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Here's the list of all current racials: Also here's the list with descriptions included. As you can see some are more useful than the other; be it because some are more useful due to encounters we have to face, or as in case of moon and fire godlikes: lack of scaling. I have assembled a few suggestions in this regard, grouped in 4 sections (from important to optional): Suggestion Group 1: Scaling Silver Tide:currently restores only 10 hp per proc, and doesn't scale. This makes it a really weak racial. in PoE1 it was restoring 10 + 3 * (CL - 1). average health pool in Deadfire is 40 + 10 * CL. thus proposing the following scalling: 6 + 2 * CL. This way it will heal for 8 at level 1, and for 46 at level 20 Battle Forged:currently deals only 2-4 burn damage per proc, and doesn't scale. in PoE1 it was dealing ~ 2 * CL. proposing the following scalling: 1..3 + CL. On average it will take ~11 hits for a 240 hp enemy to kill himself against Battle Forged. Suggestion Group 2: Double racials for godlikes During Q&A #7 Josh told that godlikes will have two racials. One on par with the rest of the races. And a second one that will be on the same power-level with headgear we'll be able to find: I do find this to be a nice idea and would like to see it implemented. Out of playable races, Moon and Nature godlikes are the ones who lack a second racial. Here's my suggestion for them: As for Avian and Marine, their current racials are already quite strong, so they could be just split in two. For consistency. Suggestion Group 3: Optional minor tweaks Some racials could get a few minor changes to make them either more appropriate or a bit more comfortable to capitalize on. For example I do find it strange that Fire Godlikes have lower +AR bonus vs burn than Pale Elves. Thus proposing: Elemental Endurance: +4 Burn AR, + 4 Freeze AR -> +2 Burn AR, +2 Shock AR, + 4 Freeze AR Ashen Skin: +2 Burn AR -> +3 Burn AR The next thing is human's racial. In PoE1 it had a duration. In Deadfire it is active indefinitely while you are below 50% hp. I understand that this one is a matter of taste, but I liked more the PoE1 version. Plus, if I want to make use of Barring Death's Door and akin effects, human choice kinda clashes with Death Godlike. So:Fighting Spirit (Before): +7 Accuracy and +15% Damage Done, while Bloodied or near Death Fighting Spirit (After): +7 Accuracy and +15% Damage Done for 10s upon reaching Bloodied. Can trigger twice per encounter. And lastly the Hearth Orlan's racial:Minor Threat (Before): +10% hit-to-crit while attacking same target as an ally Minor Threat (After): +5% hit-to-crit. While attacking same target as an ally get +5% more. Suggestion Group 4: Feat-alike, selectable racials that are partially decoupled from races .. in progress.. So these are the suggested changes to current racials so far. Thoughts?

So, didn't the devs mention the option to review your class' skill tree at any given moment (and not just at level up) being introduced at some point? Does anyone know what's going on with that?

So, I was hoping that I'd be able to make this thread after finishing the actual game, but the issues with my computer are worse than expected (i.e. there's always a worse scenario than the worst case scenario) and so I doubt I'll get to finish it in some time. Likewise I've only been able to skim the boards of late so if this is all already being discussed elsewhere and people feel it comes across as spam or the likes, feel free to merge it with that other thread. For the most part I hope I can add something worthwhile to the discussion regarding the two titular topics and present some possibilities that could potentially help improve the same. So, I'll go ahead and reiterate that I have not finished the game so I would appreciate spoiler tags being used when appropriate and so on, and also that my assessments below are based on what I have experienced so far of the game, which I would still say is over 100 hours or the same. With that out of the way, I'll start off with the more contentious subject based on what opinions I've read, which is the companion relationship/reputation system. Right off the bat I would say that in general I dislike relationship systems based on a reputation scale the likes we've seen in previous games like Neverwinter Nights 2 and Dragon Age: Origins, and to me this is no exception to the rule. I feel that the more transparent these systems are, the more they invite the player to play to their companions' ego and "game" their way to a max relationship, and the more unnatural and mechanical the relationships feel; Deadfire seems to exasperate this further by adding a very clear set of traits that each companion likes and dislikes, and making them respond with stock reactions to every instance where either the player or another companion acts in a way that they like (leading to many strange reactions the likes we've seen many times in other threads already). In turn I also know that if I am to respond to a certain interaction in a specific manner, the rest of the party will inevitably "like" or "dislike" that response because that's what they're very broadly and obviously programmed to do - which is odd because even if someone is "light-hearted" for example, that same person won't necessarily find every joke amusing or every situation ideal for the same. Personally I would have liked a more invisible system myself which kept track in the background of what each liked and disliked and where we'd see only the results of these opinions more so than the ticking of every instance where we say something or do something that increases a character's disposition towards us; but what's done is done and for what it's worth I think the idea of keeping track of companion-companion relationships is an interesting one which I'm glad is to some extent or other being worked on, as it would seem a good way in which to make the party feel a little more dynamic and reactive and all that jazz. But still, even if the system can't be torn down and reworked from the ground, there's a few things I reckon could improve it going further in Deadfire's development. For example, one thing I would love to see looked at is the effect that certain actions we take have on characters regardless of whether they match with their "traits" or not. For example, I am of the opinion that there's things that very likely have a deeper effect on a relationship than whether or not you are one way or abscribe to a certain philosophy. I feel that in cases like these for each character, having a reputation change unaffiliated to companion likes/dislikes would do a lot of good towards making the relationship system feel a lot more natural and less "gamey" or jumpy than it does currently. I feel the like/dislike system is fine but it should really be relegated to very minor shifts, with maybe some big swings at very determined situations when things do get very personal, in either a positive or negative sense (e.g. Serafen helping Xoti out with her nightmares, or Aloth not being able to stand Tekehu's vanity anymore). Likewise it wouldn't be an entirely bad idea to have certain "critical" situations affect a companion's disposition to the *whole* party and not just the Watcher (to use Pallegina's example above, she'd probably be appreciative towards all who helped out with her personal quest and not just the Watcher). Also something that I've noted is that at the beginning of the game, when we were first shown the relationship system via the tutorial, the tutorial section mentioned that companions could lead to forging deeper and more unique bonds and these same would be detailed through the "relationship" box right next to the reputation compass and so on… But has anyone actually seen this box get updated with new content between companions? Or even between companions and the Watcher themselves? I reckoned it was a bit early in my playthrough at first, but as the game moved on, and having reached the point I have most recently, it seems very odd that I should see no update to the same, not even to indicate the ongoing relationship between Maia and my Watcher for example. This would be worth looking into, I think, whether it is working as intended or not. Moving onto the crew now… I for one will say I really liked the crew system, a heck of a lot more than the hirelings back in the first Pillars for certain. I liked the many vignettes involving them, I liked being able to collect them all across the Deadfire almost as if I were filling out my own little Eoradex, I liked how you could get an idea to their individual personalities through many of their introductory interactions and quests and so on. I also reckon that their personalities also determine the role they'd take in the vignettes out at sea, so I liked how Eld Engrim often played the pious character, Emeini the more combative type, and so on. However, I do feel that I would like to see a few situations more appropriately tailored to either the events of the game or to individual crewmembers, which I'll expand upon next. Likewise, and this is a minor addition but and important one I feel: when we look into our journal for information on the mechanics to crewmembers, be it the way they level up on their positions or what advantage does each position and experience in the same bring, these are either not present or very scarcely explained, with all that's said about them is that they're a "motley assortment of neerdowells" and so on. I don't think it's ever mentioned that crewmembers can earn four overall stars across all ranks before they max out either, and I only learned it once I looked at the wiki or a subreddit discussion about it. A more detailed clarification within the game itself that we could access at any time would be appreciated, I think. These are some aspects which I feel could improve both systems over how they presently are, which I also feel would be feasible to do for a future patch or something. What do you guys think? Anything else you would like to add, or would disagree with, or any changes you would propose yourselves?

Like if my party member is a very beautiful women she can make some merchants give her discount or have more favorable options with males or lesbians in general. Likewise with the Watcher. Maybe ugly has bad options in dialogue and some interactions, but it repulses combatants making them aim worse or you smell bad etc. You can be ugly or beautiful depending on culture or race of people you talk to. Beauty can also just be female trait as it matter a lot more for them in most cultures, but with that you can also make them have less athletics, HP, or attack power etc to balance it out. Renown can work like how people know who you are. High renown will make you unable to lie very well as people know you, but low renown allows you to bluff and lie better. We already have reputation so renown can't really do much to change interaction with factions, but it can allow you to gain favor or disfavor with random people. Like if you are known murderer etc people will not talk to you and police will try to capture or kill you. There might be better ways to implement these ideas, or do you guys think it is bad to add this? Since I am about 5 hours into the game this system might already been added and I just do not know. If so, please tell me.

I was attempting to make a Pale Elf Mystic (Cipher/Priest), since Pale Elves come from The White that Wends, and their culture also has the option of Mystic... it seemed to be a really tight knit concept expect for an oversight, Pale Elves typically worship Rymrgand Beast of Winter, God of Cold, Death, Winter, Famine, Entropy, Bad Luck etc, but clearly there is no Priest subclass for this god at the moment, I was thinking Ice damage/Debuff theme, likely from the mage tree of spells, with a favored weapon that also does ice damage (I'm thinking two handed Axe for the true executioner's vibe, or some sort of spear for their winter beast theme)

Hey there! One thing that always bothered about me is that I have this chronic thing of restarting a play through multiple times - I'm sure I'm not the only one with this issue among the fans of this kind of games. I'm trying to play the game again for a character to import in deadfire - the previous save I had were lost - but every time I put 2/4 hours in, I then restart again with a different build. I'm stuck in this unsatisfying loop! Main reason is because another idea pops in my head and I don't have the will force to resist eheh. So I thought to maybe gather from suggestions from you guys *swings his arms to the sky invoking Boeroer* in the hope to find a cool idea. I've looked of course in the pinned build's thread and tried some of them already but could be that I overlooked something. Do you have any build / concept in mind? Even if you haven't tried it maybe. Maybe there's a combination of talents and abilities that have unexpected synergies that flies under the radar? Maybe this said combination reflects one of the possible multi classing in deadfire already? that's great! An example: actually using drugs for a specific purpose, and then it'll work well with the drug monk subclass in deadifre. I'm not min-maxing that much usually and I'll play just on hard so it doesn't have to be something that well thought. I'll play with the game companions; flexibility there too if there's someone that works well with your idea. Staples are going to be Eder, Aloth and Palegina so I can play with them in deadfire (possibly it would be good to avoid picking the same classes for the main character build, but it's also true that the same class can be played in many different ways of course). All right, that's all folks, thanks for the read!

1) In PoE1, most battles play out the same way over and over again, it gets boring. We should have less battles, but more interestingly-designed encounters with more variety. Hope to see more enemies with more pronounced strengths and weaknesses, e.g. extremely high hp and regen, low hp but extremely hard to hit, oozes that multiply, glass cannons, a huge army of weak enemies etc, that will require different strategies and gear, even on easier difficulty settings. Another aspect is to create interesting battle scenarios, e.g. split your party into groups to defend different entrances, escort a caravan, protect a fragile character. Perhaps a few epic battle scenarios which allow a 10 member party. 2) PoE's artwork is the best out there. However the maps and dungeons all follow very similar and predictable designs, the same thing in different skins. Please do not limit maps to the same dimensions. Create more variety, each dungeon should have a unique distinct archiecture, e.g. a huge open cavern, a claustrophobic labyrinth. For good map/dungeon design, please check out Wizardry 7/8 and Dark Heart of Uukrul. Good dungeon design is a lost art. 3) Create some challenging dungeons where we cannot rest or escape, forcing us to prepare carefully, test our limits and come up with strategies to survive. 4) PoE1 had too much text and uninteresting details. Just 1 interesting line will do, rather than 10 monotonous ones. 5) Rename enchanted items, customize look of item, more enchantment options such as stun and crit. 6) A workshop where we can craft various golems, which we can deploy in battle, or to carry out tasks. 7) Allow more traps to be set. Deploy temporary defensive structures such as ballistas, cannons or magic totems. Tower defense-like battle scenarios where we need to build up defenses and withstand waves of enemies.

Working my way through a tactical battle in the first game, and I noticed something: The auto-pause options in PoE I don't cover every situation where characters are twiddling their thumbs. For instance, when you're done quaffing a potion. Rather than set lots of options for specific things that tend to leave your character idle, why not auto-pause on the idle state itself? As soon as your character has the [...] over their heads, auto-pause. Then I can rest assured Aloth isn't lollygagging after nipping from his purple flask. It also covers "xaurip gibbed" and "finished moving out of the way of a flaming dragon belch".

Are there any "app only" exclusive cards? If not has there been any talk of them? Being that the game has gone digital I'm hoping that there ends up being an achievement system that can net you special things like exclusive cards, treasure chests, "Fate points" per scenario, +% of gold found, or +% of base items removed when advancing in levels... Kind of like "Badass Points" in Borderlands 2....

In the dialogue between Lady Webb and Thaos, Thaos looked at the label of the bottle she drank from and wanted to taste it too. But she saw it and said that she's "been saving it for someone". I guess she saved it for me to celebrate the victory, right? So, Thaos replied "Pity." and "carefully placed the bottle back on the table". In the Lady Webb office, I see this opened bottle on the nightstand beside the bed. And there's even a clean glass beside it - the very glass Thaos was reaching for, I guess. But this bottle and the glass are part of the background, not game objects. So I can't take the bottle with me, nor can I drink it. That's a pity. I wish I could take that bottle. I would drink it after defeating Thaos, after getting the answers. To remember the Lady Webb and her contribution. Because without her contribution, I would never have taken part in any of the Act III events. Just imagine how rewarding it would be to have that bottle at the very end. Her soul would have cheered seeing me do it. I suggest Obsidian fixes it in the next patch -- makes the bottle an object. More precisely, the table top should become a lootable container with a bottle in it.

Hello Obsidian Entertainment. Thank you for the incredible game and congratulations on the well-deserved accolades it has garnered. If I had to assign a number on a scale of 1-10 to PoE, I'd give it at a solid 8.8; an incredible game, albeit one with some room for improvement. I kept a document open while playing to jot down ideas/observations/bugs... it's a very long game so there ended up being quite a few of them! I can't wait for the sequel since I'm certain it will prove to be the BG2 to PoE's BG1... perhaps—hopefully—even surpassing that venerable legend. Gameplay Improvements: -In my opinion the Stash is the worst part of this game (excluding the inevitable initial bugs and I can hardly believe that disabling the stash not actually disabling the stash isn't one of them). In-game mechanics, especially fundamental ones, must have some attempt, no matter how feeble, at in-game explanations: bags of holding; pocket-planes; storage demons; some sort of spell; a donkey (pets are already in game and who wouldn't jump at the opportunity to have a 'dirty ass' follow them around); you're a priest in the service of Storly, god of storage and miscellaneous items; etc. The more powerful the in-game mechanic is, the greater the importance of explaining it becomes, at least if your intention is an immersive and believable world. A completely realistic system would be terrible too, however, making no attempt whatsoever to address so fundamental a mechanic as item storage, both on the character or in the world, is horrendous, more so when considering the fantastic lore and world-building achieved via the supplementary material: the myriad books, cyclopedia and bestiary. The stash, in its current iteration, totally negates all the considerable effort put into the creation of alternatives to combat. This is exemplified by Raedric's Keep. Why avoid killing all the enemies and forego 15000+ copper from selling all their equipment? Wasn't the point of quest only experience to disincentivize indiscriminately killing absolutely everything? The current inventory system also renders money a total non-issue less than 1/3 through the game. At the very least, if total replacement (optimally with Josh's original, involved—not dumbed down to the point of mindlessness—inventory system) for an enhanced expert mode is not an option, the disable stash toggle should disable both withdrawal and deposit when not in a tavern/resting and bags for crafting materials should be added into the game. -I was very surprised by the absence of a tutorial option when I started the game for the first time. Some sort of primer would be incredibly useful for people new to this type of RPG, as there is a ton of information and systems that would be better learned if shown first-hand than read about in the manual. Also, there are many shortcuts and UI tricks not even mentioned in the manual that could be taught in a tutorial. -An overarching narrator (ideally a pitch-perfect Morgan Freeman imitator) who spoke the gray 'flavor' text for the voiced sections would be wildly entertaining as there usually is insufficient time to actually read that text before the VO resumes. If that's not feasible, perhaps a slight delay to allow the player to actually read that text could be implemented? -It would be great if instead of automatically succeeding, adventures forced the player to take control of the assigned character and fight solo to determine the outcome of the adventure. The difficulty of the fight(s) would be determined by the quality of the adventure. -Enemies should not just line up behind each other at a blocked doorway if there are other available paths to the blocked room. -Music volume should be reduced 50% when voiced dialogue begins. -NPC banter has too long a delay between quips. Furthermore, it'd be nice if the portraits had some indication showing which NPC was speaking. -It's very hard to see NPCs or loot if they're behind things. Increasing the transparency of foreground structures when something is behind them would help a lot. -When sending someone to your dungeon you should get their equipment. -Your party should never automatically attack charmed members, nor should enemies immediately attack their charmed allies for that matter. -Important outdoor quest NPCs/merchants should adhere to a rudimentary day/night cycle, e.g., why is a fisherman on the docks 24/7... is the fishing really that good? -It'd be very cool if reading books opened choices in dialogue or gave quests, but only if the book was actually read, which would be determined by a combination of the player scrolling to the bottom of the text and keeping the book open a minimum length of time, which would vary depending on the length of the book. -A high reputation with a city should grant a discount on items bought at stores and a very high reputation should result in a premium being offered for items sold by the player. -Items sold at the stronghold should be priced similarly to those sold by stores in a city at maximum reputation, or even cheaper. -Getting caught lock picking a chest, or even opening it to see what's inside, should cause loss of reputation or hostility depending on the situation. -There should be armor proficiency talents. As it stands, characters are either in plate, if they're front-line, or, if they're back-line, in enchanted clothing... medium armor is garbage. With armor talents the recovery speed penalty could be reduced (or DR increased or a combination of both) and make medium armor a more viable option, increasing build diversity. -Stronghold resting bonuses must stack to be even remotely competitive with mid-game or later inns. -It would be interesting if the stronghold's library offered experience for depositing books not currently found within. Perhaps the steward could offer an item that started a quest if every possible book was collected? This also opens up an interesting, alternate resolution to a quest where you have to procure a certain book. -There should be a way to deposit pets in the stronghold, so that they can wander around. Some sort of pet fighting mini-game would be rather interesting. Hell, an NPC that allowed you to sacrifice all the available pets and choose one to turn into a figurine that would summon a giant version of that pet would be incredible. -Supplicants should stay at the stronghold longer. It's frustrating to be incapable of travelling large distances on the map in one go without risking having a supplicant come and go whilst in transit. The current solution is to split that long trip into multiple medium ones... which is an annoying circumvention. -The hide merchant in Twin Elms should pay more for hides. *Mild Act 3 Spoilers* -It'd be nice if the slides in the epilogue could be navigated both forwards and backwards, currently you can only skip forwards. UI Improvements: -Hovering over the name of a combatant in the combat log should highlight that combatant on the screen so that the player can see which of the identically named enemies was responsible for the respective entry. -It'd be nice if the combat log could be toggled to show only specific types of entries: individual characters' entries, rep gain/loss, exp, crits/grazes/types of damage, item gain/loss, etc. -List identical items numerically in shops, e.g., 13 daggers collectively instead of showing 13 individual daggers. Food/scrolls/potions/crafting materials already stack so I can't imagine this would be overly difficult to implement for other items. -Items sold by the player should go to the bottom of a shop's inventory. -When moving/selling large quantities of items the number should be able to be set using the number keys instead of just clicking the arrow to make the total lower or higher 1 by 1. For example, if I have 100 vessel bones and want to move 50, currently it requires clicking the arrow to make the total smaller 50 times... which is absurd. -Numerous properties on magic items are not listed in the cyclopedia and have no explanation, or, at best, an insufficiently detailed explanation, e.g., does an amulet that grants a 1.15 healing bonus apply to healing given or received, or does it apply to both? How far is a 'distant' enemy? Is 'low endurance' considered 'near death' or 'badly injured'? How often is 'every few seconds'? How often does 'overbearing' proc and what determines if it does? What's the difference between major and minor spellbinds? These are just some examples of missing or insufficient information pertaining to items. In addition, Spell Striking and Spell Holding have no in-game explanation whatsoever. -When an item grants/modifies a spell it should show a tool-tip on mouse-over for that spell, in addition to indicating how many times it can be used and whether it is per encounter or per rest. It's very annoying to have to close the level-up screen to check a spell that's modified by a potential talent. -It'd be nice if the transparency of the combat log could be adjusted. -NPC text bubbles shouldn't overlap, instead, a new text bubble should be forced to the top or bottom edge of the existing one. -Switching weapons should be capable of being bound to a hot-key. -Displaying stealth mode on portraits when the central UI is minimized needs a rework, the small green square highlighting the stealth icon is still visible through the 4'th PC's portrait. -There should be a toggleable icon on the portraits showing the current activity of the character, also, if a character is currently attacking there should be a small icon above that character (like there is when they're using a skill) that resembles the attack cursor. -The total number of enemies that a character is capable of engaging should be shown on that character's information screen. -Stop movement on trap spotted would be an excellent addition to the auto-pause menu. Also, it's quite odd that the party doesn't avoid traps once they have been spotted, I have a hard time believing my mechanic wouldn't say, “Hey, watch out, there's a trap right there, how about not killing everyone... stupid Aloth.” -The inability to add markers to the map is a particularly glaring omission. Being unable to click on the map to move is kind of disappointing as well. -The cursor should be capable of being positioned mid-note with the mouse when taking notes in the journal. Or, if that isn't possible, the cursor should be capable of being moved with the arrow keys instead of forcing the player to delete what is written. -It would be nice if, when in the journal, quests & tasks were capable of being selected with the arrow keys instead of just the mouse. This capability would also be nice when perusing possible talents during level up. Really, every UI screen featuring a multitude of vertically listed entries, be they quests/talents/spells/monsters in the bestiary/etc., should be navigable using the arrow keys. -Holding ctrl+click-and-drag selecting other characters should add them to the currently selected group, similar to how you can add characters to the currently selected group by holding ctrl+clicking on their portraits. -An option to disable switching to fists while clicking to switch weapons would be nice. -It should be possible to zoom out when viewing the Od Nua staircase interface. -The icon for stairs should show whether those stairs go up or down, after a few days without playing it can be hard to remember which set of stairs heads down upon exiting the master staircase in Od Nua. It would be an excellent addition if the map showed 'Stairs Down' or 'Stairs Up' instead of just 'Stairs'. -It would be nice if it was possible to zoom in on the map. -It would be useful if it was possible to click on a region when looking at the world map and see that region's map. There are quests that describe geological features that could be seen through the fog of war, making this a practical addition. -Completed quests/tasks should be arranged so that the most recently finished is at the top of the list. Also, when a quest is completed and the tool-tip pops up, clicking on it doesn't actually select that quest when the journal is opened... it should. -Stronghold status updates should list the most recent at the top and continue in descending order. Currently the oldest is at the top and the most recent is at the bottom.

Not surprisingly, I thought the ranger was prett lack-luster. Although I don't think the ranger's in danger of winning any overpoweredness contests, I actually didn't think the ranger was too weak. The ranger is really just the pet-owner class. Other than the fact that D&D also had (and struggled with) animal companions, the class barely feels like a ranger at all. This wouldn't be a huge problem if it didn't mean that, in the end, there's almost nothing to do with the ranger in both character building and combat. In my opinion, the ranger would make more sense (and probably be a lot more fun) as a series of talents available to any character. (Think about it: then Sagani could be a rogue!) That's a pretty dire verdict on a class. I'm not joking though. At this point, if I had to fix the ranger I would just get rid of it completely and allow any character to buy into the ranger pet through a series of talents (starting with something weaker, of course, since a whole ranger pet would be a bit OPed for just one talent). The remaining abilities could be divided among other classes as made sense. I'm not being hyperbolically negative here either. I actually think this would be a nice improvement to the game--allowing characters to be distinguished by the fact that they have an animal companion rather than defined by the fact they have an animal companion. The fighter with a pet wolf would feel a lot different than one without, both mechanically and from a storytelling perspective. Same for every other class.

My PC was a Goldpact Paladin. Overall, I found the Paladin decently interesting to build and play. I liked the bonus to defenses from certain reputations. I felt that was a much nicer way to make Paladin's the "roleplay" class ala D&D without hamfisting it (like AD&D does with most things) and still allowing a wide representation of roleplaying Paladins that weren't all Lawful Good. However, I found the Paladin to be pretty boring in combat due to the low number of abilities, with a low number of uses, that were fairly niche as well and no distinguishing combat mechanics (other than a couple auras that overlap with Chanter anyway). By the end of the game, in particular, my PC Paladin had a laundry list of low-use abilities (many of which were per-rest) that I rarely used, and were frequently irrelevant anyway. (Some of that was because I would wear ability-granting equipment just because there was nothing else to wear in that slot, but that's another issue.) Even though I accidentally picked Lay on Hands at the beginning of the game, by the end of the game I was running out of abilities that I wanted to pick. I've read somewhere that the Paladin was supposed to be like a D&D4 Warlord, but giving the Paladin single-target buffs doesn't really play like a Warlord at all--it plays like a Priest. Putting the Warlord into RTwP gameplay would probably be hard, but I think you could do a lot better than PoE. First step would be to make Coordinated Attacks an early, rather than a late, ability, so that the player can build around it. I'd remove the melee limitation of Flames of Devotion, because that bombos with Coordinated Attacks. I'd add an ability that let the Warlord swap places with an ally without triggering Engagement Attacks. Liberating Exhortation works okay for this paradigm, because it's a bit about controlling the battlefield by helping your allies. I'd let nearby allies use Flames of Devotion, Sworn Enemy, and any other attack ability that makes sense. Abilities that trigger on killing enemies are yucky because they are "win more" abilities and they encourage unrealistic and unfun gameplay where you stop attacking an enemy so that the relevant character will get the kill. Instead, I'd give the Warlord an ability that applies a limited duration debuff to defenses when the warlord attacks a full-health enemy. That way the Warlord is leading the charge. But honestly, I'd make the Warlord paradigm a set of talents that anyone can take because, why not let the Fighter or any class be the battlefield coordinator too? To fix Paladins, first of all, I'd give the Paladin all the auras one by one, because they're not significant enough that it feels worth giving up an ability to get another aura that's mutually exclusive with the aura you already have. Second, I'd make Lay on Hands and Reviving Exhortation into Priest spells (because that's what they really are), and then just let the Paladin pick a spell from a list determined by his Order but taken (thematically) from the spell lists of all other classes, and have that spell as a 1-per encounter ability. Let the Paladin do it again at 6th and 11th level, or something. This should allow the player to build the kind of Paladin he or she wants to play while ensuring that the Paladin has abilities that the player actually wants to use. In this concept, the Paladin becomes a knights that draws on supernatural powers to complement his traditional martial abilities instead of pursuing an alternative martial art like the Barbarian or Monk. I felt that the Paladin didn't get enough tanking support in comparison to the Fighter. Some possible ways to improve that might be: Since Paladin's are known for wearing armor, give the Paladin a free small reduction to their armor penalty. I'd give them a Challenge ability that reduces the target's accuracy against other allies. Maybe give the Paladin an aura that slows enemy movement while the Paladin is standing still. Make the Paladin's single-enemy abilities allow the Paladin to engage that enemy for free.

I tag this thread with Possible Spoilers, not because there is intended to be any, but because there'll possibly be a few, probably minor ones, but possibly major, so if you are sensitive, stay out. Now, anyway, there was this other thread, where I found myself running away with a concept, and realized that we needed a thread for suggesting CNPC:s! Woo. As I have harped on numerous times, the number of CNPC:s in the game is abysmal, and leave very little options in regard to choice, and it's exceedingly hard to push them away. Also, their reactivity leaves a lot to be desired. And during the course of the "Lack of Evil Companions"-thread, I started drawing the outlines for a suggested CNPC, and realized I wanted a thread like this. In it, we will both broad-stroke suggestions for various companions as well as flesh them out as much as we desire, albeit not write them. It's mostly meant to be food for thought and little more. Now, from my own perspective here, I'm going to be assuming balanced Attributes, as well as more diverse and different weapon focus groups. I hated how the existing CNPC:s got compromised and actually changed because of the Attribute system resulting in them getting "bad" Attributes, so if I suggest "bad" Attribute spreads for anything, it's because I operate under the assumption that they're not bad, and Attribute spreads are more about characterization and playstyle (beyond Tank vs. DPS), rather than lopsided and simple min/max. I suggest everyone else does the same. I will also assume a CNPC Level of 2, meaning 1 Ability, 1 Talent. This is purely because that's what I think CNPC:s should be limited to in terms of auto-leveling, in order for them to be a bit fleshed out, but still have ample room to move. It is by no means a rule; feel free to post full progressions suggestions in the same way CNPC:s in the game already has. And without further ado, a "proper" post of my original idea that made me want this thread, below. I will put it in a separate post.

Pillars of Eternity Things I really liked: • The writing. It's nice to see a game that doesn't assume players are afraid of reading. I really loved the descriptions that came with dialogues - it's the kind of thing other games try to show through very expensive graphics and motion capture, but they never nail it. • It's not D&D. No tacos, woot! I like table-top RPGs, but I have never enjoyed D&D (Nobilis ftw). It's nice to see a fantasy RPG using the Infinite Engine not afraid of leaving the D&D roots behind. • Combat speed. In other IE games, combat always felt clumsy to me — I'm fonder of turn-based systems. But all the options we are given in PoE, all the triggers for auto-pause AND slow mode, make it a huge improvement over other IE games. • Improvements to the magic system. It's great to see that we don't have to memorize a specific spell per rest in order to use it. Being able to use entire levels of spells instead of a pre-defined spell a pre-defined number of times per rest makes playing as casters a lot more fun than in many classic IE games. Ciphers are a lot of fun, too - not having to worry about casts per rest makes them my favourite casters in the game. • The inventory system doesn't get in the way of gameplay. It would have been easy to add item management options that would have been huge nuisances, like durability. PoE goes in the opposite direction, though, by allowing us to have direct access to the stash everywhere, and thus effectively have infinite inventory space. Things I think could be improved a bit: • A respec option would be nice. Players are asked to make one of the main decisions about the main character - attribute levels - before the game begins, while they don't really understand the mechanics of PoE. Nothing in character creation tells us that we won't get more attribute points when levelling up, for example. Between this, patches changing skills and talents, plus the questionable builds companions come with, I think having the option to respec would be a good thing. • The attribute system needs some fine tunning. I'm happy the game isn't using D&D rules, but, like any new system, it could use some improvements. Might is too valuable and IMO shouldn't be used as the defining attribute for all kinds of damage. Resolve is kinda useless for a backline character if you have good tanks, and even Constitution isn't relevant for those characters. It becomes hard to make a character who is interesting for dialogues and for combat. • Wizards are gimped way too much. They are still being held back by leftovers from D&D. Unlike Druids and Priests, Wizards have to learn each spell individually and they are limited by grimmoires; unlike ciphers, their relevant abilities are limited per rest. Wizards have all the limits, with few of the advantages. Weaker spells but useable per encounter instead of per rest would be better, IMO. • Crafting could use some help. I don't like using consumables, so I haven't tried crafting scrolls, potions or food. But the equipment crafting is lacking. There are many useful mods we cannot craft; it's better to find a weapon with zero quality but a draining mod (which we can't craft) than to find a weapon with almost top quality, since that we can craft ourselves. I wish we could craft any mod in the game, with reliable ways to get more materials. • The inventory is kind of a mess. A way to sort items would be great. As would be changing the background of items so we know at a glance what is their rarity. Right now, items with any mods have different backgrounds than items without any of them, but later in the game that isn't really enough. • Voice acting loses sync with text. When reading a dialogue box that goes "spoken dialogue — description — spoken dialogue", there is no pause for us to read the description between the two bits of spoken dialogue. This makes reading at the same time we're listening a bit clumsy. Maybe breaking those sections in two dialogue boxes, or adding a pause? Pillars of Eternity is a very good game, and I'm happy for being able to play it. I wish Obsidian a lot of success, both with PoE and with their future games.

Greetings, all! While Obsidian is stlll in the mood to heavily modify things via patches, I find this a good time to include suggestiosn for future Pillars of Eternity versions. Note that I am generally enjoying what I've played so far and wish to make this game even more perfect! Suggestions 1: Please allow us to manually name our saves! Dragon Age: Origins did it. Baldur's Gate did it. Divinity: Original Sin did it. Being able to name my saves tells me where I've been and lets me tell myself where to go next and what to do there. 2: For those who have completed the intro sequence, please add an option to allow skipping that. (This may not apply on Trial of Iron mode.) We'd simply get all the items of the introductory sequence, all the EXP, etc. and be placed at the northeast entrance to the Gilded Vale. 3: In the options menu, allow an adjustable number of autosave and quicksave slots (minimum 1, maximum 20). Doing so lets people have quicksave and autosave rotations. On the player side, this requires less effort than manually saving 'just in case,' especially with no manual save names. Divinity: Original Sin does this. 4: For all descriptions (and I'm looking at you, Fire Godlike), have the tooltip show exactly what the ability does. In the case of Fire Godlikes, what's the bonus to DR and the damage inflicted in melee when the Fire Godlike is below 50% Endurance? 5: May we get other battle music tracks? Divinity: Original Sin includes a variety of battle tracks. Maybe it's because I've only played as far as the first town that I keep hearing the same battle music. 6: I'd greatly like the ability to also access the level up screen via my character sheet, a la Baldur's Gate. Make a LEVEL UP button on the character sheet UI. Bam! Problem solved! 7: In the options menu, add a toggle for whether the game should pause when it loses focus, like when someone alt-tabs out. In other games, I often order my units to move then alt-tab to find something interesting on the Internet, then return to see it done. I'm grateful that we can use Double Speed, and I'd like this option too.

WARNING - some spoilers. (not many though) Secondary Warning, fairly lengthy. Bugs---- So far I've encountered relatively few bugs, and none of them have caused me any real headaches. I generally look in the steam discussions (forums) for answers to whatever I'm looking for. When this inevitably fails, I head to Obsidians forums (this generally fails as well), but this means I'm constantly alt-tabbing in and out of the game, which may be why some of these appeared. I'll list em, starting with the worst of them. - After alt-tabbing quite heavily I went to save my game in case I'd forgotten before I alt-tabbed out. All saves for my current character (except the autosave) had disappeared. Quite frightening. I now have a backup of my saves. - While attempting to use my keep page, the scroll down somehow got stuck. Nothing I did would allow its normal function. Closing the game and re-opening it fixed this. - Every once in awhile, my characters will lose most of their ai. Highlighting everyone and telling them to attack a target will generally result in 2 out of 6 of them attacking said target while the rest stand there, forcing me to manually click each of them and force attack the target individually. At the same time their pathing seems to disappear, and if the target/location isn't available as a straight line, they will cease to move/attack again. - While in the inventory screen highlighting certain items on the character (generally the head/necklace/belt slots) will be blurry and shift side to side a pixel or two rapidly. - NPC's (Eder) have unnaturally high hp, and some stats of npcs dont match up with created characters. - Not sure if bug but after a mission from the keep, it says to check your halls chest for rewards, there are no rewards. As far as I can remember, that is all the bugs I've seen. Thoughts/Suggestions Stats-- Now I've not gone heavily into testing stats but it seems to me that currently Con is the weakest. Just thinking out relatively straight numbers Con could be changed to a flat 5 hp and 1% hp and end per point. Early on, this is a small increase to anyone who uses the stat over the current Con, later levels would have a slight decrease for anyone with high hp/end. Also, I saw a suggestion on these forums for Con to effect armor recharge reduction, which I'd like but am currently unsure if it's needed based on; Armor-- I've generally run the game so far as having the flimsiest armor I can reasonbly live with for attack speeds (Mage/priest in robes, tanks in plate/heavy everyone else in between). I had just reached Dyrford Ruins and the boss battle (the first shot at it) killed all my characters in under 10 seconds (well, 3 of my party was dead in 4 seconds, no way I could win after that). Based on this, I decided if they are hitting me this severely, I will put EVERYONE in high DR armor, and be damned with the reduction in speed. This caused the fight to drag out barely. It also caused me to win with nearly no health lost at all. Since, I've been running around in heavy armor (without realizing it at first, because I had forgotten I switched their armors out) and I have been surviving FAR better. I have not noticed (and if I have, it's a small change) to my speeds. While I like being able to survive everything on everyone now (for the most part) I feel this is very unbalanced, especially for roleplaying. Weapons-- After playing with multiple characters, and especially on my rogue, I began noticing that certain weapons just didn't cut it. My first rogue used stilettos, and did very subpar damage (yes I had spikes) but in general I'd see mainly 4's, with a bit of spikes in the 6 range, when the stars aligned I'd get 10-15's. After making a new rogue based on new information about stats and weapons, I began using maces. I still attack almost as quickly as stilettos, but I do 15 average, with high spikes. Where I'd stab about 3 or 4 times to take off 1 little diamond (I assume 20% of the enemies hp/end?) on my first rogue, I take off two, sometimes 3 of the enemies 'diamonds' (40-60?%) in one hit using maces. I'm also more accurate, somehow. I just feel weapons in general need a bit of love here. Weapon speeds-- I've seen it crop up here before, but having an actual number for weapon speeds instead of relative terms (average, slow) would greatly help in determing what we wish to use in our builds. Classes-- My latest playthrough has no Wizard. Looking through my old parties to see weak links, the weakest was the Wizard. So I looked at them compared to other classes. Yes I like the Wizards renamed Magic Missle, I always have, its a staple for a reason. But other spells, aside from actually either doing nothing or missing all the time (not sure which) or causing harm to everyone made me look at the druid. Now granted, they have a plethora of spells I'll never be able to use because 75% of spells in this game affect everyone (or so they say/aoe circles look like) but they have quite a few spells I like, that I can use, and they have some endurance heals. They also feel less squishy than a mage. Plus, in a pinch I can shapeshift (I've heard people say the shapeshifts are terrible too, but once I feel I'm good on spells it's always been a dps increase for me) At the moment, my Druid outperforms my Wizard in every way. And Lastly, Damage-- In my current playthrough, my party has; Rogue - 22000 damage done Fighter - 5000 damage done (tank) Barbarian - 8,500 damage done Druid - 8000 damage done Priest - 2,500 damage done Paladin hasn't been in long enough to formulate All other members have been in there since the very earliest I could get or create them. Just based on this, I feel rogues damage is either quite a bit high, or everyone else (except for the tank/s) are quite a bit low. While it is my personal opinion, I feel Wizards or pure magic using fold in general should be very near a rogue if not surpassing them. In general, I just feel that classes are too... random. I'm sure if I had chosen other talents and whatnot I'd get much different results but in general I feel dps classes, outside of spikes, should be fairly comparable damage wise, or at least damage/survivability wise.

The Paladin is by far the class I've played the most, and since paladins are generally the class I favour the most, it is also the class that I have the most thoughts on. The Paladin class has a number of outstanding issues that I'd like to raise, but first, let's go through what the Paladin gets, level per level. Character creation. At this point, the Paladin gets to choose between Flames of Devotion, a 1-per-encounter Ability that does Weap.Dmg.+100% Burn Dmg. and Lay On Hands, a pitiful 3-uses-per-day HoT (Healing over Time) Ability. The Paladin also gets Faith and Conviction, a passive bonus to all defences that depend upon your Behaviour/Reputation; the Paladin also gets to choose an Order that defines what Behaviour improves or diminishes the bonus from Faith and Conviction, however, what disposition is celebrated or condemned by each Order is not actually explained or expanded upon, which is just all kinds of odd. Finally the Paladin gets +1 Lore and +2 Athletics, which strangely implies that the Paladin is more Athletic than even a Fighter. Skill Points and a Talent. Nothing special, which makes perfect sense and it's alright. All Paladins get to choose between a number of unique Talents, same as any other Class, really. Skill Points and a Class Ability. Apart from the aforementioned Flames of Devotion and Lay On Hands, the Paladin now has three more Abilities to pick from; Zealous Charge, Zealous Focus and Zealous Endurance. All of these are Modal Abilities that can be toggled, with a incredibly short range of 2.5m, acting as Auras, and as of v392, only Zealous Focus is remotely worth considering. Skill Points and a Talent. Nothing to see here, same as everyone else. Move along. Skill Points and a Class Ability! This time, the Paladin adds the following to his list of choices: Inspiring Triumph, a passive Ability that triggers a defensive bonus to all allies within 5m every time the Paladin downs an enemy; Sworn Enemy, a once-per-rest Ability that targets a single enemy and gives the Paladin (and only the Paladin) a damage and accuracy boost until that one enemy dies; and finally, the first "Command"-style Class Ability, called Liberating Exhortation, a once-per-encounter Ability that lets a single ally ignore Hostile Effects for 15 seconds (they will resume afterwards). Skill Points and a Talent! Skill Points and a Class Ability, go figure! Again, the Paladin gets to choose from all the previous Abilities that hasn't already been chosen, and adds Deprive the Unworthy and Reviving Exhortation to the list. Both are "Command"-style Abilities, but for some strange reason, the offensive Deprive the Unworthy does not follow the same pattern of being named as an Exhortation. You'd think they'd at least come up with something analogous, such as Depriving Judgement or something. Anyway, Deprive the Unworthy is a straight-up offensive version of Liberating Exhortation, and it suppresses the Beneficial Effects of a single enemy for 15 seconds. Strangely, the Paladin only gets two-per-rest of Deprive the Unworthy, whereas Liberating Exhortation is once-per-encounter. Reviving Exhortation, also added at this level, is also a once-per-encounter "Command"-style ability that allows the Paladin to revive a fallen ally with a modest amount of Endurance restored, much of which will be taken away from him after 15 seconds. Guess what. Skill Points and a Talent. Booyah. Skill Points and a Class Ability! Another two Abilities are added to the list; Righteous Soul, a underwhelming passive Ability (why are passives even offered up as Class Abilities?) The exact nature of this passive is questionable, because the wording of the Ability is ambiguous at this point, but it supposedly makes you resist all Poisoned, Diseased, Charmed, Dominated, Frightened and Terrified Effects, as well as reducing their duration by 5 seconds. Potentially powerful, but again, why would passives even be offered up as Abilities? Passives are by their nature and definition passive, and even if powerful, definitely not contributing to interesting choices in combat. Second, Reinforcing Exhortation, a twice-per-encounter Ability that increases the Deflection of a single recipient ally for 20 seconds. Another "Command"-style Class Ability. Skill. Points. And. Talent. Skill Points and... Class Ability! This time, only a single Class Ability is added: Hastening Exhortation. This is unsurprisingly another "Command"-style Ability, but this time it's three-per-rest, and it multiplies the attack speed of a single ally by 1.2. Final level. Skill Point and a Talent. Final stop. Everyone get off the rapetrain, it turns out that it's got brakes after all. Now, after going through all that, let's take a look at the available Talents as of v392: Critical Focus; Improves Zealous Focus. Deep Faith; Improves the defensive bonuses of the Order-dependent Faith and Conviction passive. Greater Lay on Hands; increases the healing of Lay on Hands. Intense Flames; Increases the damage of Flames of Devotion. Untroubled Faith (Paladin); negates some of (removes?) the negative effects from Reputation on Faith and Conviction. At the very least, this should be renamed, because it really stands out with that "(Paladin)", since no other Talent is class-marked like that. There are also several Order-dependant Talents, all which affects either Flames of Devotion or Liberating Exhortation (for some damn reason), or triggers on kills: The Black Path, Bleak Walkers; similar to the Inspiring Triumph Class Ability, except it Frightens all nearby enemies whenever the Paladin kills someone. Remember Rakhan Field, Bleak Walkers; nearly identical to the Intense Flames Talent, except it adds 50% Corrosion Damage instead of 50% extra Burn Damage to Flames of Devotion. Inspiring Liberation, Darcozzi Paladini; affects Liberating Exhortation, and gives the target ally a bonus to Accuracy in addition to the normal effects. Fires of Darcozzi Palace, Darcozzi Paladini; affects Flames of Devotion, giving the Paladin a Flame Shield upon using it. Enduring Flames, Goldpact Knights; causes Flames of Devotion to also cause a Burn-dmg DoT equal to 50% of the total damage. Bond of Duty, Goldpact Knights; whenever the Paladin uses Liberating Exhortation, the target ally also gets a large defensive bonus against Charmed, Confused and Dominated. Strange Mercy, Kind Wayfarers; again similar to the Inspiring Triumph Class Ability, except nearby allies gain Endurance every time the Paladin kills someone. The Sword and the Shepherd; Kind Wayfarers; every time the Paladin uses Flames of Devotion, all nearby allies heal a trifling amount of Endurance. Shielding Flames, Shieldbearers of St. Elcga; similar to the Kind Wayfarers ability above, it grants a small deflection bonus to nearby allies every time the Paladin uses Flames of Devotion. Shielding Touch, Shieldbearers of St. Elcga; again, the target ally gains an Accuracy bonus when the Paladin uses Liberating Exhortation. Yawn. Now that I've gone through all of that so that everyone gets a more or less clear picture of what the Paladin has and can get, several thoughts and ideas have occurred to me based on playtesting paladins in v392 BB. In no particular order of importance, here are some issues and potential solutions. Mileage may vary. • First of all, the paladin suffers from a lack of combat options. This is particularly glaring for the first 5 levels, which in the context of Pillars of Eternity is a figurative eternity. The fact is that at the moment, Flames of Devotion doesn't just appear to be a default assumption made by the developers that the Paladin is expected to have (judging by Talent support, more on that later), but it completely obliterates Lay on Hands. So while every (almost?) other class gets either multiple uses per encounter of one ability or another, or gets something that hinges on being deployed tactically, the Paladin gets a once-per-encounter ability that is swiftly blown (because there is often no reason whatsoever to not use Flames of Devotion almost immediately, or even attempt to initiate with it) and is then relegated to autoattack. At level 3, when the Paladin gets to pick a new Class Ability, all that is offered up are auras. Now, likely to inflate the sense of combat options artificially, Auras have been turned into a "Combat Only"-Ability, but it doesn't functionally change the fact that it is completely passive. It is not until level 5 that a Paladin can even think about doing anything in combat that isn't healing 3 times per day, or use flames of devotion once per encounter followed by auto-attack. • Second, the supposed core abilities of the Paladin is seemingly lost in translation. It is my understanding that a few aspects of the Paladin was intended by be part of his core concept, primarily Commands (Exhortations + "Deprive the Unworthy") and Auras. Due to the way ability gain has been modeled, however, it is entirely possible to opt out of these things completely. This isn't necessarily something bad, and it depends largely on what the developers want to do with the class, but it is definitely something that should be discussed. What is the concept of the Paladin, what assumptions are made? This ties into a third point. • Third, the Order-specific Talents are somewhat out of whack. Why is it that the Order-specific Talents all favour either Flames of Devotion or Liberating Exhortation specifically? There are two notable exceptions, The Black Path (Bleak Walkers) and Strange Mercy (Kind Wayfarers), both which gains on-kill bonuses to nearby allies. It is still a very strange, lop-sided favouritism that seems to assume that these two abilities are part of any Paladin's core skillset. The Paladin-specific Talents need to be looked over, and spread out to apply to more or different Abilities. Not a single Order-specific power affects Lay on Hands, for example, even though you'd think that such a thing would fit the Kind Wayfarers like a glove. Even though there only exists two different Paladin abilities that can be taken on creation - Flames of Devotion and Lay on Hands - only one of them is consistently affected by Order-specific talents. This is very odd and jarring. This also goes double for Liberating Exhortation. If Flames of Devotion seems to be a default assumption of the class that can conceivably be missed, it is currently very unlikely that anyone would. Liberating Exhortation, however, enters the scene when there are multiple possible abilities to choose from, and it is entirely possible to build a Paladin completely without picking up Exhortations. • Fourth, the oddity of the 2 Athletics, 1 Lore starting Skills. It is odd that a Fighter would be notably less Athletic than a standard Paladin, but I also think that there is a missed opportunity at play. I would suggest that instead of cementing the starting Skills of the Paladin, make the starting Skills 1 Athletics, 1 Lore, and 1 Order-dependent as such; http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/69902-v392-class-skills-starting-skills/?do=findComment&comment=1553094 • For some concrete suggestions, partly based on personal preference and interpretation: Revamp and look over all the Order-specific Talents, to diversify them based on more open-ended assumptions. It should not be assumed by the entire system that you end up with very specific Abilities, unless these Abilities are specifically granted. There are many Exhortations, why only favour one? There are two starting abilities, why only favour one? Lay on Hands need to be considerably buffed. In earlier versions, healing was stronger than it is now, and it was supposedly nerfed across the board. I do not think it would be inappropriate for Lay on Hands to be a premier healing Ability that blows others out of the water; it is per-rest, and potentially a core ability of the Paladin class as a whole. It should also not be a HoT; it should be instant. The Greater Lay on Hands Talent could add a HoT to the Lay on Hands ability instead. For some reason, there is no "Extra Lay on Hands" or "Extra Flames of Devotion" Talents. This should be rectified, and the former should add two additional uses of Lay on Hands per day, and the latter should add one extra use of Flames of Devotion per encounter. It is not interesting, but it is useful and consistent with what other classes can often get. Make Auras a core part of the Paladin concept; on Level 2 or 3, allow the Paladin to choose one of the three auras independently of other Abilities. Additionally, there should be Talents to support all Auras, not just Zealous Focus, an aura already well-known to currently be the only worthwhile one. Rebalance the auras. Especially Zealous Charge is utterly useless due to the Engagement system's current implementation making movement in combat largely meaningless. Also, auras as "Combat Only"-abilities (if "Combat Only" is to be a thing at all, rubbish as the concept is) is utterly ridiculous, an artificial buffer at the initiation of combat meant to inflate the feeling that the Paladin is doing something worthwhile besides auto-attacking. Stop it. Auras are passive modals that should be on at all times if the Paladin wishes it to be so. Rework the Exhortations (including the oddly-named Deprive the Unworthy); ideally, they should similarly be part of the Paladin's core skillset in some capacity, possibly being granted outside of the regular choices offered to the Paladin. Additionally, they should all either be Per-rest (preferably not) or have a similar Per-encounter use (preferably). Them being so conceptually similar as to share names almost across the board, but mechanically dissimilar feels odd and contrived. Instead of making the core functionality between them different, balance them based on the assumption that their functionality is conceptually similar, such as "2 per encounter", "1 per encounter", or "3 per day". Create the framework for how the concept is meant to work, and balance it based on those assumptions afterward. If all Exhortations would be offered outside of the normal Paladin Ability choices, all of them would ideally be offered up at once, instead of the odd progression that they go through. There is no conceptual reason why Liberating Exhortation should be offered before Reviving Exhortation, and I believe this to be a vestigial holdover from a time when the Exhortations were granted at given levels, rather than as a choice amongst a plethora of different abilities. Righteous Soul is terrible. Complete passives should never be offered up as full-fledged Class Abilities. This feels much more like a high-level Talent than anything else. The Paladin already suffers from combat option(s) starvation, and while flavourful and perhaps powerful, this is a bad choice not from a player perspective, but from a development perspective; it should not be offered like this at all. Inspiring Triumph should be made into a Talent. There are several Paladin-only Talents with the exact same functionality, but with different effects, and this has no business being a Class Ability to begin with. It would be much better served being turned into a Talent. Doubly so not only because of it's relation to how other Paladin-specific Talents already work, but also because of the aforementioned "passives are bad as Class Abilities, especially for Paladins"-issue. That is it for today, and I hope that this doesn't read as an enormous wall of text. I did my best to avoid it, but I'm not sure how successful I was. I hope the relevant developers take the time to read this brick, and any thoughts not just on my thoughts but also on the Paladin class in general would be greatly appreciated. It is not uncommon for large posts to kill their own threads, but I hope people instead see it as cause to discuss the Paladin class and possible perceived issues with it. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and is just some thoughts and notes on my perceptions of the Paladin class and issues I've discovered during play or from subjective analysis.

It would be great if threads which OE responds to were marked with a little OE badge, like on some other popular game forums. Clicking the badge would filter and show just the OE responses in the thread. (Or at the very least jump to the first OE post.) This will make it much easier to see which topics already have an official response and what it is. Thanks!

When you hold Tab, it highlights interactible objects and shows labels over the heads of NPCs and stuff. It would be nice if clicking on those labels allowed you to interact with the person/thing, sort of how in Diablo games when labels are showing for items on the ground you can click on them to pick them up instead of hunting for the specific item's model on the ground. Also, in general I wish it was easier to click on people to talk to, it seems like I have to click on their feet where their selection circle is, but it's counterintuitive that clicking on their bodies does not work.

One of the staples for the RPG crowd are mini and/or hidden bosses. Bosses that are hard to find, hard to fight, and are not part of the linear storyline. I realize that with 6 months to go and most lines pre-recorded that most of the gameplay is locked down this far into development, but I think this would really add to the gameplay with relative minimal effort. They don't have to be neccasaringly a mandatory part of the storyline, and thus, won't negatively effect the turnaround time as much. Suggestions for hidden bosses are: Darth Chef MechaStreissand Sally Struthers (in her Jabba the Hutt form) the evil goldfish from a parralel universe (from season 2 "Spookyfish") ManBearPig Sexual Harrassment Panda Moses (the Super Friends version with the big red face) A giant stone Abraham Lincoln I am sure there are tons of other great choices but those are ones I rattled off the top of my head. There's also a possible issue of copyright infingment with some of the choices (chef in particular), but just rename some of the characters to "dark, darph, derp [chef]" or some other generic name. The fans of the series will know anyway what was meant anyway. I hope the devs read this, and I would like to know what other fans think! Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Oddly enough I haven't seen topic like this here, so I will be first to start. In this thread we post things and features from our favourite RPGs we'd love to see in Project Eternity. I'll start with few games I have known and loved very dearly. Fallout 1&2: -Humour (some might find it bit childish though) -Very high verbal quality of dialog -Ability to talk your way out of most conflicts (if having necessary stats&skills) -Very free exploration (esp. Fallout 2) -Ending slides -Refreshingly daring take on sex (especially for it's time) -Random encounters (funny and scripted ones, not boring monsters-only ones) Baldur's Gate 1&2: -Cities that feel big -Characters (some might find some of them annoying though) -Banter Planescape Torment: -Philosophy -Story of personal exploration and rediscovery -Nice bestiary -Very alien world (planescape is interesting setting) -Ability to lots of interesting things through dialogue -Characters (very bizarre and unique, but very lovable) Arcanum: -Lots of Choices and Consequences -Ability to create very diverse characters -Race, gender and sometimes even clothes having profound effects on dialogue -Raise spirit ability (sadly underused by game) -Some great characters (ie. Geoffrey, Torian Kel, Magnus and most of voiced ones, aside Virgil) -Interesting lore flavouring books Morrowind: -Lots of unique loot -Interesting books (like Arcanum, but lot of more) KotOR 1&2: -Full-blown evil path (even if just silly puppy kicking in KoTOR 1)

Sorry I'm tardy to the party I just learned about this entire thing a few hours ago! I went through all of the updates and saw all of the videos...after spending a while crying tears of happiness I finally composed myself and decided to share my thoughts and express my thanks to all of the developers for continuing my favorite type of games! Thank you very much. ----Pathing---- -Pathing is massively important. In IE games I really disliked indoor / close corridors fighting because the characters would often waste time running in a wrong direction. It was especially annoying if a pillar blocked line of sight for a ranged command 40 yards away and the character would move directly toward the target instead of taking the single step to the left/right to regain view. When Starcraft 2 first came out the first thing that made me cry tears of joy was how fluid and perfect the pathing was. You could select hundreds of units and watch them perfectly navigate around a series of obstacles with a single click. It was so beautiful that many people were making videos just showing off how cool it was. If I could spend more time monitoring spells and actions being preformed instead of making sure my recent commands are properly being executed the enjoyment would increase tenfold. I know this is really obvious but I just felt like mentioning it! ----Spells---- -Spells that had a long casting time (almost a full turn) were sometimes difficult for me to manage when I have to pause countless times in between it's actual cast. This happens often in large scale battles where certain death can occur at any fraction of a second. Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition did a great job helping this problem by creating an icon on the player portrait symbolizing the current action being performed. I would love to see something similar, if not identical to this! ----Replayability---- -I've seen a lot of games being accused of having little replayability because of it's linear play style, yet calling Baldur's Gate a masterpiece because of how opened ended it is. I don't understand this logic because Baldur's Gate is completely scripted and after you've played it 100% you will know what to expect on each subsequent play through. I love that game to death but it's never been the same as my first play through because I truly didn't know what to expect behind every inch of shroud my first time around. I think the perfect solution for these things is to have a randomization system for events. Any "Rogue-like" games have the right idea; you can create randomized sections of the game that doesn't change the storyline in anyway but offers the element of suprise for the player. I'm not saying the game should be randomly generated like a Diablo map (1 and 2 ...lol@3) but certain "insignificant" areas would have random chances to create a type of event. For example : You approach the Friendly Arms Inn and instead of that mage who attacks you, one of the following happens : 1)Nothing 2)One or more randomly generated characters attacks you. 3)One or more randomly generated characters greet you, and offer you some advice. This advice could be something like "Greetings traveler, careful if you travel east... I heard the howls of a large pack of wolves." Then somewhere in the east a pack of wolves would be created in the nearest spawn point used for such events. 4)A generic traveling merchant would offer you some standard wares. 5)A silly flavor text event happens that pulls you into the atmpsophere, or at the very least makes you grin before moving on. This is a very basic example, but having multiple playthroughs where the feeling of exploration and genuine suprise can be kept is such a big deal for me and makes the game incredibly more fun! ----Exploration---- -Hidden items are always fun to find. It's like an Easter egg hunt but instead of chocolate goodness you find a sum of gold, or a magic scroll, or a potion. Nothing necessary, and nothing big but just a little way to reward players who take the time to look or have a good eye at catching cleverly placed secrets. Holding the tab button to highlight everything would be an exception to this rule, and these secrets wouldn't be shown through that button (if it exists). ----Life in the City---- -Something that I loved about BG1 and BG2 was how long you could enjoy the game while being in a single place. The major cities had a perfect balance of places to explore, places to experience combat, places to shop, and places to progress storylines. You never had to leave the city walls because "I feel like fighting something now." I would love it if there were even more reasons to stay in the city! A few ideas I have are : Auction house / Retail Investments : Instead of selling an item directly to a merchant you could place it on an auction or lend it to a shop keep in the hopes of earning extra gold with some patience. You would return to the auction house or store you owned/invested in several game play hours or days later and either collect the gold you asked for (if the game decided it sold) or scan through the offers you got for the item. For example : Say you placed a +1 Longsword on the market. When you return about a day later you get the following options: 1)Don't sell; Keep +1 Longsword. 2)Accept offer : +1 Flail. 3)Accept offer : 1000 gold. 4)Accept offer : Scroll of Identify, 200 gold, and Potion of Minor Healing. The options would always vary between existing and total profit as well. Sometimes you would see great deals and other times you would see lousy deals and be forced to decide. - An idea I had about cities is having minor quests that utilize a player's skill set. Imagine if you ran across someone injured somewhere and at the cost of one of your heal spells/or potions you just saved someone's life. Maybe someone has a disease or negative effect and asks you for a cure. If you happen to have the right spell, you can decide to heal them or even charge them a specific amount of gold for your services. I know a lot of people would see these things as pointless but interacting with the world in non-combat ways is extremely satisfying for me and really increases my enjoyment of the game. I loved the idea of paying for spell casts when you went to temples, and I always wished I could go around selling spells. ----Weather Effects---- -Day and night cycles can have interesting effects on game play! I would love to see spells and abilities that have both positive and negative effects based on current sun/moon cycles or rain/sun/snow conditions! ----Item Related Quests---- -Finding Pommel of the Equalizer in BG2 instantly made me happy. It was a brilliant idea by the developers to put a partial item in the beginning of the game that did many things to the player. It explained to them through game play mechanics alone that this game has specific item pieces in the world, there's definitely a place you can craft items at, and that the items in the game have stories fueling their special powers. I loved this concept but I felt like there could have been more than there was in the game. I would love to see a lot of items that are craftable through exploration and am just as equally interested in learning the stories behind them. Creating actual quests revolving around piecing together legendary items would be a lot of fun! ----Stat Related Quests---- Something Dragon Age Origins tried to do but didn't deliver properly were quests that are directly dependant on your characters skills and/or stats. I think they didn't do it right because it wasn't used enough. There were very few examples of when it actually mattered, and it felt like a lazy attempt to instill a feeling of significance in the world but in the end further illuminated the linear path they took. I think there should be a large variety of NPCs placed throughout every city and even some amongst the wilderness. They should be randomized to discourage meta gaming, compliment replayability, and encourage exploration. These NPCs would present to the player problems such as: 1) Someone needs help with identifying a potentially cursed scroll or item. A spell of indentify completes the quest and earns the player a reward. 2) Someone needs help with picking the lock off of a box they found. If you're party is capable of picking the lock then you are presented with three options : accept the reward of "x" amount of gold, share half of what's inside of the lockbox, or chose the evil route and just kill the person and take everything for yourself. 3) Somebody challenges you to play a card game. If you agree to playing the game it automatically determines the winner based on your stats. If you lose you forfeit an agreed upon amount of gold prior to the bet. If you win you earn the agreed upon reward and are told in a quick text popup something like "Your quick dexterity catches the hussler trying to cheat you, he apologizes and forfeits." Or, "Your sharp intellect overcomes your oponent, and you win the game." These small stat checks are insignificant in comparison to the grand scheme of the game but offfer a very rewarding feeling when you are tested on the spot and walk away the victor. ----Difficulty and Danger---- -Something I really hate is level scaling. I hate fighting something blindly with the comfort of knowing level scaling is on my side. I think anyone who has played BG2 can say that their first encounter with Kangaxx the Lich was a very humbling and likely hilarious event. It would sadden me if anyone ever actually got frustrated upon dying there. That event alone made me recognize that I'm living in dangerous times where anything can happen and I'm not the Rambo of the world like in most video games. This is further emphasized with how Irenicus brings the wizards to their knees in the beginning. Trying to fight them yourself soon after learning that you can't cast spells in the city and deciding to do it anyway soon proves that you're no match against them! Taking the time to avoid a recognizable danger is way more satisfying because it reminds me that I'm not playing a normal video game, I'm playing one of the best ever made! It's also satisfying to be rewarded upon recognizing danger and having it pay off...and then later in the future returning to that location and showing off how strong I've become during my journey and to overcome and obstacle that was once a sure death to my former self. ----Awkward Game Mechanics---- -I love having a large variety of characters/companions that join my party but I never want to have my intentions of playing with a certain group get in the way of their perception of me. I would take everyone if I could but you can only have 5 other party members with you. I get that, I like that, I think a total of 6 is a perfect number and I hope it stays that way because personally I think 7 or more would get a little too crazy. HOWEVER... I don't want a dialogue option saying "Sorry but you can't join us; we're full." What the hell does that even mean? Is this game that prides itself on immersion actually have a dialogue option that's directly referencing a game play mechanic? That bothered me really bad. What should have happened is you should either let them join or say something along the lines of "I think it would be better if you met with me at 'insert hub like copper coronet'." At least that way the player wouldn't be discouraged about potentially pissing off the NPC. And yes I know that as far as stats/numbers go you aren't actually experiencing any real disadvantage from the NPC you're turning down but I have watched many others including myself experience a pang of guilt because of the game forcing you to chose that dialogue option. A great example is when you are in BG1 and you have 1 empty slot and a group like Jaheria and Khalid want to join you. Or Minsc and eventually Dynaheir. You are in middle of the wilderness and you say to their face "We don't have room for you.". That is a large error in game design, I think, and should be at the very least rephrased. Another example of awkwardness is when you first enter Spellhold in the game BG2. You're decently far into the game at that point and almost assuredly have a full party by then. You suddenly meet Imoen and are forced to decide somebodies fate on the spot. Not only is that just an awkward way of putting the player in a tough position entirely based on game mechanics, but you also are very likely to have to reload since there's a strong possibility that whoever you decided to boot out of the party had some crucial items in their inventory. BG2 forces you to go through the clunky process of redoing the entire portion of that game simply because a game mechanic got in the way of your game's momentum. Sorry about the length of this rant but it's very important to me and I wanted to be sure to get my point across.

I'm sure "This is an idea I came up with" has become an automatic eyeroller of a phrase for many people on here, not least the developers themselves. Nevertheless, this is an idea I mentioned in a thread on the Wasteland 2 boards that almost immediately struck me as a good fit for PE, and people seemed to like it a lot over there, so I think it's worth copy-pasting. Probably worth noting that I was here assuming a hard threshold-based system of Speech checks, as in New Vegas. That may or may not be the case for PE, but I think at least some of this is still salient regardless. Oh, and Fallout obviously has a classless skill system and PE doesn't, so. I'm also going to censor some of the curse words, as I'm not yet sure of this forum's policy regarding them. Now, obviously, this isn't something I think PE should adopt wholesale, but there are some interesting ideas in there that could be adapted to PE's systems. I would never claim it's perfect, but it's a good starting point. What say you, PE forumgoers? I'm open to any reasonable criticisms.

Hi all. So of the various classes in PRoject Eternity, ciphers were one of the most highly anticipated, based on the rudimentary polling done in the General Discussion Forum. So I wanted to hear everyone's ideas for mechanics and where the devs should get their mechanics ideas from when it comes to ciphers. Also, feel free to ask any questions here that you guys would want answered from the devs. Maybe, we can hlp each other out and find quotes to answer some questions. I personally wonder if ciphers will have consumable resources like "wounds" for the monks. How are ciphers going to be different than the other classes?