archangel979

I just looked through all screenshots and looked at damage from attacks and stats of creatures when shown. The newer screenshots seem to have a bit strange numbers. Like the lvl 1 creature (duergar theurge) has AC 5 but in older screenshot zombie has AC 12. The first creature (duergar theurge) has HP 60 and they didn't show zombie HP although it said he is also lvl 1. Higher HP are not strange in D&D 5e, a brown bear is a lvl 1 challenge that has 34 hp. He is meant to be an average challenge to 4 lvl 1 adventurers. But 60 HP for a lvl 1 characters that also seems to be a caster is too much. So if this represents how the game will be, they gave creatures at least 3x of their standard HP. But the lvl 6 boss has 3300 HP and this is more than 3x of challenge 20 dragons. Next damage. Zombie did 8 damage plus a bonus if he hits with a bite. The caster lvl 1 (duergar theurge) did 4 (probably with his base weapon) but I expect he will do more with spells. Creatures probably always do max damage with their attacks. But zombie creature also had 1d4+10 bite damage so we know there is at least some random element to damage. Then there are plenty of screens where players do damage to enemies. Highest one I seen was 96 from a Call Lightning. Ray of Frost II usually did around 20 and I seen Magic Missile where each missile was around 11. But I also seen damage under 10. It seems basic attacks do low damage for all attacks (player and creature) but special attacks/spells do about 2x to 3x of core rules. The screenshots also show critical hits, critical misses and saving from spells. Also cooldown on skills I think are a combination of cooldown and duration. My conclusion from all of this is that the game will use cooldown mechanic to have all spells available often and big HP numbers to make battles last longer. The battles will revolve around using same skills in each combat, only combining them with other party members in possible smart ways. Armor I am not sure if they changed some numbers for GDC demo or if it works differently than in PnP. Since there are critical hits and misses, maybe it does not. Also I would not surprised if they removed saves and put that AC as one governing mechanic for both physical attack and spells. The game will play nothing like IE games, but it might have better combat than NWN games.

mages in 5e use 1d6+con bonus for HP, max at lvl 1.

That is also your personal taste. I managed to finish the game many times hitting enemies all over and never had less fun. It was certainly more fun than WL2 with no such options.

There was also all kinds of robots if I remember well and I shot them in different parts.

When they said in one interview that it is important that fireball is a mid level spells that does AoE damage more than that it does precisely 6d6 damage, they were not kidding. I was just hoping that it means they are going to give spells a x-xx values or just give them flat average values, not change it all. The HP change will make sure all attacks do more damage and it makes sense with cooldown system where you will get to throw around your "cool" fireballs often instead of once or twice before rest. Now they can give us the action DAO combat we always wanted with no stopping and losing time on unimportant decisions like resting and preparing spells. Pff, who in 2015 wants to make decisions on which spell to use for next combat, so we are given these cool cooldowns and big health bars so this cool, awesome, shiny battle can last even longer and we can throw even more cool fireballs when they get off cooldown...

I had more than one situation where hitting eyes did nothing so I would switch to head or some other body part. It was mostly when fighting non humans.

267 hp lvl 6 wizards and 3300 hp lvl 6 bosses I guess I will stick to PoE, WL2 GotE and new SRR and then wait for TToN.

Yes and I am not talking about that. As a real time game based on 5e, it is better to have ability based cooldowns even if they plan to follow D&D 5e closely since in 5e some abilities can be used once per round, some more often, some per short rest, and some only per day. But like Stun, I expect them to just assign different cooldowns to different abilities. I am hoping not but we have seen a screenshot with two abilities in cooldown (unless that was the duration timer). I would not mind if at will, once per round and per short rest abilities used cooldowns but per day abilities asked you to find a place to rest. Having both short and long rest in a computer game would just break the flow of combat. The other solution would be like PoE and have per encounter abilities instead of some on cooldown and have to deal with inside and outside of combat states for those and others. I would rather have cooldowns so those abilities/spells can be used at any time. I am most afraid they are going to abandon Vancian magic completely and base it all on cooldowns which would be terrible. Vancian magic is one of the trademarks of D&D, even with a fairly large group of people not liking it. Most other systems use mana or spell points systems and those that don't like a more strategic Vancian system have other options for their gaming.

No, it looks better than NWN2. And cooldown combat might turn out OK if they don't go overboard with it. We already know they are "adapting 5e rules", we can hope that the end result turns out D&D like no matter if it has cooldowns or not. I still hope cooldowns are only used to represent rounds, but until they talk about the rest system we will not know.

Even if it end ups as fallout, finding out which part of body is best to hit was fun. I know I wasn't able to do max damage always with eyes. Some creatures were resistant to that.

We are getting also quirks, aimed shots, better graphics, that balance overhaul and maybe some extra content (they talked about putting some extra content that was cut from release version as a real possibility).

Still waiting for real info. Too much PR talk so far and very little real info.

Romance discussion seems to be like a virus on these forums, infecting even the most tangentially related topics. Then to fight fire with fire.. do you think Angry Joe is going to get angry when he finds out there is no kill xp?

You walk down a path and find a concerned woman standing near a door to a cellar. When you ask her what is wrong, she tells you she has a bug problem but a passerby offered to help her. She says he went down but has not been seen since. When you ask about his name she tells you he was a young man called Sensuki. When you click on the door to the cellar, you get a message "Sensuki: Don't worry good sir, I got this! Only 999 bugs to go!".

Ah so now you are expanding it all even more are you? Then ego stroking is when you go into store and they tell you good morning. Maybe that person also want to romance you because you know, it is all the SAME! (according to you)

Strongly Agree Agree No Opinion Disagree Strongly Disagree Really it's nothing about that. Or Xzar and Montaro, Edwin or Xan make the player feel important and I've failed to see how. I know the first BG didn't put the same depth in its companions background, but they had personality nevertheless. They react towards pc, they comment about pc, they comment what pc is doing, they see pc as someone they can travel with, etc. So they are ego stroking player, they may not be best or most direct ego strokers that there are, but they still all ego stroke player. Ego stroking is quite interesting things as it usually better if player don't realize that it is happening. If we apply your train of thought to food we would say all food is the same because it all just provides carbohydrates, proteins and fat for our body.

Maybe hire Sensuki as head of their QA department? And we would all be calmed by knowing PoE 2 will be best IE successor ever :D

That is funny because in both NWN1 and NWN2 well build warriors dominated the battlefield by a mile. In NWN1 HotU my Fighter/Weapon Master killed anything in one round, no caster could do that. In NWN2, Barbarian/Bard/Dragon Disciple was just unstopable and dominated everything. Or any build that focused on critical hits murdered enemies much faster than any spellcaster. Early to midgame maybe - later on casters were much better as far as i remember. You remember wrong. Find good warrior builds for NWN1 and NWN2 and go play again. You will see how powerful these characters are.

Ironic that you would call people who buy games for the graphics 'console kiddies' at the same time as praising the most spec-sheet-obsessed of PC Master-Race Youtubers. Totalbiscuit has never seen a wall he didn't want to lick. I don't have a clue what you are talking about. Care to explain it? Wall-licking is looking at textures unusually close up to find out whether they bear up. When not worrying about FoV sliders, Frames per Second etc. etc. that is one of the things that Totalbiscuit worries about. My point was that PC gamers tend to be more obsessed with graphics than console owners. In fact, if you look at the spread of consoles, someone playing a 3DS is clearly less likely to be buying a game for the graphics than someone with even a low-spec PC. So why describe someone who buys a game for its graphics a 'console kiddie'? I also said similar things :D But I agree that PC games would usually look to have better graphics with their games due to having more expensive devices. Well console kiddies is more due to console games being vastly inferior to what we can play on PC (with or without good graphics). Even when some of these games find themselves there, the controller interface is crap for them (I think some RTS games could be played on consoles in past).

That is funny because in both NWN1 and NWN2 well build warriors dominated the battlefield by a mile. In NWN1 HotU my Fighter/Weapon Master killed anything in one round, no caster could do that. In NWN2, Barbarian/Bard/Dragon Disciple was just unstopable and dominated everything. Or any build that focused on critical hits murdered enemies much faster than any spellcaster.

Ironic that you would call people who buy games for the graphics 'console kiddies' at the same time as praising the most spec-sheet-obsessed of PC Master-Race Youtubers. Totalbiscuit has never seen a wall he didn't want to lick. I don't have a clue what you are talking about. Care to explain it?

Nope, TotalBiscuit is actually a fair reviewer that is older and knows and understands how modern games have gone down the drain in last 10ish years. His Dragon Age Inquisition reviews was less than stellar and he often reviews indie games and less AAA games and bashes mercilessly on all AAA games that are bad (Destiny, Watchdogs) without fear of anyone. He also invested a lot of his own money and time to run his own esports team and help young players from around the world compete in Starcraft 2. TotalBiscuit don't review games, which is thing that he constantly repeats, he only gives first impressions. He and Joe have much different way to approach games and they have bit different tastes. And they target their channels bit differently, like for example Total Biscuit looks only PC games and focuses quite lot on indie games and games that he things need more recognizability, where Joe don't focus any specific platform (although he currently favors PC) and he reviews mostly games that he is interested or that are hyped lot. Reviews and first impressions are always subjective, meaning that one can't be any fairer than another, because they give subjective opinion of the game. Of course one could argue that TotalBiscuits format to show more unedited game video and comment over it is fairer way to do things than Joes way to show gameplay clips that show what he is talking at that moment, but both formats have their strengths and weaknesses. It should be remembered that when you look reviews and first impressions you should look up what kind games reviewer/critic likes then you have better ability to determine how well reviewer's/critic's opinions correspond with you tastes. While it is true that his "WTF is .." videos are just him playing a game for 30 minutes while talking about it, he does live twitch shows where he is not afraid to bash games on objective flaws that big sites are afraid to do. And he explains well why. Also he does not hate modern games, but does not love them instantly because of good graphics or similar bull**** that console kiddies buy them for today.

I still hope they do something for release or their promoted feature of letting some players turn off extra indicators will be nothing but words on paper made into half arsed option in the game.

Nope, TotalBiscuit is actually a fair reviewer that is older and knows and understands how modern games have gone down the drain in last 10ish years. His Dragon Age Inquisition reviews was less than stellar and he often reviews indie games and less AAA games and bashes mercilessly on all AAA games that are bad (Destiny, Watchdogs) without fear of anyone. He also invested a lot of his own money and time to run his own esports team and help young players from around the world compete in Starcraft 2.

Honestly, I never use Bless any more, and in my last playthroughs, I never end up using Defensive Harmony because the duration is too short and the benefit is meh. In BG2, you buff for specific encounters, like Chaotic Commands before meeting Illithids (which lasts forever on higher levels, to boot). Other than that, Stoneskin for wizards that can get it (12 hour duration, after all) and Protection from Evil 10' is all the relevant pre-buffing that should always be on. People are vastly overstating the "issue" of pre-buffing in the IE games, and in PoE it shouldn't even be treated as a relevant argument. True but it also depends on your party. If you got more physical members bless and defensive harmony is good. It also protects vs Intelligence drain in Illithid scenario because they need to hit you first. Also I avoid casting Haste and rather use spells like bless as haste make your party tired and I don't abuse rest. But, for some fights massive prebuffing is not needed but only 1 spell that is most useful.