Rheios

See, I was actually, if not agreeing, thinking you were making a good argument until this point. While its probably fine to go get a more varied perspective, just for flexibility's sake, I'd hardly say that those people are any more arbiters of what constitutes 'good' or 'progress' than those of us who like Vancian are. And I'd hardly call us a niche as if its a small view - there's a reason Pathfinder's continuation of 3.X and older D&D tropes, including Vancian, made it so popular. (And the pseudo-vancian 5e has doesn't seem to be damaging either) The biggest departure even there was to allow more cantrips for casters who didn't want to use a weapon, and POE has wands, tome slam, and arcane blasts to simulate that concept. How people see the combat is pretty meaninglessly subject, just as the contrary view is, its just subjective. That all being said, I can eat mechanics to an extent - if the lore can continue to support it - but change to lore and retconns really butters my bagel on the wrong side, thankfully that's not what we're discussing here. As it stands Vancian's enjoyment as a tactical element could be predicated, at least somewhat, on something we haven't discussed yet - who uses the scripts for the NPCs? Because I don't. I micromanage everything with space pause and have since BG. I like the control and micromanagement and as such the greater levels of both choice and utility I found the Vancian spells gave me were preferable - including when and who to auto attack. For those that use the companion scripts for everything but spells they may find themselves watching more of the battle and so its more boring for them in the first game.

I tend to disagree, primarily because there's usually no need to 5 minute workday it. I had more fun balancing my fighters hp vs the amount of spells used. If I can get them to run out at the same time, before a rest, its kindof great. No lost resources vs successes gained. Sure you *can* abuse the resting in those games but people used to do that in 3.5 too and the solution was simple - don't. Your character's wouldn't take a nap every other hour. You wouldn't. Why play the game like you would? It is an rpg after all. And if you think it makes the game boring? Why would you keep doing it? And I actually like the wizard/priest having to use their instruments. As it stands in POE2 there's almost never reason to not be casting spells and it makes it feel like you're wasting resources if you spend any time using the cool unique weapons, like the dagger you can get for your priest, or the Whale of a Wand. The old way gave you a reason to do both and it was up to you to maintain the balance. Not to mention the cool POE1 instruments like the (rod I believe) that would charm enemies. To clarify I do use those items anyway and just forgo the spells often enough but you can tell the difference in the effect you're having and its a bit disappointing sometimes.

I'm actually a little proud that my analogy about the damn and the inconsistently overflowing river was so close.

Well its origins come from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_Earth because Gygax, one of the major contributors to the creation of D&D, was a huge Jack Vance fan. I myself prefer an outlook more similar to The Chronicles of Amber - in which a caster must "hang" constructed spells, from an internal map of a greater structure - the Pattern or Logrus in those books, around one's self with specific trigger words+motions combined to fire this pre-packaged ability that then must be rehung/reconstructed to cast again. In that concept the hanging is time consuming and precise and takes a chunk of rest + prep time the next morning. The levels of magic and the amount of spells you can memorize are a product of your skill in hanging and your mastery of the complex construction so that you can produce more, of a better level, more easily. So far as 'mana' system being less ridiculous - that's entirely based on the setting and context. Dungeons and Dragons has magic being a very formulaic and extensive thing, sometimes defined like in Forgotten Realms or sometimes not, that may constrain even deities. Its like learning the physics of this world and how to circumvent/use it. In something so structured I'm not sure Mana would necessarily be appropriate beyond maybe having a class that brute forces such rules. That all being said, the reason Psionics has gotten away with it in the past is because its a system separate from that magic one wherein an individual has learned to control the physics of the world in a manner separate form that Magical background system. Which can *seriously* not fit if its poorly explained or implemented (I'd say only Dark Sun's setting has done it well) and I think a Mana system in D&D would feel similarly to that. My understanding as to why spells are limited for each class: Wizards: Require a lot of time, study, and effort to memorize these arcane reality rewriting symbols, or construct these magical reality-altering constructions depending on your point of view, and the time it takes and skill at doing so improves with time but free-form reality altering is never really in their grasp so much as they eventually can hang as many spells as can be useful. Sorcerers/Bards: They literally use their presence and sheer force of self to alter reality. Sorcerers do it through the focus of their blood and bards perform it through the power of expressed belief - something like 'If I can convince myself its real, I can convince reality it is too' and for some reason that works for them. Problem is, its probably tiring and since magic apparently works in a formulaic way forcing it will probably only get you a bit farther than the Wizard and usually they can't produce as many effects without study. Clerics/Druids: Are gifted their magic through faith and only gain so many gifts when requested during their morning meditations/communions. Asking for more at a different time and the DM may give it to you but at the same time may not, I've done it either way before. Usually at a cost when it works. Warlocks: Something relatively new, these are likely closer to what you'd think of and while they have less power up front they can get it back with only a bit of rest and focus. Their powers are given due to a 'deal with the devil' (in 5e D&D it doesn't have to be a devil specifically) style situation, giving them an endlessly replenishing arsenal of magic to pull form, but only a few pieces at a time since its still constrained by the D&D setting's assumptions about magic

I really liked the old resting system with resources. Upping the rest limit while on ship (maybe having to choose what resting supplies you take with you as part of an exploration pack - that also holds your loot) , adding a fatigue mechanic for your crew, requiring them to use the drink/food resources during rest on the ship and having events occur when you're anchored and on nightwatch would have been fun. So far as Wizards being cautious with their spells - you absolutely could cast spells in a lot of POE encounters. It was actually part of the fun to manage the resources well so that your fighter's health and your caster's magic were running out about the same time. And then personally I always pressed my luck a little more even but I tended to play with maim on (instead of immediate death) because I like to go until a few people have dropped once or fatigue sets in. Add in night fights and there'd be a certain tension in resting then. So I'm not sure what all the talk about POE wizards not acting like wizards is about. Maybe don't burn all the spells you spent your rest time weaving around yourself in the first 3 hours of the day - a wizard aware of how they cast in world would know that. (Its actually why I dislike lore-mechanic disassociation because it raises this concept of 'how would a wizard act? How much is the mechanic like the reality?' and then if that mechanic changes - 'what changed in the lore to cause this change if they are connected?'. Then you get **** like the 4e Spellplague) As an aside I wish there were more of POE2's environment fights, like the mugging encounters in Nekataka, but occurring in more places. There's 1 on each of the area's big islands - at least - but it'd be nice to have more at sea.

I have to say Kana, but not because he's a bad character, just a little loud and naive for my tastes, and his focus on the paths is pretty isolated and over quickly. Beyond those I didn't feel like he meshed/was attached with the events going on around him as much. I'm keeping him till the end since I need that faster ranged attack, though. So he may surprise me.

I wiggled between Berath and Hylea. I like Berath's consistency, stoicism, and coldly pragmatic view on things and thought those values he brought to the view on how to deal with the souls were well argued. But I also appreciated Hylea's love of art and life and hope for the future by giving the children back their souls so that they had the chance to grow and improve. I've grown to appreciate Abydon and Galawain as well, seeing as how they also seek to empower humanity, but something about Berath just runs in line with my own views and in my main watcher. I ended up going Berath for the first run, Hylea for the second, and for this third one I'm going Abydon/Galawain. I actually was okay with most of the gods, it was really only Woedica, Eothas, Skaen, and Rymrgand that I saw any problems with. And I could have backed Woedica's concept of Law and Vengeance if she wasn't stealing kids' souls to fund her power. That *has* to be worth of Vengeance under any sane Law, so I can only deduce her a bit of a failure at her position and deserving of the punishment inflicted by the other deities. Eothas I kindof liked at first but his approach seemed very counter to his sphere as well. Skaen and Rymrgand are just a concept/spheres I disagree with in general, more than anyone I believed was doing a bad job at representing their spheres. I disliked Ondra's personality but couldn't discount her dedication to her purpose either.

Hopefully this isn't too much of a thread necro but I think the Heritage Hill machine was a prototype machine for the mechanism that was later used in Sun in Shadow to create the eternal soul prison. As far as the why to it being activated at heritage hill? I believe it was just to cause views to turn further against animancy and maybe sneak in and harvest some remaining souls later for the Sun in Shadow machine.

In fairness, they may not be the same people, playing the same way, or at the same difficulty. I can't comment on balance toward difficulty, as I didn't play optimally first game but entirely for the story, but my natural hoarding nature means I don't like the change myself. I'd prefer them just take a longer time to recharge - like multiple rests, or you could only have 1 figurine out at a time or something.

Its worth noting that Thaos in POE mentions that without the gods the wheel would grind souls to dust - so it would appear that while Rymyrgand is in charge of that entropy process now, he's not really the originator of it. And from the way that POE's Endless Paths talked about the Nua child statue, and Old Nua's goal to forcibly pull his son back from the beyond, it seems to me like the former process of reincarnation was spotty, inconsistent, or troublesome even for the Engwithans, like a river that periodically backs up between 'soul floods' or something, and the Engwithans sortof damned it up and kept things at an even and consistent circular flow. Just feeding off the resulting Entropy to empower their stewardship over creation. But I tend to have a fairly positive view over the concept of the Gods, even if I find that, in practice, some of them bicker or panic a bit to fast. Thankfully Berath's there to keep things tempered.

in PoE 2 before patch 1.2.0.0017 they had illimited charges and one use per rest now they have only (x) charges, exausted them you can trash the figurine. I was a bit confused when I saw this topic, as I'd not noticed that in the patch notes, but it was my negative prediction. I'm not wild about the nerf, since I rarely ever used or abused them anyway - it was just good to know they were there without a huge background cost. Because unless you spam them I never found them particularly fight swinging so much as convenient. But then, I was surprised when Berath's Bells were 'scrolls' and didn't recharge or weren't a once per day thing, and I ended up never using them. That patch would just turn figurines into the bell v2.0 for me, personally. Something I save and never use unless a character is about to go down, and for the figurines not even then as I'd probably be better off dropping that stronger potion and getting back to it, rather than summon the weak creatures (weak by the time I'd probably be needing the summon anyway). If anything making them consumable means that when you use them they probably need to have an even bigger impact to justify the inherent cost of losing them - a potion of the proper level for the character can completely undo most of an opponent's resource usage in a fight. As they stand now I always just used them as fire and forget flanking mitigation when I was *really* outnumbered so that it was less likely Eder would get charged past by 3 or 4 xaurip champions, or something, because he'd maxed out his like 5 or so engaged foes.

I believe the apotheosis didn't kill all the Engiwthans who worked on it, but thousands of volunteers in Sun and Shadow. I imagine there was a similar sacrifice to activate whatever machine Eothas eventually destroyed that was controlling the wheel. Iovora and Thaos were both Engwithans and their arguments over the Gods was a result of Thaos proselytizing and Iovora finding out the truth and, when spreading it, being condemned and killed. I think, once the religion had caught on and everyone believed in the Engwithan gods, the remaining Engwithans probably killed and/or sacrificed themselves further. So I think the first activation in Sun and Shadow, and at Ukaizo probably weren't immediately catastrophic. So far as gaining Ugati's favor before meeting the Engwithans, that doesn't mean Ondra didn't exist already. It wouldn't shock me if the newly created god found some worshippers and softened them up for alliance, and eventual sacrifice, by the Engwithans. Although how long this all took and the timelines seem fuzzy and inaccurate to me.

Seems the new "random stuff" option is winning now. I hope the random is fun and effective (hoping for a teleport through Rymrgand's domain on enemies on occasion) and not potentially party damaging or completely useless.

I almost wonder if it could be fixed with something like 'On ability activation, Barbarian gets Strange Meat added to belt for each nearby corpse within a small area. Using the Strange Meat consumable gives +2 Rage resource and 50 Health and attempts to apply Shaken+Sicken debuffs on allies and enemies in the area whenever consumed.' The drawback is something like the Nalzpaca but in reverse - Can't receive healing (or maybe only like 20% of healing) until you have gathered/consumed Strange meat) Granted that is a ton of work for a rewrite probably and I'm not entirely certain its better save it fixes the gibbing thing (maybe. I'm not sure if they have a 'mark death' token that's just untargatble at first - since you still loot them after) and the drawback I think. Although maybe something like a Distracted debuff might work better until meat is gathered or eaten.

I'm looking forward to it, if only because Rymyrgand was my initially one of my most hated gods and getting a different view on him could be fun. In the same way Deadfire made me hate, hate, hate Eothass.

I mean, that's not really evil so much as completely unchallenging. Kindof coo-coo for coco puffs as is.

I had mentally switched those numbers, thinking there were only 3 skeletons and that the Engwithans had some sort of giants living among them, like old gods in the same way Nemnok was a "god" or something, but rereading it - that's pretty interesting. 3 Gods that I know of being killed/harmed/punished in some form were Eothas, Abydon, and Woedica respectively, so its probably their skeletons missing. Maybe spiritual harm that befalls them still impacts their remains to some extent? I doubt the converse is true.

I think you can actually ask about that but if you notice (you might need perception, I don't recall), the guy who's doing the "prosecuting"? He's a giant self-important stick-swinging douche, even if he is trying to do his job competently, he's all bravado. He takes it as a point of pride and position to punish whoever committed the crime (somewhat rightfully if unequally), so when you ask about it he turns you down. Or at least speaks in such a way that he gave me the impression it wasn't about the fruit, but was instead about making a statement with the punishment. Something he apparently feels he needs a body floating in the harbor for. Plus the whole 'pacifying the gods' angle he mentions.

I didn't vote because I'm going to end up picking them all on different characters, but on my first character - who was a Death Godlike Priest of Berath - I ended up going Huana. They seemed like they had the greatest respect for the dieties - something my character happily extended to Berath and was willing to extend to other deities when they had their heads out of their own ass - and were a native culture on the verge of their first step into the next phase of a society. They had declined and now had the ability to rise but had to change in response to surrounding pressures. So whenever I could I pointed out their hypocrisy and how their current system made them weak and got them to do the right thing and help the Gullet themselves. He was pretty neutral to all the other factions and ended up on good terms with everybody even after the espionage, except for the Princip which he decimated as he felt they had stagnated regardless of leader. Although he seriously didn't like the VTC mining the glowing Adra. They were part of the soul wheel, he knew it, and he hated to think of soul energy used that way. He repaired the Poko adra because of that but never turned in the quest. Sadly I have no idea how things turned out because that character fought Eothas because he'd been tasked with stopping him and there's no 'please listen to reason and keep a working system working, you giant ****ing manchild' option. EDIT: I guess he wasn't "tasked" with stopping Eothas. He certainly still wanted to though. And frankly the 'talk to him' pep-talks misled a bit...

If they made a half-decent Dark Sun crpg (or another good Planescape one) I'd be pretty thrilled. They won't but that doesn't change the dream. 5e could work okay fine with its base mechanics in a game. The only thing I could think would be weird is Short Rests stuff with regard to Hit Die and classes. And a just a different button to trigger a short rest with a window similar to Deadfire's food selection on rest, but for HD selection and listing what each class is getting back or something, would probably be enough. @gkathellar: I credit you for your abilities to dodge the lingering embers of edition war there at the beginning of the thread.

I believe its a spell/ritual that does something like the Clone spell in D&D since there's a direct mention of you defeating the drakes and Llengrath together during the convo. So I think what happens is when one Llengrath dies the knowledge and memory are blackbox, shipped to the next in line, and then unpacked so that they gain all the former's knowledge, spells, and experiences. I'm assuming they do lose stuff over time, like a Snowball rolling down shill will pick up snow and rock but also shed them at times too. To what extent though its not really detailed.

Huh. I never even knew you could keep the baby. I might do that on my current character. He's sortof a gruff dwarven cowboy-esk character. My orlan's gonna be evil and probably kill her, ironically. Probably going to be a cypher/chanter spear-weilding orlan who is going to be cruel. So cruel he's probably going to sacrifice a character. I'm thinking Sagani. She has a family who will miss her. Probably right after I try and get her to abandon her quest too. So that everything's for nothing.

What you describe here wouldn't really look or play well with the existing isometric gamestyle POE1 tried to emulate and POE2 built off of, it could be fun but I think it'd really work better delivered in the text interactions like the Keep defense war in POE 1 or the Ship battles in POE2 - if the ship battles had hazards and some more variables (might have actually been interesting then). Describe a scenario and letting you choose the action works better in text than trying to provide the tools to emulate it as opposed to straight combat and your system would leave those circumstances out most times because they lack a lot of choice beyond the obvious. I can't even say I'd hate that approach in a different or unrelated game - I actually really liked the war for the castle's precursor decisions and would have liked the Boat choices to have that much impact on the resulting boarding battles. I'd probably also have decisions between encounters carry over in some fashion, even if it wasn't always damage. High risks that damage you should come with penalties later on. That being said your flat wrong about there not being some amount of strategy to resting based resource mechanics. There's a very obvious interplay between the drive to complete the ruin or area, avoiding potential rest dangers (which there should be occurrences of and I think can be interesting to occur when out of doors and could be mitigated with high survival characters), rationing damage vs spells (I know I do my job right when my spellcasters run out of spells about the same time my fighters were running out of health in POE1), and not wanting to trek back to town - risking become dangerously fatigued on the journey that you could be surprised on - empty-handed just because someone blew their resources. What you're describing is the 5 minute workday from D&D and its never a problem in a group/with a player that actually cares about their characters' view or the dangers of the world around them. Its almost always a problem, not because of lack of encounter complexity although that is always a good thing, with the DM not making the world punish slow completions, risky sleeping events, and the simple fact that players who just woke up aren't going to be tired enough to benefit from 8 hours of rest again right after the last one. Not to mention in a game like POE its just self imposed boring. Sure you can do it, but that's entirely on you at that point, as its pretty obviously not the intention.

I was pretty disappointed on the first play through, but only because I was playing a Death Godlike, Priest of Berath, who was given a sworn duty to confront and stop Eothas. I resented when he just *absolves* me of my responsibility, something my character wanted, that he had no right to absolve me of. I restarted and just argued against him and he nuked me and I just ended it there. I was given a mission and clung to it but nothing I could do could effect anything other than maybe assuage his divine little ego. I wasn't sent to jackoff a god I didn't worship, I was sent there to achieve a goal. Apparently there's an ending that would have empowered someone, I might go back and try that one out, but it didn't seem like this single minded character. I think I'll probably like the next playthrough a bit more, knowing what's coming, but as it stands the ability to even just tell him "I really want you to stop. I know you won't listen but everyone's telling me to give you an opinion - I *want* the wheel. Even Thaos comments that souls ground down unendingly anyway, so why should the resulting chaff not empower beings whose purpose is to look after the world. Maybe they need a swift ass kicking but leave things as they are and empower the most impartial one or whatever". I'd have taken a hollow plea after my character's original goal and outlook than the options with the wording I saw.