Enoch

Maximum screen resolution indexed to main character PER score.

Hmmm Enoch is being diplomatic. low-INT dialogue is very resource heavy. I simply don't think they had time to write it, as it is precisely the sort of design feature you'd expect in an Obsidian game. Maybe in the future. True enough. It's a feature that few players will ever notice and that creates a lot of problems for quest design and writing throughout the game. But Fallout did it, so a portion of the fanbase always makes the case for it. Interesting that you don't often hear similar calls for 3-DEX characters to be randomly afflicted with the "hobbled" or "prone" condition, or for all descriptive text to be excised when playing as a 3-PER character. Maybe all 3-RES characters should have dialogue responses replaced with "I can't decide! Do you have any suggestions?" ;-)

Because the ability score ranges aren't as broad as they are in systems like SPECIAL or AD&D. A character with 3 INT in Pillars is still a functional human adult-- just not one that you want to be cheating off of when you take the SATs.

Yeah, you mean the EMS idiocy, right? Didn't they patch that **** out eventually? That would be a good indication that they learned their lesson, wouldn't it? It's still in there. The patch just edited the war assets math such that a reasonably completionist single-player run could achieve the "best" ending without ever launching the multiplayer.

I'd be really nice if we could see current fatigue levels on the character sheet before hitting the threshold of stat-modifiers being applied. I've had a few situations where I've passed by an inn and wondered if it would be a good idea to stop for a nap or not.

I just got a fine crossbow from the location where I was used to get the fine arbalest. Was it patched by 1.03 or is it random? Probably random. Yep. First time in the Compass, I got a Fine Pistol. My second character had to make do with a Fine Wand.

I never had the option of gaining legitimate access to the archives, nor the option to talk to Grimda without mentioning Nedyn, related to this quest. You couldn't talk to Grimda and accept her quest to track down the missing scroll without picking a Nedyn-releated dialogue opion? (Not sure, but I may have visited Grimda and gotten this task before meeting Nedyn.)

It makes a certain amount of sense, though, doesn't it? Some people are not convinceable on certain things-- you're asking a priest to get a book of necromantic research to hand over to (from her perspective) a mad scientist. Perhaps it could have used more warning at the outset that Grimda wasn't going to be talked into cooperating, but it's been a while since I read Nedyn's initial request dialogue. Apart from that, informing the target that you're planning on stealing something of theirs seems like a really dumb thing to do, so I don't have much problem with the game punishing the player for it. The credited solution to the quest is probably to talk to Grimda without mentioning Nedyn, do her quest, get access to the archives legitimately, and walk out with the Theorems.

My big fear is that additional mainstreaming of multiplayer content will mean the death of the pause button. I only really enjoy shootery gameplay if there is a pause (or something close to a pause like FO3/NV VATS) or if the majority of the combat can be avoided through stealth, such as in DE:HR. Without it, the gameplay becomes more stressful than fun, and I stop playing. Apart from that, I'm game for an ME4 along those lines. I'll second PJ's summary of the series/studio's strengths and weaknesses, and, on-balance, I had a lot of fun with the ME games.

Best general advice, I think, is that if something can be done before the end of Act 2, you should do it before resolving the core Act-2-main-plot quest.

The Bestiary entry for Dargul uses the word "facultires." This should be "faculties."

Well, what if Obsidian just thinks that capes look dumb and weird, and they don't want to make folks gimp their character if they don't want to go around looking like ? Did you think about that?! A cape is just an amulet that has gotten too big for its britches and has to be worn backwards.

Different streams of '90s-era CRPGs are being resuscitated. Pillars echoes the IE games; Divinity Original Sin echoes Ultima; Might and Magic X echoes Might and Magic III-V; the Grimrock games echo Dungeon Master and the EotB games. The original games were all very different from each other, and so are their modern homages. (I quite enjoyed the first Grimrock game, but I haven't gotten into the 2nd yet. To me, the first was fun in spite of its twitchiness, and I'm not sure how well I'll tolerate that over the haul of a longer game.)

I doubt that they coded any immunities, but it's possible that some opponents have action speeds and concentration stats high enough to make it near-impossible for even an interrupt-optimized character to land interrupts with any consistency.

It'd be rather nice to be aware of partymember fatigue levels prior to negative stat modifiers being applied.

One would hope that Obsidian themselves would resolve the issue. There should be no hard level or XP cap. They should design the game so there just isn't enough XP in it to reach level 13. Wouldn't that be impossible to do without also eliminating the less-than-6-party-members XP adjustment? (Unless, of course, the XP needed to progress from level 12 to 13 is greater than the XP needed for level 12 + 50%. Which would be pretty silly.) A level cap is an inelegant solution, but they've got to stop somewhere. Probably less bad than many of the alternatives.

I found one "Ixamatl Clothes" that looks not-awful. (I think I was on one of the perps you meet when on a sidequest to enforce a library's lending practices.)

Man, this cough & sore throat just won't go away. I mean, I'm doing better than the wife, who's got this plus nasal congestion, but it's really a pain. The little vector of transmission got over this one quickly, and has been taunting us with his relative health. This is probably part of why human biology favors child-rearing when far younger than we are-- I don't recall being this discomforted by cold symptoms when I was 19. Anyhow, this is the latest in the year that I've ever put off doing our taxes, so I did most of the work for that this evening. (Fed form is done, but I'm going to do the State stuff and the formal signing/submission tomorrow.) It's a hassle, but it always makes me feel rich-- years ago, I don't think I ever would have thought I'd be in a position to be writing numbers like this on a federal tax form. Makes me appreciate the amount of dumb luck it took to get into the position we're in.

But this is a party-based game. Almost nobody plays just one class, and folks with a general interest in the game's mechanics aren't going to want to keep tabs on 11 separate sub-forums. (Or even the 6 that are relevant for the party they're presently playing.)

Eh, that'd make it a pretty huge pain in the rear to browse the forums. I'd check one when I had a particular question I was looking for the answer to, but not with any kind of regularity. And that would deprive you all of the my valuable insight when interesting threads pass my notice. I do support separating the mechanics and character builds from the engine/modding discussion. A couple pinned threads wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea, but 11 of them would push new user threads to second-page obscurity (on default view settings) alarmingly quickly.

An extra point in a skill at character creation translates to every subsequent rank being cheaper, as the cost acceleration of skillpoint buys doesn't count the ones you get from your class/background. A Rogue/Merchant who starts with 3 ranks in Mechanics can buy rank 4 with only 1 point at level-up, and can get to 10 ranks with only 28 points spent (i.e., almost every point from 5 level-ups). A Ranger/Merchant who starts with 1 rank would have to spend 6 points to get to rank 4, and 45 points to get to rank 10 (almost every point from 8 level-ups).

Consider making a more balanced party instead of having two tanks and a missile battery behind them (like I've said before, that gameplay style is *not* optimal). Or maybe use more spells so to end fights before your tank character takes a lot of damage.

I like the stat qualifiers on, but disposition information off.

That's nice, sure, but I don't see how achieving a near-untouchable Wizard is worth the opportunity cost of 2 talents, 2 per-day spells, the casting time necessary to deploy them in combat, and whatever good offensive spells they're displacing from your Grimoire.

Rogues aren't really built around combat stealth in this game. The Shadowing Beyond talent gives you some limited opportunities to do that, but it's not the core of the class function. (Really, combat stealth is a pretty silly trope when you think about it. As is "aggro," but that's a separate discussion.) What you should be doing is waiting for opponents to get locked-in to engagement with your high-deflection/high-DR folks, using companion abilities to apply de-buffs (blinded, hobbled, prone, dazed, etc.) before you strike. You get Sneak Attack bonuses when attacking folks suffering from any of a wide range of de-buffs. Use your companions to make sure you're benefiting from it as much as possible.