Enduin

True, but the player really wouldn't have to worry about that background stuff. That's just important for balancing and overall feel. In actual practice it would simply be I have X wound(s), is it enough to make me want to Rest and use up some of my rations and lose whatever resting bonus I currently have or are they minor enough to just ignore and let them heal on their own or deal with when something more serious happens. The current system doesn't really offer any nuance to it. Every character and every injury results in a 25% drop in health and other decently annoying penalty, no matter the class, stats or circumstances. So one alone is cause to Rest for some and for most people two basically is a necessity. But by having injuries of lesser and greater severity it can possibly become more of a meaningful trade off rather than an automatic reaction.

I would be in favor of the Overkill system. I've suggested creating a two tiered Injury system between Minor and Serious Injuries. Though with your proposal of self healing wounds the idea of Minor, Medium and Mortal is also a good idea. One issue with the Injury system that a few posters have brought up in the other threads is that it's universal and doesn't account for character class or type. You could argue that it does with regards to combat and the likelihood of said character getting knocked out in the first place, but that's pretty tenuous already and more importantly it ignores the fact that Traps inflict Injuries and most likely scripted interactive events will have a chance to impart them too. Certain classes and characters with very high CON, and maybe RES too, should not be able to get injuries as easily as other classes and characters with very low CON/RES. Having Injury tiers and using a stat based condition to derive what severity of injury is given helps to balance this out. So in your Overkill example if a character gets knocked out with a really powerful attack that will trigger a Mortal Wound, but that can then be checked against their CON/RES stats and maybe certain unique Class/Sub-class modifiers that provide a chance for that Mortal Wound to simply be a Medium or Minor one. Same condition could then be also used to calculate severity of Injuries when a character triggers a Trap or suffers an Injury from a scripted event, though in that case the Injury severity should be rolled against whatever stat was at play in that event, not specifically to CON/RES. So like if you're attempting to jump a gap and it requires DEX and you fail it the Injury type will be determined by your DEX. Weighing the Injury types would also be beneficial. Again if we go with three classifications for Injuries 4 Mortal Wounds = Death, 8 Medium Wounds = Death and 12 Minor Wounds = Death. 1 Mortal Wound would result in 25% reduction in health, while one Medium Wound wouldn't, but 2 Medium Wounds would = 20% reduction in health and then 3 Minor Wounds would = 15% reduction in health. And so on. That said three tiers might be more complex than is needed, which is why in other threads I advocated for just two: Minor and Serious. But I think the overall idea is more flexible and the right direction from both a gameplay perspective and a RPing one.

Same, I don't mind it that much out in the open, but what is very jarring is when you spot enemies that are behind solid objects. This happens a bunch in the Poko Kahara ruins, where you'll spot enemies in a room adjacent to the one you're in but in terms of actual layout there's a solid wall between you and them and it is quite a ways away from you on foot.

It's even worse considering that it's also visually emphasizing "wound equality" among all builds and classes. Doesn't matter if you're building a battle-hardened, scarred Coastal Aumaua or planning on roleplaying a support class-oriented Orlan who's never been in the thick of battle directly - both will go down when it hits that imaginary fourth red light. I think this is a good instance where having different degrees of severity to Injuries would be beneficial. Certain Classes/Sub-classes could have bonuses to Injuries allowing them to acquire more Injuries or further reducing the change of acquiring a Serious Injury. With your Constitution then being the main determining factor on the threshold required for you to receive a Serious Injury vs a Minor Injury when knocked out and chance of receiving a Minor Injury when struck with a critical attack.

I have tried to visualize this, as it's easier to get a wider view: I think it's important to keep in mind that Pen-AR does affect not only our dps, but also the survivability of our "tanks". I've added a quick v2. But still thinking of all the pros and cons. Here how it looks: Btw, if you are interested in PoE1 situation (although there we could get a much lower PEN minus DR situations): This is very useful, thanks. Looking at the current setup and alternative takes on it I think a mix of the current stepped dmg variation and gradual variation would be best. So for each Pen point above AR you'd get a 5% increase in DMG, with an additional 10% bump every 3rd point for a maximum dmg bonus of 150%. So 105%, 110%, 125%, 130%, 135%, 150%. Then on the other end for every Pen point below AR you get a 10% reduction in damage, with an addition 10% every 3rd point, or 90%, 80%, 60%, 50%, 40%, 20%. This would provide more gradation and leniency while still providing pretty sizable bumps for those with far superior PEN/AR. The current system is too all or nothing, but going to a completely gradient scale would still likely result in issues of armor class benefits. You need that noticeable bump/decrease in DMG based on that to retain the use case for heavy armors and trade off of light/cloth armors.

I think the new system is a step in the right direction, but certainly in need of tuning and changes. The old Health/Endurance system worked, but it wasn't ever something I thought was a very good system. It was rather inelegant. Simplifying health to fixed conditions rather than a very large numerical scale makes more sense and is far easier to understand for your average player. I think it's also a potentially more accurate approximation of what it's trying to represent, ie the overall physical condition of your character. That said the Injury system needs more nuance and granularity to it as it is currently too simple and thus severe in its implementation. I didn't find it all that hard to avoid knockouts in my time with the Beta but it certainly is quite punitive when they do happen. Especially when you take into consideration things like Traps which automatically add an injury. I think more injury conditions and degrees of severity would be the best way of improving the current system. The old Health/Endurance system was to abstract, while the new Injury system is more straightforward and representative, but it is too rigid and simple at the moment. I think it would be beneficial to introduce two tiers of Injuries: Serious and Minor. Serious Injuries would work just how they currently do in the Beta and then Minor Injuries would incur less serious penalties. The severity of the injury you receive would be dependent on the severity of the attack that knocked you out. Powerful attacks would result in Serious Injuries while less powerful attacks would only result in Minor Injuries. Minor Injuries could also occur when struck by critical hits and when you trigger a trap. On their own Minor Injuries won't impart a Health Penalty, but they will in pairs maybe for a reduced amount say only 15% instead of 25%. As well you would need twice as many Minor Injuries to trigger death. I think by making Minor Injuries the more common outcome will reduce the pressure to rest. They would still be detrimental, but not so punitive that having two or three would make the average player feeling compelled to rest. I think it would also possibly be worthwhile for them to test out making it so that Serious Injuries can only be recovered by staying at an Inn or similar fixed resting location, not through camping/food. That too could again help to curb the inclination and pressure some players feel after receiving an Injury to immediately rest up. But then again that might just do the opposite and have players feel compelled to leave a dungeon before a major encounter and return to an Inn to rest up, which is pretty much the exact opposite behavior you want to encourage.

I have to say I like the new system but it could use some more depth and granularity to it. I'm in favor of having two tiers of wounds based on damage dealt to you as others have mentioned. Break them up into two types: Serious and Minor. Serious are how they currently work. If you get knocked out by a powerful attack you'll get a Serious Wound, lose 1/4 of you health and the 4th results in death. But if you get knocked out by a weak attack you only get a Minor Wound. These have a smaller penalty and carry no Health reduction on their own, but do in pairs, and require twice as many to get perma death. They still require rest to get rid of them and they can also be acquired by chance when stuck by a critical hit and not knocked out. I think that would provide enough depth and nuance to the system while still remaining fairly straight forward and easy to understand. Cause that's all this new system is here for to simply and reduce the confusion many had over the old Health/Endurance system. Instead of gradual and incremental changes to Health that's measure by hundreds of points you just go by the major milestones. But only have 4 is probably a bit too simplistic, having Serious and Minor wounds helps to bring back more leeway to the experience while still retaining that easily grasped nature of it.

I haven't seen these reported elsewhere so just in case I've noticed a few issues with the Quicksave/load system. 1. When entering a new zone the F8/Quickload feature does not work and an error message saying a Quicksave could not be found displays. The file still exists in the normal Save/Load menus, but not via F8. Quickload does work though if you return to the zone where the Quicksave was created or if you Quicksave again and don't move into a new zone. 2. Quickloading during battles can often sometimes resulted in the normal loading transition to be skipped, with a fraction of a second screen black out, and my party going missing, along with the party portraits, with then the game and enemies still running normally. The rest of the UI remains and opening up the menus shows everything blank, no portraits, no items, no stats, etc. https://i.imgur.com/1u8dXqV.jpg - Screen with missing Party Members and Party Portraits and rest of game running https://i.imgur.com/q20dj0H.jpg - Screen of Inventory Screen with blank info 3. Other times Quickloading in battle causes the system to hang on an all black screen for 5-10 seconds, with then the main menu appearing for half second and then the normal pipe loading screen to come up with central UI and Log appearing over it for a second and then disappears. When the game does load all that you see is black screen with the center UI and Log showing, no party portraits once again. Music, location and enemy sounds can be heard, but any kind of input does nothing. Quickload again does not function, requiring you to open the main menu and choose from the Load list. Opening up the Character, Journal and Inventory is the same as #2. https://i.imgur.com/pVeXU1J.png - Screen of what shows up after loading https://i.imgur.com/oWXW715.png - Screen of Map missing 4. I've only seen this once, and didn't screenshot unfortunately, and haven't been able to reproduce it, but in reproducing #2 & #3 with fair regularity the Quickload behaved similarly to #3, but did load everything and one back as it should, save for my main character's in game model lacked any of the armor and items on her. Everything showed up in the item menu and her model there, but in the actual game nothing showed up and when initiating combat her attacks did nothing and she just swung around at enemies in her undies. These issues only popup when attempting to use F8/Quickload and do not occur when loading any kind of save from the normal load screen menu or from the Continue button on the title screen. https://www.dropbox.com/s/hccxpjmt4tam1i5/QuickLoad%20Issues.zip?dl=0 - Copy of Save I used to reproduce this and copy of Output Log.

I noticed if I attack the good people of Tikawara the Mataru Warriors and a few of the major named NPCs, like Himuihi, will start to attack themselves. Most of the population will cower in fear but those brave souls who should be looking to attack me instead attack themselves till death in most cases. Sometimes they'll engage me once they see met at a distance like they should, but other times if they are in the midst of murdering themselves they won't engage me until I am within a meter of them and even though they do engage me they'll sometimes still only do damage to themselves. A few times they came at me from a distance only to stop a few meters away and then start to attack themselves. This is not the case for the two Warriors in the Chieftain's hut though. Whether that is because of the close quarters or something else I don't know. I tested this out with a few new games and it's always the same.

Upon loading an autosave created when entering the Beach location near Tikawara my animal companion is duplicated. The duplicate animal is not selectable, controllable or anything, but will follow my character and take part in combat along with the normal companion. The duplicate does no persist when loading into a new zone. Screenshot, ouput log and autosave in question attached: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bebpg6t2zkjk26o/Companion%20Duplication.zip?dl=0 Edit: I was able to recreate this by going back to an earlier save and re-entering the Beach area. Upon entering the Beach the first time everything is normal, but upon reloading the Autosave that is generated my companion is duplicated once again. It also appears to reset my custom formation back into a straight line.

I think a mixed approach may be best. In DAO the slower animations were quite odd and unnatural for larger weapons. Swinging a giant two handed sword in real life isn't some slow process, it takes a bit to build momentum but once that's done that sword is really cruising, not languishing through the air the whole time like you're in slow-mo. But it is a viable way to handle balancing without using arbitrary wait times between attacks like PoE does. To mitigate that unnatural aspect of slowed animations it might be worthwhile to then just employ both methods to reduce the weirdness of both. Have both slower animation speeds but also have some shortened Recovery periods in between. By doing that you can have slower animations that aren't so unnaturally slow and also have recovery times that don't need to be so long and artificial with characters just standing there doing nothing. Otherwise if you cut out recovery times and try to avoid painfully slow attack animations you'll need to rework the whole damage system to account for far more attacks per second and how that then translates to damage output or misses. Which in itself could be a huge problem that weakens player experience if people feel they are doing too little damage with each strike or simply missing too much altogether. A problem you kind of see in DA2 and DAI where enemies feel like absolute sponges because every character class attacks at a fast pace, but ultimately doesn't really deliver very much damage with any one strike.

I'm not really put off by the lack of Talents as they were in PoE on paper, though I've yet to experience it in action, but if they were to reintroduce them in some fashion I think I would prefer something a bit more substantial and meaningful for Deadfire. I understand the desire for more numerous and smaller incremental augmentations that can help reshape and make single class characters, especially, more unique, but I'd personally prefer something akin to FO1/2 Perks. A more infrequent choice that carries a more substantial impact on your character. Such infrequency can potentially allow Obsidian to create more unique and powerful options based on race, class and sub-classes as players would only be able to choose a handful, say every 3 or even 4 levels, so the overall pool available wouldn't need to be so large if it were every other level like it was in PoE. This could also help to further differentiate Single Class characters giving them access to certain Talents only available to them. Maybe some providing similar, but not as substantial, benefits that multi-class characters are awarded. Much like cross-class Talents from PoE. The current system heavily front loads 80% of your important character choices to character creation based on your whether you go Single or Multi-Class and then what Subclass you choose, after that your choices are far less dramatic and carry much less weight on the direction of your character do to the overall reduction in choices each level up and what you're choosing. But by introducing these landmark Talents every 3 to 4 levels that offer a not too dissimilar impact as choosing Single/Multi-class and Subclass that could help to improve the feeling of leveling and developing your character over time and give Single Class characters more opportunities to specialize or deviate from the standard path.

I collected a bunch of custom portraits early on just cause I like option but now that I'm set playing an Orlan I'm stuck with whatever portraits the game comes with since there really aren't any suitable alternatives out there, and from what I've seen none of them really light my fire. They're not bad by any means, they're all quite good, but none of them stick out to me as my character.

Thanks for the input. I'm leaning a lot more towards the reduced CON to bump up PER and RES and so Interrupting Blows looks a lot better. As does Coordinated Positioning over Adept Evasion. 2x per encounter means that could be really useful for putting my Rogue into position to get those Flanking bonuses and getting next to ally targets to really bring the pain. And since I should be focusing on not getting hit it's a bit silly to have a Passive that's only useful in that scenario. At least with Coordinated Positioning I can potentially use that to get away from an unwanted attacker as well as just for general positioning to gain advantages. Adept Evasion is also something I feel like is also better suited when matched up with Riposte as well which I don't have in there currently. Potent Potions or Powerful Traps might be useful as well if I find that I utilize either of those much, but I'll have to play the game a good deal to really tell if either of those are effective enough to drop a talent on them, on this character at least.

I haven't actually played the beta, but I've been watching a lot of vids and scouring the wikia and I came up with what I'd like to play. Hearth Orlan Dual Wielding Rogue: Armed with two Stilettos for fast attacks that bypass DR, along with a Pistol for opening combat with major Dmg. Attributes: Might: 17 Con: 9(4?) Dex: 18 Per: 16(18?) Int: 3 Res: 15(18?) Talents: Vulnerable Attack: +5 DR bypass on top of the +3 from the Stilettos makes for decent DR bypass. Also results in -20% Melee Attack Speed which should be negligible. Two Weapon Style: +20% Melee Attack Speed, which will negate the reduction caused by Vulnerable Attack. Vicious Fighting: +10% of Hits converted to Crits. Deflecting Assault: Reduces the loss of Deflection from using Reckless Assault. Bloody Slaughter: +20% of Hits Converted to Crits for enemies with low Endurance, as well as increase crit multiplier by +0.5. Weapon Focus Ruffian: +6 Accuracy for Stilettos and Pistol(May want to drop that and use something else like Superior Deflection or Bull's Will for better defense since Acc bonus is quite minimal. As well Interrupting Blows could also be useful, though Stilettos have a weak interrupt, but every second counts and I jacked up Perception pretty high which comes with +18 Interrupt.) Abilities: Crippling Strike or Blinding Strike: 1.25 dmg multiplier and applies status effect enable on enemy for Sneak attack dmg bonus.(CS can be use 2x per encounter while BS can only be used 1x, but BS is more useful as it decreases enemy Accuracy for a time as opposed to Hobbling like CS which doesn't really help out a melee character) Reckless Assault: x1.2 DMG multiplier, +8 Acc with a cost of -8 Deflection. Dirty Fighting: +10% of Hits converted to Crits. Deep Wounds: Adds Raw Dmg over time to strikes. Adept Evasion: +50% chance of converting incoming Grazes to Misses.(Coordinated Positioning is also a good option) Deathblows: Melee/Range Dmg x2 when enemy has 2 or more conditions that allow for Sneak Attack. Class Talent: Sneak Attack: x1.5 Dmg on from Stealth and on enemies that are Blinded, Flanked, Hobbled, Paralyzed, Petrified, Prone, Stuck, Stunned or Weakened. As well as any target struck within 2 seconds of combat starting. Racial Talent: Minor Threat: +10% chance of Hits converting to Crits when attacking same target as Ally. So all in all this character will have a +30% chance of converting Hits to Crits, a relatively high attack speed, decent DR bypass, a wealth of DMG multipliers that, not even counting weapon enchantments, can get as high as x3.66 when all possible multipliers are active. Intellect isn't all too important, I think, since there's only one active ability with any kind of duration effect and that is mostly there for the Dmg bonus, obtaining Sneak Attack bonus will mostly be achieved through status effects brought on by your party members with things like Flanking being key, especially because of the Minor Threat talent and it's +10% Hits to Crits when attacking an ally's target. Con might be an issue, or might be something to decrease even more to buff up Res and Per more. I'm not familiar enough to say though. For me this feels, on paper at least, to be a solid build combat wise and something I'd enjoy playing, as well as an providing compelling options RP wise. Overall I'm pretty happy with it. Would love to hear people's more experienced opinions on it, especially the Attribute spread. I'm curious if I could bring Con down to 4 so that I could boost Res and Per to 18 each, or that would make me too much of a glass canon.

Talents on Even levels and Abilities on Odd levels. So 6 of each since the level cap is 12. But apparently some Talents can be gained via quest and NPC interactions, so you'll likely end up with more than 6. As for Skill points I think you gain 6 every level.