Lephys

Maybe with a team of 6, you lure it to a favorable terrain (that you've studied, and is the optimal place to fight it), and make it think it's only fighting one person (mask the scents of everyone else while they hide behind rocks/outcroppings, etc.?), and have everyone ambush it at once. Two people each go for an eye with ranged weaponry (or spells/abilities), blinding it, then two others make to slice its wings so as to ground it permanently. Then comes the luck, with it thrashing around angrily (but probably still as smartly as it can), and people trying to draw its attention with sound/movement/scent at this point, and avoid its fire and claws and tail, and getting set up for a good thrust to the vitals. *shrug* I can't imagine it would be an easy task, and you couldn't always lure a dragon somewhere. But, that being a best-case scenario, the dragon would still not be at much of a disadvantage, if any, pound-for-pound. I agree that it shouldn't be a DPS-attrition-fest, like it is in many games. The dragon should be almost CONSTANTLY changing/producing major factors that require alterations to strategy, and the utmost attention to strategy even WITHOUT the changing factors. And, as far as character power goes, I don't think a fireball should do uber damage to a dragon, but it should serve well enough to blind it as well as an arrow, if striking a dragon's eyeball. MAYBE its eye even has resistance to fire/heat, so maybe it would only cause temporary blindness, and some other type of magic would be necessary to cause permanent damage to its eye.

I think the availability of different tones and specific responses being contextually appropriate would still be a viable way to handle such a system. You could still limit or expand the options based on context and need. The only important thing I think would provide great benefit is having more than one of each tone/response. Even if it's just 2 for each, that would make all the difference in the world. Maybe you have your initial choice-list: Question A Question B Aggressive starter Charm starter Then, if you pick Aggressive starter, you get: Aggressive option A Aggressive option B Maybe A is to intimidate, and B is to straight up try to start a fight. Maybe if you have them each be different types of aggression, you'd have a third response so there wasn't simply a pass/fail one of each (intimidate, provoke)? I don't know. But, not everything would even have an aggressive starter, and/or a charm starter, and/or a deception starter. I do think that increasing the total number of dialogue options is an integral part of increasing the dialogue depth, because "I'm rolling to intimidate you with this option" dressed up as "Are you certain you want to cross a man like me *cracks knuckles*" is pretty one-dimensional and gets pretty old. I mean, you don't come at a lock with a lockpick from 3 different angles. But then, dialogue manipulation isn't a lock. Of course, where most systems have a pass for any such skill check being always positive, you could simply have all options pretty much available in any dialogue, and have only certain things be positive and certain things be negative for different people. Meaning, you might be a BAMF at intimidation, but intimidating this particular person just pisses them off, or makes them so scared they actually share LESS information because they're just rocking around in a sitting position, hugging their knees. Same with deception, or charm. *shrug*. You could stick with single dialogue options in each scenario, reducing the workload on the writers. It maybe wouldn't be quite as deep as adding more options for each manipulation/tone, but it's a pretty decent compromise, I think. Off the top of my head, at least.

So you attract the attention of enemies by opening the door that you need to get through? Doesn't sound helpful. You'd already attract the attention by opening it normally, and you'd still get the advantage of using it as a chokepoint, assuming the enemy AI is smart enough not to charge toward the door (which you imply they will as a result of this psychic version of something you can do without wasting a cast.) When did I ever say it was the door you wanted to get through? In fact, I even said "It could be used on a different door than the one through which you plan on entering the room," right there. You quoted me on it. I don't understand your need to be so judgemental, but if you're going to do it, at LEAST be constructive with it. Jeez. Just plain unnecessary... And, to save you the trouble of pointing it out, obviously you would need some means of deciding which doors the Cipher had access to, and I don't know if you'll be able to peek through door cracks (or those little "Who's there" trapdoor things that I think were the early form of peepholes) in any/many doors in the game, since I'm not the one behind the game's design. Which is precisely why this is a discussion of potential useful/interesting abilities for Ciphers.

I appreciate it, and I look forward to reading them, ^_^. And I know how it is with the time-finding. No worries.

The entire reason this whole thing started (the decision, by Obsidian, to deal with XP awards on an objective basis) was because, in the previous (standard/typical) system, all dead things gave XP, but all non-combat tasks performed did not. In other words, they'd often say "Hey, look how clever you could be in this situation with stealth!". But then, you'd do that, and you'd get some different stuff, and some different outcome, but no 3000 XP that the combat guy got SIMPLY because he killed things (he'd get that even without completing the quest/objective, so the quest/objective was COMPLETELY separate from kill-xp). So, every single time you had an either/or (I'm referring to individual optional non-combat quests/objectives, and individual optional combat quests/objectives... ONLY mutually-exclusive branching path options in the same quest/objective), you had a progression discrepancy. In other words, if you had 15 of those, then you're basically saying (with example numbers) "Hey, you can totally handle these 15 situations however you want, because our game is so deep, but have fun without that 45000XP from all the deaths of things! LOLZ!" Sure, sometimes you got lockpicking XP, or talking-your-way-out-of-something XP (sometimes this was one in the same as the objective-completion XP), but you were never going to pick 20 locks (as compared to the 20 things you could kill for XP) or talk your way out of 20 situations (as compared to the 20 things you could kill for XP), and you pretty much never got anywhere NEAR the amount of XP you got by killing all things. So, yes, it was a problem. Could it be fixed? Sure it could. The XP rewards for non-combat solutions/paths (that the design itself is calling viable, and is supposedly designed around the viability of) through certain quests (especially key quests, etc.) should be more in line with what was gained from combat XP. That doesn't mean perfectly equal to, all the time. It simply means "If I handled 10 key situations with talk/stealth/cake-juggling instead of combat, when I could only do one or the other, I shouldn't be 8 levels below the combat-happy player at this point in the game simply because of my playstyle. Maybe you're 1 level behind? Maybe you got more other stuff? Maybe you got access to further quest/objective paths when the combat people's got cut off (they killed a person who would've given them some other quest or something, etc.)? Sure, that's all fine and dandy. But, in the long run, you should be decently on-par with the combat people in terms of raw level progression, as the entire combat-encounter-centered nature of the main storyline/questline depends upon it. In a completely separate (but related) note, it makes sense that some instances of killing/lockpicking/talking maybe shouldn't award XP (depending on the design of the game). If there are a bunch of creatures in cages, for example, and you can either set them free or kill them as part of a quest, killing them shouldn't get you any XP. They're not even CHALLENGING you. They're simply existing. Killing them is for the SOLE purpose of eliminating their existence, not gaining combat prowess. Likewise, you don't want people running up and down a city street at night, unlocking and re-locking people's doors simply to gain levels. It doesn't make any sense. (See? It's not about hating combat, ). So, what did Obsidian do? "Hmm... let's just make the whole SYSTEM run on designated objectives, rather than saying "Okay, kills award XP, AND objectives (which are specifically designated accomplishments of various types) award XP." Yay, simpler! Now, any particular exceptions to the "combat earns you combat prowess" rule can easily be toggled to "not-objective," and the same goes for random unlockings, etc." The system still even allows for INDIVIDUAL enemies to produce experience. So, the decision of whether or not to do that is up to the development team. So, yes, I really don't comprehend all this argument against the system itself, as it's the same thing as "kill-XP + quest/objective XP," only much more efficient. "Everything that dies gives you XP" favors a certain playstyle when "everything action that isn't killing also gives you XP every single time" isn't in the system. So, the first step of an actual argument here is "Do we want literally every skill-based action (lockpicking, diplomacy, killing, etc.) to award XP, or do we have a design in which SOME of these actions shouldn't actually progress your character levels?" "People like getting XP for everything that dies" is not a valid reason to make a design choice like that, as it affects a lot of other things. It's not a matter of "I either like the people who like getting kill-XP, or I hate them." That's not what fuels the choice. It's how it affects and restricts the design of your game that matters. It's exactly the same as having some optional "find this kid's lost rat" quest in your game that provides 999,999,999,999XP, getting your party to level 374, when all other total experience in the game only gets you to level 35. Does that hurt anyone? Yes, actually. Some people want to help a virtual small child find his lost rat, but they don't want to be level 374. So, you can't just say "Well don't do that quest, then." Well, now that's not fair. People who happen to not care that they're level 374 halfway through the game get to do that quest with no "penalty" really, and people whose playstyle doesn't involve suddenly becoming level 374 don't get to do that, without being essentially penalized. So, toning down the XP for that quest isn't out of hatred for the people who like being level 374, it's sheer balancing because being level 374, especially from a single, easy, "optional" quest is completely ridiculous and makes the entire game lopsided. It's just plain terrible design. I don't know what else to say about this, really. Maybe someone'll actually read it, and go "Ohhh, I see... I should probably stop arguing about how people who like the objective-based XP HATE combat, because those two things have nothing to do with each other." Maybe not. *shrug* For what it's worth, the reputation system should integrate with all of the above, whatever the design decisions. It shouldn't serve in place of anything in the decision of how to handle XP, because you can't just not-handle XP. It will, however, work itself in as a form of "reward" or unique outcome, just as loot and quest opportunities and XP and currency and merchant discounts and party members and everything else of the sort does. Which is why XP shouldn't be seen as the end-all-be-all reward for all situations. It's fine for some things not to award it (regardless of whether or not those "things" are combat, speech, stealth, exploration, animal husbandry, bipedal locomotion, etc.). It's indiscriminate in terms of playstyles.

I think it might work best with only-destructable doors (barred from the other side... no lock), only-pickable doors (door's too sturdy, lock's too complex), and only magically-sealed doors (Some kind of enchanted, fused together stonework that you literally can't affect without magic, for example?). That isn't to say you wouldn't have combos. Also, with things like doors that are barred from the other side, rather than locked, it might be that there's a switch (or even a LEVER, 8D!) that your Strongman-less party could get to in order to unbar the door mechanically, if they took the time to go out of their way and get to it (maybe a Rogue could only get to it by sneaking into someone's personal quarters and finding the switch). *shrug* And again, that isn't to say ALL barred doors would even be breakable, or that all of them would even have a switch/mechanism to unbar them. Basically, you'd have the exact same thing as the barrier of a lock on a door in a game where only a Rogue can lockpick (Don't happen to have a Rogue? Well, you miss out on THAT particular bit of content, behind that door or in that chest.), except you have several other abilities akin to lockpicking, each with THEIR unique barrier types. Then, you could have any combination therein. Some doors would be magically sealed and locked. Some doors would be locked and breakable. Some doors would be breakable and magically sealed. Maybe. The magical sealing is a bit iffy. *shrug*. But, from a mechanic standpoint, that works really well. Just have to figure out how to best tweak it for sensical immersion (without destroying the mechanic's functionality). And, on a side note, regarding magical-unlocking... What if magic folk could unlock a lock without lockpicks, but they still had to have a "lockpick" skill (that was more like... lock lore?)? I mean, why would a wizard even know the inner workings of a particular lock, or have a spell for that particular lock? A telekinesis spell, for example, allows an object to be manipulated form afar, but the mage must be able to SEE the object, and he must direct it himself. He knows the object is there, and he knows, based on his perception and the knowledge of his immediate environment, how to use his object-floating ability to guide the object safely to his hand. It doesn't just instantly teleport all objects within a radius to his pack. I think that's the only problem I have with the typical "Knock" spell. Sure, there might even be different tiers, but how does the spell just solve a mechanical puzzle, all on its own? Another alternative for that might be to have them be able to both cut through doors AND cut through locks/locking-mechanisms (aside from undoing "lock" enchantments of whatever sort). But, their skill (similar to lockpicking, requiring points for progression) would be some combo of structural knowledge and magical precision? I mean, anyone can swing a sword and cut someone (a person's a big target), but that doesn't mean they could be a surgeon. That kind of precision requires skill. Whether you're directing a scalpel, or channeling fire, I would think (verisimilitudily?... verisimilitudeously?). Annnnnnywho, just my thoughts. I just think Wizards blowing doors away would get a bit ridiculous, and instantly manipulating unseen tumblers in the perfect manner, inside a god-knows-exactly-how-it's-designed lock seems a bit overboard, too. If the Wizard doesn't even need mechanical knowledge of the lock to work magic on it to manipulate it in such a complex manner, why can't he just dismantle enemy organs with the snap of his fingers? "Some kind of living thing? ORGAN ROULETTE!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHA! World's in trouble? I CAST 'SAVE THE WORLD'! Annnnnd we just won. u_u" Oh, and I think bashing chests is questionable, too. Maybe a crowbar/hammer combo as a tool (rather than numerous lockpicks) would work with a forceful opening without damaging things? But, again, it'd be more of a precise force than just a Link Downward-Kneeling-Hylian-Thrust attack on it with a giant axe. And once you got to a decent bit of reinforcing (maybe 25% up the quality-ladder in door/chest materials?), you'd have to go after the lock? Or maybe for chests, everyone's skill just applies to the lock/locking mechanism. Maybe wooden doors are the only thing that can be bashed? (Or maybe metal ones with weak enough barrings). I apologize for the cavalcade of thought, here. If I were capable of being more concise, I would in a heartbeat, haha. It's a curse.

Lookout! A BICLOPS!!!

^ True. In so many other games, you get that "Oh no, you've got lockwrist! -1 to Dex." And you could pretty much live with that for the rest of the game, really. It's such a minor penalty. Fallout: NV's hardcore mode had the hydration issues that got worse the more dehydrated you got, etc. Of course, they did that with radiation poisoning WELL before New Vegas, methinks (I think it might've been in Fallout 1?). But, yes, they can have minor effects, but need to worsen with time (like an infection you just don't do anything about). Maybe there's even a chance your character's body can fight them off on its own (Constitution? Fortitude?)? And, while they can totally affect stats and skills and whatnot, I think they should affect much more than that.

I'm sorry. You're incapable of mistaking my meaning, and you would definitely know what I was specifically referring to better than I would. My apologies. You're absolutely right. But it just so happens to change (although not suddenly) the nature of an auto-Stamina regeneration system. It's an awful shame I was simply making a point with a hypothetical example rather than claiming any specific game had a 5-minute heal duration on a potion. (Fallout: NV had heal-over-time healing items in hardcore mode, in case you were curious.) You know what? I'll actually shed light on the point in the good faith that you actually aren't here just to be an arse. The specific stuff to which you were arguing against with your anti-regeneration spiel was only referring to the regeneration of things that are infinite in supply that would otherwise (without regeneration) simply take unnecessary amounts of time to refill, such as P:E's Stamina, which you yourself already said you were cool with. BEHOLD: I think PE's system is going to be pretty cool, since it actually doesn't promote rest or waiting around. So, yeah, the healing being "busy work" that you quoted Adhin on was referring to healing that is available to you after combat, but only happens if you spend 30 seconds using/doing it.. In the context of P:E? Stamina. So... maybe there was no need for the childish "You love regen because it's dumbing down and you're dumb and it's easy, LOL!"? A simple "wait, are you talking about regenning all your health instead of having finite healing here?" would've sufficed, and you wouldn't have voluntarily been an arse.

*Nod*. That was the main issue with Skyrim. It wasn't "Oh look, a story is taking place around me!" It was just a big buffet of little story bits, that kind of fit together. You were hardly ever placed in any actual situations. I mean, they had exploration... gotta give 'em that much. But the whole GAME was exploration, pretty much. Some freedom and contextual exploration is great, but it's gotta follow the framework and circumstances of the story skeleton.

^ While that's not a bad idea, I think they're already going with "Rogues get a permanent bonus/modifier", which pretty much takes care of that. 8\

^ Yes! Also, what if you had a mind/soul swap? (Basically, a body swap)? You get to take over a bandit, for example (after the appropriate save fails), and he would occupy your Cipher's body. He'd be very confused, and he wouldn't have any of the skills or knowledge your Cipher has (those would be in the other body). It would probably have to last only a short while, or be limited in some other way, depending on how you want to handle the "that body dies while your Cipher is still in it" situation. 8P

Maybe you could just have 3 aspects of it? I mean, maybe on a tougher door, the hinges would still be the weakest point, and with a crowbar or or something, or a sledgehammer and chisel, your Strength-based guy would use his structural knowledge of the door to break off the hinges. Or, well... I said 3 aspects. Really, you could just do 2, I think? (The details of this are coming to me as I go. I apologize). Breaking and picking. The classes would just have slightly different ways of doing these. A Wizard could probably melt or even freeze the hinges off, but maybe he can't sustain a constant flow of magic for long enough to blowtorch through an iron door, and maybe a fireball would blowback too much before it actually broke the door down. *shrug*. I dunno. Wizard power is still tricky. Obviously it's going to be abstracted to some point, but I keep thinking maybe there's some logical foundation we could at least build upon as a solid moderator of that. Also, I'm not sure how all the other classes would do it. Maybe for some classes, the only option would be lockpicking, and for some, smashing (well, except I suppose you could build a Wizard or Rogue with 20 STR?). If all classes can simply bash the door, or use Monk/nature/deity/mind powers on a door to break it down, then you might as well have a simple bash and a simple lockpicking, methinks. I'm not sure there'd be much benefit from all that work for every single class, if they didn't actually have different limitations and situational usefulness, etc. But, yeah, aside from "Why can't Wizards just nuke the whole building and walk around the door?", I think maybe the structural knowledge skill bit might work, for breaking doors, regardless of how it's done (with arcane elements or a giant shoulder/hammer)? This is like a puzzle. I like puzzles like this, heh. I'm just slow is all. I'll think on it more.

What if impoverished folk, who had the disease themselves, would actually react POSITIVELY? That would be interesting. "We feel you're like one of us, because you're having to put up with the Fidgets, too!" Also, there should be a disease called "The Fidgets." -10 to Bowmanship, Lockpicking, and Inconspicuosity.

You ripped my Mage! I just bought that Mage! -____-

Not true. Avalanches and mudslides and storms can bury the dead, too, and they're not alive. u_u I think diseases would be awesome if they were worked in well. I think they need to be more than just a debuff. I'd like to see them be a unique factor in dialogues and quest progressions, etc.

Speak for yourself? Often times (in fact, almost all the time) in the IE games if my party lacked the resources to fully heal themselves up after a bruising encounter (or if I simply didn't want to use up my resources), I *didn't* wait (or rest) until I was healed. I moved on, confident in my party's abilities and my own gameplay strategy to be able to take on the next encounter in my wounded state and still do fine. So no, don't be imposing your modern-rpg degenerate gameplay habits on the rest of us. *siiiiigh*. I'm sorry to point out that you're still assuming I'm somehow saying "YAY, I WANT EVERYTHING TO REGENERATE AUTOMATICALLY, INSTANTLY, YAY!!!!" here. I was referring only to actual, finite healing capabilities (potions, spells, items, ritual dances, what-have-you). Pretend regeneration doesn't even exist. You get damaged in combat. You make it through combat. Now you're low on health. You either: A) Care about trying to get your health back before moving on, or B) Don't care about healing at all for some reason and just push on with half health, even though the majority of the combat encounters are probably balanced with a full-health party in mind. So, if it's B, well, then the rest doesn't matter as far as you're concerned. So, let's assume it's A. Okay, you care about recovering health, so you check your inventory. Hey, a healing potion! (I'm sticking with one to keep it simple, as you may not always want to use ALL your available healing stuffs). So, you care about recovering some hitpoints, and you have a thing that will allow you to recover some hitpoints (nothing else will. There is no regeneration *jedi hand wave*). So you're gonna use it, right? Okay, so you use it. It takes 5 minutes for the potion to fully work. It heals you 10 HP per minute. Wow, this is strategic fun, this is. Let's sit around for 5 minutes, OR be penalized by having to go into battle with only 10 more health instead of 50. Tough decision. Do we allow the stupidly-long duration of the potion to do its thing, or do we just forget about healing and run on into the next bout of combat (which, again, is designed to be harder the less health you have)? So, yes, I'd rather that health potion bit be taken care of instantly. Now, obviously, in a system with just regular health, having automatic healing/regeneration outside combat would negate a major purpose of finite healing reserves, since all you would EVER have to do is make it through a combat encounter. After that, you'd be fit as a fiddle. Enter P:E "Health." It serves that purpose, so Stamina is only solving roughly HALF of the purpose health in a typical RPG serves. So, yes, I think Stamina should regen, and that's totally fine, because you SHOULD always be at full Stamina because of how its designed. So, I don't need potions and healing spells and sitting and drinking beverages and eating foods to restore my Stamina over the course of the next 3 days. If I made it through combat, that means all threatening things are dead. So, unless I just fumble into more combat (which requires intentionally running off in some direction without even worrying about healing), I'm going to want to heal myself with whatever means I can. It's just plain efficient, and it doesn't hurt anything (thanks to the design). Now, if you hate the Health/Stamina system, then so be it. But, thanks to the way it's designed, regenerating Stamina outside of combat isn't an issue.

@Ffordesoon: I know people get frustrating sometimes, but yeah... we just need to stick to the topic. If he doesn't want to provide anything response-worthy, then let him post away while we continue sticking to the topic.

In that case, I simply don't understand how pickpocketing (filching someone's belongings without their notice) is a direct comparison to killing and looting someone, who obviously noticed that they aren't alive anymore. Why would you say "Okay, Rogue... see those guys over there? We're about to kill them anyway, because we're not worried about NOT-killing them, but I want you to first go quietly and deftly steal all their belongings." The Wizard stun spell? Perhaps. I think people would possibly notice, though, unless you still planned it out to all be very subtle. So you couldn't really do it in a crowd like you could pick-pocketing. So, it may not be a direct replacement of pickpocketing, just as the Barbarian's Kill-n-Loot skill isn't. Unlocking a locked door with magic is performing the exact same task as the lockpicking skill, and breaking the door down is simply bypassing the lock. That is my point in the "possibly not a good comparison" bit. I agree here, but I don't know that the answer is as simple as "Wizards are super magical, and therefore should be able to open locks." If that's the case, then, if they are masters of lightning and electricity, why can't they simply stop your heartbeat? That should be realllllllllly easy. Way easier than getting through all that armor with a blade. Or why can't they just turn your blood to sand, or snap your neck? If they can simply use magic to operate complex mechanical devices, then what is the extent of that power? So, would I like to see Wizards doing something different than lockpicking? Yes. Would I like to see breakable doors? Yes. But that doesn't change the fact that it's terrible design to let a guy who's simply magical just go around tripping locks with a spell that somehow just opens the locks, when this Rogue fellow (or, really, anyone who isn't a Wizard in P:E) would have to spend umpteen points in a skill just to be able to open that lock. My point is not that it needs to be 1:1, as in "Omg! You can't let a Wizard's ability sometimes be situationally better than a Rogue's!". Just that we need to consider a better way of handling it than "Well, a Wizard should have no trouble opening 72 tumblers, while it should take a Rogue 17 hours to do the same." That's all I'm getting at. We need to come up with a viable system for various classes, or stick with lockpicking across the board if we can't (even if just for the sake of developer time/resources.) My statement seems, to you, to suggest that, but it does not actually suggest it. All I'm saying is, why would you put a jigsaw-killer-level puzzle on a lock for a swinging saloon door when the hinges could be broken off by a small child with a hammer? Sure, that might actually occasionally happen, if the person's a rich idiot or something. But, well... look at portcullises and fortress doorways. They don't close those big doors, then put a little padlock on them and hope no one picks it. "Man, these doors will NEVER be broken down, 'cause they're 2-foot-thick oak, so let's just put this lock on to make sure they stay closed, and hopefully no one skilled with locks will ever try to break in." No, they don't give it that weakness. They drop a giant iron or hardwood bar across the doors. On the same token, you would not put a huge iron bar across the latch of a flimsy, soft-wood door. Of course, I didn't say that it bashing will never be easier than picking, or vice versa. But, you're not going to run into a friggin' steel door with a little copper padlock on it. Again, unless someone in the game world is literally a complete moron. Why would someone spend all that time and effort on such a door if it weren't going to be secured by some similarly difficult-to-bypass locking mechanism? It doesn't make any sense. If some commoner wants to put a lock on their door, then yeah, you could probably break the door down pretty easily, just like I could kick in a common modern-day house door if I wanted to (and I'm not even THAT big and strong). But, they're also not going to have a legendary Interdimensional Space Lock on there. They're just going to have a simple lock on there. And this ties back into the Lockpicking-for-all thing. Again, I still think it would be cool to do it differently, BUT, how problematic is it, really? In a party-based game? If you don't have someone put lots of points into lockpicking (even if you have a Rogue), then it'll probably be easier to break down whatever doors you can with your burly Barbarian than it will be to pick the locks with your party's collective Lockpick skill of 3. So, going with just a simple "let's toss in door-bashing for strong guys," there will be a very low threshold (pun totally intended) at which point you will no longer be able to break down doors. Simpler doors, accompanied by their simpler locks, will be break-down-able. Decently reinforced door? You're probably gonna hafta pick it, and it's probably gonna be decently tricky. You're most likely never going to have "Oh, look! Someone just put a small piece of masking tape on this latch to keep this reinforced iron door closed. I'll just use my lockpick to tear that, and VOILA!" And as for Wizards... well, like I said, you just have to figure out a good, reasonable limitation for that. *shrug*. I mean, technically they should just be able to go around blowing up houses and looting them all. But, that gets a bit ridiculous. And if you DON'T allow that, then suddenly it begs the question "why can't they do that? They can obviously create huge, explosive fireballs at will. *shrug*" If you have any thoughts on that, I will gladly roll with them. I'm just not thinking of anything, right at the moment.

*gasp*... What in God's name possessed you to attempt to evoke THOUGHT on a FORUM?!

Well, if you allowed the tone to account for the skill you're trying to check (lie/bluff, intimidate, charm, etc.), you could THEN have the various options for each of those have varying degrees of effectiveness, depending on how the person was responding to things already said, etc. This would work even if you didn't use hard speech skills. But, let's say you get SOME mathematically represented bonus or modifier to Intimidate from your Strength/physique/equipment. Maybe you make it clear you want to intimidate someone (not sure how that'd work in the dialogue UI... but let's just ignore that for the moment), then you're presented with 4 different ways in which to intimidate them (not necessarily ALL variants of the exact same sentence.) Maybe you can intimidate them from various angles, regarding various topics. So, you get 4 different options. Maybe with your bonus/modifier, 3 of them will intimidate them to a degree, and get some extra info out of them, and only one (of those three) will intimidate them to the max, making them provide the most extra information that can be obtained through intimidation (or maybe you can even get them to give you things because they're so scared). Maybe without the modifier, you can still try it, but only 2 of those same options will successfully intimidate that same person, and only one of the 2 will provide maximum intimidation. Maybe, since you aren't scarily strong or equipped, one of the options will actually cause you to fail, and the person realizes you're trying to intimidate them and laughs at you because it doesn't work very well. *shrug* It could be nice. Would be a lot of extra dialogue work for the devs, but I'm curious to know how they're planning to handle it as it stands. They've said they want to make it more about how you handle the dialogue options and less about skills providing beefed up ones. One would think that would almost have to include more dialogue options (than usual), to some degree. And really, all the typical single options do is grant you a skill check. "I've bitten through tree limbs thicker than your arms" is basically just flavor text for "Try to intimidate them," Because you're either going to, or you aren't. There is no "Oh, well, maybe what you said worked! 8D". Mechanically, it's just an illusion. So, without hard speech skills, one would think that only single dialogue options for each tone/intent wouldn't really do the trick.

That's not really the best comparison. Wizards shouldn't be able to cast "Teleport Pocket Contents," and Barbarians shouldn't be able to tackle people "accidentally" and have them drop all their stuff on the ground, then simply apologize and pick it all up without them noticing. There's no problem with doors being bashable, or locks being magically openable. But, if you make Lockpicking require 75 skill points to pick a given door, and you let a Barbarian easily break that door down just because he has 19 STR (which he's had since LvL 1), that's a bit silly. For one thing, why would someone foot the bill for an EXTREMELY complex lock (back in the day when such things were hand-friggin' crafted by master artisans) to put on a door that a buff guy could simply knock down? Did the person who wanted that door to be a barrier to people just not know about strong people, and/or axes? He just made the door out of quarter-inch balsa wood? You would expect someone to make sure all aspects of a door or chest were fairly level with one another in quality/sturdiness. That being said, I think there are ways to handle it that aren't silly/problematic, and I think those are definitely worth exploring. The implementation just requires a lot of consideration, is all.

If his comprehension skills are so terrible, why do you keep repeating things you're CERTAIN he will be incapable of comprehending? Wait, don't tell me... my inquiry skills are truly abysmal?

Hehe, . I only meant that, technically speaking, they've already got the tones in there on most games. They're just (like you said) wayyy to infrequently available, and/or always overly simplified or attributed to a single outcome (aggressive = fight, flirty = romance, etc.). So, really, it's not that they're lacking a system of complexity, they're just intentionally keeping it ludicrously simple. And I agree with you on all the rest. I have a good feeling about Obsidian, though. I think my favorite part of Josh popping in and sharing so much with us (and all the update info they provide) is getting a good feel for how they're going about coming up with the mechanics. Usually, all we get is advertising once the game's done (or almost done), so we see things like "Revolutionary new combat will let you decide how to fight!". But, what does that mean? I don't know. But, when the development team delivers 3 paragraphs about their thoughts on how they feel combat should work, you know what they're going for. What they've said about speech and dialogue so far bolsters my hopes for just the advancement in that area that we're hitting on here.

I don't think it's a bad idea. It's just a bit hard to make such things intuitive. They usually either end up WAYYY too easy (where you always know the perfect thing to say, and how to say it), or they end up LUDICROUSLY enigmatic (I personally had no idea what was going on in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, heh). Really, though, it all comes down to writing and content design. If you did it right, it could work pretty nicely. I do think it's high time for dialogue to be more about "how" and less about "what." We've gone too long with the "Say the aggressive thing to start a fight, say the polite thing to gain favor, say the terrible thing to frighten them, say the sexy thing to seduce them, etc." structure. But, that's more a comment on specific designs than the system itself. 8P