anameforobsidian

I read the patchnotes, but I've found a bunch of small improvements as I've been playing. - There's a new icon for stealing. - The system gives much clearer warnings about status effects. - Most importantly, you don't have to go all the way to brighthollow to rest in your stronghold.

It doesn't do it at the end, but it does create one right before the end. You just wouldn't know what your character did with one of the most important decisions in the game.

Woedica isn't even drawn quite right, because her crown is supposed to be broken. BTW, does anyone know if being a priest affects the Council of the Stars?

You probably should hit the cap before you fight Raedric 2 or the Ardra Dragon. Both are supposed to be extra hard optional end-game bosses, especially the latter. I might even include some of the later bounties in that as well.

Eh, I think they could probably comfortably take higher level invocations out of the game and the chanter would still be a great class. Lots of neat close abilities like thrice she was wronged, and an insanely powerful lower level summons.

Eh, if it's a strong racial, just move it to the godlike. It's worth pointing out that the moongodlike have to make concessions for their powerful racial.

There's a fairly large missing distinction here. No dump stats is nowhere near the same thing as no min-maxing. No dump stats means that every stat is useful, and when you chose one you miss out on meaningful bonuses from the other. This expands player choice. No min-maxing basically means you can't build a character to fit a highly specialized role. This limits player choice. As it stands, the system isn't perfect, but every stat is fairly compelling, and you design your character based on what they're going to be doing, not what their class is. The largest ways I think the system could change are: increasing the con bonuses / penalties; moving the increased health from con for some classes to talents/abilities; and maybe bolster or remove perception. Note that neither of those would limit min-maxing.

Honestly, I don't care that much what the in-game definition says. Real Lore would be about education, which in game terms would most definitely include geographical and historical knowledge, in addition to knowledge about the arcane arts and monsters and so forth. It could be a neat mechanic if lore could open up some dialogue options currently restricted by backgrounds.

First of all, there's no reason resting should have long-term tradeoffs. Resting is a short term gain that replenishes a constantly diminishing resource. Yes, health is restored, but you'll lose it again. 1. Basically, expensive resting would make it easily possible to create a complete fail state, where you have to restart 30 hours of game because you bought a new sword or rested one too many times. 2. Therefore, there has to be a cost free or low cost place to rest. 3. Since resting in the wilderness confers no bonuses, it always better if you are maximizing player resources to go back and get free rest. 4. Therefore, from a systems perspective there is never a reason to rest in the wilderness (save the final dungeon). Resting in the wilderness never was and can never be a systemically hard choice due to reason one. 5. The only reason resting is not limited to very specific zones is to avoid tedium. Yes campfire resting is powerful, but it is almost always less powerful than easily obtainable inn-resting. 6. Raising the price of campfire resting would only incentivize tedium, thus being antithetical to the system itself. We accept some hard limits on resting to avoid degenerate gameplay, but the hard limits are already in place and effective. BG2 style sleepwalkers are gone. Other random arguments against high cost campfire resting- Classes with many per encounter resources gain a much stronger advantage over classes with a per rest resources. If the game is giving to much gold, the better solution is generally global rather than specific inflation. The resources resting is curing are already capped short term resources. Resting is just as frequently not a choice. It is very often that you have to rest. Then the system is putting fees on the inevitable.

I really want to quit my solo barb run halfway into act II and try it with a chanter.

Sorry, that was part of a larger post that's been edited in. That's not a problem with chanter abilities, if anything it's a problem with AI. But I still fail to see the problem with playing tactics to pick of stragglers. Pulling is itself a skill, and you're saying that the game encourages you to use hit-and-run guerilla tactics through a slight incentive system. Or to put it another way, that playing the game well is rewarded. And lets be honest, you're party is probably going to curbstomp that one lone xaurip or troll you pulled away anyways. Finally, all it takes is one of the many enemies with charm (ciphers, wisps, spores, vithracks, and fampyrs) or slow/root ranged abilities (druids, adelmegans, spiders) and there's a good chance your pulling character is mincemeat, especially indoors. But the point was that you don't have to fight while the chanter chants for 12 seconds. I'm not tanking with summons. I rarely used summons. It would have been utter overkill. That's not a meaningful decision within the context of the game. Player's time vs in-game money. Player's time vs. in-game money is a meaningful decision to the player if not the game system. In the system itself, using camping supplies itself is always a negative, since it would almost always be better for the player to run back to the stronghold every time they need to rest. That way you get bonuses the camp supplies can't supply, for free. They are only valuable because they are both a convenience and moderately scarce; making them scarcer could possibly decrease their utility and conversely make them less valuable or make gameplay more tedious.

1. This seems like a somewhat fabricated problem, since many if not most of your enemies are faster than you, which means running positioning requires a certain type of build. If you're playing to the tactics of your build, then I don't really think its a problem. Also, a party with a barbarian would not want you to bottleneck in doorways. Really druids and wizards don't play best that way either. 2. Chanter invocations are powerful because 12 seconds is a hellaciously long time in PE. Wizards could have cast three slickens by then. For most non-boss battles, invocations are combat finishers. 3. Yes summons are powerful, but by mid-game the phantom is nowhere near as invulnerable as you make him out to be. A lot of enemies can wipe them out. It sounds like you're tanking with summons, which requires some careful maneuvering, and sounds like its prone to faceroll or die depending on how much aggro they can hold. Also, enemies are chewing through my DR on PoD, it's pretty much deflection or bust. 4. Resting works well the way it is. With only two of them, it's already a pretty tough decision whether to wait or not. The cost in time is more important than the cost in money to players anyways, if not the party. About dual-wielding, unless you're a barbarian, dual wield suffers from some heavy damage penalties compared to two-handers and deflection penalties compared to sword and shield (especially a bashing shield). We.... don't like to talk about single weapon style. Speed is what dual-wielding is best at.

I think the idea is impractical for multiple reasons: They've already said that they're planning to release all the class and balance changes that come with the expansions. Mainly, expansions are really about adding content and a reason to be level 12. Also, it seems like it would be an unnecessary expense to maintain two separate codebases, one that allows modding and one that doesn't. And it seems like it defeats the purpose of modding. Modding is successful because it opens a large existing customer base up to new experiences. People that mod frequently want their creations to be shared, and bifurcating the user base would stop that. It also risks creating the classic problem that mediocre moddable games fall into (at least for the expansion): no modders because there's no users and no users because no modders. By all means, the game should be as open to mod as possible. I don't think that charging for that capability is the right way to go. Also, a modding forum is a good idea.

Eh. There are third party programs that enable it anyway. If there weren't I'd guess I'd be against it.

Stealth is very useful for planning encounters. It's hard to sneak by most groups, but stealth can let you slip high dps melee like barbarians into a position to strike the back line at the start. I wouldn't max it, but I'd say its worth getting some points in. I'll probably try a "pacifist" run after my triple crown solo run. That will take a lot of stealth.

I was purposefully talking about Baldur's Gate. BG2 had many, many more unique items than PE. They were also frequently more specialized. People would make whole builds around the Caromyser, etc. However, they also had more content to place items in. Something that the PE team might want tp think about is separating more powerful weapons/armor, that way it's easier to place them as mundane loot, and it makes mundane loot more interesting.

The enchantments use less space, but they're clearly superior. Superb - you only get to craft that once with parts that come from a late-game boss, so its a bit of a misnomer to treat it like a common crafted weapon. Having a weapon with superb already on it means your party gets two superb weapons. Speed - A 20% boost to damage and interruptions is more valuable than a blade that gives you a 25% damage bonus against a specialized enemies. The applicability of the bonus matters; that's why a sword +1/+4 vs werewolves is worth less than a battleaxe +2 in BG. Marking - Giving your allies a higher chance to hit and crit is a weak enchantment? BG had many spells designed to do just that, and casting them had a significant opportunity cost. This is basically a sword that casts doom for free every time it attacks. That's a really powerful weapon.

I'd personally say: don't worry about it. This level of VO is just about right, even on the high side for this kind of game. If you can get more funding, put it into more quests/abilities/areas/QA instead!! I was just about to say that. I could have gone with less voice acting, especially if we had 3-5 more wilderness areas.

Um.. not sure that means what you think it means. If you can easily remake an exact duplicate of the item, it's not unique then, is it? The items can be relatively specialized in their mechanics but not unique. Whereas weapons in Baldur's Gate were relatively unspecialized, and better versions of them were very unique. Many weapons in PE are far more specialized in their mechanics than in BG. You can have a acid-spitting ghostkilling +3 halberd in PE when nothing of the sort exists in BG. Also, I love the weapon variety. But PE has something like 28 weapon types compared to BG2's 19. Placing a weapon of each type would be significantly difficult with the amount of content they have. Since the weapons have significant differences, and are usually accompanied by another feat that narrows their use, not placing some would be a bad decision for gameplay and build variety. Placing them in a big store would be anticlimactic.

Sadly, they didn't scrap enough. If only crafting and enchanting didn't make the game. Instant 3x better. 4x maybe even... Okay, I dare say 5x! EDIT: Also, on durability... D:OS had it much more severe and punishing in the earliest beta's, getting gradually weaker per update till it's just an inconvience that could might aswell not exist in the game so pitiful it's role have become. Why? Because players (rightfully) hate it, and developers pick up on that. Getting a new good weapon isn't very helpful if a dozen hits later you need to switch to another, carrying 10 spare weapons around just to use when your original broke? Not good gameplay. You want them cause they differ in their properties, to match enemies strengths, not as upkeep for durability. They would have needed three or four times the content to place appropriate late-game weapons of all levels; cut whole classes of weapons from the game; or just ignored classes of weapons like BG did. I think they actually would have done better to make crafting recipes loot or something you find by exploring. Finding the recipe for retaliation or spellbind: maelstrom would be great rewards for killing the ardra dragon. I also think making crafting a skill might not have been a terrible idea.

I will say that crafting makes it much, much easier to get unique weapons and armor, so they might feel less unique. Varscona was relatively unique in BG1, but if you're midlevel in PE you can make as many varsconas as you have gold to buy ingredients. However, I think PE needs crafting because it has many more weapon types than BG, and many more enchanted weapons, so it can't place them all. Combine that with a randomized loot system, and players are in serious danger of not finding weapons that complement their proficiency choices in the late game. BG's approach was to largely ignore several categories of weapons, which isn't a great choice either. I personally would like to see more areas with higher level enemies that have better gear equipped and then drop the sell price on everything to combat gold bloat. I will say this, playing on PoD, white spire and retribution plate are very unique. And I'm trying to rush prestige to get the merchant early to get Hiro's cloak.

Also the ears. Pallegina's ears are attached, Rhianna's are separated. But since we're naming random black stars, I think Pallegina is a dead ringer for Gabourey Sidibe: In all honesty, Grace Jones is probably a better reference.

It was based on the USA, but I don't feel like it was as negative a portrayal as you make it out. For one thing, they were far kinder to their natives than the US was, even including the war of burnt trees. For another, Pallegina particularly makes a big deal about how its an engine of new ideas. Finally, they haven't really fought an imperialist war in this.

Don't trash the classics because people are trashing a game you like. BG1 was an excellent game. PE is too soon to label, but my 100 hours are leaning towards pretty damn great. It's entirely fair. The story and characters were serviceable, if not nearly as ambitious as PE. The combat was quite entertaining; right now my feelings are modded BG combat > PE combat > unmodded BG2 combat (too many early dead spots, but that SCS AI is sexy). The exploration was much better in BG2 (less gates, although there were completely unnecessary ones at the bandit camps, cloakwood, and most egregiously Baldur's Gate - L2Fallout). The content was much more expansive even if a few areas stank (Ulcaster, Firewine, Peldville, the area between BG and Ulgoth's Beard). Both had memorable fights: BG had the chessboard, gnoll stronghold, and Sarevok. PE has Of the two games, I think the chessboard board fight comes on top.