saving throw next turn and come back to life. The effect is permanent (meaning that it never wears off of its own accord). You cannot be partially dead. You cannot be temporarily dead (well, I guess you could be, really. That would be an interesting ability, actually), with the type of spell effect I'm referring to, anyway. Therefore, there are only two possibilities for the spell's effect on you: nothing (regardless of what caused it to be nothing), or complete death. If you could tell me how that doesn't make any sense, that would be lovely. With any other spell that doesn't reduce your hitpoints to 0, you still have more than 0 hitpoints. So, yes, that actually is a difference. I don't care if you're incapable of performing tasks. Someone can dispel that effect and you're fine again. If someone dispel's you when you're dead, you're still dead. I suppose someone could necromantically reanimate you, and that would be kinda like dispel... give you your combat capability back without actually giving you your life back? That would actually be pretty interesting, too, heh. "What happened?" "Well, you were dead, so I... kinda used your body as a puppet. Just temporarily!" "WHAT?!" Death is not a status effect. It is the most completely a character can be removed from combat out of anything in the entire game. It is infinity. Death deals infinite damage to you, and lasts infinitely long (on its own; it doesn't ever wear off). That's why resurrection spells typically require the most resources (cast time, mana, etc.) out of any "friendly" spell in any game, ever. It's not because it's just the cure for a different status ailment. Not to mention what has been brought up in this thread like 73 times: There probably won't be any kind of resurrection (from a 0-health state) mid-combat. So, once you're dead, there is no "But someone can just revive you, just like they can un-stun you" comparison in the context of P:E. Why? Because we have Stamina. And running out of Stamina and falling "unconscious" is the functional equivalent of running out of HP in combat in a typical RPG without the dual-system. It's really quite simple: Instant-death is a roll-of-the-dice absolution, and I'd much rather have a variable-effect spell in its place. If I'm crazy, then I'm crazy. If you don't want that, then cool. My day isn't ruined just because you are more focused on figuring out ways to make sure I'm wrong than you are on actually seeing the reasoning behind my entire argument. This whole time, you still don't even know what my argument is, and it's not because it's complex. If you want to point out things I haven't thought of regarding instant death, then be my guest. But every "that's totally not what instant-death does!" response on your part is wasted typing. Absolutely, I keep going. This isn't about losing a party member. It's about HOW you lose a party member. When I'm dodging things and repositioning people and making oodles of tactical decisions to make the enemy's attacks less effective and my own MORE effective, and someone throws a "you can't make this less effective because it simply kills you" ability at me, that's like a crying baby in a movie theater. If you take advantage of my failing to move my Wizard, and crush him against a wall he so carelessly backed up against, thereby trumping all his defensive factors with your offensive ones to result in kill-achieving damage, then I tip my hat to you. If you half-assedly whip out your "I don't feel like dealing with factors, so I'm just going to fire this Death Beam" spell, and a coin is flipped, and heads means he dies, and it lands on heads... I may still not reload, but that's pretty preposterous. The fact of the matter is, the two things conflict: dealing with all the regular factors and tactical decisions of combat, and then dealing with this thing that ignores all of them. It wouldn't even be a big deal if you ALWAYS faced either ONLY instant-death wielding enemies or ONLY non-instant-death-wielding ones. But, you put them together. The sole reason regular enemies aren't killing you is because you're handling them with tactical efficiency. But the sole reason an instant-death spell isn't killing you is because you're forgoing normal tactics to place emergency-focus on one thing: Making sure that spell doesn't hit you. "Make sure nothing ever actually hits me" is not a requirement of normal tactics. You can get hit fewer times instead of more, and get hit for more or less damage. You can even get more effective offensive strikes via counters, which rely on getting hit. There's an entire tactical smorgasbord at your disposal. Then, instant-death guy steps into the battle, and it's "stop him from hitting anyone" or watch people die. And if people dying on you isn't a significant detriment to your ability to finish combat, then I dare say the combat isn't balanced very well in the first place. If it's magically balanced so that "let someone die at the cost of taking out other baddies before you tackle the instant-death guy" is equally as viable of an option, then what's the point? "we hand-tailor every instant-death-involving encounter to make sure instant-death isn't TOO much of a restriction on what tactics you can use." That's the whole problem. It restricts tactics. Again, it doesn't instantly make combat pointless, or kill the whole game, just because it exists. But it does cause tactical restriction.

Excellent example, Teknoman2! Your convincing-with-words character could lack the physiological scariness and 6ft blade necessary to really drive home an intimidate, but your 7ft-tall Barbarian who's got the scariness could lack the convincingness of tongue to describe just how menacing and brutal he can be (Hell, your Barbarian could, as a character, be totally against killing this guy because he's innocent, so he'd have even MORE trouble lying about how torturous he can be when he doesn't even believe in torture, etc.). In that case, it could even be a combo between your Barbarian's Strength (and/or equipment, etc... whatever affects intimidate, or an intimidate skill itself?) and your Thief's bluff/charisma/intelligence. Even if it's as simple as "If you have enough Bluff capability, you get these additional options for bluff attempts, and if there's a 15-or-higher intimidate value at play with anyone else in your party, you get these additional options for Bluff + Intimidate combo.) A sort of skill synergy. I like it!

Well, to start simply... what if you just couldn't FULLY recouperate in a non-rest area? You know, you're trotting along through a dungeon/dangerous area, and you can only take brief "emergency rests." Maybe only when you're at-or-below 10% health and/or 10% of your per-rest ability "ammo." *shrug*. I'd hafta do some more thinking on the specifics of that (the general idea is, what's most likely is probably that the last combat encounter got you pretty close to death, but not quite there. I doubt if the last encounter took you down to 40%, you're going to be incapable of getting through the next one. (Keep in mind, here, that Health is the thing that's supposed to last you the duration of travel between rest areas, by the game's own design and balancing, and that Stamina is meant simply to last through one bout of combat at a time). Here's the point: The problem with no resting except at certain locations? "What if I get really close to death and am pretty far from both locations (the one ahead AND the one behind)?" Am I right? Well, you could "emergency rest" (only when in dire need, so as to keep it from being "Oh no, I need a bandaid for this cut and I used 1 spell! *rest* YAY! Back up to full! ^_^" every 10 seconds) and regain something like 25% of your Health, and a handful of per-rest uses of abilities/spells (or maybe even none, since you'd still have your per-encounter AND infinite-ammo abilities/spells at your disposal). So, further combat encounters can still be quite tough, since you can't just comfortably get back up to full, and get rid of all persistent status ailments, etc. which you CAN do by going to a rest-location and having a proper camp/rest and take the time to gather water, food, and herbs and such and treat wounds, etc (automatic stuff, for the most part, when you rest. It's just understood that that's WHY resting recouperates you so well). Would something along those lines be pretty nice? I mean, I still say that if you're playing on the appropriate difficulty setting for your cRPG tactical combat skill level, and the game's even remotely balanced well, you shouldn't have to use emergency rests very often. Maybe we'd see more use of them in harder difficulties where people are really ramping up the challenge against themselves. Of course, in those difficulties, they might even be less useful. But, people intentionally playing on "You're Going To Beg For Mercy" difficulty probably aren't going to be complaining about the challenge of making it between rest points without dying. *Shrug* Thoughts? (totally change whatever you want about the whole "emergency rest" notion. All the numbers and such were just example stuff for the general idea of what it could accomplish.)

Ehh, I get what you're saying, but I'd say the term could easily be applied even to a stat that COULD provide SOME amount of benefit to your character in SOME form, but with that amount and form being clearly inferior to the same point spent in other specific stats. The whole "get rid of dump stats" thing is mainly about getting rid of extremely narrow-minded associations that many games/systems have all but forced for so long. Like, why would you make a 20-STR warrior who excels at melee combat with a Constitution of 5? You wouldn't. Then, you've got the class tie-in. "Well, I'm a Warrior, so I can wear awesome armor, which already negates DEX modifiers to AC in the upper tiers, so I don't really need DEX, either." Then, you start running into dump stats, because of other groupings. "Well, I COULD try to get high Charisma, but I can't have high Charisma, high Strength, high Constitution, AND high intelligence, and without intelligence, I can't really come up with clever ways of talking my way out of situations and such, so... I guess I'll just cut my losses and go with mediocre-to-low Charisma and Intelligence." Basically, just because you're a warrior, and want to focus on melee combat, most stats don't really do anything for you. If you split them up a little bit more, you allow them to tweak sub-roles within specific roles, rather than only belonging to entirely different roles, for the most part. The INT-DEX divide on critical strikes was just an example. It doesn't have to work like that. And, even if it does work like that, 20 INT doesn't have to necessarily give you any further advantage than 14 INT. It's just, normally, with a melee-combat-oriented character, unless you just want to be smart for RP's sake, you don't really get any character-build-mechanics benefit whatsoever from INT, so you can drop it down to like... 6, easily, and get those extra points to pump into other things. It's more of a "why NOT get those extra points?" situation. Whereas, if it affected, for example, your critical hit modifier, you'd have a reason to take INT for two completely separate roles: melee-combat, AND clever predicament-solver. And the general idea does at least seem to make sense. I would think a 6-INT Warrior would rely on brute force and the general effectiveness of his fighting technique to simply overpower his opponents and make sure he's not NOT-hitting them. But, a 14-INT Warrior (comparatively) would probably fight a lot more intelligently/efficiently. And I'm not talking a crazy range, here, either. No "Oh, you have 6 Intelligence? Your crit modifier is X 1.2. You have 14-INT? It's now X 7!!!!". No mechanic idea escapes the need for moderation. Also, for what it's worth, having a melee Warrior with a base 1.2 crit damage modifier, and having a melee Warrior with a base 1.8 crit damage modifier are both perfectly viable options. With low intelligence, you're not without the ability to critically hit, and with high intelligence, you're not gaining some immensely over-powerful capability. It's just something that used to not be variable, and now it is. AND it gives INT something to do where it typically had no purpose (in affecting combat prowess). AND it seems to make at least some sense as something Intelligence could affect. Another example would be Endurance/Consitition, for, say, a Wizard. Maybe it could boost Concentration, by allowing the Wizard to more easily ignore/endure physical damage/trauma while casting. Hell, the stats could even do different things for different classes. Potentially. I'm not vying for anyone to just arbitrarily roll call the stats and make sure they all have 3 jobs, no matter what. I just see the potential for stats to affect more than they typically do, and I'm attempting to explore that potential to see if it works throughout, or if there's always a big fat wall halfway through. To go on what you said, I get that it can easily become gamey and artificial. I'm trying to figure out if it can be done without that happening, not claiming that it's just inherently not possible for it to become gamey. But, can you honestly say to me that the idea of Intelligence affecting one's ability to pick out weaknesses in an opponent's armor/physiology/technique is so artificial and doesn't fit with how intelligence works in reality, at all?

I really don't think they were all that bad, what with their lore and all. It's just a little funny how you could kinda see a Bioware meeting, with someone saying "Yeah, man! That's like TWICE the romance options with HALF the work! 8D," followed by high fives all around.

^ +3 DC to disarm attempts. 8P

I'm not gonna claim to know any specific numbers, here, but you've gotta think it's possible to find lots of voice actors who DON'T charge 7 grand per sentence, just like some big shows and films get a bunch of no-name actors and actresses who rock, even though they're not in the spotlight until AFTER being seen rocking in said show/film. Those actors/actresses consider themselves pretty lucky to be in that big of a project, and they don't say "Okay, as long as you give me 7 million dollars." They probably get like a hundred grand, to start, until the show/film does really well. Then that price starts going up. And that's full-acting, not just voice acting. I'm not saying it's easy, but I just don't think the only people out there talented at voice acting are all already well-established chargers of extravagant sums.

They could always toss in a blue, fictional race that appears female but is actually genderless... Oh, wait. This isn't Bioware.

I'm not making fun of it, 'cause I do love it, honest... but... I couldn't help noticing he looks kind of like a crayon. 8P

I don't think there was EVER an era during which fur undies weren't an available technology. 8P

You specifically chose a mace and a warhammer -- two remarkably similar weapons -- to try to make it look like the very idea of functionally different weapons doesn't even exist. For what reason, I have no idea. So, I chose to actually consider weapons with relevant functional differences. Since every other attack/ability in the game possesses a MINIMUM of 2 possible outcomes -- success or failure -- and my point revolves around the differences between instant-death abilities and all other abilities, then we can obviously rule out "failure" as moot to try to evaluate as a difference. I don't know how to make that any clearer. When a sword hits (doesn't fail), it can do multiple things. When a fireball hits (doesn't fail), it can do multiple things. When an instant-death spell hits (doesn't fail), it can do one thing. Reduce your HP to 0. When a sword hits you, it deals a finite, variable amount of damage that does not necessarily reduce your HP to 0. When a fireball strikes you, it deals a finite, variable amount of damage that does not necessarily reduce your HP to 0. When an instant-death spell hits you, it doesn't care how much HP you have, or what your armor is, or any other effect-mitigating/altering factor in the universe. It reduces your HP to 0. Again, I pretty much can't make it any clearer than that. Non-instant-death ability? More than 2 effective outcomes (including failure). Instant-death ability? Only 2 effective outcomes. Hence my use of the term "binary" that you failed so hard to comprehend, then felt the need to act like I was some kind of moron for using. I'm sorry. I wasn't aware that P:E would only be copying spells from existing games, and didn't have the potential for unique, novel spells. I see you need a breadcrumb trail. All right. I only covered the nature of melee combat? Okay, lightning bolt. Once it hits you, it can deal various amounts of damage, based on lots of factors. Even then, it only deals a finite possible range of damage, so that the extent of the effects of that damage on a given character depend on their current health, possibly armor (or magic resistance... really depends on the system used). Poison: even after it hits you, it deals various amounts of damage, lasts various amounts of time, and even affects other things (such as regeneration of health/stamina in some instances). I don't see how magic and melee working differently has any bearing on the fact that both produce finite and variable effects in contributing towards a character's death. Instant-death spells are the only ones that make it so. Really, the only thing I could think of would be something like petrification. But, if it wasn't a temporary/curable condition like in some games, and was, instead, permanent, then it IS an instant-death spell, just with a slightly different flare. "Instantly kills you by turning you to stone." So, yeah... if all it has to do is actually successfully connect (just like any other ability in the entire universe), and you turn to stone and die, then it is functionally the same thing. If you could give me an example of a spell that isn't an instant-death spell that produces just a single static, invariable effect, that would be so lovely. I would very much appreciate it. ^_^ Then that doesn't answer the question of why you've been arguing this whole time against something I've not even been talking about. o_o "You're totally wrong about instant-death spells, because *cites a bunch of D&D/IE spells that he blatantly admits aren't instant-death spells*!!!" Hehe... Also, you keep claiming such spells do not exist? Well, neither does Project: Eternity, the game. You see, it's what we call "in development," meaning that they could be writing any spells at all at this very moment. You see, that's kind of why we're discussing whether or not to put instant-death in the game. I don't think the name of this topic is "Should we copy spells ONLY from D&D/IE games?" In case you didn't know, P:E won't be using the D&D ruleset.

Yeah, it's not about making all the attributes necessary to every class. It's about stripping them of complete uselessness. The choice of which attributes to put more points in is the player's, but... well, think of it this way... If you go to a restaurant, and you look at a menu, and you can get a french fry for $20, or a 3-course meal for $20, that's not much of a choice. I'd rather the two choices be equally viable in filling up my stomach (for the money spent), and it simply be a choice between other factors (flavor, texture, consistency, different nutrients, etc.). It's silly when one point in stat A gives you an increased available skill pool for your class skills (higher level spells, class feat prerequisites, etc.), AND damage of the type you use, AND increased accuracy with melee weapons, and the same point in stat B gives you... a slightly higher Will save and perception check.

Definitely. That's the thing with these kind of changes. The natural (and understandable) tendency is to try to imagine the first-hand experience of a game with these changes, but all we have to immediately call to mind are games that were not built around such design decisions. I think a lot of the "oh no, this is going to be a problem!" alarm regarding things P:E is doing differently from past games stems at least partially from that disconnect. The first thing people think of is BG2 with no combat XP, or BG2 with suddenly extremely limited rest spots. But, the reason I'm so optimistic about such changes is that, P:E isn't limited to being BG2. Obviously, they COULD screw it up with the rest of the game's design not really supporting (or being supported by) a particular design decision very well, but, as you've expressed regarding Obsidian most likely having intuitive indication of where the player can rest and where he cannot, I doubt they're not ferociously considering the potential problems these design decisions could cause and simply designing the rest of the game so that they are never really problems to begin with, much less things to be "fixed" after the fact. *shrug*. Maybe I'm just a crazy optimist, heh. Hahaha! No way! Full-contact Rock-Paper-Scissors shall determine the victor! 8D

Yeah, I can't remember where, but Josh mentioned that there are 4 (thus far) different types of defense, basically. Armor contributes, with deflection, I think. I think skills like Parry also work in there, though. Essentially, your defense is supposed to be your aggregate ability to mitigate hits (grazes) and/or nullify them alltogether. But, it's all represented at the same time. I think. So, your ability to deflect an attack with your weapon AND the deflection capability of your breastplate both work together in the same "did this thing hit you, and, if so, how well?" equation. So, basically, if you're a BAMF at active deflection, and you're wearing full plate, and someone who's even still decently skilled at attacking techniques/accuracy strikes at you, their full miss range is going to be higher (maybe 1-10, or 1-15, even), and their Critical Hit range is going to shrink (possibly go away). You're basically pushing the range boundaries against either the ceiling (100) or the floor (1). I really wish I could find that post from Josh... I think it was in an update? All I can remember is that Deflection was for physical attacks, Evasion (or some form of Dodge) was for area effects, and there was another for Magic (basically resistance). I cannot even remember what the 4th was. This was a little while back, too, so things might have changed and we simply don't know about the changes yet. EDIT: Ahhh, found it. Update #39: So, I was actually wrong about "evasion," as it is called "reflexes," and I was also wrong about there being a magic-only defense rating.

Oh, I'm sorry... You were referring to simply to like "this mace looks like a mace and deals 8 damage, and this warhammer looks like a warhammer and does 9 damage." My mistake. I thought you were talking about functional differences in weapons. If that's the case, then what difference would there be between having 17 different weapons that all function the same way, and just one weapon type (aside from the mild jollies we get from seeing various models represented and more easily pretending that we're using "different" weapons)? Poor word choice on my part. Their effect is the same, when successful, no matter what. A sword that strikes light/zero armor can deal higher damage and cause bleeding, for example. The exact same sword, wielded by the exact same character, at the exact same level, against the exact same enemy with the exact same HP (who happens to be wearing heavy armor) might deal significantly lower damage and fail to open a bleeding wound. Can you guess what the "Kill Instantly" spell does in both situations? That's correct... it kills instantly. If there's no such thing, then why have you wasted your breath this entire thread? If a successful hit from a spell (on a valid target; I don't care if there's one spell that works on everything, or 300 different death spells for 300 different enemies... if there's one that works on a given enemy, then obviously that's the one I'm talking about) ignores all other factors and produces the death of that target, then it is an instant-death spell. Otherwise everything that could possibly deal damage would be called a "Possibly-Under-The-Right-Circumstances-Instant-Death-Ability." If you hit me with a stick for 1 damage, and I happen to only have 1 hitpoint left, and am vulnerable to attacks from sticks, that doesn't make your attack an "instant-death" stick attack. It makes it a "circumstantial-death" stick attack. The stick doesn't produce death. It just produces damage. The damage has the potential to cause death. I've been talking about "instant-death" abilities and spells this entire time. The thread is literally named "instant death." What do you not get about "instant" and "death" distinguishing an ability from other abilities? If the effect of the spell is unconditional death, then that's what I'm talking about. If the effect of the spell is not unconditional death, then I'm not even arguing against that.

You could, and you'd be right. And there'd be nothing wrong with that. But, the game still challenges you to do more than that. It gives you tools and blocks, and asks "what can you do with these, within the confines of the placement grid and physics and the limitations of your tools, etc.?". See, I get the feeling that you're taking more from the word "challenge" than it's actually presenting. You seem to be suggesting that easiness, as opposed to hardness, equals a lack of challenge. But the easiest challenge in the universe is still a challenge. "Throw a pebble at least 10 feet" is a challenge. "Interact with a pebble" is not. As broad or as easy as it may be, challenge, in some capacity, is at the core of any game. Especially a game like Project: Eternity (and any other cRPG, really). If it wasn't, then all the limitations (HP, mana, restricted dialogue choices, finite stat/attribute/skill allocation points, damage, move speed, party size, etc.) would be completely moot. There would be no reason for the possibility to die in combat, or the possibility to fail to resolve any given quest or situation.

So wait... having different weapon types that work to varying effects under various circumstances is likened to having death spells (which work the same way against everything), and having only a single weapon type that always works the same against everything (because it's the only one) is likened to only having abilities whose effects actually react to various factors and circumstances? That seems a little bizarro to me. *shrug* I'm also confused by how you keep suggesting "death" and "instant, absolute death no matter what" are the same thing. Like, if something can't ignore all factors but one and kill me, I won't be afraid of all the other ways my party can die via tactical complexity. Yes, removing the threat of death from the game would be bad. Removing the threat of death gambling, however, is an entirely separate animal.

You're not disagreeing with me, then. You're disagreeing with the nature of games. You do realize that a "game" existed long before "video games" did, hopefully. Imagine if the people who invented hide-and-seek so long ago just said "Meh, you don't actually have to find anyone. The game is actually just called 'Hide'. You can't even succeed or fail, in any capacity. Who wants to play?! 8D!" You can interact with things all day long without ever accomplishing anything. Therefore, if games were simply entities of interaction, you could play tons of games in which there is no progress to be made in any capacity. You could even say that a game like Minecraft challenges you to be creative with blocks. Therefore, the challenge is much broader, but it's still there. You could, for example, just get into Minecraft, and run in circles for hours and hours and hours, and do nothing else. Are you interacting with the game? Sure. Are you actually accomplishing anything at all within the context of the game's design and purpose? Nope.

If I'm not mistaken, the quantity limitation (spells per day) is an abstract representation of the amount of magic-usage fatigue each spell incurs. As is mana, really. Granted, I get that neither generally comes coupled with the physical aspects of fatigue that you're referring to with your Gandalf example, and that is an interesting aspect, indeed. However, I think they generally just treat it as two different forms of fatigue. Kind of like how doing 6-straight hours of math might leave your brain's complex-processing circuits a bit spent, but it wouldn't make it difficult to go run a few miles at that point. I would be quite interested in seeing some kind of endurance/fatigue aspect to spells, though (and physical attacks/actions, really), even if mental and physical fatigue remained separate. Maybe, instead of being solely dependent upon hard-coded cast times, the cast time of your spell would depend heavily upon your level of mental fatigue. So, if you cast 3 big spells back-to-back, each takes 4 seconds longer to cast than the one before. Kind of like carrying a 100lb weight 50 feet while sprinting will leave you more tired than carrying a 20lb weight 50 feet while sprinting. All the while, your mental fatigue would slowly dissipate. Smaller/simpler spells would exert you less than larger/more complex spells, so, you wouldn't have to space the smaller spells out as much as the larger ones to prevent your fatigue from increasing beyond a certain point. Of course, I'm not sure how anything resembling that example system would fit into P:E, what with already-complex party control as it stands. You'd need some pretty complex behavior settings to tell your Wizard not to get his cast time up up above 8 seconds, or to do just that when having those extra spells now rather than later are worth the fatigue afterwards.

Me too. Unless "herbalist" is a valid crafting profession. In which case, the more mortar & pestle grinding, the better!