Diogenes

The problem also gets complicated if you are adding in comedic elements to your fantasy world. Like for example in the movie Aladdin it all seems pretty consistent with the setting, all fun Arabian Nights stuff. But the genie does a Jack Nicholson impression which should destroy the illusion but for the most part you just accept it, jokes aren't always a part of "reality" so they can break the rules.

I think I heard that we would be able to pre-load it but maybe I dreamed that.

I believe the word you are searching for is verisimilitude.

Don't discount the need for certain attributes to make dialogue choices, you need high resolve to convince people of things for example.

If you are worried about something low impact as your children as hearing bad words then don't play the game around them, if they are watching over your shoulder they will see much worse things than some rude words anyway. It's one of the sacrifices you gotta make as a parent, much like resisting the urge to do a victory dance every time you demolish your kids at basketball or pretending to be impressed by their terrible artwork they are always bringing home.

Arnulf die Swartaz Bleak Walker Paladin

Wael is the obvious RP choice since followers of Wael are known for many strange and unusual practices, possibly for good reasons, possibly for no reason at all. Which describes RPG protagonists pretty well I think. "Samuel, who is this strange man in your house crawling around and poking the floorboards and looking in the cupboards?" "Oh its just one of those Wael fellows, leave him be. I'm sure he knows what he's doing."

The three things elves are best at: 1. Losing their empires, ancient knowledge, immortality, car keys. 2. Complaining about above, the weather, upstart races having replaced them in the world stage, too many/not enough trees. 3. Hair care

Monks are just random dudes who sent 30 coppers in the mail after seeing an ad for "Secrets of the Dragon Masters Kung-Fu Manual" on the back of the menu at the local pub.

Don't talk about "casuals" or use other elitist terms, its ridiculous. The base mechanics of any given game should be designed to be understood by an average person with limited instruction and then from there you can branch out to more complex systems for higher level play. This game isn't as niche or non-mainstream as you might think and the developers are very much aware of this. The Endurance bar isn't some extra buffer for bad players its a way to make the game fun by making healing a part of battles and therefore "active" or "dynamic" or whichever buzzword you prefer rather than a generally post-battle thing. You still take actual health damage in fights so you have attrition but you can avoid the situation of "well I got critically hit in that fight and the wizard used 2 spells, better rest again." Yes you can avoid taking damage and fight optimally, that's great but the game shouldn't be designed under the idea that every player will have complete mastery and do every encounter perfectly.

So you don't agree that the IE games had an over-reliance on the fight-heal-rest strategy? In terms of the for the "average player" rather than an expert with multiple playthroughs under their belt and system mastery of course?

I would imagine that the beta has more interesting items in Dyrford shops for the players to mess around with, and in the game itself there would be something like High Hedge or Sorcerous Sundries.

Eh? That's not necessarily true. I've always maintained that Obsidian has a pretty cool thing going for them by making souls be a source of power, so if they *do* come up with a decent in explanation for why there's no healing magic in the game, or why resting is so earth shakingly powerful that no known magic can duplicate its effects; or why minor injuries and flesh wounds heal themselves up in seconds, then I'll be ok with the system. Or at least I'll say "well, it's not my preference, but it's a viable alternative". But really, what I'm trying to do is to get people to understand that when developers take a simple and elegant mechanic and make it illogical and multi-layered for no reason but to check-mate bad player behavior, or to introduce an artificial challenge, We all should see it for what it is, and not come up with silly justifications. We KNOW why the endurance bar regenerates and the health bar doesn't: It's josh's solution to the 15 minute adventuring day--and to try and please the Grognards who despise the instant regeneration mechanics in modern RPGs while at the same time pleasing the modern RPG lovers who enjoy the fast-paced, "on to the next fight!" nonsense that dragon age, witcher and skyrim type games have made such a thing the norm. Here we have a bizarre system where Both crowds get what they want. And we know why there's no healing spells. Josh hates pre-fight and post fight rituals. He calls them "rote". Just as there's no pre-buffing session, there's no post fight heal-casting session either because "waste of play time". That's all I have to say on this beat-up topic. So what you are saying is that its a good system designed to minimize the problems inherent in both modern games and older titles and shouldn't be taken as something inherent to the game world itself, agreed.

If there is one thing you can expect from Obsidian, it's character depth.

There's a difference between every class being a viable choice for a party slot in any one encounter and one class being the optimal choice for every party slot.

I think you are being disingenuous here, lock bashing and sending summons into traps are alternate ways of dealing with a situation but they aren't the same as lockpicking/trap disabling. Wizards being able to cast knock or invisibility is just part of the whole "wizards can do everything" problem. Rangers being able to stealth is good and thematic which is cool.

Elves are the worst, forever and always.

Hit Points/Endurance are an abstraction in the interest of making the game fun, as opposed to a simulationist system where you are hit by a sword in your first battle of the game, roll to see if you die outright, roll for blood loss, roll to see if you get an infection, roll for convalescence, hope you have enough supplies to get back to town in your weakened state, roll to see if wild animals pick up the scent of your fresh wound...

In regards to the trap/stealth discussion I think PoE handles it in a really good way, since anyone can be good with mechanics or sneaking you avoid that "you must have X class to pass" situation that you run into with stuff like Baldur's Gate. I like the idea of having a wizard who is fascinated by gizmos and becomes an expert locksmith just for the sake of learning it or having a Fighter who is really into being an adventurer so she's read up on every monster you can find, myths and legends and what herbs are safe to eat in the wild. Who says the shifty bastard with the knives has to be the one to open all the chests?

I prefer racial abilities to be minor or just a "fun" thing than a significant gameplay effect. I'd rather make an Orlan Barbarian because that sounds like a fun(ny) character than because that's the optimal race for that class or, even worse the optimal race for every class.

The Envenomed Strike is a good pick for this build I think, aristocrats are always poisoning each other for no reason and its a good underhanded tactic.

Maybe they are worried that if they learn something new it will push some old stuff out of their brain, like when I took that home wine-making course and forgot how to drive.

Some of the stuff with firearms is probably gameplay vs story stuff, kind of like when story NPCs were killed in Baldurs Gate you would be like "why don't they just take him to the temple?" It wouldn't be too balanced if it protected against everything perfectly except guns. There is the Hardened Veil talent you can take later on to increase the Deflection it gives you, I think the 25 Def is probably pretty good for a lil level 1 scrub wizard.

It's important to remember that Rogues aren't Thieves. One of the descriptions of the class likens them to someone like Bronn from Game of Thrones, someone who is a soldier but is more willing to stab someone in the back or kick them in the balls rather than lead a glorious charge from the front lines. As for Wizards one of the design goals for this game was to avoid the problems that a lot of DnD stuff fell into where there was no point bringing anyone who was not a wizard on any adventure since they could do literally anything: fly/make themselves super strong/summon armies of undead etc etc etc. So maybe wizards don't conform to everyone's immediate expectations but it is in the interest of making the game more fun and balanced where every class is worthwhile. Everything can link arms and dance happily under a rainbow, all of that.