Amentep

I like friendly fire, for the most part. Sometimes its implementation doesn't always work for me, but frankly if there is going to be area effect spells or chance of moving through line of fire, it makes sense to have to worry about that.

Make it turn based in combat and all characters follow the leader out of combat would be the only way I can think to handle BG on a console. I may lack imagination in this area though.

Maybe "taunt" is code for "throws small rocks at to annoy"?

Its a fun concept...for Dragon's Dogma. Where the lore of reality was that there were many alternate universes and your personal Pawn could traverse them while you rested because traveling worlds was what Pawns did. I don't think I've seen anything in PE that makes me think an equivalent system would work. Also since they're really focusing on SP play, I can't help but think anything that would require work to implement for connecting characters would be a drain on their resources.

My first character in D&D had a natural psionic talent. I think it was Psionic Blast. Lot of fun. There after I always enjoyed Psionics even if often it came down to Psionics = magic, but a little different.

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.