Silent Winter

Don't know about SPECIAL but BG2 had you rolling stats - so you could easily max 2 if not 3. PE will be more like NWN2 point-buy - sure you could buy lots of strength but then you'd have too few points for CON/DEX. For a fighter in that, I'd buy 16-17 STR, similar CON and maybe 15-16 DEX (though NWN2 allows increasing stats at certain level-ups so you could end up with higher STR at epic-levels).(Which means that 18 STR isn't really maxed at all). Edit - gear to improve stats notwithstanding - may as well get a good build and then improve strength through gear as improve DEX / CON etc.

I think it's more that "Intellect" would drive your max possible damage BUT other stats affect your 'to hit' chance (there's only one roll for hit and damge but stats affect the result). Also, Intellect wouldn't give you high Health/Stamina so you'd need to have other stats higher to take more hits. Since this is a point-buy system - maxing Intellect might mean you won't have a lot of points left for other key stats. It's no good swinging the bestest sword the hardest if you can't hit often enough or stay in the fight long enough to win. So on lower difficulty it might not matter as much (though it might - don't know yet) but on higher difficulty it would probably be harder if you lacked a good balance. So, your high-INT for everyone might (or might not) play fine, but other builds will be successful and play differently. We need more info to give a good judgement on it though.

As AGX-17 said - I'll try them all eventually (including several different personality types to go with the different race/class combos) For a first run-through, I'm really not sure yet. I might try a druid or ranger and go half-elf or human. Then again, I'm also intrigued by the Orlans so I might go with an Orlan Cipher to get 2 of the new things in. (But since it seems likely there'll be an NPC of that nature, I might instead go with Orlan Wizard). Neutral Good (or thereabouts within PE's system) is usually my first playthrough - probably a more self-centred evil character after that and then whatever else inspires me based on my playthroughs). I'm interested in the different factions though - hopefully there won't be a clear 'we're the good guys' and 'we're the bad guys' to it.

I believe it has been stated that all classes are open to all races (I'm about 98% sure on that one)

Pillars of Forever? (this is how it'll get translated into some languages ) That's Interesting. I wasn't aware. But I'm pretty sure that in English it's Pillars of Eternity, which is the language this post is in. So PoF is confusing. Anyhow, not a big deal. I was only joking And no offence meant GrayAngel - just having fun with a typo

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Pillars of Forever? (this is how it'll get translated into some languages )

One way to balance this is to make it no more expensive to hire someone than it would be to buy decent equipment for a companion (and then have them come with decent equipment, whereas the joinable NPCs only come with basic / less than complete equipment)

Yes, absolutely. So, as you suggested, making strength a skill (which can add (%?) melee damage perhaps), would be a solution here. (And then renaming both strength and intellect to be more intuitive). If it were reasonable and balanced then you could have 'strength','great strength' and 'heroic strength' as progressive skills.

I guess it depends on how powerful the PE fireball is and how much enemy-defence is able to mitigate its effectiveness (reflex saves can mitigate AOE damage, I believe - other, larger, slower enemies later in the game might simply have the HP to not be too bothered by a few L3 fireballs). It might not even be 'unlimited' fireballs but more of them 'per-encounter'. Edit: and not just fireballs, obviously, I mean this for any spell. End-game, powerful spells probably won't have a per-encounter number but be limited per-rest. Mid-level spells will have fewer per-encounter spells and maybe only L1/2 would be unlimited or 'large in number.' I agree that it needs to be balanced (rather than 'this sounds like a good system' and then applying it in a linear way without testing its effectiveness late-game). I'm pretty sure they're already playtesting segments of the game (Josh spoke of run-throughs (runs-through?) with different party-members in another thread, sorry, can't find the quote) so it seems reasonable that they'll be able to look at it and say "Woah, being able to spam Spell-X is overpowered, let's move its level or reduce the per-encounter 'ammo' for that level." Using BG2 as an example - a high-INT mage with a ring of wizardry might have 9 fireballs to throw (can't remember exact numbers but, it's the idea) - not going to use them all in a single-encounter (as I'd probably hit my own party) and would easily last until next rest. So its limit is higher than needed. The difference is in variety of spells available so sub high-CHA sorceror for mage. Late game, low-level spells become less significant. They can still help (so your mage isn't useless when out of high-level spells) but they're not game-breaking (except for D&D sorceror/mage being overpowered anyway at high levels - be I think that's a spell-power problem, not spell number -> time-stop, improved alacrity, horrid-wilting etc) Edit 2: and add in wands of fireball/lightning etc with 50 charges (and can be recharged at any shop) - that would be OP in BG1 (where I think the limit is 10 per wand) but not in BG2.

I agree that the problem seems to be nomenclature v. expectation (based on simulationism and/or previous RPG experience). Someone suggested (sorry, not enough free time, can't find the quote) that 'strength' in rpgs should be considered 'effective strength' rather than muscle-mass (some body-builders can't move all that quickly as their muscles work against each other). So the idea of having all new names (at least new from D&D) (and thus making us read the manual/in-game descriptions) would solve the problem for me.

First thing I do in most games is turn off party AI - I like to micro-manage and find the AIs I've experienced so far to be somewhat lacking (of the "I'll charge through discovered traps and slap the dragon in the face, while ignoring my fireball that I just wasted on kobolds" variety. Having said that - I like some of the suggestions for basic AI - so long as having that on doesn't override an order I've just given the minute I switch to another character. This kind of thing would be good - especially that "action queue" for buffing spells, like the NWN2 mod, would be handy - it'd take the tedium out of redoing the same buffs yet again. Maybe - but when I turned off the AI, I had to babysit the casters and thief while they performed their actions - if I switched to another character then they'd stop casting/disarming-trap and just stand there - meanwhile, my other characters aren't able to be commanded because I'm babysitting the druid. So for me, the ideal AI would be a basic "fight back if attacked, but don't run across half the screen to throw yourself at the kobold behind the dragon" and then if I give a command, it completely overrides the AI until completed. Although an additional "when target is dead, attack next nearest if they're within a few steps" would be handy. I quite like the micro-management though so provided we have the right auto-pause triggers, I'll be happy.

Ok, don't know what happened to my actual post but it disappeared - no time now to re-write it.

Wait. Wait. Wait. If the "gaming community" isn't buying the games, who is? Well, Santa Claus better be buying me a gold-box, GOTY, double-platinum, box copy of PE or there'll be no sherry&mince-pie next year

Full VO? No thanks - largely because I can read a lot faster than they talk and I'll probably skip most of it. (I don't speed read, but it just works faster in my head. Even with fully-imagined character voices with intonation etc) I like the BG way of having a starter line voiced to get the character and then read from there. Volunteer voice acting for minor NPCs (dialogue and/or battle/city-sounds) - not against the idea per se. But as has been pointed out, even with professional equipment, you get different levels and it all needs mixing to make it consistent. So from a work v. payoff stance, I voted no. Of course, it's not a stupid idea to propose and if Obsidian reckon I'm wrong, then they should go with their own ideas on the matter because I'm not a pro

I don't think it'll make balancing difficult - in D&D you can end up with more than enough L1 spells-slots to mean you won't run out before your next rest (without even rests-spamming) but those spells are relatively weaker (magic missile being pretty much the only sensible choice at high levels). So starting out with unlimited or x-per-encounter cantrips and y-per-rest level one spells, you'd later be able to cast unlimited cantrips and L1 spells but only x-per-encounter L4 and y-per-rest L5. It seems like a good system to me - your wizard is always able to do some magic, is flexible (but see grimoire managing) but isn't uber-powerful - being limited at high-level spells for any given part of the game.

Not exactly - knowledge v. skill is a big difference - I know 10 simple ways to kill somebody with bare hands, but I can't do it (and not just because I can't bring myself to do it) - it's about practising the skill until your action is both precise and coordinated (and well-timed to beat their defence but I'm including that under coordinated). Your big-dumb brute who mastered the skill of hitting there is developing skill, not knowledge when he's able to strike well. If he just knows where to hit then he'll likely miss, without training, either because he's uncoordinated or because he telegraphs his punch and the other guy avoids it. A lightly muscled guy like me can be just as effective at striking the throat as a guy 3 times my size - there's only so much dead you can get [cue 'The Princess Bride' quotes] Edit: yes, I know that's fistycuffs and not armed against armoured opponents but the same principle applies. I'd assume might/power governed melee damage (not because it should but because it traditionally does) and I could see it governing spell-damage (since magical might/power is a fine term) - but I'd feel a big weird about it governing firearms/bow damage. As above comment, some kind of 'skill' (though that's too broad) term would be better for me. Though actually, I like the suggestion by Ganrich: In the end though - I'll end up reading the manual at work and figuring out what does what in the game and playing from there - if it's fun to play, it's fun to play (and if it's fun to replay then I'll be a happy camperbacker)

*ghah* Now look what you did! *starts up BG1 ... click, click ... hmm, never tried a Paladin before ... click...*

Hope Obsidian Likes It During Annual Yuletide (only relevant 'Y' I could think of) <- (closest thing to a Christmas hat that I could find) Have a great and well deserved break <- (first sincere and non-contrived comment I thought of (sincere but contrived one above))

But is that how they were designed or is that reverse engineering? Just because they're different, doesn't mean they started out the same and ended up different. It could well be that they started with a concept for a fighter - strong, high HP, all-weapons, then started out with a concept of a mage - physically weak, low HP, limited to, er, I dunno, daggers and staves, and THEN pulled them apart further. The point being - starting with them as conceptually the same and THEN pulling them apart means you don't end up with arbitratry restrictions like 'mages can't wear heavy armour or wield a long-sword at all'. They're all just people who then have talents above and beyond the base. They become better at different things but have the same grounding in their race/whatever. I'm just saying that it seems like a reasonable way to go about creating classes. In the end, the design process is a point of interest, but it's the end result that we'll care about.

But is that how they were designed or is that reverse engineering? Just because they're different, doesn't mean they started out the same and ended up different. It could well be that they started with a concept for a fighter - strong, high HP, all-weapons, then started out with a concept of a mage - physically weak, low HP, limited to, er, I dunno, daggers and staves, and THEN pulled them apart further. The point being - starting with them as conceptually the same and THEN pulling them apart means you don't end up with arbitratry restrictions like 'mages can't wear heavy armour or wield a long-sword at all'. They're all just people who then have talents above and beyond the base. They become better at different things but have the same grounding in their race/whatever. I'm just saying that it seems like a reasonable way to go about creating classes. In the end, the design process is a point of interest, but it's the end result that we'll care about.

Off Topic: Osvir - did you get about 5-7 notifications that I 'liked' your previous post, then 'unliked' it, then 'liked' it again, etc, all in quick succession? I only ask because of stupid-unreliable computers and the stupid-unreliable internet connection at my job. (2 separate instances of stupid and unreliable combining for double the 'fun') (also, I'm curious about the notification system). Back On Topic: I agree that having the option to turn off the auto-journal and just make our own notes would be great (as you say, probably not for every run-through, but I'd love it especially for a first - before I learn what I should be writing down - could really add some flavour to the playthrough). In which case, this: would be essential. Being able to edit existing entries from the auto-journal would be great too - we could already do that in BG2 for example, by clicking on an entry and going to an edit page. As for quest markers - I've no objection to an NPC giving you explicit directions when they give you a quest (even "I'll mark it on your map") if they know where something is. But pre-marking areas a la BG2 could lead you to miss some exploration. And marking "here's the secret bandit camp" is also a bit silly before you arrive there.

Have a great break - come back refreshed and inspired 2014 - the year of Eternity .... or that's how it might feel while anticipating the game's release

Apparently they're working on this: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64751-cant-ever-get-addons-in-the-future/?p=1400359 (quote below) But I agree that it would've been better to get these things sorted sooner. (Though I guess they were busy working on the game itself)

Yes, there will be point-buy system to choose your stats on character creation. There will also be abilities/skills that you can 'buy' as you level-up.

Then I demand a stretch-goal to include always-online and linked to a webcam so that everyone must play the game correctly in proper attire (which is, of course, a beige jumpsuit). Anyone caught in incorrect clothing will immediately have their game locked and their saves removed.