Amentep

To me most of the "monk" suggestions really just seem like alternate priests. I think the only idea of a monk that fits the idea of the "Asian Monk" stereotype while being European (at least for me) is the suggestion to go back to European wrestling / unarmed fighting styles. Pankration has been mentioned it was a cross between pygmachia (fist fighting) and pale (wrestling) and I think this would be a reasonable approach. The problem is that you'd almost for certain have to include grappling in the game to do so. And I doubt that's going to happen. That said you can still have the idea of the person who through training is designed to avoid blows, get in close and strike but have a European based flavor. The "monk" in this case would most likely have been a trained sport fighter whose branched out into adventuring. One thing about the picture though - the monk appears to be clearly older than the other characters - is an age penalty to characters who are monks (to signify the additional years of training maybe?) possible? Or just an older NPC but not a sign of game design?

The more the merrier, I say, but at some point they have to make a cut off point. That said I can see some way to carve a unique niche for Bards (but then I'd make them something other than kinda rogue-mages like D&D seems to). I think Paladins have a harder time because there seems to be so much overlap with Fighters and priests and if the priests aren't going to be limited in fighting, its hard to find that niche role for them. That said if someone can find that distinctive flavor - why not?

I'm not really beholden to this, but... If damage around the back is to be more damagey (or realistically, more likely to hit?), then anyone who is attacking the back should get that bonus. If rogues have mobility, then they're more likely to be able to exploit it, but its not an ingrained rogue ability and if the fighter gets behind an opponent they can get the bonus as well. If a rogue is hiding in shadows (a mechanic I'm not 100% fond of), I could see the argument that their initial attack role coming out of shadows should treat the opponent as "flat footed" (ie chance to succeed is based only on armor and not ability to defend of the opponent). This would only be applicable to other classes if they can mimic the "hiding in shadows" (say invisibility spell cast on the fighter). I'd make taunts available to all classes, but maybe rogues are just "better" at taunting so have a greater chance of succes than other classes?

The game should be fun to play and balanced to play. elements of previous games which created unbalance should be seen as cautionary tales. That said I think its impossible for a game to be made that can't be exploited by the player in some way, so to my mind the focus for the game maker can't be in trying to solve the problem of how the user is going to abuse the system once it gets in their hands, but work on solid design that doesn't actively encourage players seeking ways to abuse the game design.

I dunno, for me I'd have no problem with the shield and spear combo.

Wild, probably wrong guess, she's seeking a blessing for her gun (holding it aloft and holding a religious icon maybe?)

Yeah you could dual-wield two handed weapons - I had a character dual-wielding halberds.

I see the dungeon as more fun (since its based, not on money but on backers) than anything else. I'm pretty sure the initial stuff that I saw on PE made it clear you would make one character (possibly it was forum/kickstarter posts) so the Adventurer's hall idea was floated here on the forums (as was Psionics). I'm also pretty sure somewhere in the early days we had an idea of the general number of races and classes (haven't paid much attention to the map, so don't know about areas).

yeah, I fixed it, but first I needed to assign blame.

I've heard after some people said it was a feature, it turned out to be a bug. But I got that second hand, don't know for sure. BSN is kinda hard for me to get onto without a relatively modern computer so I don't hang there like I did.

I've always like psionics in D&D; so I hope we hit the stretch goal to have Ciphers.

I'm a huge fan of PST (hey I dedicated a couple of years to moderating BIS forums just to help other PST fans) but if someone says to me "I'm making a game like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment" I can't really think that it'll be *exactly* like one of those games in how the story is structured - or even how the parties are built. It gives a ballpark for the idea, not the exact seat number. Can't say I ever expected this game to be PLANESCAPE: TORMENT 2: BUT WITHOUT THE TRADEMARKED ELEMENTS

It's true that crits can be cheesy sometimes, but I think they add a necessary variety and exciting unpredictability to standard melee. I wouldn't want to see them removed. I'm not beholden to the idea of crits, but that's what I always thought they were for - that lucky/unlucky things would happen in real battle, like a blade sliding of a chestpiece managing to get into a joint and causing injury. That said I'm not really into adding an additional penalty to it (and some things, like being disarmed, should be handled by a disarming technique, IMO if caused by an attacker and not a critical fumble on the defender's part)

I just screwed up my size settings on my browser because I began playing with the zoom feature while reading this thread. Now I can't remember what size I'd had it on and they all look slightly wrong. Thanks a lot!

My thinking the way to go - if they wanted to go console ever - would be to develop a game in the setting that is its own console game that plays to the strengths of that platform and not a remake, reworking or direct sequel to PE which is its own franchise. This seemed to happen more back in the day (Might and Magic IIRC having a couple of different play mechanics, or Sega's Shining series, or the Atlus' MegaTen series) than it does now though.

To my mind it was pretty clear in the pitch that PE was only being developed with the PC in mind. Ergo, I don't mind it being PC only. In the same sense, when a developer announces a really cool game for the PS3 I don't demand it on the X-Box 360 or the game is for a 3DS and I don't demand it also show up on a PC. Because sometimes it just makes sense to make the game the best it can be for the platform the creators want to work on. Not everything can be a dessert topping AND a floor wax, like New Shimmer.

Right; I agree I never ran out of ammos so for the most part my dedicated archer (usually a thief) usually fired arrows. In certain occasions I went in for close combat by choice but rarely and even with limited ammo the few times I did run out I didn't feel the character was useless (which is different from Mages w/o spells and their resource management). In fact the only problem I had was hording specialty arrows (and even then there were just some situations it was obvious to use them in). I'm for fletching and recovering arrows though!

Taking a wild stab based on the Sir Tech game credits, Brenda Braithwaite did playtesting on the English transation / version.

I've heard that before but posting there I never got it. Was it the fact we all tended to be in on the same jokes? Were people actively rude or uninviting?

With the caveat that I don't know how archery is going to be in PE... I'd argue that the value in archery characters is whether you want them to be less useful or more useful in a combat situation. There are scenarios in the IE games where the best strategy is to have all the characters attacking from a distance. To me the question with an archer was never "Awesome" with a bow & "Useless" with a short sword (or whatever) because the archer characters could still add value to a fight (unlike say a mage with a sling who tended to add very little to a fight). So the management aspect of limited arrows - to my mind - is about where / when you want that character to be at their most useful - which isn't that dissimilar to when / where does your mage unleash the high level spells. And even with limited ammo in the IE games I never felt the need to hoard ammo (unlike spells). yes the walk back to might be tedious but it was generally not something that was needed; I usually had more than enough ammo for the situations or had utility by switching weapons.

I don't think it HAS to be as good as any game. I want it to be good when I play it though.

I'd totally love for it to be Turn Based, but RTwP was expected by me based on the IE hooks. I thought Josh here yesterday said he didn't forsee much, if any, level scaling being used in PE. Has that changed since yesterday? I'd argue that "the game they originally promised is already subjectively different" would be more accurate. Their stated goals is to change things for the better but keep their functions the same with the changes - as I understand it from the lengthy thread Josh was on yesterday. To my mind until we see how this implementation works the changes appear to be radically altering the "old school IE"-ness (thus its subjective). Once we see how it works if it does work demonstratively differently it'd become an objective difference. But I understand where the apprehension comes from about the changes. And I appreciate when people can articulate the things they see as "pitfalls" to their view of what "Old school isometric RPG" should be; while I think designing a game via forum posts would be a bad idea, I don't think that negates the benefit of feedback. The sales pitch of an "Old School IE like game" is already going to be different things to different people so what it means to us has to be made clear. I'm pretty sure that they indicated that they had pitched other party based based fantasy RPGs and gotten no interest; that this idea they didn't bother with and went to crowdfunding. But I may be misremembering.

so when you run out of arrows in a game like icewind dale, do you really enjoy walking back to town to buy more? Does it actually add any value to the game? I mean, its a minor enough hassle that I really don't mind keeping up with arrows. I just don't get what is enjoyable about it. Seems like realism for the sake of realism to buy arrows for your elf. I voted limited but I really don't mind unlimited; but generally speaking I rarely ran out of arrows in IWD (partially because I usually had other players carry some for my archer characters). But even when I did I didn't feel that my archer had become useless switching to an alternate wepon (just not as useful).

Kangaxx kicked my rear a few times before I figured out a strategy against him. Since it was optional fight, I had no problem with it being as tough as it was; probably feel differently if it had been the middle fight of the main quest or something.

And that is my deterrent to playing sloppily. But there's an assumption built in there that the only way you could get into that situation is if you played sloppily. I've been in games where despite my planning bad rolls have led me to exhaust more spells that I had planned on in a fight. Now maybe this is just because I'm not hardcore enough, but in my experience it happens. At any rate does it really act as a deterrent? And what point is a deterrent built around something that could be part of random chance (unless we're talking about removing the possibility of spells being interrupted and lost and other measures to ensure that no random chance could deplete resources) move from being encouraging smart gameplay to just annoying the player? EDIT: And doesn't the fact that the player isn't experiencing success encourage smarter gameplay without a 6 minute walk?