Iucounu

Some level of variance might still be interesting, when you want to simulate such things as consistency and reliance. for example, if you have an enemy mage and it's crucial to interrupt his spells, you'd rather stick with a reliable fighter who's guaranteed to hit the mage consistently. If for some reason it's crucial to disarm a weaponmaster with a powerful weapon, you'd take your fighter with the highest potential to disarm, regardless if he's consistent or not, as he might still be the only one who stands a chance to suceed at all. Both cases don't necessarily involve randomness of course, as long as there is a certain safety treshold so that failures to a reasonable amount aren't fatal, and there is room for repetition. The consistent fighter will almost always interrupt 9-10/10 of the wizards spells (and will be fine as long as the one spell that comes through doesn't outright kill him), and statistics dictate that the inconsistent fighter with the higher potential will eventually disarm the weaponmaster if he tries often enough, and it doesn't kill him if it takes him 5 or 6 tries. And it's also not based on randomness, that the inconsistent fighter would most likely fail to interrupt the mage often enough, while the consistent fighter with the lower overall potential would fail to disarm the weapon master, so it's a tactical decision when to use which fighter for which task. As for the safety treshold - everything is better than hitpoints imho.

I don't think I care much about different xp tables. In general, I think it can be interesting if certain classes gain power faster or slower than other classes, at certain stages, but still, not a must have. However, absolute XP parity is something I'd consider as inherently bad (although I've become careful with such an evaluation, considering all the game theorists that roam this site). Just strikes me as boring and artificial. It's only natural that you encounter partymembers with different experience levels during your travels. At BG it was always nice if you encountered a wizard or a fighter who happened to be one level above the rest of the group. I think that's more interesting than absolute homogeneity. The only disadvantage I could think of would be that the game might be harder to balance that way.

Indeed, I take pride in making a contribution to the English language here! After all, it's hard for a native speaker to come up with something as dumb. ..still, I have to write that down.

For a group of only level 1 characters, the beginning is indeed quite hard in TOEE, especially when you get ambushed by numerous tough monsters while travelling, or while resting, it's almost guaranteed that someone bites the dust. I also once tried Ironman, and died relatively quickly when a couple of giantspiders ambushed me while resting. My whole party failed their saving throw to their net ability, and was then finished of one after another. What is especially annoying there is that the monsters always spawn directly next to the first character, not with some distance to the party like in the IE games, so it's hard to protect your more frail casters. However, you can make the game much easier for you by simply hiring one of the many level 3 and level 4 mercenaries in town. Actually, right at the beginning one of them stumbles into you, a competent fighter with over 40 hitpoints, and hight AC. That guy could probably do the first few quests all by himself. If your party consists of only few charcters, there might also be the possibility to level up without having to fight, simply by solving the quests available in town. BTW, arcane spellcasters are far from useless even at low levels. The level 1 spell Charm Person is golden (as are most enchantment spells), and helped me out on many occasions.

Yeah, exactly that. Seems to be quite common.

I'm actually a bit afraid that the game could end up to be "oversouled", since almost everything seems to have to do with souls. However, I really like the idea of different states of a soul, giving you certain bonuses, abilities, features, negative and positive, inside and outside of combat. Story-Traits sound also cool. BTW: http://www.scifimoviezone.com/imagecor/cor085.jpg

I also thought that for me the name was rather unfitting at first. However, in the end I agree with Karkarov. Their damage probably relies more on their sneaky, elusive and cunning nature, rather than their actual weapon skill, so I have no prob with naming them "rogues" However, I think that some sort of extra defense against the "fighting style" of rogues could be nice. E.g things like alertness, awareness, readiness of mind, lack of special weaknesses etc. (or most simply, one of the four defenses) that make sneak attacks harder or reduce their effectivity. That way there could be opponents (other than ovbvious cases like a construct) against which a normal fighter does much more damage than a rogue. But something like that already seems to be in the game anyway. For example, a rogue does far more damage against "tired" or injured targets, if you take the ability Reversal.

Actually, the power curve in D&D wasn't all that dramatic, especially in 2.0. An epic Level fighter (never even mind a thief) in mediocre equipment could still be overwhelmed by a group of halfway competent fighters. What really set a character apart from others (when it comes to physical fighting) was armor class. And it was often too easy to make an character almost invincible to even dozens of lesser enemies by simply raising his AC, regardless of his actual level. If enemies need a natural 20 to hit you so that they only have a chance of 5% to damage a character, that's obviously not enough. Especially when they have only 1 or 2 attacks per round. The core of the problem here was probably that the number of ememies that attacked you didn't affect you AC much. Fortunately, we won't have that problem in P:E, since misses will probably be a rare occurence. With mages of course, it was different. But an epic level mage is an archmage after all, and you'd expect them to cause some havoc. Still, when they used up all their spells, or high level spells, they weren't that much of a threat anymore. And they also got trouble when ambushed, if they couldn't establish their defenses fast enough.

I'd like it if the Psychovampiric Shield had some sort of magical defense. Maybe there could be a feat for ciphers, that provides a defensive bonus for the psychovampriic shield against a special form of magic (that you can choose), that is otherwise hard to come by. Would also be interesting if Ciphers had some special means to defend themselves against other "psionics", like Vitharcs, or other Ciphers.

sounds like a fighter with a special fighting style, who also happens to have a skill/ability set that you'd usually associate with a thief. I'd have prefered the damage-output to be more dependant on situational circumstances, but well. Perhaps in the end, it's rather the name of the class that's unfitting, and not the class itself. or whatever.

yeah well, if the thief's superior damage-output is dependant on sneak attacks or something similiar, it's not really much of a change? Otherwise, if they also have the highest direct combat damage, I'm not sure if "thief" is a fitting name for the class anymore.. But if it's dependant on something like sneak-attacks, I repeat, it's not really that different from the IE games. In BG 2, I once played an assasin (still a thief) who had more often than not the highest damage-output in combat. One sneak attack made like 100 damage, often an insta-kill. Then I'd hide in shadows again (especially fast with seven-league-boots) and make another sneak attack. That way, I could easily outperform even two front-fighters at once, and get rid of dangerous opponents very fast.

If I throw 3 fireballs into a crowd of people, and there are still children running around after that, that just annoys me to no end, sorry.

Definately think there should be both modes in the game. An "Ironman light" might prevent lazy gaming and savegame abusing, and you don't waste your time and attention on constantly saving the game yourself. The usual rule "save early, save often" just disturbs the flow of the game. And the real Ironman mode needs to be there as well, of course, because it's awesome! As long as you don't die..

Indeed, I've recently discovered a whole lot of videos on youtube that compare our real world physics with the workings of a computer program (how we know it), and there are some pecularities. E.g, the speed of light = maximum "refresh rate" of the screen. Things like that. But in the end, of course it's all speculation.

You could just set a certain maximum of magical items (certain magical items with certain effects) that stack. For example, you could either wear 5 magical rings, or you could wear 2 magical rings, 2 magical earrings, and one magical necklace. You could possibly equip more, but the effects wouldn't stack, and it could even come to some sort of magical overload with unpredictable consequences. The specific number of magical items that you can wear could also depend on the quality or power of the items. Or you could just do completely without limits, and wear 20 rings, 20 necklaces etc. and there woulnd't be an inherent limit to the number of items you can wear, but items that are similiar in nature wouldn't stack. For example a ring of protection +2 doesn't stack with a ring of protection +1, or another ring of protection +2. So you could wear all these 3 rings at the same time if you like, but it would be useless anyway. However, this is just an overkill example. If you are in a setting where a magical ring is something remotely special, you won't come into a situation where you have 20 magical rings to wear anyway. I also like the general idea that you just can't wear specific magical items together, because they don't "like" each other, or for whatever reason. For example Wearing a ring of shadowplane-walking and carrying a stone of astralplane-walking could result in catastrophal consequences. Although admittedly, making up such special relationships can easily overblow the whole thing, and make it terribly complicated and unmanageable.

The attribute-set is quite decent imo. Instead of inventing crazy formulas with dexterity, strength, speed, cunning and whatnot to determine your accuracy, you're just making accuracy an attribute for itself, and be good with it. In the end, no simulatist approach with just a couple of numbers will ever be fully convincing anyway, so you might aswell come up with your own reasons, why you're so devastating, accurate, tough, etc. Not saying that I generally prefer such an approach, but it's kind of a refreshing change. If I'll really like it in the game, remains to be seen.

I wonder if it wouldn't have been better if they had splitted the whole attribute thing, like in primary and secondary attributes. Mages could then have a melee-power attribute, that would share a pool with other secondary attributes, or perhaps even share the skill-pool, but a different pool then the primary attributes, so it wouldn't be a dumb-stat.

BRILLIANT!!

I was hit by nostalgia as well. Must be in the wood-skin of the interface, or don't know. Who understands nostalgia anyway? Awesome update, also Defiance Bay, the age of discovery, change, sounds exciting.

There must be room for versatilty to enable different play styles in the first place

It doesn't need to be unique advantages, just advantages and disadvantages. And it seems to me that you're proposing the exact same in you post. E.g elf rogue do more damage, human rogues are better with support spells. Versatilty rather than one race being absolutely superior in one class.

There was a thread about this once. Just give different races different advantages and disadvantages for every class, instead of opting to make one particular race better for one class, try to make it play different. For instance one race could get a bonus to mana regeneration, while the other race gets a boost to maximum mana. That way you might still get stronger and weaker combinations, but not too extreme, and you get more versatilty

You can only have finite causality chains. I think the trick is to make the "endings" of the chain as mysterious and exciting as possible. Although this might often mean to explain only the general idea of magic, and only very shallow. Sometimes inserting pseudo expainations, that are very vague, perhaps use a lot of metaphers and/or lead people to believe that magic works after some other sort of logic, that contradicts logic. You could say the maximum "enigma" in a magical system is when you only have the highest layer, meaning the effects that you achieve with magic, and leave everything else in the dark. OK, but not very imaginative, and probably dull for some. Personally, I enjoy studying metaphysics of a fantasy world, and the inner workings of magic in the world. For example the metaphysics of World of Darkness is something I could study for hours. Perhaps the comparatively well explained magical system puts something of the "magic" away (although this is perhaps subjective), but I find it fascinating as well, just like quantum theory can be fascinating, or Schoppenhauer's philosophy of will can be fascinating. And If more new questions appear than questions are answered, it might still feel magical, or even more magical for some. In any case, I don't think that magic that feels "magical" and magic that feels more "scientific" are mutually exclusive. Even if you can't come up with a system that achieves both, you can just have several systems in your game. Good example would be the kingkiller chronicles. There you have sympathy, sygaldrie and stuff, which are really only some sort of fantasy physics, and you have naming and other more exotic magics, that appear more mysterious and elusive. They also have more to do with "character" than sympathy or sygaldrie.

Please no Arcanum system, where even in the game's lore magic is a predefined, limited set of spells, and magic users are basically some typos with x-men abilities. Can't think of anything lamer, really. I pretty much like the D&D system, Monte Cook/Dark Tower style is also appealing. Magic should be something you get through manipulating energies, both "inside" and "outside", from all kinds of different sources (weave, shadow weave, soul, elemental planes, surroundings, spirits, nature, some tree of life, artifacts ..bla), as well as utilizing all kinds of supernatural laws. Don't like the idea that magic users only bring forth magic through the power of their souls, this strikes me to be to limiting and dull. As to how magic is practiced, it can be intuitive, and non intuitive, through music like chanters do, or more "scientific" through intensive studies, which would be the wizard way, and somehow natural like blickers do it. Knowing someones true name and abusing it, would be an example of "magic" that everybody can utilize.

I think the intent is to make it without traps, not make it foolproof. So there may indeed be corner cases such that you build a character with stats that completely contradict equipment, or you maximize penalties that the game explicitly warns you not to do. Like a fighter that equips the mage tome and robes, then stocks up on heavy armor mobility feats or something. Reasonable. If Obsidian refers to the IE games however, I wouldn't say that they had traps. Putting aside the point that in a game where you control up to 6 party members, your main character usually isn't all that important anyway, It was hard to screw up your character at character creation because of your choice of stats. Even at the character creation screen (at least in BG and IWD) it was clearly noted which attributes were important for what classes, e.g strength and constitution for fighters. So if you made a fighter with 15 Intelligence and 15 Charisma, but 8 Strength and 8 Constitution, you're either a fool, or you did it on purpose for role-playing reasons. In the former case I have to agree with Nonek: RTFM. If there is an advantage, than it's rather that you're more free to roleplay without affecting your characters efficiency in combat, which is I think what Josh Saywer actually meant. At least with regards to the IE games.