dirigible

I disagree that tactics would be diminished with this added realism. It would still be relevant, but what it would do is change how we think. I.e. we would start thinking in terms of who's expendable and have them face the risks. We would put a great deal of thought into how long the combat lasts, so as to limit the risk of something going catastrophically wrong. And if we're not willing to sacrifice anyone, it would make us genuinely think about avoiding combat, which itself is an important decision which I feel we're not forced to make often enough in games. That said, I don't think it should be mandatory, it should be a toggleable thing. Even though I personally love it, there will be times when it'll be a pain (e.g. if I'm replaying an area due to some bug, and I just want to breeze through the combat rather than having to slog through it all over again). Problem is, this just isn't that type of game. First of all, NOBODY is expendable. Second of all, combat is - by design - a huge part of this game. Discouraging players from engaging in combat won't make this game better. Now there are SOME games where what you're saying makes sense. In X-Com, for instance, combat is x-tremely lethal, and the optimal play style means playing cautiously and minimizing your risk-taking by ending firefights as quickly as possible. But this isn't that type of game.

Keep in mind, Durance's voice actor straight up says **** and whore a bunch of times. So you'll have to remove or bleep out his sound files.

The more your game is based on randomness, the less your game is based on tactics or strategy. I would rather have a fun, tactical game than a realistic, random game.

Personally, I don't like heavy armor on anyone. The speed penalty means that your characters spend a lot of time on cooldown. The boss just hit your party with a big AOE and you need to heal right now? Too bad, your priest is wearing full plate and won't be able to do anything for the next 4 seconds. The enemy just dodged past your warrior and is running towards your mage? Well you could use Into The Fray to pull him back, but your Warrior is wearing full plate and won't be able to do anything for the next 4 seconds.

Something to consider: How many of us were children when we first played Baldur's Gate? I was 9 years old when it came out... Now how many of us would let our children play PoE? Durance alone would make me pretty leery of letting anyone under 15 play the game. The hardcore CRPG genre is making a comeback, but I'm not sure it's very accessible to anyone except adults. OP, the game is pretty hard mature. There's a fair number of f-bombs, lots and lots of violence (of course), and some fairly disturbing writing.

1. I don't think so 2. Crit chance is tied to accuracy. Any attack roll of 100+ is automatically a crit.

You may want to check your stats. I didn't realize I was affected by one of the stat-breaking bugs until I noticed Aloth's Intelligence was about 15 points higher than it should be.

Eh.... those are both once-per-rest "oh ****" buttons. If you're building around those two skills then you're planning on being in deep trouble a lot. It looks like about 6 of the 13 Fighter skills would benefit from Intelligence, either from duration or AoE size. I guess it's not terrible, but I'm not sure it would be very useful.

No, no - it does. I just typed DoT instead of "duration". But unless your class is based around AoE or duration-based abilities, it's not really worth it. Warriors, for instance, don't really get anything from Intelligence.

In some settings it does, yes. So is that how it works in this setting? Is this medieval fantasy Dragonball? Well I'm not saying it IS, but... Monk is one of the core classes, and when you target an enemy you can check their power level.

Break down each stat and see what it's good for. Might = almost entirely offense (slash healing) Constitution = survivability Dexterity = helps almost everything you do, therefore has no specialization Perception = survivability - the interrupt bonus provides a bit of soft cc Intelligence = helps almost everything you do, but only if you're a class that has lots of AoE / DoT Resolve = survivability and bit of resistance to soft cc So Con, Per, and Resolve are ONLY helpful if you're getting hit. On anyone who's going to spend 90% of their time not getting hit, they're dump stats. Dex is equally good on everyone, which means it's a non-choice. Intelligence is completely worthless to many classes. All that's left is Might. And all classes want Might anyway. It's almost as bland as Dex.

In some settings it does, yes.

I guarantee they are not relaxing.

I'm not going to stack Resolve on my Wizard for the same reason I'm not going to stack Perception or Constitution: I don't plan on having my wizard tanking hits.

I played mostly console games during my teens. This was before the days of downloading patches. I don't remember a single game which had a bugs as bad as this. My Aloth has 34 Intelligence. 34!!! His AoEs are enormous.

It seems like you're under leveled. Have you spent time in Defiance Bay completing all the quests there?

I disagree wholeheartedly. You're in a better strategic position than the enemy is. You can see them before they can see you, you always get first strike, and you can see what their defenses are before you attack. You also have the luxury of being able to sit back and draw them towards you, as opposed to being forced to go on the offensive. And there is, in my opinion, NO reliance on buffs. Unless you're running a chanter/priest core team comp, you can probably slide through most combats without casting any buff spells at all.

Tartantyco just pointed out how it does, though. If Fireball has a larger AoE radius, then that means you can do X damage to more targets than with fan of flames. So, if you hit 10 people with less damage, instead of 4 people with more damage, you're still able to deal more damage to the greater number of people. And more easily hit them all without having to get them to cluster up. AND without having to get so close to them, or take the time to reposition so that you can cast Fan of Flames, etc. I'm not saying it's perfect, but there are advantages. You can't just look at one spell's base damage number, then another's, and go "3rd level should be higher!". Yeah, if they both function identically. If they were both just single-target fire spells, the 3rd level should most definitely deal higher damage. Now, that being said, it's possible that the encounter design is lacking in the "allow you to take advantage of those advantages" department. But, that isn't the spell's fault. What you CAN do with the spell is not the same thing as what you end up being able to do. But, that's kind of the whole point of this game being "tactical combat." How you use your spells should be just as important as which ones you use. If they were all just "see enemy - fire off spell straight at them", it would be rather bland. Fireball has a smaller AoE radius, actually. It's ONLY advantages are faster casting time and longer range. In every other way it's simply worse than Fan of Flames. Do those advantages make up for the huge drop in damage (especially given that higher level spells are supposed to be stronger, not weaker)? Not in my book.

I don't really get people who act like this system prevents dump stats from happening. They're still happening. Why would I stack Constitution on my Wizard? Why would I stack Intelligence on my Fighter? Why would I stack Resolve on my Ranger? I wouldn't. They're dump stats for those classes. Making it such that Might affects melee damage and Perception affects Ranged damage won't create dump stats, it will simply shift which stats are dump stats, while making the game a bit more lore-friendly.

That's clearly the way it's meant to work, though. Look at Wizard's Double (lvl1) vs Llengrath's Displaced Image (lvl3). It's a straight upgrade. Or Minoletta's Minor Missiles (lvl 1), compared to Minoletta's Bounding Missiles (lvl 3). The level 3 spell deals much more damage AND affects more targets. Or look at the priest healing spells. If higher level spells WEREN'T stronger then there'd be no reason to prevent a level 1 character from learning level 6 spells.

Did you already choose it at character creation?

Yes, but it'll cost you about 5 seconds of cooldown time. Which I (personally) would rather spend killing the enemies as opposed to casting defensive buffs on the corpses of my friends.

Yeah, but there's a cool-down before the new spells can be used. Also, once you prepare spells the ability to swap on the fly may become irrelevant. You can swap grimoires in combat to have access to more spells, but in practice it's not that useful.

I would say that killing a known criminal, rather than letting them make amends or go to jail, would be fairly cruel?

Possibly through console commands, but I don't know of any, yet.