anameforobsidian

Most of your ideas seem pretty interesting and I do like the focus on weapons gently rewarding stereotypes. Weapon suggestions: A 2, 3, 4 progression only makes sense if enemy health progression is changing at relatively the same rate. Firearms targeting reflex seems like a pretty big nerf for fighting creatures (I don't know the effect on humans). Wolves have 10 points higher in reflex. Reflex is higher across the board in xaurips. With shadows it would be a +2 accuracy buff. That makes guns useless until you get to Caed Nua. While it's a +9 and +7 for trolls and animats respectively, that still means that guns would make the hardest part of the game harder, and make the easier parts easier. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind a built in +20 accuracy against the big dragons. But even that goes against the lore, which says that guns are good against smaller targets but suck for bigger ones. Halberds were originally supposed to have reach / increase engagement range. It came with a bunch of technical problems they decided weren't worth it to pursue. I hope they change this for the sequel. It would make off-tanks pretty dynamic. I thought they were undoing some of the nerfs against fighters, which makes the shield buff a bit unnecessary. Although, I don't see the problem with very defensive parties requiring specialization. Class Carnage AoE boost seems unnecessary. It's already pretty large, and it's something builds control for quite nicely. Rogues using everything in their bag of tricks every fight is part of being a rogue. They should fight dirty often. I like the idea of chanters being better able to control their buffs, but it would mean that each buff would have to be nerfed if they were all present, and that the phrases should be stackable. That could lead to some messy awesomeness with an all chanter party. I don't know if incentivizing the cipher to slow down gameplay is a good idea. I think you could run into a chanter problem where they have the coolest spells you never see. Metamagic would be cool, but seems counter to your goal of having less spamming of lower spells. Miscellany Interrupts are getting a major rework for either WM2 or PE2. So any suggestions are a bit premature. Flat bonuses to accuracy only makes sense if enemy progression is based off a flat bonus. My Addition For the love of god, I hope Obsidian spends the not insignificant time to lessen, change, or reduce status effects on grazes. Because combat is so bursty, a lot of spells & effects are almost as effective on graze because enemies can recast them in the time it takes for the graze to wear off. I'm looking at you PoD Xaurip Skirmisher.

See, I don't like talent trees very much. Furthermore, rogue gameplay never quite clicked for me, but I found barbs significantly different than fighters. Most fighters benefit from tank and spank positioning. Lots of blocking, engage smaller groups if possible, knockdown and control more powerful mobs, doorways and narrow halls are your friends. Barbs benefit from very different positioning, especially if they have the rush talent. They want open spaces, especially with a crowd clustered around the mages, and a dps race to the finish. Narrative wise, I think that just means the barbs need a bit more explanation, but this is true of all classes that aren't fighters, ciphers, chanters, druids, or priests. Sagani never explains why / how she has Itumaak. Pallegina never talks about paladin powers as a thing. There are no mage schools in game. The Doemenels don't have enough quests to build a strong rogue atmosphere. (Haven't played White March yet, so that may explain more).

I also like the Pillars class system in general, and I definitely like all of those examples. I would not get rid of paladins or monks, or merge them into any other classes. The only part I don't like is the relatively weak and somewhat artificial differentiation between the fighter, rogue, and barbarian, and I think it would be a good idea to merge the three into a single martial class. Ditto what Torm said. Do you dislike the separation from a narrative / flavor point of view or from a mechanical point of view? The descriptions you gave could mean both. Also, this would be out of scope, (nothing is out of scope for PE 2 because it will fulfill all our dreams, even the one where the nun is made out of cheese!) how would you feel about barbarian and rogue being prestige classes from a basic melee class?

I think druids have potential to become better differentiated, so I wouldn't get rid of that class. But yeah I do find the way the fighter, barb, and rogue are currently differentiated to be both weak and artificial. I would prefer all the martial talents to be baked into one class, and let players differentiate by builds. I emphatically do not believe that that would lead to samey builds. Why? Because there are several distinct combat roles a martial combatant can play in a party. To name three: the tank, the melee striker, and the ranged combatant. Then there are all kinds of entirely viable and interesting hybrids which combine characteristics of each of them. I'd prefer to be able to roll my own rather than have to struggle within a class's constraints if attempting to do something other than its designated role here. Also note that I'm not proposing to ax the monk or paladin: they have genuinely different, useful, and fun abilities plus a strong in-world rationale for them. I think PE has done a better job differentiating the three in combat than almost any other crpg: barbarians rush to the center and engage in a dps race with everyone, running away when they get low; rogues skirt the edges of combat, and are really best when they can bypass the front line and get to enemy mages; fighters sit there like a wall, occupying masses of enemies while party members defeat the hordes. They can be tweaked to have tankier rogues, more damage focused fighters, and more single-target barbs, but I would say there's quite a bit of differentiation there already. I would have three worries removing them to feats: 1. Player expectations. A lot of players expect rogues. 2. Players who stick to strong archetype would miss interesting and fun modes of gameplay. I.E. it would narrow the player base of the game. 3. Optimal builds. Rather than having at least three optimal builds, it reduces down to at least one. It very well could wind up that you would be stupid not to take carnage and enduring recovery for every fighter. Instead of having two different classes, most people wind up with one class that does 3/4 of what the old classes did. This is what happened in D:AO. Unless you were terrible at the game every mage healed and knew storm of vengeance. This is even a problem with multiclassing, because it's really common for fighters and paladins to multiclass until they get evasion. Here are my options for making the classes more unique (which I'm not even sure is a problem): I would say if you want to differentiate them more it would be that hard, you could take the base class and add the option to take their class features even further. Make rogues more fragile, but give them more damage, and more dive into shadow abilities. Then fighting enemy rogues becomes an interesting game of guessing where they went and keeping your casters moving. Have barbarians go further into carnage. Give them rages that alter their stats on top of normal rages, but also make them attack everyone. Then you wind up with a fun sword of beserking situation, where you have to position around them. It would be interesting gameplay for a barbarian to kill all the enemies next to a fighter, and then have the fighter knock them down while the stragglers are killed. Or you could make them even more mobile, give them more hops and runs. Give fighters more trips and disables. Put engagement back as a zone-based system that expands with larger weapons to make halberdiers. Put in optional talents that gives them proficiency with most melee weapons. Add talents that reduce the penalties for wearing armor. Add options to improve the fighter role as a melee controller as well as a tank.

Multiclassing would create a huge number of builds, and get rid of all but the most off the wall proposals (so, yay for multiclassing). However, I don't think sending whole classes into the realm of feats is the best way to differentiate characters. Dragon Age Origins tried to do something very similar to its mages, and instead of creating a huge number of builds it made the builds feel samey. Class strongly differentiates the gameplay of different characters in a way that truly classless systems have a hard time managing in combat characters. Barbarians, rogues, and fighters feel very different from each other already, and folding them into the fighter class would be snapping defeat from the jaws of victory. Furthermore, if classes are feeling too samey, the solution is to change the mechanics of one class. That's what I was trying to get with the topic of this thread. For example, Druids could be changed to have different spells available based on surroundings, or certain spells could get stronger based on an elemental focus of the druid at hand. This is something that they did to a limited degree in NWN2. Furthermore, Obsidian has not fully used all mechanics available. Shapeshifting, characters that specialize in small summons, and characters that specialize in traps would be welcome additions to existing mechanics.

I was thinking about new classes, because really almost everyone's shifted into PE2 mode. And in PE2 everything is possible and there are no real world constraints to consider. If they added new classes (and it's possible they shouldn't), the logical place to look is Pen and Paper games. What classes do you really like in PnP that would be a good fit for PE? So far I've come up with: Spellthief, Artificer, Dragon Adept, Wu Jen (giving druids an elemental theme would be cool), 4e Assassin Also, various tomes having metamagic effects would be a nice touch for wizards. It would make tome-switching more important.

If Defiance Bay is proof that they got better over time, then that's pretty good for PE2. I don't think anything is wrong with Defiance Bay per se. It just needs more content. If the other three districts had been like the harbor, it would have been much cooler. Twin Elms also benefits from the excellently designed area north of Twin Elms. That's probably the best wilderness area in the game.

Skaen doesn't make a ton of sense from a manufactured God perspective. The Engwithans made gods because they desired order in the universe. Who makes a god that exists to upset that order? Most of the other Gods that aren't terribly desirable match an established phenomenon (Rmyrgand because entropy exists, Ondra because the sea is always terrible, etc.). Rebellious slaves exist, but if the Engwithan's were slave holders they wouldn't want to promote that behavior. Did the Engwithan's make gods from their own mythology, or did they craft a new mythology for the gods they made? If it was the latter, then perhaps Skaen is the result of some unplanned interference.

Shape shifting and summoning are wildly different abilities which don't synergize well. This suggests two separate classes instead of separate builds. If there were an animancer class, I would prefer something more along the lines of summoning and buffing. This synergizes well, while maintaining the possibility of viable builds.

However, if we're throwing out crazy unfeasible classes, here are mine. Animancer: makes nastly little constructs to fight in their stead, and can reanimate corpses. Could get significantly more power when an enemy dies. DnD artificer could inspire, without gamebreaking part. Shifter / Blue Mage type: Rangers gone a step further. They can shift into the form of any foe they've killed and eaten, occasionally gaining special abilities. Or these druids can mimic the attacks of beasts once they see them. Ethik Nol blood druid. Hurt some party members to buff other ones, restore health on enemy death. There are some interesting possibilities with this one. Illusionists: A special class for priests of Wael. Illusions can daze, shift, and transform the party. This one may overlap too heavily with ciphers. Xaurip stunlocker: a debuff focused warrior, who heavily controls one character.

Honestly, a lot of people complain because chanters work as designed, a slow hands-off caster. If I wanted to improve it, I would just allow more active builds.

That would add another set of loot to distribute which is probably the last thing Obsidian wants. Also there's the whole runic magic being fixated on the past, which is antithetical to the Renaissance-ish setting. Finally, if Obsidian really is doing multiclassing, I doubt they're going to be adding much more in the way of classes. If you want an arcane knight, why not just devise an arcane knight. Just make an order of warriors dedicated to protecting mages who survived after their mages died. Then give them a different set of modals. They could have some cool reflect spell abilities, increased chance to interrupt, or a modified arcane veil.

I would probably make interrupt an effect of specific abilities / spells. Minoletta's Missiles would get it. Maybe you could have a mageslayer modal for melee weapons that would give interrupts. Or maybe you could boost rogue interrupts to make them a bit more desirable.

A couple points: - Pillars is already a class based system, and was going to be one due to its infinity engine inspiration. It's already gone too far away from that for a bunch of people. I doubt it's going to change dramatically, and I doubt they want to spend the time and effort doing a complete rebuild. The one thing it's looking like they'll do is multi-class, which will be nice. - PE's monks are hybrids of Western and Eastern monks; they're a mix of European self-flagellates and Buddhist monks who practice kung-fu. So while the lore says the founder favored being unarmored, it also says there are many different schools. If you think of a gameworld like a living world and not a collection of stereotypes, it's pretty obvious that someone would try to mix unarmored combat styles with armor to build a better system. - The difference in skills creates a remarkably different experience for all classes. The reason there are so many lol, wut responses to this topic is that virtually everyone was pleasantly surprised by the range and viability of different classes. Barbs, Fighters, and Monks are all melee but play very differently. Turning wheel and Barbarian rages are very different. Ciphers and Rangers play very differently as ranged damage dealers. Some classes may not be as universally beloved (chanters, rangers, and rogues), but they are all unique. - There is a significant talent cost for specializing and the rewards are commensurate. Class based talents strongly encourage using certain playstyles, and certain sets of weapons. While you can technically finish the game with an arquebus wielding barbarian, it's dumb and they're much less effective in the same role as a ranger. - Con modifiers and other defenses do quite a bit to differentiate classes. A wizard with a melee weapon won't out tank a fighter because fighters are getting much more HP per level. With the athletics revamp, a fighters' natural skill with athletics will make them better at it. - DnD's weapon restrictions are clumsy. The lore goes through all kinds of contortions and discontinuities to explain it. In Dragonlance, the Gods have literally forbidden wizards from using weapons, and every single wizard obeys (even wizards fighting the gods) because wizards are known rule-followers. OK, that sounds smrt. - Gandalf uses a sword.

This doesn't make sense. By this logic, people would hate the material components for enchanting in the game. It's also making a more reaching assumption while bypassing what I imagine is much more of a concern than fantasy game money, namely time and convenience. Why do people seem okay with gathering mats or buying mats for enchanting but not want to do the same for spell casting? When you use consumables, you trade a permanent loss for a temporary grain. The more common the consumable, the less that loss is felt, and the more likely it's used. When you enchant you trade a permanent loss of items you can't use (reagents) for a permanent gain in items you do use (weapons & armor).

Absolutely. On PotD those kobold xaurip clerics hit like a freight train.

It's been a long time since I played BG, but that's my memory too. I liked PoE, and I'm looking forward to the 2nd half of the expansion as well as a sequel, but I'm not sure I'd compare PoE to either BG or BG2. But the real reason I responded is to call not just for Vancian magic, but for original AD&D MATERIAL COMPONENTS. I want to see wizards grinding up gems, burning hair and tracing arcane patterns with exotic materials on the ground. I want incense and candles and powdered motherf***ing NEWT. You kids have your "mana" and your "cool-downs." I will be here in the corner with an odd look in my eye, rolling a ball of bat guano and sulfur just before I make boom-fire. I remember thinking about this when I was originally playing IE games, but even then concluded most people would hate itAnd it is too complicated to implement only as an optional mechanic. Could've gone the Ultima route of just consuming reagents. Honestly, it would have deterred rest spamming by having limits on reagents, and you could have limited key reagents thus bringing limits to the wizards higher level spells. I think a lot of games would benefit from using a reagent/component system. I would bet that most players are biologically hard-wired to hate reagent systems, because of loss aversion.

I found it was. I gave my Barbarian the rush ability. Sometimes she was using it to rush the casters, but normally she was running away from difficult fights and pull certain enemies.

I don't think subworlds is the best thing for this setting. While it works really well in Planescape or Spelljammer (make a Spelljammer game devs!), it doesn't work well for every setting. A large strength of Pillars as a setting is that it's fairly realistic. The actions of the characters are fairly grounded within the setting. Alternate dimensions are necessarily disjunctive and usually caricatures of the existing setting or otherwise hyperbolic. By their nature, they could take away from the strengths of Pillars as a setting. Furthermore, DnD in general is fairly religious and hierarchical. Pillars has analogs for Humanism, worldliness, and the triumph of the secular over religious. This means that other realms, especially divine realms, is antithetical to the themes of Pillars. All of that said, there's nothing saying they can't use the technology or rules from Pillars to create a very different setting. Or they could buy the rights to Paranoia.

I've heard that modding of all sorts will be much easier if they switch to Unity 5 for PE2.

Baldur's Gate (the city) had significantly more content than Defiance Bay. The temples, the Museum, the multiple inns, the airship caper, the rando mage fight in the mage shop, the orphan with creepy people watching, the thieves guild, the sewers, the seven suns, the warehouses in the docks, the dead kid quest.... I have to say that Pillars just didn't match it in Defiance Bay. I liked Defiance Bay well enough, but it needed more NPCs, locations, and sidequests.

I know you super don't care because it's just an MS paint map, but an Archipelago is a set of islands. And Old Valia is a set of islands too. It's weird that the big continents are relatively unsettled, but the small islands are not,

There's an acknowledgement at the end of the game, but nothing else. Oh, and the architect has a special dialogue when you get high prestige. Also, I don't know why attacks were always fought in the throne room and not outside the massive walls I built. Really it feels like virtually all the technical work is done to make the stronghold pretty cool, they just need writers and quest designers to add more content. I wouldn't have minded all the loading screens in the stronghold if stuff would have changed as you walked through it.

There's also the point that magic doesn't automatically obviate all other rules of the universe, and that suspension of disbelief is easier if the divergence from reality is structured.

I thought the same thing. TToN is promising a lot of reactivity, stuff that well exceeds many older RPGs. Pillars barely managed to live up to its promise of being a next generation IE game, certainly didn't live up to its promise to have the best parts of every IE game, and I love Pillars. I would say caveat emptor, but I backed TToN too.