Ashen Rohk

I missed the Pallegina confirmation? Eder can be fighter or rogue, which is interesting...

Why shouldn't you be able to do just that if the next group of enemies is right there 10 meters away. Because being able to regen and reset per-encounter abilities while still having a wyvern active is a bit broken in terms of combat balance.

Oh, you guys are too kind! Hopefully the content that I produce will justify actually watching!

It is indeed, good chum! With a hint of Australian (I used to live there).

Bear in mind that Russian and Polish have a completely different alphabet and syntax to most Indo-European languages so I can imagine it would be a lot of effort and investment. That said, if it's done well I'm all for it. Apparently the Witcher games sound a lot better in Polish but I think they did a great job with the English dub, so swings and roundabouts

From Josh in the backer email: Greetings. I wanted to write up a brief summary of what an increased level cap will do for Deadfire. I also wanted to explain how companion classes work, especially with regard to multiclassing. The default level cap in Deadfire is 16, which is where Pillars of Eternity wound up after The White March was released. Raising the level cap to 18 will grant access to an entirely new level of abilities for all classes, from barbarian to wizard. In our companion write-ups, you will see some characters described as class a/class b. This does not mean that they are forced to be multiclassed, but that the character's 1st level must be from one of those classes. For example, Edér's class is fighter/rogue. From level 2 on, you may advance Edér as you see fit, but his first class must be either fighter or rogue. This gives you the ability to customize your party companions while not fundamentally deviating heavily from their core character concept. Note that some other characters, like Aloth, must always start from a single class because it is more central to their concept. You may multiclass Aloth as a wizard/fighter, a wizard/barbarian, or a wizard/cipher, but his first class will always be wizard. That is huge. Most companions having a choice of two starter classes, and THEN being able to choose the Sub-class? That is a massive amount of build viability and party customisation. More than makes up for it imho.

Put out a new video about Level Cap stretch goals, see what you think

Considering this all began as "We want to make a classic IE game", removing RTwP seems fairly ridiculous. As I've said previously, Wasteland 2, D:OS and T:TON all have perfectly functional turn-based systems. Let's keep our functional RTwP system in Deadfire.

The one thing that I'd actually like to see is spells becoming unavailable to cast during Spirit Shift. It got a bit OP towards the end of the game. In the beta of PoE1, summoned beasts from either the statues or the Chanter phrases did hang around after combat. It created a very unbalanced rushing mechanic because odds were you could take your Adra spiders, wyrms and wyvern straight from fight to fight. A modal spirit shift could possibly work as a sub-class, but the base class from D&D which druid is based on had a limited number of shifts per day until super high levels which balanced it out a bit.

If they have the Adventurer generator in inns/taverns again I can't see it being a problem having few companions from a mechanics stand point. What is worth noting is that all of the unique classes to PoE were stretch goals in the original Kickstarter so when they were added the team also gave themselves the additional job of writing a companion of that class. Personally I'd like to have one of every class - BG2 did a great job with making all classes available (except pure thief) with a great story to them.

I suppose one argument FOR keeping your level is that I assume we'll have to face off against Eothas at some point?

It'd have to be implemented properly to work well. I've never been a big fan of romance in RPGs (aside from Aerie giving birth in ToB, that was total jokes) but done well...sure? That said, to me it just wouldn't feel...right?

What you also have to remember is that the 77,000 backers were across ALL donation platforms, including Slacker Backers as well as donating straight through the PoE portal. A drop off in the rate of donations like this is totally expected and will be factored in. As someone said up above, I can easily see PoE2 hitting the originals crowdfunding total once the Paypal option opens up.

If you imported your BG1/2 character into Neverwinter Nights, you got slapped back to Level 1. Mass Effect, slapped back to Level 1. Witcher 2/3, slapped back to Level 1. Literally, the only game I can think of where you actually get to keep your character level between games is Baldur's Gate. It's better to have a premise, however flimsy you find it, to be taken back to Level 1. With the sub-classes mechanic if you have a bunch of Level 16 characters you now have party members who don't take advantage of the sub-class mechanic unless you have a respec option which is even more lore-breaking. I don't really understand what the hurry is to get up the levels faster aside from getting to play with the higher level abilities and spells. For newcomers to the game, you need the learning curve. For returning players, yes it might be a bit of nostalgia to tread over the level progression but you do get the chance to play that same character a completely different way. If the sub-class system is taking a 5e approach to how you can develop a character I'm all for it. But you need to start at the beginning. 2 days into the crowdfunder and we're already having to go "This is not Baldur's F*cking Gate 3". Please, let's not turn this into the Disengage of PoE2.

I put a video together about the first update, including stretch goals and character starting level! (sorry, I'm doing this again - Sensuki help us)

As much as Wasteland 2 works with TBC, I'm very glad we're on RTwP combat in PoE. To the point I might actually bail on it. TTON frustrates me with the TBC no end.

Reducing the party size by one in what is a party-base RPG should get us to think about our party compositions a little bit more. What is very interesting is that it could push people to make decisions about the CHARACTER that they have in the party, as opposed to the class. I loved Eder as a character, but I was never won over on the Fighter class. But, because he's so great he stayed in the party. Just how conversely Ciphers are awesome, but I could never really connect with Grieving Mother. So, do you want the combat excellence or a bit of character flavour? Pushes you to make that choice a little more I think.

I'm not convinced on that by this picture, the towers look like minarets that are a staple of Middle Eastern architecture. https://fig-images.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fd3pylr1apgoxnh.cloudfront.net%2Fcampaign_images%2Fimages%2F51dab0e806b01ac57b6df8d42014a572be4d9556%2Foriginal.jpg%3F1485378595?ixlib=rails-2.1.3&w=960&h=540&fit=min&auto=format%2Ccompress&s=5185e3f4130cd2404966e3b967609da0 This one, however...

I'd be surprised if we didn't get slapped back to Level 1. This was something I was thinking as well, but if we have new classes introduced as well it might well be better starting afresh. Lord knows trying to figure out all those BG2 kits at level 7 was a pain the arse. It's a generally accepted mechanic in most RPGs.

Chanter/Monk. Punching goons to a merry tune. Very excited to have this in the game.

Aaaah, here we go again! Already backed it, gonna be fun hanging out here again and arguing about the disengage mechanic again

Sad to see MCA leave, but I think Obsidian will be fine under Sawyer's guidance. All the best to all involved.

Mine arrived in UK last week.

"Maybe I should play IWD again". Ladies and gents, the RPG Codex in a nutshell. Kinda obvious that the reviewer set out to hate the game, regardless of how legitimate some of his criticisms are.

Well, it did take 12 people to control...I'm of the impression it was along the lines of a small thermo-nucelear detonation. Clarke's 3rd law and all that.