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Across the various forums (Here, RPGCodex, SomethingAwful etc) there seems to be a fair divide about the existence of Item Durability in Project Eternity. Here is a response from J.E. Sawyer to give context. The purposes of it as described in this post seem to be: A money sink in case players don't invest in the Stronghold and to prevent non-optimal placement (or waste) of skill points when investing points into Crafting on two or more characters. Do you think Item Durability has a place in Project Eternity? If you do not 100% agree with the proposed mechanics, what do you suggest that they change?

Okay,so I thought it would be nice to do a simple poll on crafting. The main point is to see which games out of my limited selection you would like to see influence the PE crafting system the most. Obsidian will obviously do their best to make the most compelling crafting system that'll add to gameplay and enjoyment. This will hopefully be able to give some sort of indication as to what games we'd like to influence the crafting system. Hopefully my selections as answers are reasonable and offer up a suitable array of options.

It has been previously stated that Josh and Tim are going to go for Blue selection circles for Player controlled units in Project Eternity and Red for enemies due to the consideration of those that are color-blind (including themselves). This may be why ToEE had blue circles instead of the legacy green color. I don't have a problem with the fact that they are doing that, but for me, the lack of legacy selection circles will just not attain the same 'feeling' to the game as the older Infinity Engine games. It's something that annoyed the hell out of me from the get-go in Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition as well (a game which I regret purchasing). This might be a bit late to request seeming as though the selection circle code has already been written, but in the sake of keeping the nostalgic/familiar feel of the older isometric infinity engine games in Project Eternity, I was wondering whether it would be possible to allow players to have the choice of being able to revert back to the legacy selection circle colors. I also believe that there would be those who would love the option to be able to pick the color of selection circles for player-controlled characters and NPCs (I believe enemies should always be red, and I assume most think the same). Then there is the debate about whether selection circles should be always visible or only visible when the mouse cursor is hovering over the selectable area inside one. Is it possible to be able to customize how selection circles are displayed among the "Feedback" settings in the options menu ? It's obviously something that you won't want to be worrying about at the moment since you're designing the game, but it would be something to think about during post-production if it's easy to implement and you have the time to do it. So here is a poll, if it may be the most trivial poll ever.

The replace the clumsy "l" system..here's a multi-option poll. Indira, if you could copy-paste you list with links and/or more detailed descriptions, I'd be much oblidged. Untill then, more info on each point cna be founf in the other thread.

Hello. Based on what we know AT THE MOMENT about the different classes and your previous experiences with other IE/D&D games, I wanted to know what class you will choose to play as a party first. A few rules: There will be no multi-classing, so pick only one. You have one class you can pick for your PC. You will be obviously picking up other companions to help fill out the required skills in different quests, so just think about the class for your PC. Do not consider what we know about the companions (which is absolutely nothing). If you are going to be playing a game filled with only your characters from the player house, tell me the class that you will be playing for your PC, the one you relate to the most. We only have descriptions given to us from OEI and what we know from prior IE games and table-top experiences. Limit yourself to that and don't say, "I'd play this class first if I know that they will have X and Y implemented for sure." No design input from players, no aspirations for your classes. This is the first play through, so no meta-gaming. Think about what's been important in previous experiences and what you've enjoyed playing in the past or what might be exciting for this first play through. Comment below with which ones make up your party and other thoughts. Let me know if you think the poll sucks and what I should do to change it before the editting window runs out.

Since we are going to find out more about up to four classes soon, I was wondering which classes are the ones people are the most curious about. On one hand, we have Druids, Monks and Rangers where we have very little information to work off of. On the other hand, we have others classes like the Cipher, Rogue and Paladin where even though there is released information, there are at least some of us who want to know more MORE MORE because it has piqued our interest, or it is our favorite typical class, or some other personal reason out there. So in short, if you could pick which 4 classes had information released this week, which ones would you pick? (I will, however, be very amused if they are released before I even finish posting.)

I love role-playing games. I enjoying playing them but I prefer to run them. One of the most frustrating things about running games is never getting to tell the story. Sometimes your players will just go a different path and miss out on something you made this can be horrible but creates some great creative challenges when forced to rewrite a scenarios in your head. Sometimes the game just never happens. I have made scenarios, settings and entire worlds that players have never set foot in. I might go into more detail with that later Anyone else ever had issues like this?

At Chosen of Mystra they've got a guide on how to make a sound set (It is very easy, I made 2 in a weekend, I'll have to redo some, probably in the coming week for BGEE). I don't know how many sound files there was for Planescape: Torment but there is quite a few. Inspired by this thread ("Dialog mostly voiced?"). Making a double post/second post on what I'm voting. Don't forget to tell if the Poll is bad (with suggestions/feedback) so I can make it better before Edit time runs out!

A poll putting dangerous ground to the question. A related topic. http://forums.obsidi...errain-effects/

If there was only one RPG to be saved in the world I would choose.... Baldurs Gate 2 What was your decision? Choose wisely!

I've seen a number of threads on what type of magic system people would prefer and most of them seem to be following the standard tropes. However, a few years ago I ran into a Mana Based homebrew for D&D 3.5 that did some really interesting and inovative things and that I think could work really well for this kind of game. For those of you who don't want to follow the link; the basic premise of this system was that, rather than gaining a huge pool of mana so you could pay for increasingly more costly spells as you leveled, your mana pool would be kept relatively tiny and the cost of spells would actually decrease. This was accomplished by setting there pool equal to your primary casting stat + your level + your con-mod* and providing a level based chart for spell costs. While this means that your pool would increase a bit over the course of play, you'd have to be really trying in order to break 60 points by level 20; which is nothing compared to the 232 points the official mod gave to wizards. The first outcome of this is that you get a really smooth and easily controlled power curve. Since a character's resources aren't going to change to much you can make sure that they're always able to cast a similar number of level appropriate spells, so at level 1 they're not going to fire two magic missiles and then switch over to a crossbow and at level 20 they're still not going to be able to spam Dragon Slay. Yes this does mean that eventually the cost of lower level spells goes down to zero, but this isn't actually a problem. The thing is, when you're fighting Cthulhu, nobody cares if you can cast an infinite number of fireballs; it just isn't relevant. One of the other interesting things this does is let you put a reasonable limit on the number of different spells a single character has access to at any given time. If you rely on the limited casting of a Vancian Magic system then you have to eventually give the player many spell slots; which they might, reasonably, choose to fill with many different spells. This seems detrimental to play for three different reasons. It encourages the bars of abilities found in games like WoW. These take up a good amount of space on the screen and break immersion (especially if you're controlling them via mouse). Having a large number of spells that have to be fit into premade slots of fixed level actually hampers experimentation and tactical play. The reason for this is simply one of numbers and effort. When given a relatively large number of choices it becomes significantly easier to repeat a small number of good selections as many times as necessary. Ironically, they're still likely to have a spell for almost any given situation on-hand or, failing that, enough generic spells to bludgeon most monsters into submission based on sheer weight of magic. Having discreet chunks of spell power makes gradual recovery harder since you have to come up with a scheme that's more complex or cumbersome than "the number slowly ticks up". While it can be done, this tends to encourage all-or-nothing recovery and, since no one want's to play while their favorite character has been rendered all but useless, this tends to encourage the five minute work day. With this system your power isn't determined so heavily by the variety of spells you have (in fact, there could be some advantages to purposely limiting your selection) . When combined with Grimoire this opens some interesting possibilities. One way of doing it would be to tie your spells to a Grimoire; under this system you could have trade offs between the number of spells it holds (capping at maybe 5 for one-handed spell books and 7 for two-handed ones) and other attributes like mana cost, strength and casting speed. Alternatively, if you wanted to take a page from demon souls, you could have the number of spells available be determined by a secondary stat; which would help discourage S.A.D. and allow Grimoires to effect spells on a more fundamental level (rather than just making spells faster or stronger the Book of Ra might convert all spells into fire spells while the Book of the Shattered Prism might multiply all projectile spells). And, of course, there's nothing to say you can't do both. After all, there will be more than one casting class. The last thing this sort of mana system does is bring mages more into line with mundane classes. Normally Mages get a completely unique mechanic (like vancian magic) or a completely new stat (like mana) while mundane characters either get to use their abilities for free or use stamina. The problem with this is it leave the mages playing a slightly different game. This can make balancing the two types of classes hard (just look at D&D 3.5) and, on a more interesting note, this makes it hard for mundanes to gain magical abilities and for mages to gain non-magical abilities. What tends to happen is either the character is free to use abuse the ability as much as they want , because the resource it draws on isn't used for anything else) or they can't use it a relevant number of times, because they haven't invested or couldn't invest in it. With this sort of system, there's no reason "mana" couldn't be some form of stamina that gets used by all of the classes. In fact, that would go along way towards explaining how some of the more impressive physical feats are performed and just what HP is. Right, I guess that's all I have to say for now; so, does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions?

Hello again! Sorry for making yet another thread about magic, but I thought this deserved to be discussed separately from cooldowns and even Vancian magic. Well, in another thread, someone commented that he thought the reason he disliked vancian magic is that it looks like an instant respecification of the character. Like, you have a wizard decked with only fire spells, like fireball, flame shield, summon elemental, and what not. Suddenly the next day, he could memorize completely different things, like clairvoyance, invisibility, phantasmal force, teleport and what not. If you have a system like, say, Diablo, or DA, or even like Arcanum, this kind of thing really wouldn't fly. If you compare the spells to other abilities, like they are in those, that approach really wouldn't fly. But spells in D&D aren't abilities. In setting, the ability to create a frozen icicle that you can hurl toward your enemy doesn't come from understanding "the true nature of ice and cold". Spells aren't like a field of science, like combinatorics or thermodynamics. Spells are much more discrete sets of knowledge. They are, in D&D, like a specific theorem or equation. The reason changing your spells every day isn't like a respec is the same reason a warrior exchanging his sword for a mace isn't a respec. Spells, in those games, are like items, not specific abilities. And I really like them for it. One of the really cool things about spells as items is that they allow you to go wild in designing them. Consider, for example, a spell that summons a dead shield maiden to yourself. These maidens all have specific names, stories, and all were buried in the same church, which the spell's creator desecrated and bound to him through this spell. Every time you summon one of the maidens, she is freed, to the point that the spell will eventually run out! Heck, if an enemy summons one of them, he will "spend" one of the shield maidens. If someone (maybe the party itself, maybe one of its enemies, triggered by a player action) was to cleanse the temple, the spell would fail completely. Now, about this example, actually taken from the DCC RPG (a P&P game). I really love this kind of approach, the one where spells are something you can interact with, instead of simply a combat option or a piece in an adventure game like puzzle. But this makes much more sense in a game that has spells as items. If you spent your sole skill point you got when you leveled up to get this ability, and suddenly it runs out, or is gone, or is modified because one of the shield maidens was possessed by a devil, it would be extremely unfair. At the very least, it would either lead to the more predictable abilities to be more worthwhile or to the unpredictable ones to be really unbalanced to compensate. Now, I don't want to sound biased. Obviously, I much prefer spells as items, but I expect some of you disagree. I understand most people who prefer spells as abilities like them because the game is more balanced, than when you simply let casters have lots of cool toys that can run amok. I don't care much about exact balancing however. I think having the game run amok is part of the fun. Having it be unfairly hard or easy sometimes, based on your decisions, is part of what makes it worth playing. But maybe there are things I am not seeing here, so I would love if people who disagree with me would chime in and explain their position. Of course, those who agree are also welcome to comment.

Please notice: this thread and the polls are designed only for members of the Obsidian Order of Eternity, so please don't vote if you're not a member! If you're not a member yet feel free to join us for the small membership fee of $8 which you have to add to you current kickstarter pledge. Then you can choose a title like "..... of the Obisidian Order" and introduce yourself in our Obsidian Order thread: http://forums.obsidi...nts-you-part-2/ Dear brothers and sisters of the Obsidian Order of Eternity! At the time I write this post our order counts already more than 200 members which is more than we have ever dreamt of at the time this order was initiated. Thank you all for joining us and contributing to our cause to support Obsidian in any way possible to make Project Eternity the best classical RPG ever! With the growing size of the Order I thought that the time has come to ask you about your opinion on various questions concerning the Obsidian Order. So I started this thread to give you - the members of the Obsidian order - the possibility to voice your feelings and opinions. Please vote in the polls and write additional remarks in the posts of this thread. Thank you. There are more questions in the second part of the survey: http://forums.obsidi...y-polls-part-2/ Hail to the Order!

Pretty much what the title says, and the polls say; what would you say would be the best system or even combination of systems you'd like in Project Eternity? Would you like it if everything the characters you fight against are lootable, entirely randomized loot, what? Personally, I enjoy a combination of them; what you see is what you get, and being able to take what would otherwise be vendor trash items -- like Golden Idols or plates -- and giving them to NPCs that will give you a slight discount in return, or even open up new items to purchase, giving the player a wide variety of options. Sadly, this is not the case in most RPGs, but you know, I'm not terribly picky about it. Still love the 'you get what the character is wearing.' the best out of the options, but this being a poll, I also wanted to know what you all think, and would enjoy in Project Eternity on a personal, as well as a 'fun' level, and whatnot.

I, personally, find this conceit of some games to be kind of . . . annoying. Resistances? Okay. Armor that reduces damage from some sources? Okay. But needing to have: The Bludgeon weapon The Piercing weapon The Slashing weapon The Adamantine sword The Silver sword The Cold Iron sword The Lawful sword The Chaotic sword The Good sword The Evil sword The Epic sword The Wood sword The Crystal sword The Adamantine and Good sword The Silver AND Good sword . . . Just to do reasonable damage to most monsters is kind of . . . insane. Not to mention the fact that you can't REALLY build that Fire Specialist mage because, like, 1/3 of the mobs in the game are FLAT OUT IMMUNE to fire. And if you do a fire/acid specialist, there's still always gonna be some that are immune to both. And PLAYERS never get IMMUNITY gear. Let's have resistances, sure. But I'd really prefer to ditch outright immunities unless they're extremely specific or only on unique boss mobs where it's pretty dang obvious. Let certain creatures be immune to Piercing weapons (and have weapons that do 2 or more damage types), maybe or have the Fire Dragon be immune to fire. But don't let's be crazy.

A simple question, should experience scale with player level or should experience be static for enemies killed? Example of level scaling experience: At level 1, Billy kills a rat and gains 5 experience. At level 2, Billy kills another rat and only gains 3 experience. At level 5, billy gains no experience for killing rats. At level 10 Billy kills Firkraag, and gains 96,000 experience experience . At level 20 he kills Firkraag again (damned cults, resurrecting evil dragons...) and earns 6,000 exp. I'm a fan of scaling experience myself - I like it because it keeps numbers on the smaller side (no millions and millions of XP to level) and really rewards players when they accomplish more difficult tasks (assuming we can avoid easily cheesed encounters), rather than reinforcing a grinding ethic that having no scaling can lead to where players just plow through all the easy stuff first so they can breeze through things that are actually close to their level of difficulty. Scaling experience also allows players to choose to do difficult tasks but not "lose out" on the experience provided by doing smaller quests or tasks since killing those bandits without having leveled yet will counter any exp lost by not collecting 10 herbs for the merchant and leveling before the fight. Thoughts?

The devs say our character can be of any origins in PE, however, since in the start of the game we witness some very unusual events, plus with the special soul system, maybe we can assume that these events lead to some changes in our soul and thus make us gain unique powers. I think there are both sides of having a great power when gaming. On the one hand, it will definitely add some mysterious verve to the game. The nameless one of PS:T is, of course, a very sucessful example of this. On the other hand, if it is not designed properly, it can make the game less interesting. I lke the idea of the spirit hunger of MotB, but I don't like the idea of 'if I don't do it, I'm gonna die'. And of course without special abilities the game can be equally fun. Look at the older scrolls, the IWD series, the DAO, so what's your opinion on this topic?

Updated my journal.

Please notice: this thread and the polls are designed only for members of the Obsidian Order of Eternity, so please don't vote if you're not a member! If you're not a member yet feel free to join us for the small membership fee of $8 which you have to add to you current kickstarter pledge. Then you can choose a title like "..... of the Obisidian Order" and introduce yourself in our Obsidian Order thread: http://forums.obsidi...nts-you-part-2/ Dear brothers and sisters of the Obsidian Order of Eternity! This is part 2 of my survey for the Obsidian Order, make sure that you don't miss part 1: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60736-obsidian-order-only-polls-part-1/ Please also refer to part 1 for the introduction to the issues of that survey. Hail to the Order!

EDIT: sorry. Poll was broken when this was originally posted. NO was the only choice. :I. i am real good at the forums. #1. EDIT2: Wizard Tower is a generalization. It was the easiest way for me to express the concept. What I MEAN is a stronghold. and an INTERESTING one. Not a generic tower. You know: A Wizards tower that can be acquired in the latter portion of the game. I personally LOVED the Planar Sphere. It was one of my favorite things in Baldur's Gate II. It just felt...so...so...mysterious. so magical. the art and atmosphere was simply perfect. I wished they could have spent more time and resources making it even more dynamic. More exploration and creation. More magic. De'arnise keep was pretty cool as well (though I loved the planar sphere more.) Who would like to see something similar in Project Eternity? for the wizards tower, there are certain mechanics that, when properly implemented, are simply LOADS of fun. 1. Apprentice(s)--Selection of, Training of, turning them into your bestest friends(slaves). And the growth of their power and ambition(will they be loyal to you? will they betray you? is their apprenticeship just a means to an end for them?) I don't just mean you pick from a lineup of potential apprentices. Ideally, searching for and convincing potential applicants (or their parents) to become your students should be a journey in itself. 2. Exploration of magics and magical beings dark and wonderful. I can't think of much to say here. It's...Just the feeling of exploring Jon Irenicus's lab. Finding all the strange, horrible, and wondrous things there. The wonder of things beyond your comprehension. the djinn and the 'things' in the tubes that were once living beings. now imagine that YOU are the one who's delving into forbidden or lost magic and binding these great creature to your will. going to great lengths to create obscure magical apparatus. 3. Experiments. Learn more about magic. Learn more about anatomy. Can you use the body parts of living creatures to sew together a protector for your lab? Can you enchant someone's boots to cause spiders to fall madly in love with them? then again, why spiders? why not bears? the world needs more bears falling in love with villagers. can we do it? Let's find out. I assure you Mr. peasant sir that amorphous blob over there was absolutely NOT your son. it was a bandit. your son is the rooster in that cage over there. by the scorpions. There are just so many great examples of crazy magic in Baldur's Gate and Planescape torment. I love those things. Many great chances for hilarity, fantastic text, and, if you're too lazy to do it yourself, forcing apprentices to experiment on kidnapped peasants.

I've seen a lot of generalizations on both sides of this argument. Often people who want romance arcs and people who are strictly opposed to them (if that polarization of the player base is even valid at all) lump their opposite number into a category that makes broad assumptions about their opinions on multiple subjects. So let's try to characterize these people more so we can stop arguing past each other at straw-men and people that may have annoyed us elsewhere that happen to share an opinion we disagree with. Only vote in the above poll if you are actively hoping for one or more 'romance options' in the game. Hopefully this should set some light on the spread of opinions and the priorities of this particular side of the debate and allow for more nuanced conversation elsewhere on the topic.

Yes, I understand we already have a topic devoted to theoretically probable romances in Project Eternity, so I'm really sorry for creating yet another one, but I feel like polls that we had by this day (Sex and romance poll, Gods save us another romance thread) are either badly structured, either biased with the way questions are formulated, so here I am with my effort to construct something that is coherent and objective as much as possible.