Katarack21

Fighter/mage using summoned weapons still near useless due to cast times. Am sad panda.

That is a logical fallacy; it's built on the assumption that you *must* be right, and the only reason people don't agree is because they can't see how right you are. In actuality, people have different points of view, different goals, different desires, and different ways of achieving things, and some of them understand the whole thing just as well as you and think you are wrong. It's really that simple.

Ha ha. Lets assume you want to write scripted interaction with option of physical strong character doing something. Please give me different attribute to use... You can not. This is exactly what was wrong with that attribute in PoE. None. You use might. But if the character is using spell power from Might instead of stregnth, you write that. You go something like "You glow with pure magic and the bolder is shoved by the force of your power." instead of "You strain your muscles and shove the boulder." The writers didn't do that. They defaulted to Might=Strength. They made the same mistake you are.

Yeah but no, you couldn't, because you could only have four per grimoire per level actually *available*, despite "knowing" all of them. So you had to choose which ones you had ready to counter a particular situation, and didn't actually have "the appropriate counter to everything" in any particular combat.

Even the BG games acknowledged the tedious nature of inventory management with bags of holding, gem bags, scroll cases, etc. The stash just simplifies all that down.

Really sounds like you just want a melee-capable battle wizard with a mana bar.

Screw that. I *love* my unlimited stash.

Lightning and frost will always reign supreme. Necromancy above all other magicks though. (mostly because i'm an absolute edgelord) You know, I keep trying to leave necromancy, but no matter what I do it keeps bringing me back.

Fighers, Rogues, Monks, Paladins, Rangers and Barbarians aren't casters, but have abilities that scale with power level. When it comes down to it power level is basically the same thing as caster level except with a name that doesn't imply it only applies to casters. You'd have to explain the same thing if you used to term "caster level" too. Just because the name is familiar doesn't mean people will magically know that increasing it would increase Accuracy, number of projectiles, damage etc. I honestly don't see what the complexity is. As Sedrefilos said: The details of what extra levels of power mean needs to be learnt, but the same would be true of extra caster levels too. 1) Yeah, but they're still *casting* abilities. +1 Knockdown level means Knockdown is being cast at 1 level higher? Easy. It's really super simple. It's not nearly as complex as your making it out to be. Elex, D:OS, Diablo, and a million others use a variation of this system, as do *many* others. It's basic and well-understood as a convention of the genre. 2) Not really. You'd have to give some basic details about how it works in this game, but not *anywhere* to the same extent. You don't have to learn what the **** a caster level *is* the same way you do with a Power Level, which nobody has ever ****ing heard of before this game as this Power Level system is unique. With caster levels, character levels, etc. instead of learning a whole new system and what it means, you just have to learn how this system you already have a framework for applies in this situation. 3) That's a tautology, and I'm pretty sure it's a joke. Saying "Power Levels are levels of power" doesn't mean anything. We all have an intrinsic understanding of the concept of caster level--we understand in theory how caster level works and can grasp it because all have a framework for it in our minds. Nobody knows what the **** a power level is until the Devs explain it, because it's a unique custom-built system that none of us have ever experienced before. With regards to 2/, actually, it only comes down to the spell's or ability's description. In the BG series, you knew your spell dealt 2d6 + 3/level , or 5d6 + 1d6/level up to a cap of 15d6, stuff like that. Absent this description, nobody would understand what the effect of gaining a "power" or "caster" level means. Good/better documentation will take care of that. You're right, but you're wrong. It's not that BG's description told us what "caster level" means, it just told us how Caster Level applied in BG. We all understand that +caster level means your using this spell or ability as if it were a higher level; how that "higher level" works is different in each game, but the experience we have with ten thousand games using this conventions let's understand the basics of how it will apply. Power Level is more mysterious for a lot of reasons, including lack of clarity about how Power Level affects abilities/spells and real murkiness about the interaction between Power Level and Character Level. We all get that it makes an ability more powerful, but that's *all* we get. The connection between Power Levels and actual Character Levels isn't super clear, and the effects of Power Levels themselves haven't been revealed at all, so when we see "+1 Power Level" *all we know* is "generic power bump". If you say "+1 caster level" it's easy to understand what the effects will be of this ability at my next level; even if that's not the specifics of how it will work for this spell in this game, it gives you a general idea to work with. If you say "+1 Power Level", it means *nothing* until it's made clear what the Power Level *system* is. That's a very good representation of the problem. I know +2 Power Levels is a good thing, but I don't know *what it actually does*. You can literally say *ANYTHING*, or even *nothing*, in place of "Power Level" and get the exact same information. "When under the effects of a Might inspiration, all abilities get +2 levels" gives you the same amount of information. This problem exists, I believe,because Power Levels is a unique, complex system designed not for clarity and ease of use for the player but for purposes of system design and mechanics tracking. Yes. And thus it's not a nomenclature problem, it's a system problem. It's not nomenclature I'm talking about, it's the fact that the system is new, unique, and complex and creates and additional layer of difficulty in interacting with the rest of the game's system. I'm not saying it's bad, and I'm not saying people can't learn or adjust, I'm just saying 1) It's a problem 2) The problem has not been addressed from either a design or UI standpoint 3) The problem goes deeper than just UI issues, and explaining what Power Level is and how it works should be addressed as a fundamental aspect of early gameplay design.

Fighers, Rogues, Monks, Paladins, Rangers and Barbarians aren't casters, but have abilities that scale with power level. When it comes down to it power level is basically the same thing as caster level except with a name that doesn't imply it only applies to casters. You'd have to explain the same thing if you used to term "caster level" too. Just because the name is familiar doesn't mean people will magically know that increasing it would increase Accuracy, number of projectiles, damage etc. I honestly don't see what the complexity is. As Sedrefilos said: The details of what extra levels of power mean needs to be learnt, but the same would be true of extra caster levels too. 1) Yeah, but they're still "casting" abilities. +1 Knockdown level means Knockdown is being cast at 1 level higher? Easy. It's really super simple. It's not nearly as complex as your making it out to be. Elex, D:OS, Diablo, and a million others use a variation of this system, as do *many* others. It's basic and well-understood as a convention of the genre. 2) Not really. You'd have to give some basic details about how it works in this game, but not *anywhere* to the same extent. You don't have to learn what the **** a caster level *is* the same way you do with a Power Level, which nobody has ever ****ing heard of before this game as this Power Level system is unique. With caster levels, character levels, etc. instead of learning a whole new system and what it means, you just have to learn how this system you already have a framework for applies in this situation. 3) That's a tautology, and I'm pretty sure it's a joke. Saying "Power Levels are levels of power" doesn't mean anything. We all have an intrinsic understanding of the concept of caster level--we understand in theory how caster level works and can grasp it because all have a framework for it in our minds. Nobody knows what the **** a power level is until the Devs explain it, because it's a unique custom-built system that none of us have ever experienced before.

What's so confusing about "+1 Caster level"? It's only the standard way to describe ability and spell scaling in pretty much every game ever made, used and understood by just about anybody ever. You say "+1 Power Level", okay, that's great...once you explain what a power level does, in detail, so we can understand what that means. Once we learn to integrate the power level system, once it's explained and we learn how it works, once we learn this additional system. But other, simpler and more direct setups that didn't involve additional complex systems, would have worked fine, too. That's my point. Not that Power Level is bad; just that it's another later of complexity that obfuscates the system and isn't necessary.

I meant make spells scale with class level, not character level. From what I understand, it's like you said--Power Levels were implemented as a way to control interactions with multiclassing and control the exact placement of abilities, spells, etc. by tracking power levels. As a bonus, since *everything* is attached to power levels they can also use +power level as a modifier, but I believe the intent was for an internal mechanism to track and control the distribution of numbers easier on their side of things. From a player standpoint, I don't think Power Levels add anything useful, but just make things murkier and harder to track by adding an extra layer of number and system complexity.

Right, but why does that have to be tied to a separate and arcane system from the actual leveling system? I *love* having spells and abilities scale--I just don't like have to figure out Power Levels and how they work themselves. I'd rather it was a simple "as you level your spells scale" system. I'm pretty sure Power Levels was implemented as an internal tracking mechanism that makes things easier on *their* end. It's just another level of arcane system added on top of an already complex system, to me.

I'm honestly not a fan of the whole Power Level system. At this point I find it very unclear and needlessly confusing.

I still suspect that a lot of that save/load issue could have been done away with by making vendors clear their inventory every few weeks or something.

That would go a long way towards making things more clear.

Josh said in the recent stream that power levels effect *everything*; health, accuracy, penetration, number of projectiles, etc. However, I'm not clear on what exactly it is or how exactly it works. The connection between Power Levels, actual Levels, and you actual abilities...I do not understand.

Just pop a potion when I'm at 50% health and I'm golden.

It looks pretty badass, indeed.

Same here. Obsidian already has my money, and I meant it when I gave it to them. I'd rather a better-quality game than a quick game.

Well for one thing ****ing animal pelts and books I've already read.

Skimming through the plot summary, I assume you refer to the ashes, which isn't a deus ex machina, but actually a rifle hanging on the wall that fires off in the final act - and the rules of magic seem to be consistent in the movie. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChekhovsGun

That's all explained in the Silmarillion. Tolkien had a detailed history and reasoning for all of it, but the reader knows about as much as the hobbits know, which isn't much.

Nah, Midi-chlorians make everything better. I hate you a little right now.