Amentep

There used to be a DM on the old BIS boards who ran a Planescape campaign. I'm not in or running any games, but I'm still working on getting a complete set of some of the 2nd edition books (still not quite finished with Ravenloft, Planescape or Al Qadim).

I always liked the fight in IWD where you can't get an ale because of giant spiders in the basement (as opposed to rats). Low level party walking into an early fight only to be hit by web and poison? Ouch! But still fun.

I'm okay with it; wouldn't say happy or sad or anything. It seems to fit the setting so: cool.

I'm more than just a bit sad that one of the few combat elements that required actual skill (aiming/estimating) is being removed :/ Please make this radius indicator optional? I wonder if radius spells will be altered due to walls and stuff (IIRC, wasn't fireball supposed to funnel a bit in D&D if fired in a confined space). Would be nice if true (and really tricky to gauge without something showing the radius - a way to toggle off would be an increase in challenge)

Yeah, the hardest part now, I guess, is the waiting.

I am not a proponent for food requirements just simply because my experience with it in the past has been fairly negative. To me, if food often ends up being just a way to force you to pay money for a resource that has a high rate of consumption. I'd rather, in that case, have to just pay some money and assume that my character knows how to feed themselves. I'm not convinced about the need for the simulationist approach either; as people often point out there's plenty of other things that happen in real life that aren't simmed (using the restroom being the common example) and some are met with outright hostility (romances). In the end I don't find it integral to the experience and often it just becomes a pointless time sink. That said, if PE was to have food in the normal game, I'd just deal with it and hope they avoid the things that I haven't liked with food systems.

That understanding could only come from reading the entire thread and J. E. Sawyer's comments regarding how experience is accomulated -- quest/goal only. No experience for killing foes. Do you understand now? Even if XP is only generated from Quests/Objectives, it still doesn't follow that they couldn't trigger objectives (so you earn XP) when you stumbled across something from wandering around the wilderness. Only you'd be earning XP for that objective not for whatever you killed in resolving that objective.

You missed the point, naturally. Combat skills/attributes/abilities are (also) tied to level up. Don't people hone their combat skills by.. you know, engaging in combat and defeating opponents? What I'm taking away from what they are saying is this - Complete a quest by stabbing things = XP Complete a quest by sneaking past things = XP Stabbing or sneaking as actions do not, inherently, give XP. So no 3xp for stabbing a Gibberling and no skill ups for sneaking around your empty player house with no one around. Enough XP = level up = raising level = improving skills. There may be a logical disconnect to someone earning XP by sneaking suddenly puts it into combat, but if you're wanting to play a sneaky type why would you do that. I may be wrong, but that's what I'm getting from what they're saying.

I think it took me at least 26 minutes to get our of Irenicus' dungeon most of the time...

What is the spirit that it's violating? Not meaning this accusatorially, but I don't see the stamina or healing things as issues. Because to me the spirit of the IE games has nothing to do with setting, lore or game mechanics (particularly since they didn't all share the same setting, lore or game mechanics). My thought is that they'd do this by triggering some sort of goal if you explore and find something interesting; like if you wandered and found the sculptor in BG1 who was part of the stolen jewels quest and triggered that quest that way. Or stumbled upon some bandits waylaying a caravan and you could help either side, sneak past it or defeat the bandits and take the caravans stuff. But I might be wrong - just how I took it on first brush.

As long as there are custom portraits, I'm not sure it matters what kind of style they go for. I like Sweet myself, but understand how others might not like his style. Personally I usually ended up importing most of the portraits I used for the IE games, either using famous painters like J. W. Waterhouse or other game art as sources.

You mean that gibberish was an actual developed language? News to me. Yes it was. It also just goes to show a developed language used in a handful of case specific situations will often be indistinguishable by the untrained ear from having "Star Wars"-like dialogue featuring random grunts and clicks and whirrs.

It does seem that bartering should be more useful in terms of intelligence gathering (but IMO it should have a downside - the more you barter your way in and out of situations the more likely you're going to attract attention for people wanting your gold).

Certainly by small country you were talking of Liechtenstein, and not the seventh economy in the world? It was a joke for effect; sometimes I've ended up with so much money in RPGs I can't imagine there's any gold left in the world for anyone else to have a nugget, much less a gold coin for themselves!

The Party Has Killed Ago Nee, the Tax Collector The Party has gained 30000000 XP Reputation + 10

One of the reasons why everyone feels they have to carry every looted armor is because money tends to be scarce early on then by the end you've got enough money to buy a small country. Like Brazil. So honestly there's a couple of problems going on when this happens and not all of it is related directly to the inventory system itself (playing inventory Tetris is often just a symptom of trying to maximize the amount of money you can get so you buy that Silver Sword that allows you to beat the werewolves that you know about but can't beat because you need Silver weapons). So really the best inventory has to look at a number of different problems in the game and find a way to solve it that makes sense and doesn't annoy the player.

I couldn't shake the image of this Except with large, furry ears...

I always liked the loading screen tip that suggested the player take a break and get something to eat because they didn't want the player to die.

Megatherium!!!

I'd be up for a large race (avoiding ogre/giant stereotypes) myself. We usually see games go smaller rather than larger.

I'd love being able to get rumors on how to kill monsters that are wrong. "Yeah, my gramps tol' me when I wuz knee-high to an orlens that you could kill one of those darn insectoid critters with a pick-axe to the head..." [later] "Damnit man, I'm pickaxing this insectoid's head like a hen pecking for seed on a sunny day and IT DOES NOTHING!!!!"

Also lack of printing press makes cards difficult, at least in a collectable sense (as anyone who had cards would have presumably made the deck themselves). Dice games don't seem all that collectable. Marbles?

I'm not against typical gambling parlors, particularly if there's more utility to them than a place to lose money. I've never been crazy about the "walk up to random people and play minigames in the middle of the street" approach.

When I was a kid I pestered my older brothers to allow me to create a dungeon. It had an elephant in it. They didn't appreciate my level design. But it was only a game (and I spent a full day working on it! That was like months in kid-time! ) I said. They left the room. Sometimes it is nice to get some realism (but to be fair to my youthful self, I had thought the Monster Manual listed underground as a possible dwelling place for Elephants. Yes I knew elephants lived above ground in the real world even at that tender age, but how was I supposed to know D&D elephants weren't subterranean?) Given the limited budget and time, is a full language something I think is essential for the realism...I don't think so. But if it was something they could do easily and within the budget, its not something I'd be against.

Titan Quest's paperdoll, IIRC, was actually the figure you saw on screen too. A bit like how some of the IE games did it (IWD) but with greater detail on the character.