Spiritofpower

It's possible an enemy turned one of your hirelings and one of your party members hit them. Something similar happened the first time I defended the stronghold manually (after reloading because I used Restore Light Endurance on one of them to keep them from dying, which is interpreted as an attack. LOGIC). The attackers turned one of the hirelings and Aloth hit him with a blast after the enemy had been wiped out, which caused all the hirelings to turn hostile.

One specific model of breastplate has some clipping in the lower arm/wrist area on female characters. Some pictures are in here, and I'll embed these in the spoiler, too. I've tested this particular breastplate model on all characters in my party, and it worked fine on the male characters, but not the female ones. I got the breastplate as loot in Raedric's Hold, it's a Fine Breastplate, otherwise unremarkable (besides the clipping issue). Not sure if you're already aware of this, Obsidian, but I didn't see any reports about this when I used the search function, so I figured it's better to be safe than sorry.

Yeah, in almost every type of melee combat you see that doesn't use a shield, the defensive positions are designed to deflect blows, not stop them. Because, keep in mind, even if you've got a magic invincible weapon, that's a lot of force you've gotta put a stop to. No way are you gonna pull that off very easily. Far better to redirect the blow and possibly unbalance them in the process, no? Also, on the subject of poleaxes, it occurred to me that one could very easily do something like this with it: But, y'know, with a poleaxe instead of a war scythe-thing. As in, you replace the spike at the bottom (or at the top, whichever you prefer) with a magical focus of some sort so that, for fighter/mage types, you can quickly switch to throwing around lightning or whatever when you need to.

If buns and such can be snagged, so can other things, like clothes. Clearly, adventurers should run around in hardened leather armor, skintight clothing, or full plate, and should not carry backpacks, because those can be grabbed, too. My concern is less that long hair will get grabbed and more that it'll get in your face and distract you, which is easily fixable. ...Argh, just... just no. Don't start this again. Fine. I give up. You win. Clearly I am in the wrong here.

Chainmail hair nets: The ultimate protection for your hair (and head)!

You wouldn't want to have long hair flying around unrestrained. You could totally put it in some form of bun or short ponytail, or just cut it short. If you're wearing a helm or even a hat you could put your hair inside that if you wanted. Basically, you can have long hair if you want, but you would, practically speaking, want to make sure it doesn't get in your face in the midst of combat. Thus, hairdos. Not necessarily all the time, if you want to let it out when not in combat that's perfectly fine, but in combat you'd want to do something about it to ensure it doesn't just get in your face. Of course, I don't think we'll be getting many options at character creation anyways, so this might very well be a moot point.

Agreed; poleaxes are ****ing awesome. On that note, poleaxe pictures! The wikipedia page claims that they could, via interchangeable parts and rivets, have axes, spikes, hammers, and flukes on the heads, in addition to the stabbing point at the top, making it a very customizable weapon on top of its innate versatility. Perfect for an adventurer who might want to change weapons as the enemy demands, reducing the size and weight in comparison to carrying a backup weapon. Edit: Just to clarify, I think the wikipedia page was referring to interchangeable heads, not actually interchangeable axe blades and stuff, because that does sound a little bit unlikely.

I thought this was relevant to the topic, so I decided to post it on top of the pictures of the Polish koncerz, a sword used by the Hussars in the article back there. The koncerz was very similar to the estoc, being used for largely the same purpose; namely, to pierce through plate. Estocs are probably going into PE if this piece of concept art is anything to go by: So I hope that the koncerz will be in as a different civilization's take on this type of weapon.

I personally think the best overall route would be to have the stronghold essentially be a big, fancy house with a bunch of special features. As awesome as it would be to become embroiled in the politics of Dyrwood or wherever, doing such a quest-line justice would require it be essentially a secondary main quest in terms of length and time investment, which would detract from the actual main quest. Not to mention if I have to deal with the delicate balancing act of relationships with other lords and toadying to the king that feudalism was, I'd like at least the option to say "Screw this ****" and declare independence, which is basically guaranteed to have massive political repercussions and would be all but certain to cause massive changes in the main quest. Not saying such a quest-line can't be done well, just that doing it well is likely a bit too much of an undertaking to fit in the main game on top of everything else. If Obsidian can do it justice without taking away attention from the main quest, by all means, go for it. But otherwise, I'd prefer it if the political intrigue and drama was saved until the expansion(s).

That would actually be a pretty interesting setting, IMO. I don't think I've ever seen someone write a book or something about a universe in which magic has literally rendered normal mundane weapons, armor, and clothing completely obsolete... They could even have illusionary clothes and magically-enchanted objects and constructs grow and cook all the food. ...Actually, the more I explore how a setting like that would work the more it sounds like a deep, philosophical novel exploring the depths of the human psyche o_O

Basically this. All we can do right now is wait. I imagine the forums might liven up a bit once we get a playable beta demo or something, though. Anyways, Sensuki, if you haven't already, you should try Mount & Blade: Warband. I recently downloaded the demo off of Steam and WOW. It is awesome.

What if the crafting mechanic was balanced such that it gives you more utility in your items, not power? Like, it doesn't really make sense that you can craft a sword that is more powerful than the ancient sword Excalibur, crafted by the gods themselves and sent down to the mortal planes to smite evil, does it? But then crafting seems a bit useless, doesn't it, seeing as you can get Excalibur, which is just better? But then what if you can craft a sword which can shoot other swords, like this: (And yes, I am aware that this would be a terrible, terrible weapon if we're being realistic, but that isn't my point here) Or anything, really. My point is that we should perhaps be able to craft items which, while not as powerful as the weapons we can get otherwise, can do more interesting, different things, in order to keep crafting relevant through the end-game without going the route of Skyrim, where a half-decent smith and/or enchanter can make weaponry more potent than divine artifacts, rendering said artifacts little more than curiosities, not to be used by any sane adventurer.

I asked mainly because you kept on talking about distinguishing between characters (without anything such as color customization, plumes, etc.) and how you want male/female difference because of that, but don't appear to address male/male and female/female difference as well, which doesn't make sense. You make it sound as if the reason you want to tell Tom and Suzy apart in full plate is not because they look different without plate, but that you feel there needs to be a difference between them for gameplay purposes and such, which doesn't mesh with the fact that Bill and Steve would be indistinguishable under those circumstances. That might be why 17 people have all asked the same thing, seeing as that's why I asked... Edit: And just to be clear, I'm not saying that you actually said any of that, just that you appeared to, which is where I believe the confusion comes from.

Let's test this hypothesis of yours... It IS possible that I'm imagining this quote right now. 8P Okay. Just wanted to be sure you weren't going around saying he said stuff he didn't actually say. A) I've already addressed this (this is why threads are 17 pages long... no one reads anything and just jumps into a debate with their gloves off). B) Let me use your exact same line of reasoning to ask another question: "If Dwarf Bill and Dwarf Steve look super similar, then why the hell should Dwarf Bill and Beholder Sam look any different?" The fact that we happen to be talking about the male/female difference is pure circumstance. Whether or not you can tell the difference between two things that happen to already look the same, once you cover them in armor, has absolutely no bearing on whether or not two things that already aren't twins should suddenly become "homogenous," as you said, once they've donned armor. The "that doesn't fix every problem in the world, so it therefore is useless" argument doesn't really fly. Look, are the Obsidian concepts BAD or something? Do they look terribly stupid and infeasible? Because, I don't think they do, not even SLIGHTLY, and I can easily tell the difference between Tom and Suzy (whom I could already tell the difference between before they ever put bulky, rigid armor on). I don't comprehend how "Take away all their visual distinctions, but then don't worry, because you can always optionally give the armor some visual distinctions to undo the removal of visual distinction" is supposed to make more sense than "Just leave some visual distinction in place to begin with." Notice that I didn't say the former makes NO sense. I just don't see how people are baffled by my thinking the latter makes oodles of sense. How silly is it to preserve 100% realism in the armor design at the cost of extremely simple, intuitive visual distinction between already-visually-distinct entities, THEN be totally fine with the Full Plate Power Rangers walking about in identically-formed-yet-variably-colored/decorated suits of armor? Either the world and story are devoid of anyone who's ever going to be discreetly trying to find and murder you (which is a lame slap-in-the-face to realism) OR everyone who's ever even mildly curious as to where you are can find you in a heartbeat, and you'll be ambushed left-and-right, 24/7 by people who look at your vibrantly-distinguished-from-one-another characters and say "A blue one, a green one, a yellow one, a red one, and a pink one, all in plate... yep, that's them all right." That's horribly unrealistic in that your characters would never agree to do that. So, I'm all for realism, but I also understand that certain things are better off abstracted. So, get with the program. If slightly altering armor to fit the character in question is too much, then so is allowing them to have all kind of distinguishable-to-assassins markings and accessories all over their armor as they travel about. But we allow that. Why? Because it's a friggin' game, and the satisfaction of making your party uniquely your own FAR outweighs the notion that "Oh no! Everyone will know who and where they are, because I chose red armor instead of camouflage armor! BLAST!" So, we say "You know what? You get to customize your character, and you won't suffer for it simply because you chose your favorite color for that helmet plume. I didn't say most of that. I asked why you wanted visual difference between Tom and Suzy but not Dwarf Bill and Dwarf Steve. From what I was able to pick out of that rather confusing rant, you want people who look different without plate to look different with plate? Okay, you know what, I can understand that, even if I personally disagree.

I know you're a troll, but my god, is that seriously the best you can do? There's a reason the phrase "The customer is always right," exists, you know.

Just popping in to point out that I don't believe he ever called your words "white noise" that "bores him". And, while I'm at it, may I ask why, to use an example of yours, it is necessary to distinguish between Bob and Suzy at a glance without any other factors while they're in homogenous armor, but not Bob and John? As in, why do you feel male/female distinction is necessary, but not male/male and female/female? Assuming your party is made up entirely of humans or something.

This has potential. Make the crafting process far more involved, and even genuinely difficult, and you might find people actually taking pride in their crafted items. Say, for example, the process involves Cooking Mama-esque sequential minigames representing the various parts of the crafting process. Then let's also say that getting the temper for your sword just right requires a discerning eye and impeccable timing. If a player is capable of accomplishing this feat and creating that elusive perfect sword after trying and failing for a long, long time I can basically guarantee they are never going to use another weapon for quite a while. That is, until they get the enchanting process down and manage to etch a perfect series of rune arrays all the way down the blade, at which point it's doubtful even Killevil the grand blade of smiting ne'er-do-wells could keep them from using their precious baby. Or maybe that's just me. Regardless, I like this idea. Speaking of, Obsidian? I now want a sword named 'Killevil the Grand Blade of Smiting Ne'er-do-wells' in Project Eternity.

No, I made my own, very similar mod. I have tried FPaPS too and it's good. I tried to install it, but for whatever reason I couldn't. I installed based on these instructions (and added in a mod that removed the XP cap and let you get all classes to level 40 but no higher, meaning you could totally dual-class 39 fighter/40 mage if you wanted to and had no life), but when I downloaded FPaPS and tried to install it didn't work. ...And I just tried again with a manual install and it worked o_O In any case, do you know of any modding guides for BG2? I've got a couple ideas I'd like to try, but I don't know if any of them are possible.

And another thing I hated about D&D: Armor Class. Not necessarily that having a better AC gave you more survivability, but that they decided to abstract something so simple so much. Having a better AC makes you harder to hit, and doesn't even help if you get hit. One could argue AC represents the armor totally redirecting the blow, but that doesn't change the fact that wearing plate is still going to absorb a lot of damage, even if it fails to deflect blows. And that's also ignoring the fact that leather and chain armor were easier to move in, making it easier to dodge. A better way to do it (at least off the top of my head and without refining the concept at all) would've been to have damage absorption and damage deflection/avoidance values, with plate having the highest absorption and good deflection/avoidance, and chain and leather having less absorption but roughly the same, if not higher, avoidance/deflection. But I digress.

Wow, that is a really good deal... Guess I'll be buying that, then. Thanks!

I know they're cheap on gog, but I'm low on cash at the moment, and am thus somewhat reluctant to spend it. Anyways, my current two games are Planescape: Torment and Baldur's Gate II. Will this give me a decent picture of what Infinity Engine games were like? Does anyone think I should choose any of the others instead of BG2?

Hmm. BG2 does look pretty good... Can anyone who's played both BG2 and ID2 tell me which has better combat? Also, will I need/want to play BG in order to get the full experience from BG2? I don't have the money for four games, and, while I might be able to squeeze in three games, I'd much prefer to only get two, at least right now.

So Planescape and ID2 for the 'best of both worlds' as it were? I'm mainly trying to get a decent picture of what the Infinity Engine games were like in both story and gameplay so I know what to expect from PE, and Icewind Dale 2 looks to be pretty fun. Thanks for the suggestion!

So I just got an account on gog.com, and I have decided to get one or two of the old Infinity Engine games in preparation for Project Eternity. Which one(s) should I get? I've heard really, really good things about Planescape: Torment, and it sounds exactly like the type of game I'd like, but I've heard the combat isn't so great, so I'm not sure if it's the best game to get a good picture of what PE's gameplay is going to be like.

I wasn't saying the armor should have to be taken to an armorer's so you can wear it, just FYI. I was sort of assuming it would automatically resize itself to whoever it's being equipped to. Anyways, I think I see where you're coming from, and, while I may not personally agree, I can understand your viewpoint. And I personally hope Obsidian includes at least the option to zoom in until you can actually see your characters in good detail.