jimgagne

I've spent some time studying how various skills and attributes affect combat abilities. One thing that gnaws at me is that more agile characters (those with higher Dexterity and Athletics) don't get bonuses to attack or defense. These rules are complex and REALLY different than what I'm used to. Attack stats are divided into two major pieces: likelihood of a hit and damage done. They interact. Likelihood of hit is determined by subtracting the enemy defense value relevant to the type of attack (Deflection in the case of melee/ranged) from the attacker's Accuracy. To this result is added a 1-to-100 die roll. If the result is 15 or less, it's a Miss. 16-50 is a Graze (partial damage). 51-100 is a Hit (full damage). If the result is over 100 (Accuracy is greater than defense and a high die roll is achieved), it's a Crit (critical, added damage). Accuracy is a function of class and level. It also goes up with Perception, but I see no indication of by how much. Many spells briefly increase Accuracy. It appears that much of the time, Accuracy and the corresponding defense are about the same, mid-50s, and so most attacks result in a Graze or Hit. The four defenses are determined by different attributes. Deflection (physical damage) is a function of Perception and Resolve, but only increases by one point for the amount each of these exceeds 10. (The in-game documentation says Deflection goes up with Intellect, but this doesn't appear to be true.) Fortitude (resisting poison or knockdown) is a function of Might and Constitution. Dexterity and Perception determine Reflex (resisting AoE attacks), and Will is a function of Intellect and Resolve. These effects are fairly small, so MOSTLY these defensive stats are a function of character type and level. Damage done is poorly documented but appears to be simply the damage caused by the weapon/spell minus "damage reduction". Strength can substantially increase physical damage from any weapon. Shields increase damage reduction but may reduce Accuracy. Armor also improves damage reduction but slows attack speed. A "Graze" reduces damage done, and a "Crit" can greatly increase it. I would guess that Damage Reduction comes into play only after the decreased damage from Graze or increased damage from a Crit has been determined. Attack speed isn't discussed much but appears to be a critical issue. Heavy armor can slow it by over 50%. BB Rogue's Dexterity of 17 increases attack speed by 21% (i.e., three times the amount by which Dexterity exceeds 10). This effect seems to be the only way Dexterity helps combat. Athletics doesn't directly help Attack, Damage, or Defense, but it does increase maximum combat fatigue limit and slows the speed with which combat fatigue accumulates. Fatigue isn't discussed much but appears to accumulate during combat and, if it exceeds the maximum limit (not disclosed anywhere), it decreases Endurance and Health. Endurance and Health are also confusing. Combat damage or excessive Fatigue decrease both by the same amount, but you have about five times more Health. Substantial loss of Health occurs mainly with successive combats, but it's very hard to improve Health without resting. So unless your Health is already low, Endurance is the only statistic worth watching in a given combat. However, healing spells and potions work well to help Endurance, so theoretically you could maintain Endurance but lose all Health in a single battle. One final statistic is Interrupt, which is the power to prevent an enemy from its next attack. To do so, the Interrupt must be higher than the enemy's Concentration, although there is probably an additional random number in the mix. SO, having analyzed how attacks and defense work, what role does agility play? There is no direct agility statistic, but one would think Dexterity and Athletics would be the appropriate statistics. Again, they have relatively little effect. Dexterity improves attack speed by 3% for every point over 10 and increases Reflex (AoE damage) by 2% for every point over 10. MEH!! Athletics just improves Fatigue -- useful but hardly critical. SO, in real life, being more agile would definitely reduce your likelihood of being hit and possibly the damage done by increasing the chance of a glancing blow. But not in PoE! I think this is a real oversight. Granted, in many other RPGs, a high-Dex dual-wielding thief can be devastatingly effective and almost impossible to hit. In PoE, he is quick and can inflict lots of damage but is at incredible risk of being hit. Yes, he gains invisibility and the ability to escape a dicey group attack, but only once each per combat. Otherwise, trying to run away gets him killed. Do you agree?

As mentioned in another post, I agree with #6. We all understand AD&D stats, but those in PoE are quite different and frankly somewhat confusing. One suggestion: at character creation, display an updated list of attack and defense statistics, conversation modifiers, etc.

THANK YOU!! That's very helpful! Of note, I don't recall seeing any display of my characters' fatigue during combat, just health and endurance. And except for fatigue, it appears that none of the Skills affects Attack or Defense statistics. Given my understanding of Health and Endurance, it appears that in a well-rested character, the only thing that matters in a single battle is Endurance, unless people use a lot of healing spells/potions. Health becomes an issue if you're battered in successive combats without resting. But are enemies apt to attack unconscious characters (zero Endurance) and further degrade their Health? Also, it would be great if the developers clarified strategies for building fighters, clerics, rogues, and wizards. For example, during yesterday's PoE demo at Pax East (YouTube "watch?v=roK1wzOLT-k"), it was mentioned that wizards have such good protective spells they can wade into melee combat after firing off spells. Since the number of available spells doesn't reset until after a rest, wizards can now do something useful once you're in mop-up mode. So having adequate Strength is important. (Or, you can use bows. I've given every NPC ranged weapons. As with most RPGs, starting off combat with a barrage of arrows/bullets is a great way to whittle down a single enemy.) Speaking of wizards, are they limited to just the spells in a single grimoire, with the option of swapping one grimoire for another? And to what extent is friendly fire a problem with combat spells? Some descriptions suggest an attack just hits enemies, whereas others seem to affect anyone in the AoE. I think I've fried some of my allies with the electricity spell, but at yesterday's demo someone tossed a Fireball into the middle of a melee, seemingly without harming any allies. Since Dexterity doesn't protect rogues from getting clobbered, I haven't found a useful way to put them in melee besides the single use of invisibility. The beta makes it clear that putting your fighters in a narrow doorway to block enemies' access to squishier NPCs in the back doesn't always work, because many enemies can get around the obstruction. Finally, it appears that the classic strategy of having just one character max out each Skill or Attribute works well in PoE - for example just having the rogue increase Mechanics. In the beta at various points I needed someone with a lot of Athletics and another with high Strength. Agreed? It does look like just magic users need high Intelligence, but so does the main PC to improve options in dialogue. Whose statistics are measured during the skills checks for various dialogue options?

THANKS for the update. I've looked through my stash a dozen times. The note really is gone. Looking forward to the full game!!

When I went out on the ledge just outside the spider cave in Dryford Crossing, I found a corpse with a note. I tried to right-click the note, which immediately disappeared and is nowhere to be found. Perhaps as a result, I can't move beyond Dryford Village, Dryford Crossing, and Stormwall Gorge. Is that the extent of the Backer Beta? I've spoken with every NPC and completed every task in these areas. How do you know when you've reached the end of the beta?

In one area of the dungeon below Stormwall Gorge, when I leave the tunnel going down, I get the message *Missing intractables 782*. Game seems to work okay. Similar messages occur frequently, as described by others in this thread.

The backer beta uses tool tips and detailed windoids to describe weapons and armor effects. These descriptions are often somewhat confusing or incomplete. Some of the descriptions in the Character window are also confusing. The most annoying issue is I can't figure out how to determine damage over time (DTS) for a weapon. This figure has multiple influences: the weapon itself, the character's Dexterity, and a variety of status effects. But it wouldn't be hard to calculate this number on the fly to display in a descriptive window. Since the windows already contain a great deal of information and not every player may want all that detail, one could right-click on the window to bring up an even more detailed display. A related issue is figuring out each character's delay between attacks. It doesn't seem that attacks just occur in rounds, in which everyone gets one turn. Instead, it appears that each character can attack once every few seconds, and that this frequency varies based on the weapon, armor, and status effects. Obviously, more frequent attacks are more effective, all else being equal. Some descriptions are just incomplete. For example, "Envenomed Strike" says just "Envenomed Strike Poison for 10 sec...the character is able to deliver a poisonous strike that does Raw damage over time." Doesn't tell you very much. Here's a confusing description: "Barbs of Condemnation" does "25-37 Pierce (base 20-30), -5 All Defenses for 14 sec (base 10 sec) vs. Fortitude (+10 Accuracy)". What I THINK this means is it lowers defenses by -5 for 14 seconds unless the attack fails a Fortitude test that itself is helped by an additional 10 Accuracy to succeed at the attack. But it's taken a full play-through of the Backer Beta until this made some sense. "Holy Radiance" includes "Only Vessels, Frightened for 42 sec (base 30 sec) - Only Vessels vs. Will." What's a Vessel? Under the character description for BB Rogue, it says, for Athletics of 2, "-80% Combat Fatigue Gain". What's Combat Fatigue Gain? And for my Paladin PC, his 19 Might gives him +27% Healing. What's Healing? If it's Restoration (restoring Endurance gradually over time), how much and how fast? How do Skills like Athletics, Lore, and Survival affect combat? Is it possible to increase Defense through Dexterity as in the ADD games? -- my reading is no. Only Perception and Resolve improve Deflection, and then only by a little. Does armor reduce the likelihood of a successful hit, the damage done if successful, or both? Is it true that Health and Endurance diminish by the same amount with each successful attack? So that if I receive a 10-point hit to my Endurance in each of four battles, after the last battle my Endurance will fully recover, but my Health is down by 40 points until I rest? (I just have a lot more Health.)

Just started up PoE after playing for under an hour, stopping the other night in the Inn. When I hit Continue from the main menu screen, game froze.