Ffordesoon
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Posts posted by Ffordesoon
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D&D is great in some ways, and terrible in others. What it tends to be terrible at is what computer games are great at, which is the problem.
I started doing PnP with 4E and immediately didn't care for it. It's fine, but there's not enough mechanical defferentiation, and it plays as a board game unless you have a great DM. I switched to Pathfinder pretty quickly, and found it vastly more rewarding.
However, if I had to choose between those rulesets for a computer game, I'd pick 4E, because it's already ninety percent of the way there. It would be an incredible video game, because everything that's problematic about it in PnP play is a strength in a video game.
(Granted, if actually offered the choice in real life, I would take Pathfinder and use it as a starting point, but that's because I find Paizo's lore much more interesting than 4E-era D&D's, and also because Paizo just seems like a much cooler company to work with.)
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Apologies for triple-posting, but:
If you (Obsidian) are going to give us big cities with multiple districts to run around in with lots and lots and lots of quests, in the quests that involve finding a person and/or going back to a questgiver, will you please at least tell us which region of the city we're supposed to be searcihing in?
Now, granted, this is less of a fix than "Don't make architecture that blurs together," but I understand that maintaining the level of detail a game like PoE requires necessitates some reuse of assets and the like. I would rather see the same house interior reused many times than have less houses to go into, for example.
But, well... Let me explain. I'm wandering through the eponymous city in BG1 right now, and it's very easy to get lost in it - which is a good thing overall, even if I'm not always lost for the right reasons. However, the quest journal, which has until this point been sufficiently helpful, now tells me nine times out of ten in the descriptions that the person I want to find is "in Baldur's Gate." Baldur's Gate has nine districts, each packed with virtually identical houses that are not labeled as anything on my map or in the world, many of which are the only place I can find the NPCs I need to find. Telling me to look for someone "in Baldur's Gate" is like telling me to look for someone "in New York." Except worse, ecause there isn't a phone book, there aren't streets with names, and there aren't any signs telling me where the hell I am. It is, in other words, a mite irritating.
I'm all for having to pay attention to the gameworld, but this is just bulls**t.
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I was thinking of switching to Numenera for that reason, actually. Rules-light, creativity-heavy. Proabably a better fit for my first GMing experience.
I like PF as a player, and they do give GMs a whole lot of help, but there's still a crazy amount of math involved, and math and I get along like, er, two things that don't get along very well at all.
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Strength is back.
Maybe not. Josh could have easily had a brain fart and switched out Strength for Might.
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As a moderator on the Wasteland 2 boards, I've borne witness to a lot of grousing about the attributes not feeling attached enough to the skills, particularly in the case of Charisma and the dialogue skills it opens up. As such, I wholly support dialogue checks tied directly to attributes.
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Savescummers are going to savescum no matter what. It's when savescumming is considered expected and necessary that there are problems.
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Reposted from another forum, just like last time:
Well, after reposting this on a few forums, I've got enough players, but I've just been accepted into a play-by-post game, so I think I'll put this on hold for a little bit. Not enough people interested, and after reading the GameMastery chapter of the Core Rulebook, I find myself a little less interested in such a heavy workload. Also, I'm a little rusty at the game anyway, so hopefully this play-by-post thing will recharge my batteries on that front.
Will come back to this thread and ask again when I feel more equipped to handle it.
God, I use "after" too much.
So yeah.
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To be honest, I'd rather see all spells be useful throughout the game without any kind of scaling. Instead, the spells should be useful throughout the game, and the monsters should communicate visually that a given spell won't be so useful on them. A fireball is gonna kill the hell out of the average kobold, but on a dragon or a gibbering horror from beyond time and space, it should be as useful as going "Pew pew!" and pointing your finger at it.
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They probably put some similar spells in there to assuage fears that Wizards would be oh-so-shockingly-different from IE casters. Which then bothered some people anyway.
Obsidian can't win with some of you folks, I swear.
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Why is this argument still going on? It's boring.
What is the point of this post? It's boring. Why do I continue to go into threads that I find boring and post meaningless posts? I know, because I feel special and need to post these meaningless posts and let the community know how I'm feeling. Ah, I feel better knowing I've let the whole community know I'm bored and had to post this.
Well, yeah, pretty much. I never claimed I couldn't be a jerk.
Still a boring argument, though.
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Oh, yeah, and it is true that non-combat skills are largely class-agnostic. Class mostly determines how you fight rather than who you are.
EDIT: Which I am absolutely a fan of, to be clear.
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Addendum to previous: Turned out I had a spare Wand Of Paralyzation, thank Christ. Still, it was a lame situation to be in.
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I don't know how "common" this is, but I would definitely call it a pitfall: trapping us in a place where we have to fight a monster who can only be hurt by a certain weapon we probably don't have and may not specialize in even if we do have it, and then giving that monster regenerating health.
I've been fighting Kagour (sp?) on the Werewolf Island in Tales Of The Sword Coast, and frankly, he is impossible for my party to beat even with the Sword Of Balduran and using cheesy kiting tactics. Which wouldn't be so bad, if I had any other options than to fight him. But I'm stuck on the island, and the only way to move the story along is to fight a character I straight-up cannot defeat. At this point, I'm just going to give up and edit his entry in Shadowkeeper until I can beat the motherf***er.
Does that bother you, Baldur's Gate grognards? It sure bothers me. I don't want to cheat, and I wouldn't, but the game cheated me first.
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From the Pathfinder Core Rulebook:
Brain-teasing puzzles, roleplaying challenges, and skill checks are all classic methods for resolving encounters, but the most complex encounters to build are the most common ones—combat encounters.
If I may be forgiven for quoting that out of its original context, I suspect this is why we've mainly heard about combat. It's the most challenging part of the game to build, so doing it upfront is best. Also, combat has rarely been an area in which Obsidian has excelled, whereas they always excel at writing, C&C, and world-building. I expect they're trying to shore up this weakness first and foremost. And, of course, there's the fact that non-combat stuff tends to involve scripted interactions, and thus spoilers.
Which is not to say that they aren't working on any of that stuff, necessarily. It's just that they're not talking as much about that.
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It's interesting. That's exactly the vibe I got when I was reading the list. Many of these spells sound like they'd compliment a multi-class Mage-warrior build marvelously. Like Mage's Double, for example. Imagine casting that on yourself then wading in and engaging in melee brawl...But alas. There's no Multi-classing in PoE.Of course, you can still do the above, but you'll be doing it as a pure wizard.The wizards sound like they will be great fun as well for multi-classing characters.
But multi-classing is a solution to overly rigid classes. If the classes aren't so rigid, there's simply no need for it.
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Why is this argument still going on? It's boring.
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I am interested. Even though I love crpgs like Baldurs Gate and Neverwinter Nights, I've never tried playing a pen and paper game before.
At the risk of scaring you off, I should point out that you would be a guinea pig for someone (me) who's learning on the job just like you. I'm not sure that's the ideal first PnP experience.
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'Tis not so bad a life as all that, my friend, but I thank you for your concern regardless.
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Heh, funny. I'm from Alabama.
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Mighty slippery slope you're standing on, there.
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BGEE fixes that, FYI.
EDIT: Also, mods. Presumably.
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I'm copy-pasting this from another board, so if it reads weirdly, that's why:
Before I say anything else, let me state that starting this thread is in no way a commitment on my part to run a PF game. I'm gauging interest, nothing more.
Got it? Good.
Okay, so here's the deal: I've never GMed a tabletop game before, and I've always wanted to. I own some short Pathfinder modules that might be a good introduction to GMing, and I own all the rulebooks. But I have nobody around here I can play tabletop RPGs with. I mean, I do, but not really, because agoraphobia.
This, perhaps unsurprisingly, is where you people come in.
Who'd like to play a game under a GM who's learning on the job?
Be advised that my immediate concern is being sure everybody has a good time and is entertained. I'll allow just about anything in any Paizo book, minmaxed to hell and back or not. We'll be using Roll20 and Skype.
If this happens. Which it may not.
Anyway, yes, who would be up for it?
^
I know I don't know many of you very well, and that I tend to keep to the PoE subforums. Nonetheless, I'm wondering if anyone would be interested in watching me squirm.
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Let us queue up actions. It was a good idea in KOTOR and it's a good idea here.
I'm sure someone's already said that, and it probably goes without saying, but things that go without saying have a nasty habit of not being said until it's too late.
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AI defaults to on in the IE games.
Game Mechanics etc.
in Pillars of Eternity: Stories (Spoiler Warning!)
Posted
Good narrative cRPG balance, to my mind, means five things are true in a given game's case:
1) Every player can complete the critical path. Some parts are very difficult for some players, other parts are very difficult for other players, but every player who is willing to engage with the mechanics and is persistent can eventually complete the game.
2) The hardest side quests are much harder than the hardest crit path content, but it should be clear to every player that it's possible to beat them, and those who can't beat them should always have a way out, even if it's just running away.
3) Multiple solutions to every problem, and multiple ways to accomplish those solutions. They sound like the same thing, but they're not. If there are multiple ways out of a jam, it's best if they break down into something more complex than the Combat Way, the Stealth Way, and the Talky Way. Players should also be tempted repeatedly to switch approaches, and the game should accomodate that, too. That way, the player who doesn't give into temptation will feel special, and the player who does will feel catered to anyway.
4) The game should provide a stiff challenge, but that stiff challenge should be surmountable through proper engagement with the mechanics, telegraphed effectively, and never cheap. I should always be able to trust that my failures are not the game's failures.
5) It's fun to play even if you're not all that good at it. This may sound "casual," but it's really the reason roguelikes and Dark Souls are so popular. They're not forgiving in the traditional sense, but everyone can walk around and fight a few monsters in, say, Dungeons Of Dredmor or Spelunky or Dark Souls, and they're fun then.
I could probably go on, but these are the requirements I feel most strongly about, so I'll stop here.