Lephys

^ Well, there's no problem at all with running away. The proposed example of a problem scenario was basically "What if you need to run away, and you never come back and finish the fight?" So, all I was getting at was, if you only ran away because you HAD to (out of health, etc.), then what makes that anything more than a simple delay to finishing off the remainder of a group of enemies (which you KNOW you can now kill, because you already killed most of them and will be returning fully healed), which you never didn't want to kill (for fun, rewards, progression, you pick...)? In other words, why wouldn't you come back? If anything, it seems like awarding you for 4 out of 5 kills actually encourages leaving the fight undone, whereas only awarding you for all 5 kills actually encourages returning to finish things. The only beneficial difference to kill-XP seems to be that you can partake in less combat instead of more and still get stuff for it, which seems to completely contradict the "you pacifists can have your objective XP, since you'll want to avoid fights, but I want to fight EVERYTHING, so give me XP even when I don't fight everything" reasoning that's been echoed several times. I, again, do not think the desire to gain XP for kills, in and of itself, is flawed. But to suggest that only combat objectives awarding XP after potentially multiple kills is inherently a problem seems to go against all evidence as to the contrary.

You slightly lost me here. If a better dagger has 7DT- instead of 4 DT-, wouldn't it make sense for a better chainmail to have 7DT instead of 4DT? I'm seriously asking. I'm mildly confused. I mean, I think I get what you're suggesting the armor bonus be, instead of an increase in damage threshold. You want an actual percentage of damage reduction factored in. Correct? I think one main problem with the previous system is that... I dunno... something's a bit muddy feeling with the three different types, is it not? Slashy the Sword that does 15 damage does the most damage, until an enemy has 5DT. Then, Piercy the dagger that only does 11 damage but bypasses 5DT (meaning it does 11 damage instead of 10 from the Sword). UNTIL something has like 11 DT. Then, Crushy the Club comes in and says "Well, even though I only do 7 damage, I can't do less than 5." I get that it's more valuable than this, but, in a way, isn't that just a super convoluted substitute for "A Sword does 15 damage, and armor lowers that by 10, so a Dagger does 22 damage (12 after the 10 armor is better than 5 from the sword). But then higher armor lowers that by 20, so a Mace does 27 damage (so 7 still gets through instead of none getting through.)"? I mean, Slashing does damage, but then armor negates damage, so Piercing NEGATES the negation of damage, but then armor out-negates the negation-negation of Piercing, so Crushing negates armor's damage negation in a different way that results in more damage. Right? It just... I dunno. It's like Slashing gets screwed. "Like swords? Better stick to enemies that don't wear armor, u_u..." That's why it seems like DT (or whatever form of base bonus you use for armor) should be separate from whatever damage-type-vs-armor-type effectiveness scheme you go with. Slashing should be more effective, in some interesting manner, against a certain TYPE of armor. So, if someone's wearing Medium armor with 4DT, you're actually doing less damage with your sword than if they were wearing Light armor with 7DT. Something like that. It makes sense to still have the DT ceilings increase as you go from Light to Heavy (maybe Light armor maxes out at 10, Medium maxes out at 13, and Heavy maxes out at 16?). But if you're basing all your weapon effectiveness on the DT value, then you wind up ruling out weapons sheerly by increasing armor values. So, yeah... Maybe I oversimplified and/or missed something? But, I think the new proposal is good. Also, as I said, I think Valorian's proposal has much to offer. I think damage-type-vs-armor is a good place for percentage chance, rather than hard/static penalties. I mean, as a very simple example, imagine if you simply adjusted the damage range on weapons, based on the armor. Slashy the Sword does 5-10, but versus Light armor, it does 5-17. So, against Medium armor, you're still doing 5-10 with the Sword, while Piercy the Dagger (being effective against medium) will do 5-17. Then, against Heavy armor, Crushy the Mace will do 5-17 instead of 5-10 with the sword or the dagger. (This assumes all armor is 0DT and is merely different TYPES of armor.) OR, going with my example of one bad, one okay, and one good damage type for every armor type, you could lower the minimum damage for the "bad" type. So, against heavy armor, Slashy the Sword would do 1-10, Piercy the Dagger would do 5-10, and Crushy the Mace would do 5-17. Etc... Obviously, Valorian's system accomplishes the same effect (and more), but more elegantly. I was just trying to simplify it to show that difference. But, the point is, when you use a "good" weapon type against a certain armor type, you're not DEFINITELY doing more damage on every swing, you're just able to do more damage. You might still do between 5 and 10 damage (with these example numbers), but you CAN do between 11 and 17, also. When you factor in DT, it's still an armor bonus across the board. And a sword that does 10 more damage is always going to be that much better against armor with 10 DT, but it's going to be worse compared to the mace (and/or dagger, depending on whether or not you go with "bad/okay/good" or "okay/okay/good."

Yeah, I was only kidding, haha. I wasn't REALLY suggesting they'd be **** about it or anything, . Just poking fun at the probable gap between my artistic skill and that of their art department. I might actually try to make something, but my only tool of "expertise" is pencil. Hmmm... what to draw... *ponders*

<8O... Why did you just break their glorious, well-deserved award?! WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?! *violently shakes Hormalakh* . I kid. I know it was supposed to be a whip. Coincidental choice of "crack," given the properties of the award, haha. I want to send them an award! T_T. Maybe I could draw them a well-deserved picture. Of course... then their art department could just be like "Oh, that took you 40 hours? We could've made a better piece of artwork in like 7 seconds, u_u... *shines fingernails on coat breast*" Haha. Seriously, though, guys. I'm glad someone thought of that, and it is VERY well deserved, ^_^. Every ounce of effort that goes into the making of this game is individually appreciated by so many people! 8D

Haha. Well, I think you can have chargeable abilities without becoming Dragonball. Besides, it fits with the "gradually increase in power/effectiveness the longer its sustained" notion.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like actual XP is best reserved for things you actively control. Otherwise you end up having to balance the level/difficulty of all the game content against yet another factor: "How many out-of-party characters did this person send on errands that awarded XP, and what if a player sends them all on money-only errands or something else?" *Shrug*... it just feels like passive XP gain. "You there! Focus your efforts, for the rest of the day, on acquiring XP!" "Okay, I'm back, and I picked up a 6-pack of XP on the way home, just like you asked, ^_^" I would not, however, be against any other manner of rewards. Maybe even skill bonuses sometimes. It really just depends on contextual elements in the game's mechanics and design.

If their mechanic (or one of the main aspects of it) is the scaling of focus/intensity over time (while "channeling"), I'd like to see them get abilities that can be "powered up," for lack of a better term, for various amounts of time. During the power-up/cast-time, the Cipher would be defenseless, and any attack (maybe with exceptions?) would break the "spell" all together. EXAMPLE TIME! *Example Time theme song plays*: You select your Cipher, and wish to use Flood of Will, which will allow the Cipher to command 1 enemy for 10 seconds (All numbers subject to balancing, I just have to pick SOMEthing for the example.) The minimum "cast" time is 3 seconds. So, you have to stand there glowing and focusing for 3 seconds, without getting hit (again, you maybe get concentration bonuses or something as you progress, so that it takes three attacks instead of one to interrupt or something, or a certain amount of damage, etc.) to successfully prepare the ability. Once prepared, it's instant-use (like a loaded crossbow). However, you CAN prepare the ability for up to 10 seconds. Maybe if you charge it for 5 or 6 seconds, it gains an additional target (duration might have to drop some with additional targets, but might still drop less if you charge it beyond the point of gaining an additional target, *shrug*). So now you can command 2 targets IF you charged it for 6 seconds without interruption. At 9 seconds, it can affect 3 people (again, probably for less than 10 seconds.) You couldn't begin preparing these until combat begins, so you can't just always have one maximally prepared. Other abilities could increase a radius, and/or damage and effectiveness in different ways. Maybe some could even be charged during combat and unaffected by incoming damage (but using any other ability would cancel the preparation of the initial ability.)

Kudos on the blueprint, Valorian, ^_^. I like how it addresses the whole weapon effectiveness (and, on the other side of that coin, armor effectiveness). And yeah, it does seem more complicated at first than it really is, heh. I dunno if Josh wants to change the whole 4-part-defense-roll system they've got right now (which takes care of certain aspects that the AQ range addresses), but the team could still easily work in part of your weapon/armor type relationship, even without adopting the whole thing. For what it's worth, I give it several thumbs up.

That's a valid point, but I wouldn't worry too much about that. As Naurgalen said, DA2 wasn't even trying to imply that you were going to the same areas. They were just physically/aesthetically the same areas, even though they were supposed to be different. DA2 has got to be the most terrible implementation of maps/areas I've ever seen in my life, haha. But, yeah, in the Mass Effect games, you went to a lot of different places that you never returned to. It's not that it didn't have anything in it to parallel medieval fantasy caves/forests/dungeons. It's just that they intelligently didn't make you return to the same derelict ship 72 times or anything like that. The likelihood of something else happening to a derelict ship after you've already dealt with it is pretty much 'nil. So, it's just a matter of intelligent design on the developers' part, really. Things like "There's actually a basement to this place, but the player either doesn't know that or obviously cannot access it yet" make the same cave/area a lot more feasible to re-use than just "Let's shove some more content into this same cave." If you can't make it a different experience in the same area, then don't re-use that area. The reason towns and hubs make sense to re-use is because there are so many factors involved that are prone to change.

I'm going to assume "EP" is supposed to be "XP." I'm not trying to be snide, I just am not 100% certain "EP" doesn't stand for something I don't know about. It doesn't automatically mean that, just like putting in a game of dice in the tavern that awards XP instead of money doesn't automatically mean it either. But wouldn't you see a problem with a dice game that awards XP? XP differs from loot and money in that it is NECESSARY in a level-based, progression-balanced game. It's integral to the progression of both the characters AND the story/challenges/encounters. Loot and money are less integral. They're more versatile, so they could be spent on things that don't directly affect character progression (which directly affects whether or not you can even complete the game.) If you have 50 combat encounters tied to actual progression and accomplishment, each with 10 enemies, why does it need to be possible to kill 9 out of 10 of those enemies in all 50 instances and get XP for all of that fighting, purely for the sake of fighting, without accomplishing a single thing? It's an optional XP factory. Besides, I think TRX's examples still assume an overestimation of the breadth of objectives. It's entirely possible that some quests will contain optional kill objectives. So, if there's a group of 5 goblins, what is the point in making sure the player can kill 4 of those and still get a reward? Is it logical to even want that last 100XP to level up THAT badly, just to kill the 5th goblin? And, if the only possible reasoning for choosing to combat things is: A) I just love combat (it's its own reward for me, regardless of whatever rewards I get that might be helpful to the rest of the game) AND/OR B) I love loot and XP that I get from combat AND/OR C) It's required to progress the game/this portion of content and I don't mind that. So, where does "But I really only want to choose to fight SOME things rather than ALL the things in a given group," fit in without contradicting the other reasons? If you hate combat, then you'll avoid any optional combat you can. If you hate it TOO much, you probably just won't even play the game (unless you're masochistic, and pay money to play games that piss you off.) And if you HAVE to kill stuff, then running away and never coming back to finish them isn't an option, unless you just quit playing the game all together. That only leaves the actual desire to combat (for whatever reason... be it fun or rewards, or both, and/or optional progression.) So, why would you simultaneously desire to fight things you don't even HAVE to fight, AND not want to fight all of them? In other words, even in a system that awards XP for every kill, why would you only kill 4 out of 5 things (for 200 XP) with absolutely NO desire to ever finish off that 5th thing (which would give you 50 more XP, for a total of 250), which would be significantly easier all by its lonesome than fighting the whole group was AND might even help you complete another objective for even more XP (not to mention provide you with loot and/or money, and/or enjoyment of the game's combat system)? You probably wouldn't, right? One enemy left, 50 XP, followed by potential loot and other quest objectives with no more obstacles in between your party and them? Hells yeah! So, why then, if you suddenly say "Well, you kill all 5 of those guys, and we'll give you 250XP," are you going to be like "Whooaaaa... where's the incentive to kill only 4 of them?! What if I don't WANT to kill all 5, but I want to kill 4?" If you don't want to kill all 5, then you must have a reason. "I had to flee and go back to town this one time" is not a reason, unless the game's so imbalanced that it takes 50 minutes and 900 gold just to return to the place from whence you fled to finish killing that 1 enemy. In other words, it simply doesn't make sense to say "I'm so upset with the fact that I didn't get XP for these 4 goblins, I NEVER want to come back and kill the 5th goblin for the same amount of XP and rewards I would've gotten in a system that awards me for the first 4 goblins." Lastly, in the "I only have 100XP until level-up" example, why do you desire to level up? To improve your combat capability (among other things), correct? To what end? To never fight anything else ever again? I understand the desire to not have to fight 17 groups of enemies over a 30 minute span JUST to get SOME XP. But I don't think that being too imbalanced automatically leads to the logical conclusion that the only reasonable way to balance it is for EACH and EVERY enemy to award XP upon death. As long as the game's balanced around the fact that XP isn't awarded for each individual kill, I bet you won't even notice the difference after playing for an hour or so. For realsies.

Yeah, I just thought it might be interesting to still allow for some amount of added effectiveness to the aiming/positioning of the initial bolt. You could even have the actual distance-range be much greater than typical Chain Lightning spells as seen in RPGs, because the bolt simply will not strike an enemy in front of you, then turn 170 degrees to the right and come almost right back at you to hit another enemy, even if he's only 2 feet from the first enemy. Kind of a hybrid from the "Ha-HAH! When things are in a line, this is WAY better than a radial-area spell!" flavor of Lightning Bolt, but without becoming full-on "as long as things are pretty much within a certain radius of each other, this will jump to all of them" chain lightning. Kinda gives it a unique behavior, I think. Makes you pick your targets and position yourself beforehand, like I said. *shrug*. It's a pretty rudimentary idea, really. It would need some hashing outing, and I don't know if it would really be all that great in the grand scheme of things. BUT, I just want to say (on the small list of suggestions) that I hope we get more than like 3 types of spells for each element. It saddens me to no end when I can make a wall of fire, but not a wall of ice or lightning. It's as if the game's like "You've got Fireball for a radial AOE... why would you need any other spell if it's just going to do what Fireball does, but in different and exciting ways?" That's one thing I like about the style of Guild Wars 2's Mage abilities. Like Lightning Whip... your auto-attack with a dagger is A FREAKIN' WHIP MADE OF LIGHTNING! It even strikes multiple targets, as long as they're within a very close range! (It reaches about 3 times that far, but it only strikes a single target if you're not quite close.) I don't want to just do things science and nature do with the elements. I don't want to be a liquid nitrogen tank, or a flame thrower, or a thunderstorm... I want to WIELD them! Another super-creative example is one of Captain Hitsugaya's attacks from the anime Bleach. He basically summons a peaceful-looking snow storm, but every little snowflake that floats down and touches something explodes (like popcorn!) into a large flower of solid ice! If they land on someone's arm, they spread from the center of contact in all directions, so they freeze straight through the arm.

As awesome as the potential psychic abilities are, I'd like to know what non-psychic capabilities, if any, Ciphers will have. Since they can apparently directly manipulate/tamper-with souls, I would think that would include more than just the mind. (EDIT): Nevermind. I am a moron and failed to properly recall the official description, haha. It seems that, even if they affect more than just the mind, the mind is the conduit to the soul.

Grr... couldn't edit by the time I finished with paint! VISUAL AID: The AOE cone for determining if the lightning can jump to another target would always be centered on the direction the lightning was already traveling when it hit the current target (Hence the dark line through the center of the cone, above.) Necessary? Not at all. Just a potentially interesting implementation of a lightning spell that I thought of, then felt compelled to illustrate in glorious HD graphics.

What if it was a hybrid... sort of...? What I mean is, I kinda like the fact that the straight-line lightning bolt spell can do like, OODLES more damage, because it's actually difficult to hit more than a couple of enemies with it (thus, the OPness of the damage is balanced out by the difficulty of hitting, as opposed to an AOE radius/cone spell). What if you kind of hybridized lightning bolt and chain lightning? You fire it at whatever target you wish, and it then arcs from that target to the next. BUT, at each jump, it can only "turn" so far (like an AOE cone range at each jump). So, it's still kind of difficult to hit a lot of enemies "in a row," but it allows for a much greater margin of error in that "line," without running into the friendly-fire and damage-reduction-from-balancing issues you'd get from converting it to a purely AOE spell. You could even (if there's a spell customization/improvement system tied to character progression) upgrade its arc range, OR its damage or jump distance. Blarg, I really need to go make some visual examples in MSpaint or something...

True, except it doesn't necessarily have to be years. I think that's part of what ME did right. Every time you actually progressed, it was assumed an appropriate amount of time had passed (whether it was a day, or a week, or weeks...). The same can EASILY be done with world-map travel, etc., in a game like P:E. You still have a time discrepancy whilst doing things (i.e. "That just took me like an hour, real-time, but the second I completed it and went down the path, that suddenly took all night?!") sometimes. But, it can be minimized with quality design. Also, in Mass Effect, you went back and forth to different places a lot more than in some games. Between that and the assumption of time passing upon quest/mission completions, almost EVERYone always had something new to say, and it always felt like "things" in general were in a different state now, and that it was specific to the choices you made (even if that often only showed in some little bit of dialogue that went along the lines of "Hey, I really like that you picked (insert choice here), 8D!" I don't want everything to just stand still while you spend 3 days in the forest gathering all sorts of information, tracking down baddies, recovering artifacts, and unblocking the mountain stream that feeds a town, THEN magically resume from the exact same point as if you didn't really CHANGE anything and there was simply never a problem to begin with. If you allow things to be different when you get back to town, or when you have to head to a different town, then travel back to a previous one 4 game-hours later, the game world feels a lot more reactive and alive. I think too many RPGs, nowadays, go for the "Let's just offer ALL quests we've thought up for the WHOLE town right here at once and get it over with" approach. You can typically do 7 quests in any order you wish, because they don't really affect one another. But they advertise "choices and dynamics!" because, within each given quest, you get a few branches in the quest line. "Oh, you saved my cat instead of letting that poor old woman keep it because I'm an evil bitch? Well, now SHE gives you the next quest instead of ME, u_u. THE WORLD IS SO ALIVE, ISN'T IT?!" Again, I know ME didn't do everything perfectly, but I'm more trying to focus on WHAT it did that works well, rather than measuring exactly how well it did things.

True, but you don't actively use armor. You just wear it. Any armor benefits would be passive. So, unless you can't keep the armor fitted about your person any longer because it's so mangled and destroyed, I would think any and all enchantments would still stand. For example, some magical chainmail (3 armor) with a +3 armor-bonus enchantment on it, when the physical armor had holes in it and was no longer providing any protection, would still provide the +3 armor bonus. 0 + 3. So you'd still have 3 armor value from that, so long as you are actually wearing that armor. Or, if it was fire resistance, you'd still have fire resistance, but no armor bonus against physical forces/weapons. This makes sense because you could have a cloak of fire resistance (that doesn't provide any armor), and armor of fire resistance. So the enchanted effect should, in no way, be affected by the current physical state of the item, EXCEPT when it prevents the item from being used (again, a Ring of Protection only protects you when you're wearing it... it doesn't protect the bag it's stored in, or a floor board when it's on the floor.) I think fictitious magic works a lot like programming. "IF (ring_center) = Humanoid Phalange, THEN (AC) +1;"

"... And I'LL form... THE HEAD! *giant Cipherbot presses fist to palm, producing a huge Psionic sword.*" Also, the "Keep your ally's soul from leaving this plane" ability would rock! You're fighting a necromancer, and your ally "dies," but you tether a safety line to his soul. The necromancer re-animates him and he fights you. Maybe you have to avoid damaging his body too badly while you kill the necromancer. He drops back to the ground. His soul goes back in him as he clings back to life, just enough for you to get him somewhere for some salves and some rest.

I don't understand... he's betting there will be people who mod in co-op and such when the game comes out. How is that trolling or missing information? o_O

Well, if I HAD to try and figure up the logic behind the workings of an enchanted weapon, I'd say that, an enchantment is an enchantment, regardless of whether or not it's on a weapon or an apple. I mean, an apple with the same +10-Fire-Damage enchantment on it, when thrown, should still do 10 fire damage, even though the apple itself does 0 damage. So, even if an axe is worn down to complete bluntness, and only deals 1 damage now (I'd assume not-0, since you're still swinging a substantially-heavy lever), the fire damage should be the same. It's a completely separate effect. Now, if the axe completely fell apart, I don't think a small piece of the handle should still do 10 fire damage, when chunked at someone, because a small piece of an axe handle isn't the same thing as a whole axe (whether in crappy condition or good condition.) But, at the same time, if you go too literal with it (i.e. "A small shaving is missing from the wooden handle now, so THIS IS NO LONGER THE WHOLE AXE AND THE ENCHANTMENT IS VOID!"), enchantments would pretty much be useless. Hell, after the first stroke shaved off some tiny bits of metal in combat, the enchantment would be gone. So, regardless of how magic WOULD literally work, if it existed, which we'll never know... the only useful think to determine is how it even COULD work. Like I said, you wouldn't have enchanted weapons and such if it was gone with a shaving. So, either you've got to make your enchanted weapons never take any damage (satisfying the "this is always the exact same item and we don't even have to worry about a degradation threshold" bit), OR you have to assume that, unless the weapon is completely destroyed, it still holds the enchantment. Maybe if it's in 10 pieces, it just won't work (until repaired) because the enchantment works off of using the axe like one uses an axe in combat. Otherwise, everything the axe ever came in contact with would burst into flames. *shrug* It makes more sense if you think of a quiver. Maybe a quiver enchants arrows drawn from it, so when you're out of arrows (an integral component of the usefulness of the quiver), it doesn't really do anything (just like the broken axe). BUT, if you fill the quiver with arrows again, it becomes usable again. So, it's not that enchantment died... it just only functions under certain conditions (if you hit an enemy with the quiver, it probably won't do anything but piss off that enemy, and maybe break your quiver.)

I thought I would post this here, since it was really kind of an off-topic discussion in one of the Developer Update threads: Yeah, I get the original idea behind "junk" stuff. But, it loses almost everything in translation into a video game. I guess I just wish it had more than one use (selling for gold.) Because, mechanically, it literally just becomes a delayed tiny pile of gold. That "tarnished candlestick (junk)" is literally just an IOU for 1 silver, 3 copper, with a name that helps you pretend you found an actual part of the game world that just happens to be worth a little money and nothing else. I don't mind the situation of finding tons of herbs (that are all usable crafting components) and those herbs actually having a sell value. Maybe you have no interest in crafting, so you just sell them all, as they're useful to someone. Of course, thinking about that, how often do random people know exactly what herbs are what out in the world? Really, only certain people (who learned how to identify those herbs for a reason) would even know what they were. So, one way to handle the "this only has one use to me, and that is sell value" items might be to only allow your party to "find" herbs, for example, if someone in the party has enough skill to identify them (could be tied directly to Apothecary or Survival or something...). What I mean by this is, even if some chest in a dungeon has 17 useful Apothecary herbs in it, is your group of 6 Barbarians who don't even know the difference between mushrooms and grass REALLY going to go "Oh, hey, this is a potential thing for us to take that will be worth 7 silver a piece!"? Hmmm... I hadn't really thought of this before. I mean, who's to say you know exactly what everything you see/find is, and its worth? Maybe you open a chest, and you find some junk in it (a broken pocketwatch or something.) The fact that it's listed in the loot interface suggests that your character(s) know it's worth "2 copper" or whatever. But, why don't they take the chest, itself (it's a small wooden box that probably isn't welded to the floor)? It's worth a lot more than a broken pocketwatch. And who's to say there isn't stuff in the chest that just wasn't of enough significance to list in the loot interface? What if all the "junk" that was readily identifiable displayed no monetary value until you found a value for it (such as some person in a town saying "I lost my family's old pocketwatch... it was looted by bandits", or some smith saying "I'm in the market for any metal scrap things"? And things like specific herbs wouldn't even show up in the loot interface (much less have a value listed) unless someone in your party KNEW "Hey, that's a meelodinus flower, and I can make a potion with that!". i.e., they open the chest and say "Hmm, a nice sword, an ornate flask (worth money because I can see gold and gems on it), and... some random plant? It looks like a dandelion... those are literally everywhere. Why would I loot that?" Any thoughts? Crap, I should really put this in one of the recent economy/loot threads...

By night, a dandy highwayman. By day, a door-to-door cosmetics salesman. Because even a thief needs a "real job" sometimes. Isn't a salesman just a thief who only steals during business transactions? "Of COURSE this is a good price! This thing is DEFINITELY worth 60 gold! *hands over item worth only 10 gold... just stole 50 gold*" It's like sleight-of-mind! Really, though, regarding the per-encounter/per-rest issue with things like Wild Sprint, what if EVERYthing had a per-encounter limit, but certain things ALSO had per-rest limits? That way, you could have 20 Wild Sprints per-day, but you wouldn't run into all 20 being used in one encounter, followed by 5 more Wild-Sprint-less encounters before the next rest area, with a pouty player the whole way. Sure, maybe that player deserves it, but, you ALSO won't have that person who's like "I don't know how long it'll be 'til I can rest again... better only use like 1 of these per battle, u_u," only to get to the next rest area with 15 Wild Sprints left. *shrug*. We could also just deal with it and gauge things as best we can, I suppose. Also, I don't know about specific abilities, but I think the Barbarian should get bonuses to the effectiveness of certain attacks/abilities/passive-effects for the more enemies engaging him at once. Not tanky stuff, though. He's not HOLDING OFF those enemies. But, the threat of 5 people coming at you would, I think, give you sort of an intensity-of-the-situation boost to adrenaline/aggressiveness, if your whole fighting style was based around aggressiveness. You've even got 3 possibilities there, just off the top of my head, for different sort of style specializations: A) The greater number of foes currently facing/surrounding you, the greater your bonuses. B) The more often you change targets, the greater your bonuses/the longer you maintain bonuses. Maybe they drop off if you focus on a single target for too long (more than just a 2nd subsequent hit... maybe 3 or 4 times. The goal isn't to make you change targets on LITERALLY every single attack/ability use.) C) The more you focus on the same target (with subsequent attacks/combos), the greater your bonus climbs. I know this is similar to what they said about Cipher abilities, but that sounded like the focused maintenance of abilities (like Void Rays beams in Starcraft) rather than "the more times you hit/use various abilities on the same target." Just some thoughts.

I will say that, in the context of the soul system, that could potentially make more sense. If Grandfather's departed soul is the thing enchanting the axe, then it wouldn't matter how many times you physically change the axe, as long as you always used at least one component from the existing form of the axe. Or, to go along with modern ghost lore, maybe you could holy water the axe, then chop it up into pieces and bury it on consecrated ground, and the magic (aka Grandfather) would be gone. But really, I see what you're saying.

I actually love friendly-fire with big, giant, scary-powerful spells. But, all things in moderation. It might be interesting if there were talents/spell-improvements you could pick that reduced/affected friendly fire from your AOE spells. The key word being "might." It'd hafta be more interesting than "the more points you put into this upgrade, the less damage your allies take from your spell-splosions!" Maybe just have a really good/convenient set of protection spells to choose from? So, one player might just not mind the micromanagement necessary to keep his allies out of harm's way when he strategically launches fireballs, and he'll spend 5 more points on improving his damage and offensive spells, and another player might say "Hey, I LOVE tossing fireballs and chain lightning, but I don't want my allies to die all the time," and get some "Bestows protection from fire within a 15-foot radius. 3 charges. Each instance of negated fire damage uses 1 charge" spell. *shrug* Also, I think some kind of callout should be in order. Like how you can usually yell "GRENADE!" in a shooter and your allies can get away from the enemies. Targeting a fireball or lightning tempest should work with potential party AI to have them try to get out of the way when it's feasible (when they're not stunned, or surrounded, or knocked on their arse, etc.) You're still going to have times when they get hit by stuff. I'm not against the option to turn off friendly fire (usually tied to easier difficulty modes), but if you have that on, it should still be pretty managable. In most games like that I've played, the player has almost no tools at their disposal for getting allies out of the blast zone whilst leaving enemies in. At the very least, you should have an option such as to cast fire resistance on a specific member of your party (to just reduce fire damage, not negate it, even), who then has the ability to keep multiple enemies in the blast radius of a spell whilst other allies get out. In other words, you hurt your own person, in a very planned way, to hurt many enemy persons substantially worse. It should require effort, but the player shouldn't have to be a jedi just to pull it off. This kinda ties into the idea of useful/plentiful cross-character combos.

^^ I really don't blame you, Valorian. I'm not about to claim my brain presents ideas to my mouth/fingertips in the most efficient fashion, haha. My conclusions, based on assumed system characteristics, were the only real value in all of my tippity-typityness. I wasn't aware they were using both now. It sounded like it might've been "Now, only weapon damage numbers and armor type will determine how much damage you do." The 50% penalty might not have been so bad if there wasn't an independent DT value. 8P

EDIT: Totally missed Josh's post while typing this... I suppose you could have something like (L/M/H): slash -- good/bad/bad pierce -- good/good/bad crush -- good/good/good then have the typical weapon damage trend thus: slash > pierce > crush. That way you have two counter-balancing distributions. Well... I might be unclear on the specific details (or we may just not have them all yet) on the announced changes as opposed to the previous system, but it SEEMS to me like the previous one relied upon only a damage-vs-DT calculation (damage being simply categorized by damage "types"), and the new one literally just uses damage type vs armor type. The problem with crushing being good against all 3 types of armor (we'll just assume 3, for simplicity's sake) is that you'd just equip EVERYONE with crushing weapons and not worry about anything. *shrug*, Why not use a combination of DT AND armor type? I'm with Valorian on the oversimplicity of the 50% penalty for "bad" damage types on a given armor type. Numbers can always be tweaked, but it seems like using two separate factors (damage threshold/reduction AND armor/damage type) is a lot easier to work with and get balanced depth from. Example Tyme!: Let's just assume Slashing beats Light armor, Piercing beats Medium armor, and Crushing beats Heavy armor (even though they could all have different names, or different pairings, or there could be more damage/armor types than that...). Well, if you could have Light armor (maybe leather?) with a DT of 2, and Light armor with a DT of 8 (because DT is a factor independent of armor type), then an enemy wearing DT-2 Light armor wouldn't be such a big deal for your less-effective piercing and crushing weapons. If an axe (slashing), a dagger (piercing), and a mace (crushing) ALL deal 15 damage, and you're fighting the lower-armored Light enemy (DT 2), then your axe would deal 13 damage, and your dagger would suffer a penalty (whatever it is, if you stuck to the current penalty approach). We'll go with 20%, so your dagger vs Light armor drops to 12 damage, vs a DT of 2, so 10 damage. So, your axe does 13, and your dagger and/or mace do 10. Well, if you run into something wearing Crazy Awesome Masterwork Leather (DT , and you have the same weapons, then your axe only does 7 damage already (he's just really heavily armored, this guy.) But, your dagger and mace only do 4 damage. The 7 is 175% compared to the 4 damage, whereas the 13 with the axe against the lower-DT armorerd guy is only about 130% of the 10 you did with the "wrong" weapons. Basically, this would mean that having the "wrong" weapon equipped wouldn't always be such a big deal. Fighting an enemy with armor your weapon isn't effective against? Is his armor value high? No? You're probably fine. Wait, his armor value is 12? You might need to switch weapons for that guy. You might even have them in the same battle. "I'm using an axe, and these three guys have heavy armor, but their DT is only 3... I should be fine. But THAT guy's DT is 10. I'm gonna want to whip out the hammer... OF JUSTICE!" Annnnywho, that being said, I think that system works really well, and I think the handling of weapon/armor effectiveness could use tweaking. I think, if you're going to have 3 damage types, and 3 armor types, and with each armor types having only 1 effective and 2 ineffective damage types, you should at least have the ineffective ones do 100% damage (or maybe 90% or somethng minimal), and make the effective one beyond-100% effective (120% damage or something.) The benefits might be heavily psychological, but it makes it feel more like you're doing it wrong when you're doing 50% or 75% damage against things, instead of the "normal" 100%. If your weapon says "15 damage" in its info panel, it's much better to have the OPTION of doing 18 damage with it, against a tough foe when you really need to, as opposed to just 15, than to have the OPTION of doing 15 damage to stuff instead of 8 because you're using the wrong weapon. THAT being said, I still think the best thing to do, with 3 damage types and 3 armor types, is the "good/bad/meh" system. Maybe Crushing is "bad" against Light armor, so it does 80% damage, Piercing is "meh" against Light armor, so it does normal (100%) damage, and Slashing is "good" against Light armor, so it does 120% damage. (Numbers subject to tweaking/shifting, as always.) But, we already see this in magic resistance systems throughout the realm of RPGs. Weakness to fire? Fire does BONUS damage. Resistance to fire? Fire does LESS damage. Neither? Fire does plain old fiery damage. It doesn't seem to cause problems in that implementation, so why not use it for armor types? And the DT value could be thought of as the resistance VALUE in magic resistance. In other words, if an enemy has 10 Lightning resistance, or 10 Fire resistance, 10 is like the DT/DR value (which is the exact same no matter what the type... 10 is 10), and "Lightning" and "Fire" are clearly the types of damage it's blocking. Well, it'd be the same thing with armor, only... think of each armor type as a grouping of 3 resistance values. Light armor would be weakness to Slashing, resistance to Piercing, and neutrality to Crushing. Medium would be neutrality to Slashing, weakness to Piercing, and resistance to Crushing. Heavy would be resistance to Slashing, neutrality to Piercing, and weakness to Crushing. Just my thoughts, lengthy though they may be. Also, in regard to the 3 types of magical armor... I think replacing "Armor" with "Synthetic" would be a nice change. Then you'd have "Natural, Synthetic, and Spirit." You could even go with "Ethereal" instead of Spirit, but that's pretty much nitpicking at this point. You've basically got 2 types of physical armor (organic and synthetic), and 1 type of non-physical. *shrug*. We probably need more details about how that works, but, with 3 types, I suppose you could have 3 damage types. That would just have to take the place of individual elemental resistances, I would think. Things might get a bit convoluted with both in there. Perhaps not, though. Also, I'm with Valorian on the "% of DT applied to elemental weapon bonus damage effects" thing. If a sword does swingy-physics damage AND elemental damage, the elemental damage shouldn't really have anything to do with physical armor DT, just because it's coming from a sword. Seems like it makes you have to balance fire damage 2 different ways, and I don't see a benefit that outweighs the convolution of that. Obviously, I'm not inherently smarter or more knowledgeable than Obsidian, so there could just be a reason for it that we don't yet know.