Lephys

This is too vague a context for the problem. There is no problem with you sneaking past a group of enemies to get to a chest, looting it, then turning around and killing all the enemies for their loot. If the looting of something in the chest was tagged as a quest objective (the contents of the chest were valuable to the story/game-world and not just valuable to your characters within the standard loot system), then you'd get an XP reward for reaching and looting that chest. If you ALSO killed the group of enemies that prevented you from simply waltzing up to the chest and opening it (instead of masterfully sneaking past them with a sneaky, sneaky build), then you also get any loot from those enemies. The problem comes when you get to a "do I just let a fight break out here, or do I go through the trouble of 10 more minutes of dialogue and careful choices to make sure a fight doesn't break out here?" choice, resolve the situation peacefully, THEN, purely because you can get XP for it, go instigate a fight with the no-longer-hostile NPCs and kill them all and take all their stuff. Of course, really, I just think the game shouldn't let you do that anyway. In the event that you get any XP for resolving the situation peacefully, I think utilizing any ability to fight anyway should either result in no combat XP (which is the specific argument in this thread) OR the deduction of the Peaceful Resolution XP. Either way, you wind up with pretty much the same result. You only get the combat choice XP, or the Peaceful Resolution XP. That's the thing about Objective-based XP that no one seems to get. Is it abstracting the 100% realistic gain of experience you would normally receive from combat "practice"? Yes. But ALL the experience is abstractly granted. It represents the challenges you overcome to actually accomplish things. In a lot of games, you have exploration XP. "You've discovered, Such-And-Such-Vale!". That's not rewarding you for how many footsteps you took. You can run in circles for hours and hours and hours and never gain a single XP point. But, you happen to move in the right direction, and reach the right spot, and you've discovered something! Again, if you want nothing to be abstracted, then you might say "That shouldn't get XP!" Or "All you did was move!". But, A) you generally have to do more than just move to get from wherever you started to the location of the discovered place (including fight things), and B) that's also why you tend to get 1,000 XP for a quest, and about 50 for discovering a place. But wait, all those bands of orcs I ran across on the way to Such-And-Such-Vale were avoidable, so I don't get anything for them! How do you know that's the case? Maybe "Drive the orcs from the Blargity-Blarg Plains outside of the village of SquibblesVille" is an objective. And, again, if you went around and there were countless instances of combat, left-and-right, that were purely for funsies, then that would be a balance issue. NOT an issue inherent to the system. Want combat to provide XP? Design it to contribute toward an objective outcome. Want Stealth to provide XP? Have it contribute toward an objective outcome. Hell, who's to say "clear the cave of Orcs" won't be an objective, and "sneak past the orcs to just loot stuff" will? Just because you COULD sneak or you COULD kill things in a given scenario doesn't mean that every act of sneaking or every single act of killing must provide you with XP. Sometimes all you'll get is loot. Sometimes maybe you'll gain reputation. And any combination of the three. Maybe even more different resources. Who knows? I don't, because the game design's not finished or detailed yet.

I like the per-encounter limit on arrows. It's obviously still abstracted, but it could work very well if ironed out properly. What if, to go along with that, in place of buying all the individual arrows of various types, you could purchase bigger/more quivers? I don't mean to the point where you've got an archer with a quiversuit, carrying 1,000 arrows that replenish every encounter, heh. BUT, if the arrows were to function like the spells, don't the casters gain a larger and larger repertoire of spells as they go along? And there's talk of grimoires/tomes possibly being an equipment item tied to the number and variety of spells available on the per-encounter (and/or per-rest) regiment. Again, this obviously wouldn't be 100% realistic, but I don't think it would have to be anywhere near ridiculous, either. I know there were hip-quivers and back quivers, and it wouldn't be entirely infeasible (probably more of a "how much stuff can you really carry around on your person?" issue?) to have both a hip quiver AND a back quiver. Or maybe you have a dual back quiver, or maybe not (since that would, essentially, achieve the same result as a single back {dorsal? I like the word "dorsal," ^_^} quiver with simply a larger capacity.) So, maybe two actual separate quivers would be the limit. Either way, you could purchase quiver upgrades, or have them enchanted or something so that they'd basically give you fire/ice arrows. Instead of buying 50 ice arrows at 1 silver a pop, you'd probably spend about 15 gold on a quiver with Frost-enchanting capabilities (15 gold being an estimation of the expense being relative to the benefit). I mean, if you can enchant so many arrows, what magic rule says you can't enchant a quiver? *shrug*. I know it would need a lot of detail-ironing, but I just thought it could be a cool idea, in the midst of existing abstraction. I'm just not sure the absolute best way to handle it off the top of my head. If anyone thinks it's worth discussing further, I'll gladly continue my efforts to work out viable details.

So now we're assuming there are going to be ultra-convenient alternate tunnels everywhere that always lead to the chest behind the big group of enemies, are we? . Lovely. The key words there being "If." Where in "No. Awarding loot is not systemic." (which is exactly what you just linked to) does Josh say "All the best loot in the game will be placed in non-combat-obtainable chests. Suck it, combat-advocates!"? Please, please point it out for me. Pretty please. I'll give you a dollar. All that means is, you have no way of knowing what's in the contents of a chest behind some enemies, and what the enemies, themselves, are carrying (you can see weapons and equipment, maybe, but what about small bags of gemstones or gold?). At the very least, not-killing them means you miss out on ANYTHING they're carrying regardless of whether or not it's uber equipment that you want to use, or lesser equipment that you want to sell. Josh has expressed an intent to deal with loot bloat, but I don't recall anyone at Obsidian saying anything about "No enemies will ever drop anything except for elites, and you'll know exactly who these elites are, and what they will drop!". If they did, then, again, please show me. I would seriously like to know, because I missed it (Not sarcasm... sincerity.) If you opt to attempt to kill the enemies, between your player skill at controlling your party, the difficulty setting of the game, and your party's build, you have 1 of 2 outcomes: A)You are unable to defeat them and must reload from a previous save and give up on killing them, or B)You defeat them (however many tries it takes, you either eventually win or you don't), get anything they were carrying (which, until they announce loot lists on mouse-over, I'm going to consider that we probably don't have any way of knowing without killing them and checking), then STILL get to go open the chest. How does the amount of stuff enemies had on their persons + contents of chest somehow = only the contents of the chest? And if the combat loot is NEVER a significant enough addition to the chest contents, then that's a balancing issue, not a problem with the system itself. If you heat water on a stove, and fail to bring it to a boil (you only get it to 200 degrees Fahrenheit), the method you're using to boil it (heating it) isn't the problem. The exact value of the temperature you reached is the problem. i.e. balancing. You're perfectly free to believe they'll terribly balance the game, but that's pretty much just a guess (Like, "I believe we will have exactly 10 hurricanes next year, instead of some other number of hurricanes!"), and has absolutely nothing to do with the system. Hell, in a system that awards XP for each and every enemy killed, if it only gave you 5 XP for each enemy, and you always needed 20,000 to gain a level, then you'd still be upset because of balancing issues, even though it was using the system you favor. So, I'd very much like to know why we should all assume the same things you assume. Also, no one addressed this example I gave earlier: If you'd like to ignore it, I suppose nothing's stopping you. It just seems to me like it disproves the "Combat avoidance is always the better option" hypothesis. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I just want to point out one more time, regarding the "OMG, we won't get anything for combat!" concern, that this is what Josh Sawyer said regarding enemies and loot: I bolded the parts important to his ideas about loot. Nowhere in that did I see "And so, you see, I hate loot, and people who enjoy combat, and no one will ever get anything for combat, MUAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAHHH!!! *Dramatically pulls cloak across his face beneath his eyes in a diabological gesture, whilst lightning flashes ominously in the background*" I'm curious as to how people decided combat would produce no rewards, or an extremely strained "MAYYYYbe worthless rewards, u_u." When discussing his feelings on loot and combat, he specifically reference a scenario from ToEE in which one of the enemies "carries several nice items." Again, how do you get "Ahh, so Josh Sawyer hates quality loot..." out of that? How, I say? *glaaaarrrrrrrrrre*... o_O

I said that my interest is not in making sure that whatever you say is wrong. In other words, if we're standing side-by-side, and you tell me "There's no way it's raining," and water is falling from clouds onto my head, I have no interest in proving myself superior to you in any way, but I'm going to feel compelled to point out the fact what I can observe (rain falling from the sky) seems to indicate that you are mistaken. It's entirely possible you could mean something else by it, like "You've gotta be kidding me," or maybe you muttered a thought aloud about it not raining in a specific location, and you didn't say the location part aloud. It's possible what was conveyed to me was not entirely clear on the specifics of your point. That's precisely why I question and present examples. I might have misunderstood your meaning, but it seemed very strongly that you were suggesting that non-combat skills aren't capable of being anything but incredibly simple, and following it up with a "But, sure, even though that's never gonna happen, I suppose if it magically did, you could knock yourself out with the handing out of rewards." If I misunderstood, then I apologize, but what reinforces the confusion is that, instead of just admitting the possibility from the get-go whenever it was brought up and voicing your opinion on the likelihood of XP-deserving complexity in non-combat skill challenges, you argued against the possibility for a time, THEN finally threw in a "But I'm not really saying it isn't possible." I can't count the number of instances in these forums in which a simple "Yeah, if they could get that to work, that'd be cool, but I don't think they'll get it to work properly because it's so tricky" would've saved countless paragraphs and paragraphs of convoluted discussion, as opposed to the actually-posted "No, that possibility is the worst idea ever, because in some implementations I've seen in other games it didn't work well, and obviously there's no possible design that hasn't already been implemented in another existing game! !" You either agree that something is possible, or you don't. If you agree it's possible, then why argue against it? No one said "Combat should NEVER award XP!" We just said "Combat shouldn't always award XP." And then touched on "Well, shouldn't non-combat stuff potentially award XP, then?" So a big "What?! That's ridiculous!" or "NO!" to that doesn't mean "Well, except for sometimes!" It's one or the other. There's no reason to go through all that to argue against a possibility when you're only really arguing against certain sets of specific circumstances. And if you can't think of any example that verifies the proposed possibility, what's wrong with saying "I don't know how you'd do that. It seems like you can't." And maybe asking for one? Observe: Does it? How does it automatically become the optimal solution? I can think of situations in which it wouldn't be the optimal solution, so that seems to contradict what you claim. If you can point out otherwise, I'd be happy to hear it, and would understand the correctness of your words. Example situation: There are some bandits rather forcibly interrogating a finely-dressed merchant. You have no idea who he is, but, unbeknownst to you, he will be in your debt (if you save him) and can offer you very cool rewards in the form of quality equipment and/or discounts, etc. BUT, you came to this bandit camp because you knew that they were amassing stolen goods. So, you know there's a chest in this tent full of nice goodies. You don't know exactly what, but bandits don't steal mundane things of no value. However, they're being quite liberal with their efforts to "make him talk." So, if you take the time to slowly make your way past all of them without being detected to avoid combat and get to the chest, he will die. So, A) The optimal solution isn't really clear, because you're not even sure what the exact rewards will be (which could be the case in the majority of the game), and B) You're prevented from both taking advantage of the resource-saving avoidance of combat that stealth provides AND saving the merchant, meaning that you can't use both approaches. Either such a scenario is impossible or there's a flaw in my belief that stealth isn't inherently optimal in this example (in which case, please explain), OR stealth isn't inherently optimal in this situation.

I'm 100% behind this, but I would think that one aspect of that would BE "in-world connection." I mean, the more the buying-stuff-from-a-merchant interface conveys the idea that a shop transaction is going on, the more effective it is at professional interfacery. It's like camouflage. The more closely you resemble that shrub you're trying to hide in, the better you blend in. A really good example of this is in the game Alone in the Dark (the more recent one... I think it was a remake of one from the '80s or something?). When you accessed your inventory, you simply gained a 1st-person perspective from your character's eyes, looking down as he opened up his little utility-leather-jacket. You could only carry what would fit in all the pockets and velcro-ties and whatnot, and when you selected/equipped things, he literally just grabbed them out of his jacket and put away whatever was previously equipped. Image example: That's what I mean by the positive effects of the interface's connection to the game's reality.

Where did blacksmiths of old get the steel from? Were they all experts at both mining AND smithing? Yes, he has tested the helmet. They have dulled (but otherwise replica) axes and swords and flails and warhammers at their disposal, and, while I'm sure it can be damaged, and it's highly possible it wouldn't withstand 12 blows from a weapon in actual combat from an adrenaline-fueled hostile hell-bent on killing my friend, A) it wasn't exactly designed to make sure it could, and B) that's beside my point. Also, obviously soldiers within an organized army wouldn't all build their own forge and sit down and each make their own armor. That's completely inefficient. They'd delegate specific tasks to specific groups. But, can you tell me there were never any rebel or small militia groups that contained any people who ever crafted quality armor AND possessed fighting skill? I have no intention of belittling your knowledge and experience with things, nor claim that I know more than you on the subject (I had no idea how little or much you knew on the subject, which is why I said "you might be surprised" in my previous post. And I never compared anything to "legendary" quality. I specifically said "masterwork," meaning the realistic top-tier of craftsmanship. Nor did I say that you wouldn't, ideally, WANT masterwork quality instead of my-friend-who-used-a-forge-for-two-weeks quality. But, ideal isn't always what you get. RPGs are often heavily founded in progression from the basics, so you generally start with some pretty crap equipment. Lastly, I specifically shed light on the possibility that one or more of your 6 "adventurers" had actually accrued some non-marginal amount of experience mining or crafting or fishing or baking over the course of their entire life thus far, which would allow "you," the person in control of the whole party, to craft. I never said "and that's why you're wrong, and crafting should, inherently be in the game, and everyone should have to do it, and it's always 100% believable no matter how it's implemented, and everyone should enjoy it. The end." I don't understand why so many people feel that it's in any way necessary to snuff out pleas for the consideration of sheer possibility, and that "not necessarily" means "THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOU SAID, AND NOTHING ELSE!". *sigh*...

Coming in at number two is "It allows for jovial games of limbo so the party can de-stress between intense battles." Seriously, though, I'm thrilled about the confirmation of not only spears, but multiple kinds! ^_^! Of course, even though they're confirmed now, they could always opt to remove them later for some reason... Oh no, o_o... I just jinxed it. If they get removed, I accept whatever punishment you can conjure, -___-

Awesome notion, 8D! Maybe, depending on how/to-what-degree the passage of time is evident in the progression of the story, that type of idea could be tied to the changing of seasons? Maybe a cave is full of bears at a later point in the game, because it's now winter, and bears in the area sought a cave to make a snuggly home out of, and found that cave. Bears + winter was just a simple example. Obviously there are much cooler ideas, haha. Also, for what it's worth, the XP-not-necessarily-rewarded-for-every-kill prototype would totally allow for an infinitely-repopulated mega-dungeon (maybe a portal to a dimension filled with an invasive, demon army is the reason behind the respawn implementation, or something along those lines, *shrug*) without creating the problem of infinite XP gain in the absence of any other form of story/game progression.

As do I. The most potent example of that has got to be my memories of playing Everquest (the original) at a friend's house. At the time, the only real consequence of losing a lot of health in a fight was that you had to literally sit and drink and eat for much, much longer (sometimes upwards of 5-10 minutes) just to regain all your health and mana before you could go again. I know most games have it much improved from that, but you still get that "Welp, combat's over, but that was a close one. The Cleric's out of mana, so let's either sit here and wait while it regens enough for him to cast another healing spell, which takes about 20 seconds per spell, and I only need to do that about 27 times to get everyone back up to full." OR, like you said, you simply rest. In which case, you still have a completely arbitrary "option" to rest that you have to use every single time (when are you NOT going to rest and instead wait on mana or use up potions when resting is always available?) and still have to wait on, if for a minimal amount of time. So, Josh announces that resting won't always be an option, and there's a resounding "BOOOOO!". Why? Well, one of the only things it accomplished was to heal your party back up to full in between fights. So, Josh also announces that your immediate "health" (which just so happens to be called "Stamina,") will automatically regenerate quite speedily outside of combat (and very, very slowly within combat), and once again there's a resounding "BOOOOO! We automatically heal up once the fight's done?! LAME! By the way, give us back the ability to rest immediately after a fight has ended so we can heal up!" And people wonder why we're so puzzled, and why we suggest there might be a misunderstanding afoot...

Noted. My mistake. That doesn't change the fact that he didn't say it wasn't easy, either. You chose to voluntarily ignore that possibility, whilst only addressing situations B and C, then calling the example out because their described ease didn't seem to fit the issue. Are you claiming that the act of maneuvering your character through a field of enemies, undetected, can't possibly ever be easier than combat, or that dialogue sessions will never take more thought and consume more time than a given session of combat? You've never played an RPG in which your character(s) took out groups of enemies in a swift, single environmental interaction (collapsing a column with a bomb or fireball or something) or a well-placed AOE spellcast? Once again, it seems you're unnecessarily assuming that Stealth will consist of simply clicking a button that toggles between 100% detectability and 100% undetectability, then strolling care-free past all hostiles, and that dialogue options will be labeled "*Convince the man to give you awesome stuff!*", while ignoring the fact that combat can potentially require very little effort in certain instances. If you're going to take the time to argue against people who are putting forth the effort of considering possibilities beyond just what suits their stance, the least you can do is do the same yourself. My interest here is not in making sure whatever you say is wrong, but instead in better understanding what can/should be done regarding the issue at hand by taking into account all that anyone who chooses to post on the matter has to say.

How dare you say that! lolz I didn't. Other people did. Hence the quotation marks. But it pleases me that my text amused you, nonetheless. I believe there's a laughter shortage in this world of ours. ^_^

Do you mean that they seem to have fixed the lack of a supposed miss mechanic that isn't truly a miss mechanic, or did you mean that they supposedly fixed the lack of a true missing mechanic? Same confusion with "dumbing down." The quotes are commonly used to reference something incorrectly labeled or misrepresented by another. So, I just wanted to make sure, because it strikes me as a bit odd to not want supposed dumbing down of mechanics, but it makes perfect sense to oppose the actual dumbing down of mechanics.

One of the *many* reasons why romances gargle donkey sick. I don't follow... character depth is bad? Is that the reason to which you're referring?

Not true. Josh has expressed full advocacy of critical hits, or they would've been removed. Also, not only are misses still being considered as a possibility, but, either way, glancing blows/misses are still percentage-chance based. u_u...

Oh, hello. Spear and shield (plus)? Pssh... spear and flail! Nay...! Spear and GRIMOIRE! *Cackle of madness, with background lightning strike* Thank you very much, as always, for the continued updates! Keep up the good work, Mark! Now if there's even the slightest flaw in any of the animations, we'll know at whom to direct our rage-saturated feedback! 8D (I kid, just to be clear, haha.)

Well if both B and C are true then it sounds like there was no challange at all in your given scenario. If they are doing a task that is so incrediable easy to them why are they being awarded at all. I think we should award them for eating pie while we are at it. A seems to be the only choice where you don't imply that its a walk in the park. So option A couldn't possibly be easy? Also, imagine that options B and C are equally as tricky as combat (relative to your current combat, stealth, and diplomacy/negotiation skills, respectively). Example flaw: corrected. Any thoughts now?

I have a feeling that P:E will not decide your main characer's opinion toward Elves until you, the player, actually make in-game decisions regarding Elves, so I don't think what you're referring to will be much of an issue in this case. However, it does bring up the interesting question of "Should you be able to make your character directly express favor for Elves in 17 consecutive decisions in the game, then make a decision that specifically expresses hatred toward Elves? And, if so, should there be a stronger impact on your reputation (i.e. 'Wait a minute, that go guys around talking about how Elves should have as many rights as everyone else! Has he been lying this ENTIRE TIME?!')?" Personally, I think the game shouldn't prevent you from doing this, because it remains completely plausible no matter what it conveys about your character in the game world (psychoticness, evil, etc.)

So what you're saying is... respawns? Yeah. Rare respawns with worthless xp that are only there to improve immersion. Okay, thanks for clarifying. I was just confused, because you said "no respawns," followed by "except for sometimes when there should be respawns" (paraphrased). I didn't know if you wanted them to never exist, or if you wanted them to exist more often than never. Also, how many weeks later are we talkin'? How few enemies should repopulate? Should all enemies in all areas do this, or only certain enemies/only certain areas, or some combination of the two? Also, how do rare respawn with worthless XP act to improve immersion? Would it be better to use frequent respawns, or reward useful XP instead of worthless XP? What else should respawns hope to achieve besides improving immersion, and were the rare ones that provided worthless XP failing at this in some existing game/system? How so?

So your suggestion, in the matter of how to best determine (in the design of the game) the specifics of the racial bonuses for all available races in the game is to make sure the Humans don't get any bonuses (or penalties, for that matter) and not worry about the rest of the races? I wasn't aware that the desire to discuss design potential design possibilities in a "cRPG (Gameplay & Mechanics)" discussion forum somehow inferred that I "don't like making strategical choices." By the way... Humans aren't a class. Thank you, though, for that extremely useful contribution to the discussion, Helm. I really appreciate all the effort you put into making sure you don't ever hop into completely optional discussions only to suggest that discussing is stupid. You need a trophy or medal or something.

Man... all that typing I did, and none of it got even any attention, haha. Look, here's all I'm saying. I think there's a discrepancy in the discussion. You're thinking that you're "against" this, and myself and some others are "for" it. But what is "it"? Being powerful? An ant is powerful. It's just not very powerful compared to humans, or dragons. So, obviously, the only constructive way to look at this topic is "Let's try to find the range of power that is the most acceptable." We might find out what's not powerful enough (like, perhaps, the inability to ever take on any more than 6 combatants at once -- one for each of your party members), and where exactly is TOO powerful for the game's own good. So, if what we're saying is, in your opinion, too powerful (which, I'll agree that Dragonball would be bad. Dragonball doesn't even make any sense within its own universe... planets can be destroyed instantly at ~9,000 power, and later on it takes someone with like 4 million power about 30 minutes to destroy one?), then please provide more constructive insight as to what wouldn't be too powerful, but would still not be a minimal amount of power. Obviously different posters are providing different examples of relative levels of power for our characters to have, so, like I said, we should probably use each example as a reference point for determining where "reasonable" should be. Here's a good starting place, using the dragon example we've already both discussed a bit. Do you think that a group of 6 simply being capable of taking on a believably powerful dragon (not it being easy at all for them, just possible) would automatically be too powerful? If so, why? We can work our way up or down from there.

Yeah, now I remember something I disliked in damage types. Let's assume you slash with a sweihander, the mail stops the attack so you do no damage? Lets assume you slash with a pole the size and weight of a sweihander, it's crushing so it does damage despite the mail? Same weight, same size, but the other is sharp so doesn't work. It'd work better if it was a dull blade? All weapons should have a crushing damage component derived from weapons weight and dimensions. Maybe that could "kick in" if the armor penetration of piercing and slashing component fails? Or somethign. That's what the Damage Reduction or Damage Threshold values (and the damage values on the weapons, regardless of damage type) are meant to address. If someone has Full Plate (DT 7), and you try to hit them with your longsword (8 damage), then you're going to only deal 1 damage. This just means that the structure of the armor was thus that the physics of kinetic-force transferrence from the shape and weight of your sword was only enough to get 1/8th of the force to actually bypass the absorption of the armor's structure. A sword doing "slashing" and a hammer doing "crushing" isn't meant to say that there's no bruising/rib-cracking force behind the weight of a sword. But, that's why, if you're wearing chainmail, the DT would be lower (Maybe 4?). The sword may not cut you, but it's still going to transfer the force of the swing through the much-thinner chain better than it will with the rigid plate (which doesn't necessarily even allow the force of the sword to make direct contact with your body unless the armor's structure is compromised.) Think of it like this: If a longsword deals 9 damage (change from 8 for simplicity's sake in this example), then pretend it does 3 slashing damage, 3 piercing damage, and 3 crushing damage. If you strike a target with no armor (or very light armor), you deal all three types of damage (maybe reduced by 1 or something from the light armor). If you strike a target wearing medium armor (chainmail, we'll say), it stops the slashing damage, so only the piercing and crushing get through and you deal 6 damage. If you attack someone with heavy armor (full plate), you only deal the crushing damage, so you deal 3 damage. It's just example math, but the point is that the total possible damage and the exact damage reduction take into account your concern (which is a perfectly valid one, by the way), even if they do it rather abstractly. If full plate has a damage threshold of 5, and your slashing sword has the ability to bypass 0 damage threshold, then that means its crushing capability is not strong enough to affect the plate. So, you can still deal 4 damage with that 9-damage longsword. Whereas, the hammer is specifically designed to make the plate armor less effective, so it might bypass 5 damage threshold, meaning that a 7-damage warhammer deals all of its damage, even to the plate. The sword fails to deliver enough effective (crushing) force to the plate armor to affect it. It's not that all its force is focused into slicing, and it couldn't possibly crush anything. So, a warhammer will still severely hurt an armorless target. Hell, it might even slash their flesh a bit, if you were to try to do so (even blunt hard metal edges will tear through flesh), but the sword is always going to slash much more flesh with the same force applied. The hammer might crush the hell out of your ribcage and organs, but it is never going to crush the side of your torso in AND slash across your torso in the same strike. The sword, likewise, will deliver some crushing/bruising damage to your bones as it swings, but the more it slashes, the less it crushes, and it can't crush as much as a hammer can. Swinging it like a hammer at the side of a target's torso would result in a very precise cut of damage that could be quite deep, but the force wouldn't be transferred to as much of the surrounding ribcage and organs as with the hammer (which wouldn't strike as deeply). (Note: I realize you have to swing a different way to effectively pierce instead of slash or crush, but this system simply abstracts the specifics of your swing to take into account what all you COULD do with that weapon. If we are able to choose how to swing our weapons, as has been suggested, then the system would need to be altered. I acknowledge that, and am not against allowing different modes of attack for the weapons with multiple actual damage types.)

Whether or not they should adventure with you, and exactly what benefits and what types of "companions" definitely depends on various separate factors in the design of P:E, but, assuming we're going to consider those in the implementation of this idea, whatever they may be, I give it a giant waving foam thumbs up.

I actually wasn't being sarcastic, so, you are sadly incorrect. Also, you cannot "attempt" sarcasm. You are either being sarcastic or you are not. It is a style of communication, not a puzzle or challenge. You can be sarcastic to no effect, or to much effect, but you are still being sarcastic or you aren't. If reason and logic support the idea that combat kills should always produce an XP reward, then that same reason and logic support the idea that performing any other action that involves a progressive skill should also produce an XP reward. If "experience," meaning what it does, should logically be produced by combat, then any other form of character experience should reward game-system XP. Assume it doesn't mean that, for a moment. Combat (in the existing level system that I haven't seen a proposed change to in any examples) leads to XP, which leads to level-up, which leads to an increase in your non-combat skills, such as Stealth. Therefore, you don't actually need to use a given skill to improve that skill. Therefore, sneaking should be able to improve combat, because actual first-hand experience is gained by utilizing your sneaking skill. Now, if you had a system in which your level did not encompass improvements in both combat and non-combat skills, then things would be different. Of course, even in that system, it wouldn't make any sense for non-combat skills not to produce XP, and combat skills to produce XP. Non-combat skills would, at the very least, need to produce non-combat XP. Using any of the criteria above, completeing a quest/objective (essentially, accomplishing a goal) does not, in and of itself, constitute an action or use of a skill. It can only result from some other action or skill usage, which reason already dictates should be rewarded, regardless of whether or not a goal was accomplished. So, logically, there is no basis for rewarding the completion of a goal or objective. XP rewards upon goal completion are rewarding whatever actions and skill implementations the completion of that goal involved. If you merely walked your characters 50 feet and opened a chest to retrieve some iron ingots, then returned them to the smith who asked you to retrieve them, and you were rewarded with XP, then the XP is representative of moving and looting. Those actions are what was rewarded, since they are the only possible actions that will earn you that reward. Hence the term "Fetch Quests." Imagine a quest of "Go kill those 10 orcs for me." You go kill the 10 orcs, earning you any amount of XP (for the act of killing the orcs.) Now, you talk to the quest-giver, and you're rewarded for the goal of eliminating the orcs, gaining some more XP. You just got rewarded twice for the exact same actions/applied-effort. If you disagree or feel that my observation of reason is flawed, then I implore you to point it out within the context of my argument.

This is the last thing I'll say in this topic, since Valorian is allergic to elaboration and explanation: Level-scaling sometimes serves a purpose, depending on the implementation and the rest of the game's design context. And yes, this discussion has probably been quite thorough enough, regardless of whoever did or did not benefit from it.