Lephys

Trying to bring back the traditional lightning bolt's effectiveness? Heh. It could be possible. Perhaps a perception distortion or an impulse to indulge in a conga line/millitary drill? Form up! Something along the lines of an attraction to a point to form a solid group? Then to make them scatter the opposite; a repulsive suggestion. Can't work on everybody, willpower check perhaps? Lines would be harder as they are less organic. It would be a bit over powered. So it would require more effort/cost and be less effective on high level creatures, but I imagine a line of low level beasts would be fun to shred with a single spell/bullet. A few new ideas I had were: Mental duel: In a battle with an enemy Cipher the allied Cipher can elect to attack the opponent in a direct mental clash instead of the elaborate tricks they normally use. This in effect results in a temporary paralysis on both sides as they struggle. Depending on level, willpower, concentration and intellect the clash can result in three outcomes; a draw a win or a loss. In the case of a draw both sides are drained of stamina but unharmed. In the case of the player's win the opponent takes moderate damage and is weakened/dazed for a short period and in the case of a loss vice versa. I imagine this to be a dangerous ploy to be attempted only when facing a higher level group and need the enemy Cipher out of commission for a period or when facing Ciphers substantially weaker than your own and wish to press the advantage. An extension or perhaps an extra skill learn-able if you possess the multiple minds ability/perk: Double strike. For every effect you cause which targets one enemy you produce two, targeting a second for half the cost of the first; as your alter-ego duplicates your attack. Toggled ability. Yes to all the positional abilities critique, and yes to Mental Duel. And I like that you went ahead and halved the cost of the duplicate effects, since I was thinking "wait, that could get a bit out of ha..." before I read that part, haha.

You can run any Steam game, inherently, without Steam, simply by launching it from its folder instead of through Steam? I wasn't aware of this.

A "step EXACTLY where I step" pathing/formation option, to move your party through dangerous traps and other hazards, and/or for some sneaking purposes. A la Phone Snake. If your main character runs into your snakey companion body, YOU LOSE!!! O_O

5 is an arbitrary number of minutes. I never said "a well-known RPG, in existence, has healing potions that actually take 5 minutes to work." You yourself said "Why wouldn't healing potions be instant?" That's literally the point. It could be .000007 minutes, or it could be a million minutes. It doesn't matter. Hence the nature of a hypothetical example. What does happen is that some games (which I already cited, so you can actually read if you'd like to know what they are) have heal-over-time potions, even outside of combat scenarios. So, you're just standing about, waiting for however-many seconds for your healing to work, when there's no strategic timing, or factors to deal with, or anything. Just "Wait such-and-such time to heal, or don't heal and be on your way right now." That's the point. I don't know how to make it any clearer. You've even acknowledged the point already, multiple times. You just didn't acknowledge it AS the point, and instead suggested I had some other ludicrous point, or that a point didn't exist. All because you're apparently too proud to say "Oh, I didn't realize what your point was," because being an imperfect human is totally for other people. There's no shame in missing a point. It doesn't even necessarily mean it was your own fault for missing it. But you know what IS your own fault? Ignoring someone else's observance that you've missed their point, and claiming it's impossible that such a thing could've happened. It is not my intention to make you out to be some kind of idiot. I don't want to make you feel bad. I don't want you to have my opinions. I merely want my point to be clear. That is my interest. If it isn't clear, I'll do whatever I can to make it clear. But I can't make you care what my point is. I can only make it as clearly as possible.

^ Well, I rather think they would work quite well in the game, for what it's worth. Another (primitive) idea I had... what if a sort of specialization (or sub-group of abilities) for Ciphers was as a supportive, positioning person? You know, trick enemy minds into thinking there's a need to group up, or move to specific areas, or run into traps, etc.? Maybe you get them to form a linear formation (because they believe they had a good reason to), and another party member uses some linear, piercing attack that is most effective when enemies are in a line. Etc.

And that makes sense. However, the same reasoning is still being used to define what is and is not a "threat." That's my whole point. When you switch to the proposed "We're probably going to shift the definition of 'a threat' to groups of enemies, rather than every single individual enemy being one," it's almost the same thing as switching from feet to meters to measure. It's a simple balancing issue, the same as "How much of a threat should we put in this spot? Should we put an orc, or a dragon?". It's functionally the same as asking "should we put an orc, or 100 orcs?" So, yes, having a thing's death be the removal of "a threat," and having the removal of "a threat" be the threshold for XP reward frequency is an arbitrary decision, in that the amount of time and effort the killing of that thing constitutes is being evaluated and agreed upon, by the designers of the game, as an acceptable "threat." All I'm getting at (and was trying to in all similar posts and usages of dragon examples in the other thread) is that the basis for the decision of when and why to grant XP in anything related to killing is exactly the same in both forms of XP-handling that have been so gladiatorially pitted against one another by numerous folk who share concerns about the proposed objective-based-only XP system. All I'm looking for is an "Oh, well yeah, I hadn't really thought about it like that." Or even an "I already knew that, but it makes sense." This is merely an effort towards a better understanding of how the systems function before human decisions start causing any problems. Not a "I shan't sleep until ALL bow before the mighty objective-only XP system! MUAHAHA!" It's just my natural response to the outcry of "That newfangled system is stupid and makes absolutely no sense!". I know it does make sense, so I'd rather people understand it if they're going to hate it. And if they don't care to understand it, and they still want to hate it... Well, I'm not the opinion police. Heh. This is true. And this is a part of balancing, after the decision to make kills a static objective in your XP system. Think of the change this way: The only thing different, really, is that the minimum CR is higher now. If a goblin has a CR of 5, then nothing below a CR of 20 (at a given level) will give you EXP. Then, the enemies are placed accordingly. So, you're probably not going to be running into individual goblins simply roaming about. Because they don't naturally do that. There are only individual goblins randomly strewn about if the devs design it that way. So, you run into a group of 4 goblins. Minimum CR met! Maybe you get 100XP for taking 'em out. Run into a group of 12 goblins? For example's sake, we'll just stick to simple math, so you get 300XP for taking 'em out (even though it would probably be higher, since you're fighting 12 at once, rather than 3 separate groups of 4.) Anywho, this is no different, really, from a single goblin becoming too easy and no longer giving you XP in a per-kill-XP system. The devs obviously wouldn't populate the world with goblins at a stage in the game where they know the single goblin's CR is too low. So they start throwing orcs at you, all balanced to the needs of lore and story, of course. And various other, higher-CR creatures. Well, in a kill-XP system, if they wanted to use goblins again, they'd have to basically designate a big group of goblins as a special exception to the "goblins are too low-CR to give you XP" rule they've already established. Whereas, in the objective system, if they add up to a high-enough group CR, they're a combat objective. If not, they aren't. And, again, the enemies are placed accordingly. If you need to fight a group of 12 in order to get XP, they're probably not going to fill an entire dungeon with groups of 11 goblins, just to spite you. Everything is designed and balanced with everything else in mind. If it's not, it's designer error (which happens... I know. It's a complex thing, a whole RPG.) Hopefully this was both constructive and helpful. Hopefully. *blink blink*

Ahhh. Much appreciated information. I probably even read about that, then forgot about it. 8P. I don't have a very high WIS... haha. Still, the viability of installing a game through Steam, then having it run without Steam is useful information as well. Even if Obsidian already has such things worked out and happens to not need it for P:E.

I REALLY like this, but I think they should provide a bonus to your skill check (if you happen to have them in the party in that situation, and they don't hate everything you stand for), rather than mulliganing your skill check with their own. For example, say you have a skill of 50 at Intimidation. I know P:E might not have an Intimidation skill, but just pretend it does for the sake of the example (however it works in P:E, this will still work the same way, just not with a hard skill value.) If you try to intimidate some person who has an Intimidation difficulty check of 55, you're going to fail. BUT, if you have Thorbert the Dwarf in your group at the time, he totally backs you up when you Intimidate, and your collective Intimidation is 65 now, so the NPC in question looks at the both of you, gulps, and spills information/lets you pass/etc. Basically, it could've worked like that in NWN2. I'm not sure. It might just have you fail (because of the example 50 versus the difficulty check of 55), THEN have your companion step in and add their boost. All I'm getting at is, if you have an Intimidation skill of 5, and they're just gonna step in when you fail and give you a roll of 65 anyway, it kinda detracts from the usefulness of your main character EVER specializing in Intimidation (unless you play alone, or always have the wrong people in your party at the wrong times).

Very true. That was precisely why it seemed to me that the idea of P:E-lore-specific "diseases" might be explored, and maybe the only ones you can contract in the game directly affect the soul? Almost... magical/spiritual/fictional diseases? Or... "conditions," if you prefer. Soul Tarnish. Spirit Tear. Soul Malignance? I think that quote about healing lore in P:E talks only about PHYSICAL diseases and conditions not really having any magical means of "curing" or quick healing. Didn't it say something about non-physical things being healable? (And one would think Ciphers could aid in mental illnesses, etc.) Ahh, no, here's the part I was thinking of: It doesn't really say anything about non-medical/physical illnesses and conditions. So, I dunno... at the very least there's plenty of room for "illnesses" of the soul.

Also... aren't certain backer tiers getting physical media? Is my disc gonna take me to GOG to download the game, or is it gonna run via Steam? (If the answer to the first question is "Yes.")

If we had to use keywords, it would be tough to dye your log the color you wanted. Maybe they should just have a color wheel selector for us to dye our logs? Horrendous joke aside, I am also quite excited to see how that system works out in Wasteland 2 (I know it's been used before, but I haven't played the older games that fiddled with it). And while I don't think it COULDN'T work in P:E, I hardly think it's necessary. It seems to fit better in a setting like Wasteland, where you're not surrounded by bustling cities and folk and oodles of lore and all that jazz. The tone of your dialogues is going to be much more investigative in that setting than it is in a typical medieval-fantasy setting. There would be so many keywords, it would be crazy. And it would kind of detract from the extremely rich style of the dialogue, methinks, if not done just so. Could be done, but doesn't really need to be.

Maybe that's when the players who just say "Well, my Rogue's the awesomest lockpicker, so I'll just have HIM/HER focus on lockpicking, u_u" are upset for putting all their skill points into one basket, and the people who say "Hmm, I might have my main character pick up some medium-level lockpicking, just in case" are overjoyed at being able to open a bunch of not-too-crazily-complex doors and chests throughout the "SURELY our Rogue is deadeded T______T" segment. ^_^

^ That's the kind of spellcasting control I long for in an RPG. This whole "I can make it rain lightning bolts in a 20-foot area, and I can make ONE lightning bolt in a single spot, but I can't make it rain lightning bolts in a single spot, and I can't make lightning strike once in a 20-foot area" thing kind of makes it feel like your spells are just James Bond gadgets. "Oh, I can magically create this grenade, but it always has the same properties. The only difference, really, is that I don't have to buy it or carry it around. 8P" . I want magic to feel like my Wizard is actually intentionally weaving things just so to make stuff happen. Granted, it would take a stupid amount of resources not to abstract that a bit, but a decent variety of variance options to spells (along the lines of shrinking an AOE for more damage, or expanding it for less damage, as per your example) would work wonders. Maybe there are a lot of enemies in a decently large area, and some extra-flammable stuff you've laid down? Maybe you're more situationally concerned with combusting the maximum number of enemies, and you're less concerned about the damage and/or knockback (or any other qualities) of the fireball or fire spell. I want to be able to tweak the cast of a spell similarly to how a Warrior tweaks the swing of his weapon. Maybe he slashes, maybe he pommel strikes, maybe he thrusts, maybe he throws it, and maybe it's an axe and he hooks the top of a shield with the blade, etc. The axe can be used in different ways. A fireball (in most games) can only be aimed at different things, but it always does the same thing (at a given level).

^ Yeah, I don't know if I'd want Wizard spells to just easily make everyone stealthy for miles on end or anything... BUT, the paint-your-AoE idea (and especially the example for the flammable Grease spell usage) is a phenomenal idea! 8D Probly needs a different thread, though, heh. The silency spells stuff was borderline, like I said (still deals with breaking doors, though, a bit?), but things that don't even deal with doors, we might need to jump to another thread with, for organization's sake. 8P

Those are some quality ideas, Greydragon! 8D

Balancing Stealth Vs. Combat II: The Armageddon Scale. Coming to a theater near you, this Friday. All right, all right, if this is still here, we'll see if we can't get something constructive out of it. I'll keep it simple. Here's a point I failed to clearly make (or a way in which I failed to clearly make a point?) regarding why it makes perfect sense based on the logic behind per-kill-XP, to award XP only for groups. If it sheds some light on something, awesome. If it doesn't, then *shrug*. I tried: In a per-kill-XP system, how do we determine how much XP an enemy should give? Well, you might say "with a challenge/difficulty rating." But, what is that based on? What is "difficulty," mathematically? Why does a rat give you no XP, but a Troll Lord gives you 200? Simply put, because the rat is so easy, and the Troll Lord so challenging. Quantifiably, it's because the rat requires so little effort and resources in order to overcome/kill. We're talking player resources, here (time, party micro-management, hit points, spells-per-encouter/rest, etc.). Is that not how we determine it? "Oh, this thing is so easy now, it only gives you 10 XP instead of 50. Oh, now it's even easier because you've leveled up some more, so it no longer gives you any XP." So, using that same exact basis, fighting the fearsome dragon might take you 30 minutes and all the cunning and micro-management you can muster, and that's why it rewards you with 2000XP and lots of awesome magical loot and the components for a legendary dragon claw dagger or dragonscale armor, etc. But, notice how the game, still using the exact same system, is using the quantity of effort and resources demanded from the player (including time) to determing the XP reward, but it's TOTALLY FINE with the fact that fighting a bandit for 20 seconds nets you an XP reward (albeit a smaller one), but fighting a dragon for 20 seconds does not net you any reward. If you want anything from the dragon, you've got to spend MUCH more time and effort (a greater quantity, really, of all resources involved) to get it. Hence, the decision to always award something when something dies is completely arbitrary in the context of the system. As has been mentioned, you realistically gain fighting experience and muscle-memory and technique knowledge from the act of fighting, and not from the killing blow. Yet, in a kill-XP system, the XP rewards are already abstracted to the point of an arbitrary "finish line" that is completely indefinite in nature. Are you fighting a dragon? Then you have to fight for 30 minutes, but you'll get lots more XP and loot. Are you fighting 10 bandits? Well, you'll only need to fight for 20 seconds and kill a single bandit before you'll get XP and loot (although actually getting the loot is still questionable, what with 9 other bandits standing about, attempting to bring about your demise). I know the dragon-vs-smaller-enemy example has been made several times, but I felt it would be good to stick with it, in light of the extra point I failed to make before about the fact that the kill-XP system actually determines whether or not you even get a reward from a kill, based solely on the resource/effort requirements of a given enemy. Also, you will sometimes, in per-kill-XP games, have a quest involving the battling of a horde of weak, no-XP enemies. In the numbers in which they are presented (together, as a whole group), they may actually be enough of a threat to warrant XP. Thus, the quest (i.e. "Clear out this cellar," or "find this artifact in this goblin-infested cave") might actually reward you with XP, for fighting a bunch of enemies that, individually, wouldn't give you any XP at all, but in a large group constitute an XP reward. So, is objective-based XP that doesn't necessarily reward XP for individual enemies really the devil? Well, it's based upon the same reasoning as the per-kill-XP system. What is the decision "You get XP when this thing is dead" based upon? The fact that the death of that thing required a certain amount of effort and resources to achieve. Boom. Welcome to the unbiased, reason-based basis (that the kill XP system ALREADY uses) for rewarding both combat and stealth (and all non-combat) accomplishments. And, for the record (because several people seemed to be confused in the previous thread), this isn't about seeing a group of enemies, simply sneaking past them for no apparent reason, and still getting XP as though you had fought them. This "balancing stealth versus combat" discussion is referring ONLY to times when it is viable to accomplish the same thing in two different manners: Via stealth, and via combat. No one's saying they want XP rewards for every single enemy they avoid fighting.

It could totally be a cone spell! 8D I dunno though... maybe just a radius, or some other shape? THE DODECAHEDRON OF SILENCE! ^_^ In all seriousness, though... (And this may just need to be taken to a different thread) What if spells could AID in (but not take the place of) stealthy action? Sort of the arcane equivalent of spraypainting over security camera lenses in a bank heist, 8P. Literally "Silence" sentries, so that, even though they've spotted you, they can't cry out for reinforcements. The defensive version of that is, obviously, to cone-of-silence your allies' movements and actions, 8P

Those ought'ta keep the enemy pretty... arque-busy. Now if that image was of a stacked female in revealing lingerie-like armor, then she'd be arque-bustier! And if a pirate captain saw her, he'd probably exclaim, "ARRRrrr! What a nice Que-boose!" I think to stretch the joke any farther would break it, In other news, this thread is full of awesome equipment-design-inspiring artwork. Keep it up!

Just l'in it up. -Magical items are very rare, gold is for consumables: llll -Loot is "branded/tagged", origin of items affects NPCs differently: lll -Crafted magical items are few, unique and true achievements: lllll -Temporary abstract armour degradation in combat, repairs are "automagical": lll -Armour and weaponry can get "enfeebled"/"fatigued" over time, easy repair: ll -Individual party-member quests in cities to challenge their personal strengths & weaknesses: lllll -Beast-of-burden teams embodying the deep stash; they are useful and sometimes shady: ll -Give magical non-weapon items much more love: llll -Magical artefacts for our houses and strongholds: lll -Maps, weather and environment affecting spells and the party: lll -Nice UI for weather and temperature, including an adaptive fog of war: lll -Guns can be used on certain doors and chests to open them: llll -Innovative ideas for strategic cipher abilities before and during encounters: ll -Quests, or rather objectives, centered on discovery, intrigue, info and non-fetch, non-kill X critters-goals: llll -Icons marking the tone and skill implemented when picking dialogue options: llll

I would just say that allowing any amount of proficiency to completely negate penalties like that should require a decent lack in something else. In other words, a Wizard obviously shouldn't be able to have the most amazing magic ever AND have no armor penalties with magic. The only reason I point that out is to emphasize that you wouldn't want to have armor proficiency rely completely on the talent system, then have maximum spell effectiveness not rely on the talent system in any way. If my Warrior rocks at weapon proficiency AND armor proficiency, he should lack the range of abilities (for example) that another Warrior might have who lacks either weapon or armor proficiency. OR, maybe if you have max weapon and armor proficiency, you don't get as many ability/spell uses per encounter/rest. As with anything along the lines of specialization, if you have 3 options, with 3 tiers per option, there should not be 9 points to spend between them. Otherwise, you're simply delaying the inevitable mastery of all specializations, which kind of defeats the purpose of specialization.

*Applause*

This is kind of a fledgeling thought, but what if, say, a Wizard could create a magical "bubble" around the door and your party, so that a character could perform loud actions (such as bashing a door/breaking the hinges, etc.) while still failing to alert nearby enemies? Maybe, as a jumpstart on balancing, the ability to control sound within a radius could only be maintained for a brief duration (5 seconds?), and your characters with crappier door-breaching skills would take a bit longer (maybe 10 seconds) to loudly bypass the door than would those with higher skill values? This way, the ability to mute your door-breaching actions is conditional, so it's not simply "As long as you have a Wizard, you're never loud." Also, you might have to choose that spell over something else, rather than having it as some simpler part of a default tome set or something. *shrug*. Specific party builds, FTW! Also, teamwork. u_u

^ That got me thinkin'... What if it boosted your spells/abilities, but made them less controllable? If, hypothetically, there was no friendly-fire (a Wizard, for example, just controls the chain-lightning so that it doesn't jump to friendly targets, and the fireball so that it doesn't explode in certain directions toward friendlies, etc.), then what if your spells could NOW hit friendlies, because the disease is messing up your control? AND/or extra, diseasy effects. That's what made me think of it, TRX. First I just imagined those effects being tacked onto your abilities. Then, I imagined "What if the detriment is that you can inadvertently cause negative effects to your allies now?" *shrug*. I think we're orbiting something.

Yes! I didn't know what it was called. I just knew it was a basic part of human psychology. You already achieved the normal state of not-being-diseased, so having a disease take away your normal state kinda sucks. But then, having to go out of your way just to get back what you already had (your normal, non-diseased state) is even worse. That's why almost all other loss in the game is short term. It serves another purpose, and that purpose is not to make you miserable. Lose some HP in that fight? Well, it was more exciting, because you COULD'VE died, but you didn't. That makes your awesome combatty efforts that much more exciting and meaningful. But then, you get to recoup your lost HP. Stamina will regen, and Health will replenish when next you rest (which involves natural, forward progression through the game, and simple attention to the efficiency with which you handle combat to preserve your health until then.) Diseases need to generate some sort of positive effect (TRX's list of things is a good start along those lines), and don't need to provide such a long-term loss that you must go completely out of your way in order to get rid of the loss and return to simply a non-loss state. Basically, the "amount" of loss needs to be smaller/lesser the more often the thing being lost applies. For example... if a disease causes you to do less damage, and it's going to last a while (until you can manage to get back to a city and treat it), then you've got to take into account that -5 damage is happening on every single attack between now and the time you get rid of the disease. So, it might be prudent to stick with a -1 damage or something. Or even an intermittent thing. "Every 20 seconds, your character feels a fit of weakness, and deals -3 damage for 5 seconds). Something like that (arbitrary example numbers). Another interesting idea (I think) would be for a disease to kind of shuffle things a bit, rather than simply lessen things. What if, for example, your attack/ability range was reduced by 20%, BUT you gained 2 abilities/spells per rest? Or, your movement speed is reduced by 15%, but your melee attacks have a greater chance of critical hit? Obviously there might just not be a good way to do that, even though it mechanically meets the needs of the system (for the loss to not be ridiculously agonizing). Just a thought.

No, but it has every way of knowing what your character's intentions are, and it can then allow the player to choose. Hadn't really thought of that. Excellent point. This pretty much renders the "same line but one has a [lie] tag" thing pointless. However, I still say that any other time, it should be marked, for the simple fact that, if your character KNOWS something is false when he/she says it, the player should know this as well. This ONLY applies to the main character, aka "you," and what that character says in dialogue that the player can choose from a list of options. If all the NPCs in the entire game (and even your party members) want to lie 24/7 and not inform the player, that's totally fine by me. But, if my character provides someone with information that I don't know isn't true, and my character knows it, I need to know that. If my character knows it isn't true, it shouldn't be a mystery to me. You can't perform an action later on to determine whether or not some information (we'll say about a past/existing event or state of something) is true.