Answermancer

Yes, I don't think we really disagree much . At this point I'm mostly defending the new direction that Josh has announced for weapon styles, since I felt strongly that they should be generally available but there is already pushback (even though it's not even in the build yet). I'm not sure if making them part of the proficiency system is the right solution, I would have preferred them to use the existing pool of points personally, but I'm glad that they will be available in some form. I focus heavily on weapon style specifically (not even weapon focus, necessarily) because I think that from a flavor perspective, they're the most problematic thing to take away from melee (or ranged) damage dealers. Someone who fights with weapons as their "job", by definition should be better at it than someone who doesn't, and I think it makes perfect sense for them to have a preferred style and be able to specialize in it (or take no style, save a point, and be more of a generalist). A rogue that is specialized in two-weapon fighting, feels quite different from one specialized in bows, or 2-handers, even if all their other abilities are more or less the same. And again, this doesn't feel to me like taking something from fighters, based on the precedent of many years of games, it feels like giving it to fighters is actually taking it away from everyone else. Weapon focus I am more ambivalent about. I think being able to focus on a specific set of weapons (like Peasant) has a similarly useful differentiating effect, but I think the variety of weapon styles is slightly more inherent (again, you're someone who fights with some combination of weapons no matter what) and interesting (+attack speed from dual wield vs. +damage from 2 hander) than the difference between (+acc with swords vs. +acc with rapiers) or whatever. Basically, if my choice is to give everyone weapon style or weapon focus, I'd prefer weapon styles.

I understand your point of view, sorry if I came off combative or like I was misinterpreting your viewpoint specifically. That's not really it. I'm just a little sick of explaining why I feel that the weapon styles are important to me, because some people ignore what I'm saying and just respond with "so multi-class, you don't wanna be a pure rogue anyway, you wanna be a Fighter/Rogue" which is totally glossing over my concerns with, essentially, a strawman. I mostly agree with what you're saying but here's the one thing I disagree on: I disagree that weapon styles are their thing, have ever been their thing, or should have ever been made their thing.​ ​Until this game, it was never a Fighter thing. Not in Pillars 1, not in D&D, not in basically anything related. In my opinion it's completely arbitrary that it's suddenly "their thing" in this Backer Beta. I understand that an argument based on "but that's not how it used to be" is not particularly strong (if you disagree with me), but I don't think it's any weaker than the tautological argument that "it's their thing right now, therefore it should remain their thing." I think the value of being able to "specialize" my melee character into their single preferred fighting style, so that they feel like they've fought with that style all their career, and are differentiated from another character of the same class, or an untrained character of another class, outweighs the value of it suddenly and arbitrarily being a "Fighter thing". And I also think that making weapon styles a Fighter thing is rather lazy, and they could do much more interesting stuff, here's some things I came up with pretty quickly in the other thread which seems to be dead now: I'm not saying any of those ideas are great or balanced, or anything like that, but at least some of them are interesting and reflect a class fantasy that isn't just "fights with 2-handers a lot," or whatever.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. "Way to simplify it, now I just have to memorize which buffs give grazing, which classes get it from talents (and whether I took them), etc." So clarity. Much intuitive, wow.

Exactly, rogues are agile, tricky Strikers. I want to focus on this for one second in the whole context of this thread. I'm pretty sure Obsidian labeled the classes by role leading up to Pillars 1 as well, but it's not in the character creator there and I can't find it online right now. But roles are listed in the Backer Beta, and rogues and rangers and the only classes listed as pure Strikers. Monks are Striker/Defender, but nobody else even has Striker as primary, although IMO Barbarians probably should, or at least as secondary. I bring this up because it should inform us (and even moreso, new players) how Obsidian views the classes, how good they should be at different aspects of combat (in combination with the descriptions that Indira listed), and generally answer questions like: ​"Should a Fighter be a better damage-dealer (Striker) than a Rogue, when it's primary role is Defender and secondary is Striker, and when it can choose to be a great Defender while a Rogue really can't?" ​My answer is, of course not, although I'm fine with them being equally good, albeit with a different playstyle (much more defensive and reliable, much less mobile and bursty).

Exactly! Give Fighters a stronger identity (my take in the other thread was themes of: discipline, great morale, teamwork/formation, flexibility, defense/toughness), instead of taking away specialization from all other melee "fighters". I strongly disagree with the idea that Fighters should be best at melee. That's some 2E crap, in my opinion, along with the idea that rogues are "theives" and should be bad at fighting and good at out of combat crap (which isn't even true in this game!). In-game, right now, Fighters are listed as Defenders, with a minor role of Striker. Meanwhile rogues, rangers, and monks are listed as primary Strikers. For rogues and rangers in particular, their entire kit of abilities is focused on doing damage, it's the only role they can fill effectively. They can only be effective Strikers, but they should be worse Strikers than a Fighter, who can choose to be a (fantastic) Defender also? How does that make any sense? Furthermore, you say that rogues get underhanded tricks so their damage should be lower. Well, Fighters get disciplined barrage, lots of bonuses to defenses, constant healing, and lots of other stuff. How come rogues should pay a price for their "tricks" but Fighters shouldn't pay a price for their perks? The other big thing is, I'm mostly concerned about fighting styles specifically, because they help give your character an identity. "I'm the rogue that's amazing at dual-wielding, it's all I do, I'm better at it than a random wizard, or fighter who hasn't specialized the same way, and I'm different from the rogue who spends all his time with a bow, or swashbuckling with a rapier, or a two-hander like a weirdo." I think that feeling of identity is important. Great thread!

"Paladins are martial zealots, devoted to a god, a ruler, or even a way of life. They can be found in any culture where a fanatical group of like-minded individuals have formed a warrior society dedicated to advancing their cause. Among those aligned to their worldview, paladins are viewed with respect and admiration, if a bit of fear. Many paladins hold leadership positions in armies and mercenary companies, but in the heat of battle their fanaticism often overrules the chain of command - and common sense." "Paladins are extremely devoted, often fanatical, soldiers who have pledged themselves to a chosen cause. They have founded many elite fighting forces." "The Darcozzi Paladin, the oldest known paladin order in the world, was founded as the guards of the Darcozzi Palace in Grand Vailia." Paladins shouldn't *need* to multiclass to have martial training. The whole character archetype of *PALADIN* is "knight". The word "paladin", in *real* life, means "The twelve foremost warriors of Charlemagne's court." Paladins, according to the lore, background, and history of Pillars of Eternity, are *trained, organized warriors*. There is no lore-friendly reason why you should have to train as a fighter to be good with weapons as a Paladin; *PALADINS ARE TRAINED WITH WEAPONS AS THEY ARE FRONTLINE SOLDIERS IN MOST ARMED CONFLICTS IN EORA*. I missed this thread because I was only watching the other one while I was busy over Thanksgiving, and I will finish reading it before commenting further, but I want to reiterate how much I agree with Katarack here, and how incredibly frustrating it is to have KDubya constantly dismiss our perspective about this with "just multi-class, look how fun it is for me to roleplay a multi-class." Good for you. I want my pure Rogue (an agile, tricksy Striker, not a thief or any other archetype) to be specialized in two-weapon fighting, and just as good at two-weapon fighting, as any Fighter. This is not a crazy request, it is completely logical that a character whose entire life has involved fighting with two weapons is just as good at it as a Fighter. I should not have to give up half my damn class just for this small bit of specialization. I don't care if the bonus is 5% or 20%, I care that my Rogue can be just like every other Rogue in every other similar damn game in existence in the last 20 years: a specialist in two-weapon fighting. And if that "dilutes" Fighters then all that means is that Fighters need more interesting abilities. I will say again, if you want a Fighter to feel like an "expert" give him one passive that gives him each of the weapon style bonuses whenever he is using that combination of weapons. Then the rest of us can specialize our non-Fighter characters and Fighters can stil be "experts" in weapon styles if that is really important to you.

Simple solution: have them be out of character explanations that are toggleable in the options and, of course, are removed if playing on Expert mode. I would have no problem with the current log "skull rating" warning disappearing in Expert mode.

Personally I disagree with this because I think it's frustrating when a game obfuscates stuff like this. I'm big on as much clarity as possible and don't really agree that having stuff in the UI is 4th wall breaking. It would be 4th wall breaking if characters said it to you, but UI? I disagree, otherwise it's 4th-wall breaking that my spell tooltips say they do 20-40 damage, or whatever. ​I think in this particular case it's also kind of risky if you don't want to confuse and annoy new players. I'm thinking of The White March and the number of threads by people saying "I went to Cragsholdt and got destroyed, wtf game is broken.", because it's not at all obvious that you're meant to be Level 14 (higher than the max level in the vanilla game) before you go there. Yeah there's a "non-4th-wall breaking" warning from the Steward that Concelhaut is way hard but a.) it doesn't necessarily imply that the mercs outside will be (and boy are they) and b.) that's not helpful if you're level 12 and think you should be able to handle something way hard (I mean, you've killed all sorts of dragons, potentially).

This is essentially what Josh said (on twitter) they will do in the next patch. At least for weapon styles, not sure what other generic talents they might be planning.

DT was definitely Josh's term for flat reduction in previous games. I can't remember if New Vegas had for DT (flat reduction) and DR (percent reduction), but I'm pretty sure Fallout 1 and 2 did, at least. I think they initially planned the same system for Pillars, but then settled on just flat reduction and renamed it from DT to DR just to make things a bit less confusing to new players. After seeing your table of "v4" and taking into account your previous explanation I can see the need for some kind of overpenetration bonus (although I don't think it's super intuitive, but then I don't think the system in general is super intuitive, compared to the Pillars 1 system).

Yeah, that makes sense. Good explanation.

while this observation is failing from a fair bit o' reductio ad absurdum, it is also not complete wrong. as we observed earlier, ignoring feel is as much a mistake as is simple abandoning rational and reasonable. ultimately, regardless o' whether a game system objective provides more options and flexibility, if the folks playing and purchasing feel more limited, then the additional options is wasted. am not denying the importance o' feel. we explicit stated the importance o' feel. nevertheless, our query remains: how should the developer judge competing feel arguments? In what way does the observation fail from reductio ad absurdum. Why make dismissive and wholly unqualified claims like this about about someone's statement. And it is a developers job precisely to use their experience and judgment to balance competing feel arguments (among other things). That's why they are paid for it. It has nothing to do with whims. Again, experience and judgment, and above all iteration.

I think I would agree with this too, if the target has no armor I don't see why PEN should do anything. If it doesn't then there isn't really much to discourage the player from going around naked with all his non tank characters. Well I think enemies should do enough damage that they don't need a 30% bonus to be a threat to naked characters... Seems more logical and easier to balance to me, but I dunno. I certainly don't want everyone to run around naked to cheese mechanics.

Btw, I take issue with this. I was one of the people pushing hard for generic Weapon Styles AND for Fighters to get something more interesting in "compensation." There is no conflict there, I don't think that Weapon Styles are in any way iconic or important to Fighters (nor have they ever been), and that currently Fighters need something unique and interesting. Using weapon styles to make Fighters "unique" is a cop-out (and doesn't make sense, IMO). Instead I posted a bunch of things that would actually be unique and interesting and create a better class identity. How is it not boring and bland to have the Fighter class identity be "they know how to fight with a weapon and sword, or wow or wait you guys... they know how to fight with a 2-hander, so exciting"?

Interesting. I am trying to figure out what would be the perfect PEN thresholds that would satisfy a set of conditions/expectations set by the forumers. And your statement regarding "if there is no armor, penetration can't do anything" - kinda heavily affects the viability of high pen weapons. I'd like to clarify: - you expect two similar attacks against naked character, but one with quite higher PEN, deal same damage? - (same thing rephrased) you are against dealing bonus damage with stuff like estocs and stilletos when your PEN is much higher than target's AR? I think I would agree with this too, if the target has no armor I don't see why PEN should do anything.

I disagree the reason casters were so much better was because they each had a combination of area cc, damage, and buff that out classed most of the martial classes abilities to do the same and could be cast at greater rates later in the game. It had near nothing to do with caster ability to be build like a warrior. Those abilities just allowed you to change the traditional role a caster is suppose to occupy enough to make for interesting builds. Let's say for argument that you're correct. It still means, by your very own words, that the caster classes were built to be able to do everything whereas the warrior classes were not. So my point still stands. I think a lot of us disagree because your point was "new people searched for powerful classes and the answer was casters because of flexibility to do what martial classes do," and that rings false to us. As in, yes the answer was casters, but not because of flexibility. A new player searching for powerful classes is looking for a class that is powerful out of the box (with easy to use, powerful spells), not looking to build mages who are good at melee (which is a niche thing that takes knowledge of the systems to pull off, not something a new player would have any interest in doing).

I still think you're also underestimating the difference the big AoE gap makes, but overall I'm with you. I agree it would be really cool (and above all more interesting!) if they each got a little bonus on top that did something unique.

I mentioned this previously but Blessing has a massive AoE, and Dire Blessing a tiny one. They also don't last that long. I took both in my first Beta playthrough and didn't regret it, I opened with Blessing on my entire party as they ran in (massive AoE, easy to hit everyone), then once everyone had settled I would use Dire Blessing (if the fight was long enough, ideally if Blessing was running low, etc.). Plus if you are using Dire Blessing every fight you are missing out on other spells of that level, what if Blessing would be "good enough" for a fight and you'd rather cast other higher level spells? Anyway, I think this part works okay, but I do agree it could be better.

Why give them more generic stuff when they could get actual unique things. That's what I mean about weapon styles, any weapon-using damage dealer clearly has lots of experience with their preferred weapon style, otherwise they wouldn't be any good at their job. So using that as something special to Fighters is weird. So give Fighters stuff that is specialized to their role and class fantasy, emphasize their discipline, good morale, technical skill with many different weapons, and tactical acumen. The things that make them good soldiers, mercenaries, etc. Ideas: I still think 1 passive that gives them all the weapon styles (or 2 for 1, Swords and Shield AND One Weapon, Two-hand AND Two-weapon) would better emphasize that they are experts with a lot of knowledge, able to switch styles as the situation demands, rather than the guy who's killed a ton of people with a 2-hander but doesn't know the first thing about a shield. When you wield a weapon 1-handed you get +6 accuracy or something right? Give them a talent where they get this bonus for 2-handers as well (because they've trained with many different weapons, bastard swords, etc.) Give them stuff to emphasize fighting together with an army, a bonus when near other characters perhaps ("Back to Back"), could be deflection and will (to show they have good morale and won't break, or just good old fashioned damage/Penetration from having someone watching their back and coordinating effectively). Maybe Will bonuses in general (again, good morale, won't break). Maybe something focused on reach weapons like pikes and polearms, again, the army/guard aspect (extra penetration with them, damage, better engagement attacks, lots of options here). Lots of unexplored possibilities with reach weapons, I think. They know about weapons and armor right? Give them a chance to break weapons or armor or parry enemy attacks in particularly effective ways (even if it's just a chance on hit to reduce their damage or accuracy for a while, or to reduce their armor). "Clean cuts", their attacks aren't sloppy and violent, they are disciplined, maybe this means they can go from a miss straight to hit, skipping graze entirely. (This is the kind of thing that it would make sense to multi-class for, now you're not just a sloppy barbarian, you're a Fighter/Barbarian, you don't flail wildly you have precision). Maybe they have exceptional armor and weapon maintenance. Give them a passive that gives +1 Pen AND +1 Armor, or something else that emphasizes that quality (their weapons are always tip-top shape). Passives focused on tactical skill and exploiting enemy opening/weaknesses, not coming up with anything here right now because I'm tired, but I bet I can if I keep thinking about it.

I had assumed that they would come up with some new passives for Fighters, if not, they should, they have time. They could put something more interesting there easily.

Makes perfect sense, thank you for the explanation. I can't actually find a way to "clear" the two dropdowns of behaviors though... is there a way?

is still beta, but am actual surprised obsidian pulled the trigger so fast. people cannot know what choices they have in deadfire. is not good design, but maybe the developers think it is good business. It's week one of beta and the game is not out for at least 6 months. Relax, if it sucks they can change it again, plenty of time. A huge part of game design (or any design) is iteration. If they just leave everything the same for the whole length of the beta then it's just a fake "Beta" like AAA studios do these days (which is just an early demo). And I think if it makes people feel more in control of their character's archetypes then it is good design.

I'm confused where you are getting the +3 disparity? ​I don't have the beta open now but I do happen to have Pillars 1 open with W+S style on Eder and Pallegina and it gives +6 to both there. Now if Obsidian give Fighters "greater weapon style" or something that makes it better then I guess that's one way to go, and at least Paladins would "feel" like they get some training. But I was more saying "fighters get all styles for 1 passive instead of 4, letting them truly be masters of all fighting styles". (Probably too powerful, but could be tweaked so they get 2 of them in one passive or something).

Okay I really don't understand why some people are insisting that these are "Fighter" talents. It doesn't boil down to people wanting Fighter talents because they were never fighter talents until someone arbitrarily decided they were! Do I need to scan in the feats from 3rd, 4th, and 5th edition D&D? Because I can. Why are you so hung up on these totally generic talents which represent someone's preferred fighting style, and ignoring actual Fighter defining abilities? Or advocating for Fighters to get much cooler passives and/or actives in their place? If you're so convinced that Fighters need to be masters of all fighting, why not give them 1 passive that gives the effect of all 4? Now that would make a Fighter a master of weapons, able to use any fighting style effectively due to their mastery. But a rogue training with 2 weapons is too much? Or a Paladin with a sword and shield? Or a barbarian with a two-hander? They just have to be rank amateurs? Please.

I made a new generic party member (Crusader: Shieldbearer/Unbroken) at the start of the game and started clearing the starting island. In several fights now, the new Crusader randomly switched targets and most annoyingly of all seems to constantly switch to attacking Mercenary Wizard or another party member. He is not in any way controlled or dominated. His circle remains green and I can tell him to attack and enemy again, but eventually he seems to switch back to attacking party members. Little dwarven ****! I have him set to Aggressive with both slots above set to Paladin (Cautious) and Fighter (Cautious), the setting for which is chosen doesn't seem to matter, I tried both List order and Random and both had the issue.