endolex

Again, this argument has absolutely no rational basis, the opposite is true. The pure possibility to use buff spells outside of combat do NOT make it mandatory, nor even possible to use them for every encounter. But with all spells being possible to cast at all times (which makes more sense from a character agency and immersion point of view anyway), you can decide to buff before an encounter or you can decide against it (either for conserving spells or simply not feeling buffs are necessary for this fight). With buffing spells prohibited out of combat, you simply cannot make that choice. It is a reduction of choice, nothing else. Nope, completely disagree. Pre-buffing is a reduction of choice during combat, that is less spells that you need to take into consideration during combat. Pre-buffing takes away from tactical choices. Pre-buffing is a no-brainer, and all it does is take away choices during combat, which in turns makes the combat even easier because of less decisions to make. Can you please explain how having more options results in having less choice? I sure don't get it. You seem to base this view on the strange assumption that 'pre-buffing is a no-brainer', a mandatory decision you have to make just because you can, yet I have yet to read a single reason for that. Pre-buffing is the obvious no brainer, it was the far superior choice to make that Not Pre-buffing wasn't really a choice in the first place. Just because some fights can be easy, doesn't negate the fact that a lot of fights are going to be obviously hard so Pre-buffing was the vastly superior option to take that the other option is basically negated and really isn't an option in the first place. Pre-buffing takes away tactical choices during combat, it makes it so you have less spells/buffs/whatever to choose from during combat, which means that combat is even easier cause you have less decisions to make. {Do I cast this buff spell, or do I cast an offensive spell} as compared to your idea {Cast offensive spell}. How exactly does the decision to buff before or during combat increase or decrease my spell slots total? If it is extremely well-advised to buff my party, I will either do it as soon as combat starts and pay in spell slots for it (with no pre-buffing possible), or I do it before combat starts and pay in spell slots for it (when pre-buffing is allowed). There's absolutely no increase or decrease in tactical option aside from limiting of my choice if I take the risk and waste spell slots on unnecessary buffs, therefore having less offensive potential, or taking the risk of entering combat unbuffed with enemies I should buff for.

Yet is isn't, probably for the same silly assumption that "once you make that possible, everyone will feel they have to use potions all the time". Complete nonsense.

Again, this argument has absolutely no rational basis, the opposite is true. The pure possibility to use buff spells outside of combat do NOT make it mandatory, nor even possible to use them for every encounter. But with all spells being possible to cast at all times (which makes more sense from a character agency and immersion point of view anyway), you can decide to buff before an encounter or you can decide against it (either for conserving spells or simply not feeling buffs are necessary for this fight). With buffing spells prohibited out of combat, you simply cannot make that choice. It is a reduction of choice, nothing else. If a choice is obviously supperior to possible alternative, it becomes more or less mandatory, and the alternative is no longer has any a real value. To give a fairly broken analogy: if you are given a +5 longsword at the beginning of BG1, why would you ever be tempted to buy a +1 sword? Pre-buffing has a Diderot effect, making alternative approaches pretty irrelvant, unless to avoid the tedium of buffing. The analogy is truly broken, for it would only apply if you could use this +5 sword only once per rest cycle and only starting at 7th level. Which would be the equivalent for a high-lvl weapon summon. Which would be the exact analogy of something you want to cast before combat starts. Edit / Addendum: And yes, avoiding the tedium of buffing can be a strong motivator to *not* do it where it's not necessary.

Again, this argument has absolutely no rational basis, the opposite is true. The pure possibility to use buff spells outside of combat do NOT make it mandatory, nor even possible to use them for every encounter. But with all spells being possible to cast at all times (which makes more sense from a character agency and immersion point of view anyway), you can decide to buff before an encounter or you can decide against it (either for conserving spells or simply not feeling buffs are necessary for this fight). With buffing spells prohibited out of combat, you simply cannot make that choice. It is a reduction of choice, nothing else. Nope, completely disagree. Pre-buffing is a reduction of choice during combat, that is less spells that you need to take into consideration during combat. Pre-buffing takes away from tactical choices. Pre-buffing is a no-brainer, and all it does is take away choices during combat, which in turns makes the combat even easier because of less decisions to make. Can you please explain how having more options results in having less choice? I sure don't get it. You seem to base this view on the strange assumption that 'pre-buffing is a no-brainer', a mandatory decision you have to make just because you can, yet I have yet to read a single reason for that.

Again, this argument has absolutely no rational basis, the opposite is true. The pure possibility to use buff spells outside of combat do NOT make it mandatory, nor even possible to use them for every encounter. But with all spells being possible to cast at all times (which makes more sense from a character agency and immersion point of view anyway), you can decide to buff before an encounter or you can decide against it (either for conserving spells or simply not feeling buffs are necessary for this fight). With buffing spells prohibited out of combat, you simply cannot make that choice. It is a reduction of choice, nothing else.

NathanH: "I think players will tend towards taking easier options" -- I would be inclined to believe so, too, but the existence of Hard Mode, Heart of Fury Mode, Path of the Damned Mode and all the other options shows me that a lot of players do enjoy a greater challenge (or simply more legwork, in the case of restricted stash). anameforobsidian: "Making a system at all implies that you will limit the desires of players to reflect your artistic intent. At some level, every game has a designed form of play, and there are always limited resources to support play formats that abberate from the desired form of play. For instance, how many chess sets support multiball? Eventually designers must set limits." -- I wouldn't know how to compare something like PoE to something like chess, but yes, of course, limits, I can't just include every player wish if I'm still talking about 'my' project. But this isn't about adding content or removing content - it's a simple option to turn a game feature on or off, and a lot of those options are already in place, because player tastes vary.

NathanH: "because they can't be trusted with playing the way that they'll enjoy more." -- I'm sorry, but if I imagine myself a game dev and I find players playing my game in a way they prefer but not in the way I intended, clearly *I* am doing something wrong or have the wrong expectations of what players find fun to play, not the players! Simply restricting them from ways they want to play the game just because *I* think it is the wrong way to play, especially in a single player game is just bananas. The only thing I can do is making the playstyle I had in mind more attractive, not simply switch off the playstyle players prefer up to now (unless it's a buggy exploit or something severe like that). The golden thing a gamedev can of course always do (and I wonder why PoE, with so many singular difficulty adjustment options (restrict stash? show dialogue qualifiers / reputation gains? maim before character death?) already in place, has not thought of that) is: make it an option. Let players who don't want to pre-buff turn off pre-buffing, and those who would like to be able to do it, do it. Problem solved.

@manageri: "Now that you admitted it is indeed not optional, tactically speaking, to prebuff" -- I don't recall having said that anywhere. I stand by my point that buffing is an option, not mandatory. "You have absolutely no GAMEPLAY related answer to this." -- Yes I do: I want to be able to cast my spells regardless of 'combat mode' or not, and I want to decide exactly when I do that. As for immersion, I already pointed out that a C-RPG game shouldn't prevent players from using player knowledge to make informed decisions and commit to metagaming if that is their preferred way of playing. "There's nothing truly limited about the resting system in this game." -- That, however, would be a problem of the resting system, not the buff system. I find myself agreeing though, but I don't want to discuss the resting system here. "No, because with prebuffing you're doing BOTH, you're buffing the party (before the fight) AND THEN you can start using that buffing character to nuke. Long term buff spells are simply not optional in D&D CRPGs; You either use them or you're playing badly. Only when the fight starts without the possibility of having buffs already up does it truly become an option whether you cast that bless, or throw a pillar of faith to knock those enemies down, as an example." -- I'd like to see the priest in PoE who is able to 'nuke' anything, but aside from that: EVERY spell is optional in D&D CRPGs, because you use either spell slots / mana / spells per day for buffing which you could also substitute those for more offensive spells (as offensive as priests / D&D clerics can get) or you can even decide against bringing a cleric at all. In a balanced game, several playstyles are entirely possible like that. And before you again say that spell slots / spells per day are no limitation in Pillars because of the resting system - see above. That's a different problem, then.

As I said before, buffing is a limited resource. It is not something every player always has for every fight. Therefore, fights in general would not need to be designed around it.

Nope, you can decide not to do the pre-buffing, save time and start offensively even if pre-buffing is possible. Many encounters wouldn't require any pre-buffing. I certainly did *not* pre-buff for every fight in BG, IWD and NWN.

Those are two completely different situations. There are lots of points in the game where not only you but also the characters know that some big fight is about to happen. Not being able to prepare for these situations because spells are blocked breaks immersion for me. Savescumming, acting on player knowledge and the like is a decision of the player however, the game should not prevent you from doing it. For Torment: Tides of Numenera, they actually try to counter this by rewarding 'failures' to some degree instead of prohibiting player from playing the game the way they choose to play it.

@Hatred: "Surely using spells which are a prelude to combat would make anyone around you who was inclined to fight you aware of your presence and have them rush on over?" It depends how close 'around' is. I'd argue as long as the enemy haven't detected me yet, purely defensive / supportive spellcasting does not initiate combat.

I use them when I happen to have them, but putting effort into organizing them, buying, selling, stacking, distributing - do you really believe this is preferable to simple pre-combat buffing when needed? Maybe to hardcore players, but this 'logistical' aspect of C-RPGS has never interested me much.

@manageri: "If you think it "breaks immersion" then ok, whatever, seems like mushy nonsense you made up to defend your position against all sense, but sure, buddy." -- If 'all sense' in a game for you is to be derived from pure gameplay mechanics only, then yes, I'm at a loss on how to explain this to you. But I happen to have Pen&Paper-RP experience as well, and never have I heard a DM say 'sorry, you can't cast this outside of combat'. Because rules like those do not exist in any ruleset I know. "As for tactical options, no, having prebuffing means you MUST use prebuffing which means fewer tactical options." -- No. And I wrote above why not. "This is so because the ability to cast spells which affect the fight before the fight actually starts is the equivalent of getting free actions in the start of the fight." Yes. As is has been in every single tabletop and C-RPG I can remember, and for good reason. "Is it a valid tactical option to choose to not utilize such an advantage?" -- Yes, when the amount of times you can use this advantage is *limited* and the choice when to use it should be left to the player. "This is quite obvious to anyone with any experience with D&D CRPGs, so please don't insult our intelligence and your own intellectual integrity by suggesting otherwise." -- I don't recall having insulted anyone, but right now you seem to on the agressive side of things. "Now that prebuffing is not an option, it's ACTUALLY a tactical choise whether you choose to start the fight by having the priest cast a buff, or whether you'd perhaps like him to cast something offensive instead. This ACTUAL added tactical depth stretches even further into character build considerations, as you can, for example, choose to keep your priest's strength low if you want him to only play a buffer role, and vice versa." -- This makes no sense, because you can make precisely the same decision with pre-combat buffing enabled. In an encounter where blasting the enemy head-on ends a fight much faster than buffing your party, you will want the agressive option. You could also always choose not to take a priest with you at all and rely on fast damage output and little in the way of support.

"There are still many ways to prepare for a particular tough battle: resting bonuses, scrolls, consumables, equipment selection, traps..." I find managing food, potions, scrolls and the like actually way more tedious than just casting a buff, thank you. Not a big fan of consumables in general precisely because of the logistics.

Not to me it isn't. It breaks immersion, leaves fewer tactical options, and for the rest see the other reply I wrote to Caerdon.

The buffs that really matter (not counting chants here) have limited uses per rest (and once the lower-level buffs become per-encounter, they are not as strong anymore). Therefore, clearly not "every fight" would need to be designed to depend on buffing. But larger encounters ('boss fights') definitely *should* give the player the opportunity to prepare everything they have at their disposal. It just doesn't *feel* right from a player / storytelling perspective otherwise, no matter how balanced it might seem.

In the lighthouse (normal) for each encounter I focused the Spectre first, keeping my party alive until the Spectre was down. After that, mopping up the Shadows was easy. When I did it the other way around (trying to deal with the Shadows first), I always wiped.

Oh yes, I seem to remember BG prohibiting from saving while the visuals of buff spell were still playing. Afterwards you could save just fine though, conserving the buffs and their remaining duration...

Thanks, but I'm not wasting talent slots for workaround like that. I'll just have to take extra care to leave a corridor until the rogue is back and then manually close the gap with my melees. I remember BG2 having a 'let through' gimmick for this kind of thing, but I'm not sure if it was out-of-combat only as well.

Could be, and that would really something that screws up pre-combat positioning and tactics, much in the way I described, but possibly in other situations as well. :/

I've have seen this now several times and each time I'm close to crying out of frustration and confusion. Situation: I position my party at a choke point, then send my rogue out to set some traps and maybe even one-hit a weaker enemy to lure the mob to us. The rogue does her stuff, combat initiates, the enemy comes a-rolling, and then...MY ROGUE IS BLOCKED. Nobody in the party has moved an inch, the rogue could leave the choke just fine, but re-entering seems to be a problem all of the sudden. Result: Rogue stands in the way of my front line melees who can't do anything until she's downed. Bummer. Can anyone explain this to me?

I believe I searched the forums for quite a while but couldn't find a current thread about this. If one exists, please re-direct me, thank you! What exactly is / was the reasoning behind the decision to disable all buffing spells out of combat (while keeping healing spells available, which makes even less sense)? Common situation: I see the enemy, or I know they're close. I would like to start with buffing and *then* enter combat, not the other way around, which every sane person would like to do. Why is this not possible? It makes no sense to enter combat and only then start applying shields, blessings and the like. No Infinity Engine game ever had this kind of restriction, so why now? If buffs stack too high in the mind of the devs, well make their durations shorter or their effects weaker. I would much prefer this solution over simply disabling them, which is a huge immersion breaker for me ("yo, normally you could totally cast this, but for difficulty balancing now you can't until you let the enemy roll all over you, seeya!" ...ugh!)

1) All of the information in the wiki is taken straight from Obsidian themselves while they were developing the game, so I do consider it source information from Obsidian (mostly dev forum posts by Josh Sawyer). So yes, apparently Obsidian changed their view on this at some point, to my great dismay. 2) Yes, compared to other AoE buffs and debuffs (apart from Interdiction btw, which affects a HUGE area), the range of chants is 'big'. But those other buffs and attacks you are comparing them to are that much stronger as well. They are simply a completely different thing than what Chants do. It makes sense to limit the range and area (especially in the case of AoE attacks, to avoid players stop using them because of friendly fire concerns). But for chants, none of this applies. These 'buffs' are weak enough as it is (much due to their very specific effects, e.g. you don't decrease all damage from enemies, just slashing and piercing, etc.), there is simply no need to constrict their range in the same way as 'real' buffs, and further diminish their already minor impact. All overlapping phrases of a chant combined make roughly two thirds of a buff. At limited range, it's even less noticeable, and that's what I think is just too underpowered at this point. Yes, other games use different combat engines, but this whole thing is supposed to be a throwback to good ol' Infinity Days, is it not? And in those days, bard and jester songs affected practically everything in sight. So yes, I assumed this being case here as well. 3) As I already pointed out, this 'perfect position' is not possible to maintain without microing Chanter positioning for every single encounter, because if the chanter uses a ranged weapon, they will stop moving once they have reached minimum range for their weapon. To check if the Chant reaches everyone, I need to mouseover over the chant icon everytime, and again at this point I would wonder if this is the way this class is supposed to be played for optimal performance, while other classes easily slip into their logical position based on their weapon, can fire away their targeted or AoE abilities and spells and don't give any cause for concern whether they're carrying their weight. 4) "Their main problem is really that most fights in PoE are so short that they don't get to use their invocations before the battles are over." <-- Finally something we can agree on, because without Invocations, little remains that make a Chanter useful in any way. I wonder though how this could possibly mean that to you, Chanters are 'fine as they are'? To me this sounds like a severe class and combat design mismatch. 5) Too much heal - another thing I agree with. The regeneration effect of Ancient Memory is supposed to be a small boost, like everything Chants do is supposed to be (except Invocations). Also, it may sound this way, but I'm really not complaining - I'm still just wondering if all of this intended. Because if so, I'll just give up on playing a chanter or even having one in the party, because I just don't see the point when every other class clearly bring more to the table (which is a pity since I do happen to like Kana as a character... )

pi2repsion: "That the Chanter is, in fact, able to use his chants to cover both front and rear ranks if you build him right is something that is great, but it is certainly not something that is suggested by his class description." / "So, YES. Creating your Chanter to be able to cover your entire group and all enemies with your chants at the same time, while certainly a worthwhile thing to do, is not in any way, shape, or form something that is suggested by the class' stats or its description, nor is the inability to do this without a high intelligence that surprising." Ok, I'll quote the official Pillars wiki at several points: "chanters can grant their allies a sizable stack of minor bonus over large area" "A chain of low power, long range area of effect passive buffs and debuffs..." "Chants can include repeated phrases and affect a large area" Well I don't know about you, but to me "large area" and "long range" certainly does NOT imply that I have to seriously think of which part of my party I want to buff, or if I want to even consider being in range to debuff enemies when picking phrases and editing chants. And apart from that, I get the idea of colossal, low-level buff AoE mainly from D&D bards, where else? In Baldur's Gate I+II, Neverwinter Nights I+II, Icewind Dale I+II etc. all bard songs (which were low-power buffs as well, counting that the bards could *not* do anything else while singing) had tremendous range. Since chanters are in many respects Pillar's take on bards (the name alone should be a clue), I fully expected it to be the case here. Also: yes, 16 INT is recommended by the game but even with that, chant circles are ridiculously small, to the mentioned effect that when I play a ranged weapon chanter, their chants will never reach any melee party members or enemies for that matter, essentially rendering any melee-focused buffs and enemy debuffs useless - buffs that are very minor to begin with. This leaves the chanter with Invocations only for any serious magic to speak of - and they can cast those only every three turns at most. So right now, Chanters appear to be severely underpowered to me. Any other class in their spot can do more damage, more healing, more enemy control han they can hope to.