dyrhet

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/transphobia http://dot429.com/articles/2486-transphobic-officially-added-to-oxford-english-dictionary http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/transphobia

Bad history in the sense that they are not an especially good historian and make several wild leaps with sources, obviously the idea that there were people we would presently understand as "people of colour" existing in europe historically is not bad history.

Ah, rad.

Adding a question: 4) What is the current state of weapon focus talents? I'm given to understand that the wiki details are out of date. What category has the blunderbuss in it now, and what other weapons does it have?

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edit: nm

Simplest explanation for all this is that there are now 9 companions, but one was added relatively late in the dev cycle, after mentions of 8 companions had already been made.

There are plenty of games where having characters who are no good at combat can be neat and compelling but a game primarily concerned with combat (which includes PoE and almost all of the infinity engine games) ain't them.

Except that pretty often the drawbacks were fairly trivial for the best kits.

Bumping CHA wasn't even really the solution in the old infinity engine games anyway. The Baldur's Gate games had barely any stat-gated dialogue, and little of it was charisma dependent. Planescape had some CHA stuff sure, but WIS undoubtedly unlocked the most content, followed by INT. Maybe Icewind Dale 2 had some? I don't really remember, but it was a dungeon crawler, so I doubt it was that significant even if it were present. I'd suspect that might will get more use than you'd think. Probably a lot of Might oriented intimidation options. Plus, don't forget the scripted interactions! While conversations will probably, as you suggest, generally favour "mental" stats, the scripted interactions will probably favour physical ones.

There are no class restricted weapons of any kind.

God, same. It's a world with wizards and elves, gender equality is kind of a small ask by comparison. I recently ran a historical tabletop game set along the silk road in the medieval period, and I decided to have full gender equality up front. Because, yeah, misogyny existed then (as it exists now), and including it would be "historically accurate", but it'd do precious little to actually reinforce or enhance the themes of the game. Same for Pillars of Eternity, which is meant to be about stuff like colonialism, ethics in science, metaphysics, elves, etc, right?

Why not, if it's appropriately hard to get it, then hell yeah it should be awarded. It doesn't have to be class restricted, it can be an ordinary sword in the hands of non Paladins. Also the HA is kind of an iconic weapon of the Paladin. That's essentially the same thing as being class restricted, though.

Why would you say that? Because the design ethos of the game is strongly against that sort of thing? No class is going to get a ridiculous superweapon that basically exists to shore up the mechanical shortcomings of the class. I'm pretty sure Josh even said recently that NO weapons were going to be class restricted.

They're clearly not actually going to get them though, are they.

I think wanting characters to be well balanced in combat is entirely reasonable because frankly, that's where the game is. I'm hardly the sort of tabletop gamer who demands balance, my favourite games are things like Burning Wheel and Torchbearer where balance just plain does not exist, by design. But those games are consistently fun because combat is not the priority, and players are specifically encouraged to pursue their personal goals, and that's what the game is about. This game though, and the IE games in general, have stories that are more or less set in stone. They can be a little reactive and that's lovely, but they're inflexible due to the nature of the medium. And the games mostly, let's be honest, consist of combat. There's little bits of gameplay around the edges: choosing dialogue options, disarming traps, etc, but it's thin stuff. It's stuff that I like and want very much to be in the game, but it is only tenuously "play". Combat is where you actually pit your skill as a player against the computer and hope to win. In a tabletop game, your socially oriented character can participate in genuine social challenges that test them and carry some sort of consequences. In most video games, so little attention is paid to "gamifying" dialogue that the challenge is reduced to (rarely) picking the right option and having pre-emptively put enough points into a given conversation skill or stat. in a game where combat is the priority (and whatever you say, basically every RPG ever set to code is one of those) everyone should be just as good at fighting (though in different ways) because that's the way their contributions to gameplay actually matter.

I don't really get why people think that mages should be more powerful than warriors, or that magic should be more powerful in general. It's a really weird perspective considering that in traditional epic literature, a goodly amount of pulp and modern fantasy, wizards are typically not the heroes. They can often be side players or advisers, or they can be villains for the warrior hero to defeat. They tend to have weird powers that are, yes, exceptional, but don't make them good at everything. And then if you take the warriors in those stories, they often have some supernatural aspect to them. They're supernaturally physically gifted, or they possess some significant magical knack or whatever. This is not dissimilar from what PoE is trying here. Really the tradition of wizards being an overwhelming force is restricted mostly to D&D. It doesn't "make sense" for magic to be better than sticking someone with a sword, this is just how we've traditionally gamed. Doesn't make it a good idea.