anameforobsidian

I still think might and intellect should basically switch place, since larger and more impressive goes better with mighty than smaller, more precise, and more damaging. That said, I'm having way too much fun to care. (Especially with my max int / might cypher).

I've noticed it happening, but normally it means the target they were casting at is unavailable now, or they were interrupted.

I like the NPCs just fine. I think they add a lot of character to the world. The tombstones are garbage though. Pure garbage. BTW do backer NPCs ever have interesting loot on them?

I think the stronghold could be more immersive (and you could queue upgrades), but there were only so many resources in making the game. I still think the stronghold is pretty great.

Any descriptive system is eventually going to have cracks as the overall description doesn't match the vagueries of conversation. I still like the disposition system.

The backer pet is the cosmic space pig.

The endless paths are very dark for me.

As I've been playing I've found very few bad design decisions. Most of them are just a matter of taste. One would be that certain classes don't really shine until you're in a full party, so the beginning is ever so slightly more difficult than the middle. But that doesn't take very long. Another would be a couple of the skill challenges where you can't send another party member to do it. Also, it doesn't make sense that you can't queue up stronghold upgrades. Finally, I wish speed gave you the actual speed of the weapon instead of saying fast / slow etc. The game has been awesome though, and I can honestly say that I'm enjoying it as much as I enjoyed any Infinity Engine game. Maybe even a little more.

My Beautiful Keys!

High enough to show that it's a good game, low enough that Paradox will withhold some royalties from them.

Only people playing before us are press reviewers. But pre-order people get to pre-load, which is a pretty important feature to some people. (Quite a lot really). ... how? What does pre-loading do other than give you the jimmies? It lets you schedule when to download so it saves you money if your ISP data caps. Also, it lets you play right at release instead of waiting god knows how long.

Ugh. Too much negativity here. Anyways, since large parts of the system are based on 4e, it's not a bad idea to give everyone a slow way to disengage if the engager does not pursue, like shift in 4e.

RPS had this to say: "But John!” you cry, “I want to watch them to get an idea of whether I want to buy the game!” Ah, well, like I said, I’m not able to tell you at this point if THE GAME IS REALLY GOOD or not. So you’ll just have to continue not knowing if IT’S DEFINITELY WORTH GETTING for a couple more days."

That's not actually what happened with guns. People wore plate many years after guns were widespread. In fact, some plate designers would shoot their plate to show that it could repel bullets. It took hundreds of years for guns to make plate obsolete, and even longer to make other forms of armor obsolete. When arquebus were used in the Italian wars and many wars analogous to the PE age, they used mixed formations of pikemen and guns, and both had a wide variety of armor. Gunmen are less likely to wear armor not because it isn't valuable, but because it's expensive and they couldn't afford it.

I'm really excited for the sense of exploration. Nothing's better than feeling like you have a fantastic wold to explore.

The first game I ever bought was Fallout 1 (along with Thief the Dark Project). I was hooked to rpgs after that.

I'm a huge Josh fan, but this kind of information seems like it should be available in the game, and not from private / SA messages.

I thought Sarevok was a bit over the top. Bear in mind the first few times I beat him I was 15, and the most recent was the significantly modded SCS fight. Then again, I think spell resistance and level scaling are both bull****. Spell resistance is an arbitrary mechanic that creates an incentive for degenerative behavior, as well as making the battlefield less predictable for no particular reason. Combined with level-scaling it leads to nightmares like an endgame Deep Roads run in DA:O.

Maybe, but maybe they wouldn't need as much since they already have the system and tools built, as well as profits from sales of PE/expansion. Anyways, regardless of how I feel about their kickstarter, I expect they could easily make over a million. If PE releases well, they could do even better than that.

I think the OP makes a few mistakes: 1. Assuming that a game with a DnD setting actually benefits from the "infinite lore." As a counter-example I give you the original campaign of NWN. 2. Assuming that DnD races are fleshed out and interesting. Frequently they're thin stereotypes or incredibly unrealistically portrayed. I found the Drow incredibly unrealistic and annoying in BG2. Underdark was cool though. 3. Assuming that a game needs a ton of lore to make a convincing setting. As a counter-example, I give you Gothic I. 4. Assuming DnD themes are the end all be all of fantasy story-telling. They're not. I read Darwinia and Alif the Unseen in the last week, neither were bog-standard fantasy and both were quite good. 5. Lumping all DnD settings into one. Most DnD games don't use all the universes. Non-Forgotten Realms is rare, especially Eberron, and Dark Sun is practically unheard of. When they are there, they hardly crossover with any settings (DDO being a notable exception).

Jesus. What happened to old George Lucas?

That's kind of the point, though. Left-and-right, you see people talking about how great it is to have emergent gameplay, so I don't see why we sweep it under the rug for something as fundamental as countering. One could say that the very nature of a "tactical" combat system is the whole idea of countering. That being said, I definitely don't think that anything even remotely "hard" should be removed as a counter. But, generally, the fewer options you have to handle a given thing, the less interesting "countering" that thing is. And, in the interest of, well... interestingness, it doesn't have to be as simple as just 50% effectiveness instead of 100%. Even if it were, you say "just cast twice as many spells," but it isn't that simple. You can only cast so many spells in a given amount of time. D&D rules already handle the changing of a spell's level ("cast at level X instead of level X"), so if something kept reducing level 5 spells down to level 1 spells, you'd have to cast 5 of them just to get it even close to ONE spell of the same magnitude as the original. Now, that might lead you to think "well, then what's the point? It might as well be a full immunity, since it's pointless to cast such piddly spells." But, that's not necessarily true, precisely because the system isn't that simple. You could have a spell that was going to stun a target for 15 seconds, for example. Maybe it only stuns them for 3 seconds, but the fact that it stuns them still interrupts the target's casting for long enough for you to do something else about it. That's the heart of what countering should be all about, really. Not "do I have an ability that's designed specifically to 'counter' another one?", but instead "what can I effectively do about what the enemy's doing?" I think there's definitely room for "hard counters," but they have to be intelligently designed. Just as a quick example, a shield that absorbs the next two spells cast on that target would be a "hard counter" to incoming spells. But it's more of a tactical/timing thing, than a "Haha, you have no way of getting through this unless you undo this effect! MUAHAHAHA!". You could just hit them with two wimpy spells, or maybe you have a character with a weapon that procs a spell effect when they attack, and you decide it's prudent to take the time to get that character to land two attacks on them because you don't want to waste your spells, etc. Or maybe you just have your casters resort to physical weapons for the time being? And maybe that shield only lasts 20 seconds, instead of just being "check mate... waiting on your move" in terms of harming that target with spells. Stuff like that. Not that everything has to be super generic in terms of immunity, but there are very clever factors to use for immunities to make things quite powerful, without making them a permanent lock blanketing a bunch of combat factors with only one (or just a couple) key(s) to open it. As with the example above, I feel like any immunity or powerful spell like that should require/provide for just as much cleverness in its use as the cleverness allowed towards countering it. Ideally. Unless I'm mistaking my definitions, the more options you have to deal with something, the softer a counter it is. I do like your point on lowering the duration of spells. If it were up to me, I'd give wizards a bunch of near instant defenses, but they would only last a round or three. That way they're reactive, but there's no chain contingency spell immunity: abjuration stoneskin nonsense going on. Although I think BG2 (especially ToB) faces a bigger issue, and that's duration and spell level bloat. This has a nasty intersection with hard counters, which can make high level enemy encounters last too long and just be generally tedious. Higher level casters can easily create a set of conditions with an uninteresting arcane set of counter conditions while some classes sit around and flail helplessly. The game does a good job of hiding these problems from the user by making the enemies not use many of the best spells in the game, and then overleveling them. It also gives the player characters insanely powerful tools that are only used by them and not against them (Carsomyr). Then there are the truly fun exploits (rabbit swarm to deny positioning, black blade simulacrums) Bioware did a good job of hiding the system's flaws, but I don't think that's the same thing as a good system.

I wish I had the money to buy Avernum: Crystal Souls. Avadon 2 isn't doing it for me.

I think the OP is thinking too small here. We need to get the President involved. The eight brave signatories of this petition should not be silenced!

This thread seems ridiculous. It's a slight convenience, and if done Wasteland 2 style, the loot is still selectable by body. If not, its the slightest loss of immersion for a much more convenient system.