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I've started a wizard playthrough and came across this issue multiple times. When enemies in the backline not engaged by any allies are attacked, they move towards their attacker, completely ignoring other creatures in the way. If the path is blocked they move their allies out of the way, sometimes out of AoE spells and more. Here is an example This is not limited to 1 enemy moved either. Eder can engage 4 enemies but one creature in the back can move all 4 of them out of the way to go for the wizard in the back. Companions have no trouble blocking each other in the same situation (they try to move around allies), so why is that not the case with the enemies? It's like enemies just don't stick to the floor properly or something. Anyone else has this issue? Edit: After some testing, I noticed companions also doing this occasionally. It's like when characters engage something they become attached to that rather than the floor.

Is it possible to trigger disengagement attacks from push/pull abilities? For example, My tank as an enemy engaged and my cipher successfully casts Amplified Thrust, pushing the enemy away. Would this trigger a disengagement attack? Cheers.

I use the IEMod and I have "Disable Engagement" selected, which seems to improve some of the pathing issues in PoE. However, I'm starting to wonder how this affects Fighter abilities like Defender (1) and Engagement effects like the one caused by wielding Shatterstar (2): (1) DEFENDER - The fighter adopts a more conservative combat strategy, concentrating on defending incoming attacks. The fighter increases his or her number of Engagement targets to three, but at the expense of Deflection. In game text: Modal, Speed Instant User +2 enemies engaged, -5 deflection Prerequisites: level 3+ Fighter. (2) SHATTERSTAR (War Hammer) Combat Type Melee Handing One-handed Attack Speed Average Interrupt 1.0 sec (Stronger) (non‑default) Damage Type Crush/Pierce (Best) Damage 13‑18 Bonuses Two Damage Types: does Crush and Pierce damage (weapon type bonus) Superior Interruption 2: Higher Interrupt value (+0.5 sec) Enchantments Annihilation: +0.5 to Crit Damage Multiplier Guarding: +1 enemies Engaged Fine: +4 Accuracy, +15% Damage Can anyone offer some clarity on what exactly happens when 'Disable Engagement' is selected in the IEMod? Will disabling Engagement in the IEMod turn off all Engagement effects in the game and if so, how would I go about tanking without Engagement effects? Thanks in advance, and good luck in your adventures!

Do we know anything about Engagement mechanics in Deadfire? I've scoured the Q&A transcripts and haven't been able to dig up much in the way of mechanics design plans for anything, really. I DO hope it's a bit more refined than in the first game. I know in some discussions during that game's production, we were really hoping that engaging foes would be some kind of active-use ability, maybe that only certain classes got. It's a bit silly for everyone to just passively stick to everyone else. I love the idea of engagement and disengagement, 'cause it's equally silly to just nope your way out of active combat with someone. But... I just wish it worked a bit better. It should be a bit more intuitive. "I want to avoid that guy." Or "I want to stop this guy from getting past." Not just Katamary Damacy, "Oh no here come people towards each other! Oh no! OH NO THEY'RE ALL STUCK!"

I am currently working my way through the Endless Paths and it occurred to me how nice it would be to see a replay of my most recent battle or even the most epic battles of my 'campaign'. As players we spend all of our combat time micro-managing the scenario with very little time to sit back and enjoy the show. Imagine, at the conclusion of a long and draining battle being able to watch the encounter again at a preferred speed and, do I dream too much, perspective. There could be a site where players post their encounters for other players to rate and comment on, glory beckons! Food for thought anyway. And yes, I do know about You Tube.

Heya So, I started a fresh game on Path of the Damned difficulty, and I have to say, it's really challenging and fun. Really have to focus on tactics in combat, and it's a nice change after playing on hard and steamrolling everything But, I have an issue with the melee engagement system. Don't get me wrong, I think it makes sense and I love it. I just think it's missing a key feature that would make sense both in game mechanics and "realism". While engaged in melee with an enemy, I'd love it if I could "sidestep", walk backwards slowly, or turn the enemy without getting disengagement attacks. I think it's reasonable to imagine that you're fighting someone, and you sidestep a bit without to turn around completely and face in the other direction. It's happened quite a lot when I want to keep the enemy in the same position, just move a little bit to the side or to the back to allow flanking, or clearing the doorway to let other party members through. I think disengagement attacks should only occur if leaving a certain range of the enemy, or clicking too far away from him. I tried to watch the combat in the game more closely, and I don't think there are animations for it, but still hoping it gets heard and added to the game

It seems that after a good amount of time playing the beta; some players (including myself) have problems with the engagement mechanic as it is currently implemented. Is there any issues or solutions you guys would like to discuss?

... I need somebody with a human touch .. hey you, always on the run gotta slow it down baby, gotta have some fun. As you all know, Melee Engagement has been a hot topic on the forums for the last month or so. I have been meaning to do an official topic on it for some time, and I feel I can delay no longer after seeing some shocking news in the recent Kickstarter Update. The PE dev team’s conclusion from their internal playthrough is that the Melee Engagement has problems with visual feedback. While this is a problem, there are far worse problems with the concept, design and implementation of the mechanic than there are with it's visual feedback. Obsidian have stated that they are going to devote precious 2D Art time, UI programming time and possibly animation/VFX time to making engagement clearer. This pledge, combined with the serious problems under the hood makes me really concerned about the amount development time and resources that will be spent on *trying* to fix a mechanic isn't a core mechanic of the game and isn't essential to invoking a modern Infinity Engine experience. So I would like to ask Obsidian to stop right now, consider my words, and the evidence that I am about to present before you spend any more development time on this mechanic, because it has serious problems that you may not be aware of and in my opinion the game will be much better off if it is cut, and those resources spent elsewhere. What is Melee Engagement and how does it work? Melee units in Pillars of Eternity have an invisible circle around them that defines Engagement range. This circle is slightly larger than melee range by default and can be increased by abilities and buffs. Melee units can engage one enemy by default, a limit which can be raised by abilities, talents and buffs (a Fighter with Defender mode on and the Hold the Line talent can engage up to 3 enemies in BB v364) When a unit moves into the Engagement range of an enemy, and that enemy has free engagement slots, that unit is engaged and an AI targeting clause stops their movement, cancels their current action and orders them to attack the first enemy they are engaged by. If a unit attempts to move while engaged, they suffer an automatic, invisible disengagement attack, free of recovery time, from the currently equipped primary weapon of the units they are engaged by. Regardless of the outcome of the attack, engagement ends after the attack has been made If the unit is hit by a disengagement attack they play a long interrupt hit reaction that stops their movement. There is no physical limit to the amount of disengagement attacks that a unit can score in a period of time. Does the Melee Engagement system fail it’s intended purpose? No it doesn't. It makes the first enemy (or enemies) that run by a melee character, stop to attack that melee character. That is the intended behavior and that is what happens. It addresses one specific case of the one specific style of kiting cited in the Kickstarter update – ranged units kiting melee units. When a melee unit engages a ranged unit in combat, the ranged unit cannot retreat without suffering a disengagement attack. This problem is meant to stop the player from kiting the AI melee units with bow wielding characters. Multiple methods were actually implemented to try and prevent this specific scenario – bow damage is pretty low, recovery time was previously paused while moving and now recovery time after making a ranged attack is slowed while moving. Those are it’s two intended goals as listed in the Kickstarter Update. It meets both of them. One other noticeable thing the system achieves is it heavily penalizes and disincentivizes movement in combat after the initial melee has begun. Josh Sawyer is a heavy tabletop player and has a lot of experience with turn-based games, and has often talked about movement coming with an opportunity cost in combat, so one can conclude that this behavior is also intentional. So if the system meets it’s design goals, then what's the problem ? There are many problems with the concept, design and implementation of the Melee Engagement system, but the most glaring issue is that it is completely abusable by the player. Since Melee Engagement range is a circle around a character and is larger than that character, one can theoretically overlap those circles so that when an enemy unit moves into engagement range of one character, it moves into engagement range of other nearby characters. Moving to attack the first enemy it was engaged by provokes a disengagement attack from the rest of the enemies that it is engaged by. Here are some examples of what happens when that occurs: In this video I have a party of six Fighters. These Fighters have Defender mode which allows multiple engagements and increases their engagement range (larger circles). This allows me to overlap the engagement range of all of my characters. Since disengagement attacks are free from recovery time and are a standard attack, I equipped them all with Two Handed Weapons to maximize damage output. In this video I have a party of three Barbarians equipped with Two Handed Weapons. These Barbarians have normal Engagement range and can only engage one enemy, but they have an ability called Carnage, which makes lower damage AoE cleave attacks on nearby enemies. Carnage is also procced on disengagement attacks.

Update by Josh Sawyer, Project Director and Lead Designer Last week, our art director, Rob, showed you our godlike concepts and dazzled you with an in-depth technical breakdown of how we're doing animation rigging on the project. This week, we'll be talking about a different technical subject, but one that's more connected to gameplay: engagement -- specifically, melee engagement. Melee engagement is a solution to two common problems in the Infinity Engine games: melee characters' inability to control an area and ranged characters' ability to "kite" melee characters. In the Infinity Engine games, melee characters could be quite powerful in toe-to-toe combat, but many opponents found ways to foil those characters with little difficulty. Fast characters could easily rush around a slower melee character with impunity and ranged characters could backpedal perpetually out of reach. If you're familiar with D&D 3E/3.5/4E/Pathfinder's attack of opportunity mechanics, Project Eternity's melee engagement fills a similar role by making melee combatants "sticky". Coming near a melee combatant means being drawn into Engagement with him or her, a state that can be risky to get out of. Here's how it works: when two opposed combatants come near each other and one of them a) has a melee weapon equipped b) is not moving and c) is not currently at his or her maximum limit of engagement targets (the standard is 1), the other character will be Engaged. When an opponent is Engaged by an attacker, moving any significant distance away from the attacker will provoke a Disengagement Attack. A Disengagement Attack has an inherent Accuracy bonus, does significantly more damage than a standard attack, and will call a hit reaction animation while momentarily stopping the character's movement. When it's initiated, a Disengagement Attack automatically breaks Engagement on the target, but if the target is also the attacker's current melee target, the attacker will typically be able to re-establish Engagement before the target can move farther away. In this manner, melee combatants, especially ones that have high Accuracy and damage per hit, have a solid mechanic for keeping enemies close to them -- or making the cost of escape extremely expensive. Of course, there are other ways to end Engagement. If the attacker switches to a non-melee weapon or performs a non-melee-based action, Engagement immediately ends. If the attacker moves away from their Engagement targets, is paralyzed, knocked down, or otherwise prevented from maintaining a threat, Engagement will also immediately end. If the attacker has a limited number of Engagement targets (as most do) and switches his or her attack focus to a different character, Engagement immediately ends. We believe that Engagement can give AI a clear "decision point" where they can evaluate the threat of their new status and choose the appropriate course of action. For player-controlled characters, it makes melee enemies more potent threats and presents players with tactical challenges to solve. We want Engagement to be a mechanic that players and enemies can mess with using a variety of class Abilities and general Talents, so we will be experimenting with a variety of elements to that end: Fighters' Defender mode allows them to engage two additional targets and increases the range at which they engage targets. This gives fighters much greater capability to control the area around them. The limited-use Escape ability lets rogues break Engagement without provoking a Disengagement Attack. It is generally best used when the rogue's enemy is preoccupied with another target. Barbarians can use Wild Rush to temporarily ignore the movement stop and hit reactions from Engagement and Disengagement Attacks, respectively -- though they can still suffer massive damage while powering through. The wizards' Grimoire Slam allows them to attack an enemy in melee with their magically-charged grimoires, unleashing a concussive wave of energy on contact. If it hits, the attack knocks the target back, usually far enough to break Engagement in the process. Additionally, creatures may have their own special abilities related to Engagement and Disengagement Attacks. We hope that the system itself is easy to understand but allows for increasingly complex tactical considerations over the course of the game. That's all for this week! Let us know what you think of the mechanic on our forums. Your feedback, as always, is appreciated. In our next update, in addition to our usual weekly content, we'll also be continuing our thrilling coverage of Chris Avellone's playthrough of Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.

So.. I fully understand the concept of melee engagement, and I like it a lot. What I'm not quite clear on is why it has been implemented NOT with the traditional "attack-of-opportunity" implementation, but instead a "cannot leave without special abilities" implementation. Is there some reason for this? I sort of understand the mechanical reason for it (allowing frontliners to CC enemies) but I'm not clear on the rationale... if you're fighting with someone, nothing's stopping you from running away except the fact that you'll be turning your back on them (hence the traditional "attack-of-opportunity").