Lephys

Sure, but I think looking at more traditional attributes can help out a lot. I'm not saying you're doing it, but whenever this topic comes up, people act as though ALL possible ways in which to do attributes have been exhausted, and there's no point in changing anything. Looking at traditional attribute systems for their strengths is perfectly feasible, and downright reasonable. And when else should an attribute system be considered for rework, than during earlyish production? More notably, pre-production, I suppose, which I realize we're probably past now. I just don't really understand the "It's no use! All attribute systems just suck, and there's no point in putting any effort into getting one to not do so!" mentality that gets thrown around. If that's the case, then why was any effort put forth in the first place? Let's just draw words out of a hat, then effects out of another hat, slap them all together and call it an attribute system. It'll just be a fun random thing we have to deal with. "My Fighter has a Potatos stat of 3/4ths, and a Narbles stat of pi. This grants him 7.4 carrier pigeon bandoliers per encounter." There. We're done. WOOHOO!!!

Fair enough. I guess when it comes to the change to 5 and logical reasons for it, it's almost like a coin toss in a way. You can't have a coin on heads and tails both, so you've gotta pick one. At the very least, maybe they're trying out 5 because they've already tried 6 and know how that plays. If objectively there is no better reason for one option over another, then logically they are all equally sound, I suppose. *shrug*.

Yeah, but resting was part of your adventure, unless your DM treated it like a typical CRPG and resting was just putting your adventure on pause for a bit purely so you could heal up. Our DM had actual story stuff happen when/whilst we rested, etc.

I think the different versions that I've seen over the years have their own pros and cons. Though, I'm not familiar yet with anything past 3.5, and the oldest I played was 2nd Edition. I've also played some Shadowrun, which does really fun stuff with Initiative.

The others still matter though. Just not as much as the main ones for that class. That's not the attributes' faults. That's the fault of the specific way in which the classes are set up. In DnD, they've typically affected a great deal of things. Just overbearingly is that PoE was an attempt to get away from that, yes, but I feel that the pendulum swung a bit far to the opposite end of the spectrum, where it feels like the effects of attributes are struggling to justify the existence of the attributes. As it stands, you just have a couple of attributes that are globally uber useful then the rest "don't matter" (as much). Instead of per-class now, it's just across the board, but the problem remains.

You do have a party, but that party can get split up, and/or fall into all manner of statuses (statii? *shrug*). Part of the fun of DnD is seeing what kinds of challenges you run into in the midst of your limitations. If you're a Fighter, maybe you run into some magical hostile creature, or you're trapped by mages or something, and your party's mage is unconcious, etc. Well, maybe you get to MacGuyver your way out of the situation, because your Fighter has useful knowledge and/or is Intelligent. That's part of the fun. This is why the whole "Only Rogues can lockpick" thing always crops up as an issue. What difference does it make WHO lockpicks if you definitely desire things behind locks, and you have a party of 6, and everything's designed for your entire party to easily take on? What's the point of "Ooooooh, this enemy can only be damaged by magic!" if that's just designed for your entire party to dish out X amount of magic damage? By far the most interesting thing about RPGs is character dynamics. Class is part of it, but in a DnD campaign, you can make two different Wizards who have drastically different experiences. Not saying DnD's perfect. Just using it as a reference to illustrate how and why stats do what they do. Also, I didn't think DEX affected ranged damage, so much as ranged to-hit chance. But you're right... it was a bit too potent. The DnD stats could've used tuning. I'm not saying we can necessarily achieve the ideal, but ideally, each stat does something of significant interest for each class. Not really, no. I mean, the implementation of classes can be broken, in a way. But the very idea of them is not. When you boil it down, it's essentially a grouping of general character factors for the purpose of balancing certain things (i.e. "I'm gonna take Whirlwind Slash AND Meteor Strike because this is a classless system, WOOOOH!") and to sort of guarantee a degree of distinction between people. Sometimes, when you allow anyone to just choose anything, you end up with all Jacks-of-All-Trades, etc. A classless has fewer potential problems in a single-player game. If it's just you, you can pretty much do whatever you want. The second you have a group, it becomes difficult not to just want to give everyone all the strengths. Then you don't really have to make them work together. They're just a multiplier for your capabilities/damage output, etc. I think the problem with classes typically arises when you tie too many things to class choice. Like in DnD. Honestly, the awesomeness of how all the attributes work with just characters in general is a bit at odds with the idea that all Wizards are going to have high INT. I mean, sure, you could go with like 15 or 14 instead of 18, but it's pretty infeasible to go with 10. At the very least, it'd be nice to split everything in 2, at least. Maybe Dex affects how quickly you can reload your ranged weapons/draw them, etc., and Perception affects accuracy? And maybe Strength affects shot strength for slings, certain bows, and thrown weapons. Boom. Now it's not just "Ranged = high DEX." There's really nothing wrong with that, other than that it's boring. It's more just "what are we not getting because it's designed that way, that we COULD be getting?" To look at it another way, imagine Strength is the ONLY attribute in the system. Well, maybe some people are fine with that or even like it the best, but does that change the fact that having all the other attributes allow for a lot of interesting mechanics and situations that Strength-only does not? No, it doesn't. So, it's not just more = better, but there are measurable contributions that the existence of these things has upon the game systems. They serve a purpose, and most of the "how should we tune this?" just depends on what contributes the most to the system without taking away some alternative contribution (or, for the least loss, at least).

The logical argument is that Obsidian know better than any of us how their party interaction and encounters are going to be designed, so it's extremely likely that they chose 5 instead of 6 for a whole bunch of tiny good reasons. There is no logical argument for why any number of companions is better than any other number, in a vacuum. Although, I could probably say that 5 is better than 12, because 12 just starts to become unwieldy, whether I prefer that number or a different number. That's just an example, by the way. I'm not at all suggesting anyone is asking for 12 party members. Also, I'd just like to add that text can often read with a different tone than it was actually typed. Also, actual logical arguments often come across like androids speaking to you, so they often phrase things in such a way that could infer a lot of extra stuff, were someone other than a robot/android to say it. So, keep that in mind. If someone does not expressly say "Hahaha, and therefore I know more than you and that makes you dumb," please give them the benefit of the doubt. If someone says "There's a flaw in your argument," don't immediately think "HOW DARE YOU! YOU THINK YOU KNOW MORE THAN ME?!" internally. It's a matter-of-fact statement. Either they're wrong, in which cause you can correct them, or they aren't, in which case you now know something you did not. The goal of constructive argument is always to direct everyone's attention to greater understanding, including the person making the argument. It's a collaborative investigation of the topic at hand. On that note, that last paragraph is not an attack on anyone. It's just a food for thought thing for everyone here to consider and find the value in individually. If you didn't need it, then cool. If you did, then cool. It's just there in case it's helpful.

Honestly, just going with the star diagram, being able to CHOOSE one of the opposite schools to forego would make a huge difference, instead of losing 2 AND getting a penalty to all the rest of your spells. It simply feels like too much of a deterrent from other things than it does a cool bonus in the school you specialize in. It's like the bonus is that you don't get the opposite of a bonus...

False. A Wizard could dump Charisma and not suffer in combat. He would still suffer. And a Wizard with no Strength would suck uber badly at just holding his own against a single Goblin, unless he was using spells. And for the first few levels, he'd basically have no spells. Just because the game mechanics don't ideally utilize the attributes' character metrics does not mean there's a problem with what's being measured. The way Strength and Constitution, for example, worked for Wizards was fine. Honestly the biggest problem for Wizards in D&D was the "You're inherently a glass cannon" notion. "Oh, it's okay that you suck at anything but spells, because your spells are SO good!". That's like having a section of road that's just full of huge potholes, then saying "That's okay! We fixed that by making this OTHER stretch of road SUPER SMOOTH! 8D!" Infinite smoothness in the rest of the road doesn't correct the potholes. So, the solution to D&D's attribute system would've been to better tune how the gameplay mechanics take advantage of the attribute values. Again, though... in tabletop, it was still really fun to make a muscle Wizard, as you could have SO much fun with that if, say, your party got split up in some dungeon, and your DM kept forgetting you were strong because you were a Wizard, and he throws all these anti-magic things at you, and you just get through puzzles and obstacles by intelligently utilizing your strength and inventory, for example. The closer to this a CRPG can get in terms of reactivity to character metrics, the better. Part of the problem with this whole "spiritual successor to IE games" thing is that the IE games' engines severely lacked the power to match tabletop gaming's level of breadth in character checks, so it was like 85% combat, 15% attribute checks for funsies. A part of why modern CRPGs keep with that is just inertia. "This is the classic way these games were made." At least PoE's branching out a lot more into that tabletop territory with scripted interactions, and making them even heavier in Deadfire. But, the more robust the gameplay is in taking advantage of the various attribute values, the more meaningful the attribute values are without someone arbitrarily injecting them with significance. Also, I just want to clarify that a dump stat is a particular stat you dump as a particular class/archetype. So, it's not like "There shouldn't be ANY stat that you get a low value in." If I want to make a strong, intelligent, hearty Wizard in D&D, I'm going to have to dump Charisma and Wisdom and Dexterity, to some extent. The problem with Wizards (for example) in D&D stats was that no matter what else you took, you always wanted INT. And with Fighters, you always wanted Strength. The solution to that is to make stats affect the various facets of each class, rather than having one stat be the go-to thing, like "INT affects your arcane spellcasting ability." Maybe it affects casting speed or something, and Wisdom effects potency. Boom. Now you have two different stats to choose from. And with the Pillars class system, everyone essentially uses the same power source: the soul. So everyone's "casting" the same type of abilities. So, even just straight-up applying the D&D stats to PoE, you could've rolled with the Wizard's "INT affects arcane spellcasting," except it would just affect EVERYONE'S "spellcasting." Then you still could've had physical strength be a thing, with Fighters choosing between just being beefy physical combatants that don't utilize much soul power, or scrawnier scrappers who utilize big bursts of damage and effectiveness in their active abilities, modals, etc. That's what doesn't make much sense. You fixed the majority of problems by universalizing the class power source, yet they STILL were like "Also, we'll DOUBLE fix it by making all potency come from Strength!" It could've easily been Resolve that was soul potency, and Strength was still physical power, which could've affected a variety of things (bow range, carry capacity, base armor pen, physical weapon damage bonus, critical hit damage with melee weapons, etc.). Not necessarily all those at once. I'm just saying it could've affected a much broader group of things, instead of just "melee smashy damage, and that's it, so if you don't want that it's useless." That's really the only two problems to look out for in an attribute system: 1) Does this attribute benefit a given class WAYYYY more than all the others? 2) Does this attribute ONLY benefit certain classes/archetypes?

Not necessarily. There could be a tactical reason, within a combat encounter, not to cast your most powerful spells first. What if you open with your most powerful spells, then you're out of them, and the enemy just regens or heals? Or what if the enemy is shielded at first? Again, I get what you're saying, but you're exaggerating the effect of this. IF you had a batch of 6 different combat encounters in a stretch of map, and before, you had 6 casts of a given level of spell per rest, then you could still just open up with that spell every encounter. Now, change that to 1 cast per encounter... See? The fact that you can now definitely cast X spells of each level per encounter is something that is considered when designing the encounters. What you're imagining is going to be problematic is only problematic if you have bunch of encounters that were for some reason designed with "Oh no, I'd better preserve my big spells!" in mind, then the player is suddenly granted a guaranteed refresh of these every fight. To look at it another way, a big problem in RPGs is the hoarding tendency of limited consumables. At the beginning of a game, if I find a healing potion, I have no idea how often I'll find these, or how powerful that potion is in relation to other available potions/items in the game. Same with defense-boost items, etc. So, a human mind naturally thinks "I better save this until I REALLY need it." Well, what if you find 20 of them per 10-minute session? Later on, you realize that you could've just used one or two per combat and been fine. Well, now the game tells you "This is how many spells you'll be able to cast," so you're not thinking "Man, what if I need another fireball 4 encounters from now, REALLY badly?!". Is something lost? Yes. An aspect of resource management is lost. However, you still have to decide which spells to spend your "cast ammo" on per encounter. So, it's not a matter of "Do I cast Tier 1 Cone of Flames, or do I cast CELESTIAL METEOR STRIKE OF DOOOOOOM?". It's more "Do I cast this Tier 4 buff on my group, or do I cast this Tier 4 attack spell? Once I've cast, that's it." So, it's a bit different, yes, but you're not magically getting uber power for free, and/or tactical choice is not somehow tossed out the window just because you definitely get to cast spells every combat encounter.

It's a very fun game. They just can't figure out how to make the most of their content. It's like an MMO that doesn't even know how to MMO.

1varangian: While I get what you're saying, I think you might be knee-jerking a bit. It's not "free." You still have a limit to spell-casting. In a way, it's MORE restrictive. Before, if you could cast 5 Tier 3 spells, for example, then you could just cast all 5 in one encounter if you so chose. Then rest and do it again in another, etc. Now, you are simply limited at the encounter level. It doesn't mean you get to cast all the exact same quantities of various-level spells, just per-encounter instead of per-rest. It's just a different way of limiting it. Basically, you'll be more limited in what you can do per-encounter, but your spells will replenish more often now (after every encounter). Like any tool, if it's used properly and the encounters are generally balanced around this limitation, it can be pretty awesome.

Not necessarily. Not if the game uses stats in a deeper way than "how does this affect my melee hittery?". As people have illustrated in this thread and probably dozens of others by now, if you want to make Intelligence (just for example) relevant to a Fighter, design a subset of Fighter talents that have Intelligence requirements, OR just talents that check the Intelligence stat to produce beneficial effects. Like "For every 2 points of Intelligence, you can engage an additional foe at once." So, at 10 you can only engage 1 foe. 12 you can engage 2 foes, etc. Boom. Relevance. It's not hard to come up with oodles of ways in which to make all the stats at least relevant to all classes. Doesn't mean 80% of people aren't going to dump a stat still. It just means that there's an actual reason, in-line with what stats/attributes already do (which is measure your character so that those measurements can be used in interesting ways to enhance and support other gameplay systems), for any given character archetype to choose any given attribute as important.

I believe so far the boost to your chosen school is indefinite, while the penalty to all non-chosen-school spells is -20%, AND you lose two entire schools of spells.

Well, sometimes they are just designed as humans with pointy ears. I find it far more interesting when they're at least structured differently. I mean, an android is just a human that's made out of electronics, but you can still put an android into a game and make it look mostly human while having it behave in a unique fashion. Something to distinguish it, intuitively, from a human. Unless, of course, the point of the lore/story is that it's very hard to distinguish them. If you do something interesting with that, then great. If not, it's a bit silly to sit down and create something that's 99% like this other thing you created. I think we tend to enjoy things more when an entirely different race of creatures seems and feels like a different race, and we're not having to be reminded constantly that "Oh, they only live in this forest, and they have +2 Int, and if you look really closely, they all have a mole on their left forearm." It's a lot more than aesthetic differences, but the aesthetics help. *shrug*. Maybe I'm just weird, and everyone else is cool with like 7 Star Trek races that all look almost exactly like humans, but with a tiny dimple somewhere, or different eyebrows.

My favorite indefinite quantitative term is "a goodly number of."

Yeah, although it was not executed as well as it could have been, the general idea behind Dragon Age: Origins buffs fits with this. Even Fighters had their stances or what-have-you. For example, you could activate "Indomitable," which would make you immune to knockdown. It didn't cost any one-off resource consumption. Instead, it reduced your Stamina pool by like 10% (or 15%? *shrug*). Anywho... all the buffs worked like that. So, a Mage's buff might affect your whole group, but it was a sustained thing that you toggled and it cost your Mage like 20% of his mana pool. So, you could, if you so chose, have 3 or 4 of these active all at once, but you'd basically have like 5% of your max mana to cast with, rendering you unable to cast any other spells in combat (most spells cost about 10% or more of your mana at any given point). Again, not perfect execution. I think with 4 party members, there were too many things allowed to be active at once. BUT, the tradeoff actually worked pretty nicely, and you could tactically toggle things on and off as-needed or to shift roles in combat. I know Pillars had/has modals, so they've already got the setup for some similar cost-system. I guess every class would need something akin to an ability "casting" pool, though, for that to work globally.

The objective answer is: It depends on what you want to accomplish. What do you want to measure, and what don't you want to measure? What character facets do you want to allow for, and what character types do you not want to see your game deny the player? There's not a right set of attribute or a wrong set. No set is too complex or too simple, in and of itself. It depends on the context set forth by the design goals. This is why I've mentioned tabletop DnD so much. People complain about DnD attributes, but they pretty much did what they were supposed to do in tabletop DnD. You didn't have to code in a whole bunch of interesting scenarios for differences in one attribute or another to significantly change how characters could interact with various scenarios. Or, if you want to look at it another way, the DM just speed-coded in, so to speak, all the scenarios, so he could adapt to things on a level that video games cannot yet. The broadest problem with the PoE system is that the effects of the attributes on combat/active systems seem to be at odds with the measurements of your character that they represent within the roleplaying environment (scripted interactions, etc.). Basically, it tries to have its cake and eat it too. They want the interesting metrics that can be used to go "ooohhh, you had THIS value of INT instead of THIS one, so now look at all the stuff that's different and interesting! 8D!", but also just roll with "Ehh... We didn't want dump stats, so INT arbitrarily does the exact same thing for everyone, even though the classes all do completely different things." Not to mention that Resolve is basically spot on for Soul potency, yet for some reason they had to have Might essentially be "damage," as separate from Resolve, which still thematically represents the potency of your spirit/soul/will. It is, by its own definitions and context, very jumbled and at odds with itself. The attribute system, that is. I understand that any game could have ANY attribute system, and that more attribute is not always better, etc. But, by that same token, fewer attributes is not always better, and insufficient character metrics can hinder a game's execution just as much as help it. It's contingent upon the goal. In this case, the attribute system doesn't really meet the goal, because it's actually trying to meet 2 different goals. So, where it meets one, it's going to miss the other, and vice versa. As I've said before, I don't blame them, as they had severe resource constraints on the first game's development. Also, for what it's worth, FlintlockJazz, I actually think the "redundant" stat effects can be super useful. I know that's been proposed in various threads on these forums. But, it's not all that complex. I can't speak directly for or against Wasteland 2's system, specifically, off the top of my head. But it basically just means "If I want to make a max-powerhouse character, I need to pump stats A and B. If I just want the main effect from stat A, or just from stat B, I don't HAVE to pump both." That's actually a good mechanism for the whole "make stats relevant to all classes/character types" notion. There are numerous ways of doing that, though. And now that they have more breathing room, they're changing oodles of other stuff. Look at all the things they changed just in patching/expanding the first game. Group stealth, etc. So, no, I don't think it's crazy or unreasonable to expect that they'd re-examine attributes with a less hectic approach that doesn't scramble to make the attribute system achieve 2 incongruous goals.

And/or, using the Empower system, just grant additional Empower uses, but restrict all Empowers to only being usable on your focus School of magic.

At the very least, the 20% penalty and the exclusionary schools seem redundant as penalties go. Also, there is something to say about psychology, and the only negative to a choice being the lack of another choice's benefit. Even though they're functionally the exact same thing, imagine if a Human's racial modifier were -2 Constitution, and a Dwarf's were +/- 0 Constitution, versus a Human's being 0 and a Dwarf's being +2. Anywho, another thing to play with is you could just have specialty spell slots. As any given subclass, maybe you get 3 LvL1 spells per encounter instead of 2, but 2 of them are Conjuration (using your example above)-only. There. Your penalty is that, while you have access to any spells you wish, you can only equip 1 non-(insert school specialization here) spell in each tier. The goal is to make choosing a subclass interestingly distinct, and to have you FOCUS on a particular school of spells. Not to run a political campaign against the other schools once you've chosen one. "Illusion thinks education is dumb. CAST CONJURATION!" ... Heh. "Uhhh, bruh, I already CHOSE Conjuration! I'm gonna cast a lot of Conjuration. You don't need to discourage me from using the spells I DON'T GET A BONUS FROM!"

In PoE, it's not as bad, but your Wizard is still relatively usless. If you could put them in a bubble and let them stand around wand-blasting people all day, sure. Their output isn't the problem. The problem is that, at some point (and the game SHOULD be designed this way, so I'm not criticizing this), you cannot block ALL combatants from engaging your Wizard. Or rather, I suppose maybe you COULD, if you just had him jog around all day, Benny Hill style, and avoid getting 1-or-2-shotted. But, then he's not actually contributing to combat. *shrug*. I'd love to see an evolution of this style of combat, in which there's a lot more organization as to who's fighting whom and who's able to do what, etc. Almost like a hybrid between grid-based turn-based and active. I think there's a lot of room for creativity there. But, that's kind of a whole different discussion, I suppose. For me, it just comes down to having interesting stuff for a Wizard (for example... this goes for every class) to do when they don't want to use up their spell "heavy weapons ammo." "You get a blasty wand attack!" isn't a bunch of interesting options, to me. But, again, I'd love to see different stances/dispositions in combat, so you could actually have a Wizard who's designed to tie-up combatants and still live, to keep them from overwhelming your other party members. THEN he could use his spells if he needs to. This is the beauty of a mana system, though, as opposed to Vancian-esque magic. Mana naturally limits what you can do when, how often you can do it, etc. You can use little bits of mana almost constantly, if you so choose. Or you can use it all up in one big blast, but are left without as many options afterwards. You can even have doing other things in combat directly translate into replenishing mana (a lot like how Cipher's and Focus work, or a number of other class mechanics). This gives you so much more agency in combat. The Vancian-style system just makes your magic feel like grenades. There's no "it'll be a bit before I can use this again if I use it up like this." It's just "Nope, I ran out of spells. Better pew-pew with my wand for a while. Or should I... I dunno... pew-pew with my wand? You know what? I think I'll go with Option C: PEW-PEW WITH MY WAND! 8D!"

Agreed, JerekKruger. There's a trend in people just not even considering how logic works, even while their brains use it to compute data for them to cognitively utilize. Some people nowadays would even go so far as to say that nothing can actually be correct, or there's no such thing as truth. But, as a result, people tend to approach anything contrary to their current opinion/viewpoint as some kind of petty "Nuh-uh, what I think is better!". It doesn't help that text can be read in so many different ways. But, I remember back during the development of PoE, the term "strawman" was getting tossed around like beads at Mardi Gras, and most people had no idea what it even meant, really. They just knew that it meant someone was wrong. *sigh*... annnnywho. I don't know what to do about it, unfortunately. No matter how may times you re-iterate something or explain it in a different way, someone either is interested in employing effort to understand the idea you're conveying, or they aren't. You can do 50% of the work, and the ball's in their court. Another unfortunate trend is that people's posts are often treated as either 100% correct or 100% incorrect. I could say "2 + 2 equals 4, and penguins are reptiles," and half the time, the responses would just be that I was completely wrong and don't know anything, rather than "well, you're right that 2 + 2 does equal 4, but penguins are actually not reptiles. You were mistaken on that one thing." I don't know why that's become so taboo to do. *shrug*. I feel like a lot of people want to experience the thrill of debate without actually putting forth the effort, and I wish I knew why they think that's okay to do.

It may be unintentional, but you're accusing people of dismissing your posts as purely preferential, but then you're saying that the only way one could possibly have a problem with this is to be lazy or over controlling. Do you no see how that's irrationally dismissive? I realize that some people have not made magnificently eloquent posts about their problem with it, so it may come across as just "I don't want to have to click" laziness. But, valid points have been made. Essentially, the only thing Health is really doing in the BG games is giving you a buffer between death and life. You have to get hit to die, but you have to get all the way down to 0 from whatever your max health is to be dead. So, the game is inherently telling you that less health is bad, and more health is good. That's just how the system works. There's never a time when any of your characters would be like "You know what? I'm about to die at the next strong gust of wind, but we should probably give no consideration to that at all. Let's all just go fight some dragons right now." Only if you had no other choice would you continue on without patching up wounds and such. It'd be just like crossing a desert when low on water. You wouldn't just venture out into the desert without replenishing your water vessels, unless you absolutely had to (urgency, no access to water, etc.). So, if the game says "rejuvenating = good," then gives you the means to rejuvenate your party, why would you not do it? And if you're going to use healing spells to do it, every single time, why not allow for that to be an option? "After combat, have people heal up." It's no longer a tactical decision. It doesn't matter WHEN you heal, outside of combat. You're either going to convert X amount of resources into health (be it potions, spells, etc.), or you're not, before the next combat instance. Really, though, this all comes down to pacing design. You either want people to be at full health for every encounter, or you don't. If you don't, then the absolute best way to accomplish this is to hard-limit the ability to heal back up/replenish spells, etc. (if you're going with Vancian spell limitations, etc.). It's not just preference. Preference is beside the point. It's about the goal of the design, and the effectiveness of that design toward that goal. The BG designers decided that the threat of possible ambush was enough to soft-limit resting. Well, the fact is, you can still rest-spam if you want. Also, how feasible is it to just power through entire areas without healing up or replenishing spells? This also depends on difficulty, etc. You could say "Well, if you're having trouble without resting a bunch, just lower the difficulty." But maybe people want a certain level of combat challenge in each combat instance, but still want to be full health at each one. I feel that's reasonable. So, it's really a question of the goal of the design. And, if the goal is X, then WHY is the goal X? Should the goal be different? These are all principles of design, and they inherently matter, by the nature of design's goal-oriented existence. You want to make a game that people like, but that's more than just a giant amalgamation of a bunch of lesser things people like. Human psychology is more complex than that. Our brains use logical processing to arrive at our opinions, even. Even if sometimes we misuse all the little numbers in our brains logic-math. It doesn't make logical decisions for us, but it uses logic to get there. Like "This thing happened, and now my arm hurts. I do not like my arm hurting, as it is unpleasant, so therefore I do not want that thing to happen." That makes SENSE, even if you didn't actually go far enough to figure out whether or not that thing happening CAUSED your arm to hurt or not. It's how animals work. Experience, feel/think, react.

Blotter is quite correct, Karkarov. Sorry for any confusion. Yeah, I don't need them to be like 300% different from humans. But, if they could've just been actual humans who simply stopped growing at 4-ft of height, and happen to be a bit muscular, it bugs me. Of course, same with elves who look EXACTLY like svelte humans with pointy ears. It's hard to put a finger on, but it's possible to give even a race that looks very similar to humans its own distinct style and "aesthetic personality." Give it a feature set that says "Okay... from across a field, I might think that's a human. But nope... up close, that's DEFINITELY a Dwarf and not just a stocky human."

But Gromnir...! The attribute system has rendered dump stats (and by default, pump stats) extinct! o_o. That was the whole point in going with the stat functions we have now. The cons of "this is all weird stuff to be attributed to these character measurements" was all worth the absence of any go-to or undesirable stats! For sooth!!!!! *faints* So your rebuttal to "Here's a flaw in the design of attributes as they relate to class mechanics" is really "No, see guys? The effect of stats on your character basically don't matter at all! 8D!" ??? Oh, well nevermind then. Obviously it's an optimally-designed system. We stand corrected. This is, indeed, a lovely thought. If only Intellect worked that way. Instead, any additional effectiveness that would stem from smarts and result in higher damage is all bundled into Might, which should really just be named "Damage." Which is yet another facet of how the stats are too all-encompassing. Intellect is reduced to making circles bigger. So it can never do more interesting things like increase the number of jumps chain lightning makes because your character knows how to channel it most efficiently (no increase in actual POWER, just an increase in intelligent usage), or allow for more/higher-damage critical hits because a Fighter knows where to hit someone, etc. The vast majority of the posters here seem to be hellbent on pretending that isn't the case, and/or celebrating the lack of interest in trying to design this in a better way, and/or condemning anyone who tries to constructively illustrate flaws in the system as some kind of crazy fanatic who's nitpicking about stuff that doesn't affect the game at all. So your rebuttal to "Here's a flaw in the design of attributes as they relate to class mechanics" is really "No, see guys? The effect of stats on your character basically don't matter at all! 8D!" ??? Oh, well nevermind then. Obviously it's an optimally-designed system. We stand corrected.