Search the Community

The original IE games, such as Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, implemented a strictly health=live, no health=death mechanic. In these rpgs you are fighting monsters who crush and shred your flesh with tooth and claw, spellcasting wizards who with arcane energy can immolate or rip the life right out of you, duelling brigands and orcs with maces and iron swords. You suffer injuries of the flesh, represented by health. Perhaps the most exhilarating and horrifying aspect of the original games, was the character portrait that would fill up with crimson, from their neck up, as they their bodies were being torn apart by demons and werewolves, and then.... death. A black and white portrait, all colour drained from their normally lively faces. Why then, would we have Endurance? You are fighting to the death with monsters and other humans. You do not simply fall unconscious when crushed by the fist of an Iron Golem, you are not simply knocked out after a Beholder casts Finger of Death. You die. I believe that Pillars of Eternity would benefit from this mechanic, not just for realism, but for the feeling of despair and revenge after each of your party's portraits fill up (not down) with red, accompanied by their agonized sounds as they are dealt damage, ending with a black and white portrait. not to sound too morbid

Now, now, hear me out. When I see my character's portrait fill up with red, that says health to me. Having played the IE games as well as the backer beta, I can say without a doubt that anyone coming from those games is going to be disoriented. "Endurance? WTF is that?" Well, they'll have to learn, as far as combat is concerned, it's really your health. When it reaches zero, you're out of it. That secondary bar? That's your actual health. Do you see the potential for confusion? In RPGs, health is the resource that keeps you in the fight. There is simply no reason to change this for the sake of having a two-tiered system. Any secondary system should be just that, secondary. In the current build, what's called "health" is really a secondary "wounds" system (I want to call it "endurance" because it depends on resting), while what is called "endurance" is, for all intents and purposes, your health. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a deal breaker. I had never picked up D&D before Baldur's Gate 2, and I had to learn about this "THAC0" thing; without really understanding it, I just had to know that lower armor numbers were better. Fine. Some game systems are quirky. But while BG and friends had to be true to Dungeons and Dragons--replete with oddities--Obsidian gets to do whatever they want. There is no reason this can't be both intuitive and tactical. I'm not asking for complexity to be removed, so take your "you're not hardcore" flames elsewhere. I'm asking them to refactor some terminology. It doesn't make sense that healing spells affect endurance, but to restore your health, you rest, an activity associated with restoring fatigue. How can priest spells make you feel peppy but are powerless against rended limbs? There's magical sleep for that. I get that gameplay trumps simulation--when the gameplay makes sense. Switch the strings "Health" and "Endurance" in all UI text and suddenly the systems click. Mostly. The remaining issue is of character "death". Not the falling-down "knocked out" when your portrait turns red, but the "true death" as Vampire Bill would say. "Endurance" doesn't quite fit this. So, what to do? Let the portrait represent "Health". Your actual health. When it runs out, you're maimed or dead depending on whether you have "Death" enabled. Increase health accordingly, so that it's no easier to die now than it was before this change. Restore health using the same spells/abilities/potions we already have for Endurance, or by resting. And--this last bit is optional--let resting restore a limited amount of health. I liked how in the IE games, if your character was hurt badly, they'd need to visit a temple, quaff a potion or get some clerical attention--unless you want to rest a few times. This part is debatable; the terminology change is the key point. Let the secondary, little green bar next to your portrait represent "Endurance" or "Fatigue". It depletes over time as you travel and exert yourself (use abilities etc), not when you take damage. It is a limit on the "adventuring day", basically a more granular stamina system. When the green bar depletes, your characters become tired and start accumulating penalties. Restore fatigue by resting. With these changes: Health works as it always has in RPGs throughout the ages, and portraits reflect health like they did in the IE games. Everything makes intuitive sense. Endurance (Fatigue) determines when you (should) rest. It's a natural delimiter on the adventuring day, only loosely tied to how much you've fought.

Hello All, When playing beta I have feeling that I am quite a lot forced to rest due to problems that I am quite ok to keep stamina up with cleric however I am almost on 0 health after few minor encounters with my frontliners. Especialy monk class is suffering as he need to get hit to work properly. I think that 1/4 ration is not enough. I rather have barbarian tank in fullplate than warrior. I think this ratio should be affected by consitution. For example base line would be 10 constitution is 1/4 and for each 2 or 3 points above and bellow it should go to 1/5 or 1/3 regardless. It will make constitution really good stat. What do you think? Thanks, Chilloutman

I've noticed a lot of people really don't like the term "Degenerative Gameplay". I'm really not sure why. You may disagree with how Josh Sawyer uses the term "Degenerative Gameplay" (now DG) sometimes, especially when he's referring to a mechanic or system you don't like... but that doesn't mean the term is flawed. Far from it. DG is an incredibly useful term, because it describes (as I understand it) a situation in which the incentive structure of a game mechanic is flawed. DG, as I've seen it used, describes game mechanics that lead players to take actions that would be absurd or ridiculous within the context of the game world because of metagaming concerns. Rest-spamming is a classic example. A properly designed game reflects the in-universe incentives to the player as game incentives, leading them to act in such a way that the optimal course for the player is similar to or identical to the optimal course for the characters in the game world (if you were reading a story or something). DG occurs when a game mechanic is poorly designed, incentivizing the player to do something that would be absurd within the context of the game world or story. Such as stopping for an 8-hour nap every 5 minutes. Now, obviously you'll never be able to remove all sources of DG from a game as complex as this - but that should be the goal. And I think Josh Sawyer's goal of doing so is admirable. I think he's made some good steps. I also think he's made some missteps. And I think when talking about mechanics that aren't working, we should be careful to distinguish between DG and just mechanics we don't prefer. I'll give a few examples here of some disputed mechanics that are DG, and some that aren't: Disputed mechanics that are not a significant source of Degenerative Gameplay: - If the fighter tanks all the hits, I have to rest with him before all the other characters. This, while maybe not a mechanic everyone is fond of, isn't DG in and of itself. "But Matt," you may say... "when my fighter runs out of health and the rest of the party doesn't, I have to rest every 5 seconds. And that's DG!" Well... sort of. The fact that the current game mechanics encourage rest-spamming is DG - but the fact that this occurs because the fighter taking all the hits loses all his health before the characters who aren't taking hits is not DG - because that makes sense. If a party of adventurers wanders around, and has one guy doing all the close-range fighting and getting hit all the time, of course he will be more wounded than everyone else. So the fact of a tank taking all the hits and causing resting isn't in and of itself DG. The DG in that case (rest-spamming) results from a problem with the Health/Stamina system, which I'll (kind of) go into a little bit later. - Since armor slows you down, there's no point in putting armor on my ranged characters! This is another example of a mechanic that, while maybe poorly balanced atm, isn't actually DG. It makes sense that someone who wants to (for example) fire arrows as fast as possible wouldn't wear armor. Now, maybe there need to be more no-slowdown plain clothes in the game. Maybe the slowdown from armor that exists needs to be reduced. Maybe enemies need to be smarter and attack your ranged characters more often, causing you to have to make a tradeoff. Maybe all of these are true! But the simple fact that characters who want to attack as fast as possible shouldn't wear armor isn't in and of itself a source of DG. That actually makes sense within the game world. The AI issues that don't punish you for that may be though. Fortunately, we've already heard those will be improved. Disputed mechanics that are a significant source of Degenerative Gameplay i.e. bad design i.e. these need to be fixed: - When my fighter is taking a lot of hits, it makes more sense to let him fall than to heal him because of the Health/Stamina system. Oy... This is the biggest one IMO. It makes zero sense that it is a better tactical decision to let someone fall than to heal them. It just doesn't. Right now, the optimal decision for the player when a party member is taking lots of hits is to just let them fall unconscious, because healing them will only result in the loss of more health. The current mechanics incentivize just letting your characters fall unconscious because there is not any penalty for letting them fall. I.. just.... nope. Bad design. Fix it. Now, the fix doesn't need to come in the form of removing the Health/Stamina system. Remember that sources of DG are, at their core, from bad incentive structure. There needs to be an incentive to heal your party members instead of letting them fall. I have a few suggestions for possible solutions. I'll start with the ones that don't involve removing Health/Stamina (which I understand Josh is quite fond of), then move on to a few more radical suggestions: 1) Cause healing spells to heal a small amount of health as well - perhaps 1/6 or 1/8 as much as stamina. And only allow them to be used in combat (i.e. on "recent" wounds). This could make sense lore-wise (combat-only restriction means that only very recent wounds can be healed, which would fit with their lore reasons for no strategic healing) while allowing the player to use healing to somewhat alleviate the issue with frontliners losing all their health. Would also mean that healing is always a good thing - as it should be. 2) Have enemies attack downed characters, doing health damage vs reduced defenses. This would absolutely solve the problem, absolutely make sense (why does a wolf or beetle stop savaging you when you fall, exactly?), and absolutely be very punishing. This could be somewhat alleviated by making it a reduced ratio of health damage (definitely 1/4, maybe even 1/8), and would probably also be smart to only have non-intelligent enemies do this (as wild animals should keep attacking/eating, whereas smart enemies would realize they should move onto another threat). Even if only non-intelligent enemies did this, the DG problem would be fixed - after all, playing dead against a humanoid enemy would be a viable tactic in real life. Just not against everything. 3) Take a wound every time a character falls. minus-whatever to attributes until rest. Not a perfect solution, but it would resolve the incentive issues. 4) And finally (not gonna happen), remove health altogether and allow a certain number of falls before being maimed (dependent on class and talents). This would completely solve the incentive issues, making healing an altogether good thing (as it should be). That's all I've got on the healing DG problem. Josh, pls read. :3 - If I want to find hidden items, I have to walk around in scouting mode all the time. This is just dumb. Walking around in constant scouting mode with the game in fast motion is the optimal way to play right now. And that's stupid. Scouting needs to be overhauled (i.e. with some passive component) or removed. Structuring a game mechanic such that the optimal strategy is to do something absurd is the absolute definition of degenerative gameplay. That's all for now. Thanks for reading!

Although not a beta participant, I have watched various youtube videos of others' experiences with the beta. From what I've seen the health/stamina mechanic seems confusing, in fact several people have a real problem getting a grip on it... My suggestion is to rename Health, Endurance and rename Stamina, Health. The ratio 1:4, Endurance:Health may remain the same. In combat Health is reduced and recovered by spells, potions etc However, Endurance is recovered only by resting. Healing a wound by magical means goes only as far as repairing the affliction, serious wounds (being maimed) and the physical/mental/spiritual etc fatigue of battle is only overcome by rest. Endurance should be expressed as a percentage, health by a number of hit points. well...that's my suggestion anyway...

So I wanted to try and make a "useless" combat character and see how well it would do in combat. But what I found out was that my main has a lot more health than she should have. I don't know if im bad at calculating it but it seems to be very wrong. Haven't done other calculations but will trie to look at it later today. Hope this is the right place to post it. My Main Cipher The BB Rogue

After seen demo and listening as Josh has to explain again and again what the hell is stamina i would suggest to rename: Current health -> fatigue stamina -> health I think this would be much less confusing as current state. Fatigue will start at 0 (full bar) and raise to some level 100). 1/ healing spells will restore health (instead of stamina). Which normal naming convention to virtually every RPG. 2/ Resting will now remove the characters fatigue (this actually makes more sense). 3/ As characters gain new levels, their hit points increases. (again standard naming convention to RPGs.)

I was wandering and I believe it hasn't mentioned before, but do we have any idea about the enemies' health condition indication? Will it be like we can see their remaining hit point or maybe, like the IE games, a description of it (uninjured, near deth etc)?

These are some brainstormed ideas in reply to another thread, I understand that Eternity is well underway production. See this more as inspiration for future IP's or future Eternity's. I touch a lot of subjects in a single thread here, the idea is consistent and as a whole simply different puzzle pieces to a larger picture. I call it Diamondman Mode (previously known as "HellMetal Mode" or "Strongman Mode", and reluctantly "Old-Meets-New Mode"), which I find appropriate. This is an idea to get the game as difficult, but manageable, as possible. Rogue-like-ish, and in my opinion an interesting system~formula. - Permadeath (With limited ressurrection in-game side-stories, choices or whatnot, until "Ressurrection Spell" mod or "Temple Mod" etc. etc.) - Diamondman Save System. Start Game. Play Game. Can't Save. Save & Quit. Load Save, Save gets Deleted. Play Game. Save & Quit. Etc. etc. Choice: Use Ironman Save System instead if the game is known to crash on your hardware. - Difficult Economy - Difficult-est AI that act in teamwork and AI micro-manage. -- Stand-outs. Your Fighter stands just waiting for the other AI Fighter is waiting for you to make a move, meanwhile the AI Archers or similar move out. Difficult enough for the Player to hit space, scratch their hopeful and potential beard and practically play a Chess turn. Make a move, and the AI reacts. Turn-Based Reactivity but Realtime with Pause. -- Stand-out Example: So I face a group of 3: --- Enemy has 1 Fighter, 1 Ranger, 1 Priest, All Level 5 --- I have 1 Fighter, 1 Rogue, All Level 8 1. Pause. 2. Move Fighter forward. Stealth Rogue. 3. Unpause. 4. Fighter moves forward, Enemy Fighter backs. 5. Ranger moves to the side, in reaction. 6. Priest stays behind Fighter. 7. Pause. Instead, had I chosen to simply stay the initial position, the Enemy Fighter would have (in this case) stood his ground and not advanced until feasible. Chances are that they would advance instantly, as they would only see 1 Fighter (Rogue Stealthed), 3 vs 1. But because you Stealthed when combat was engaged, the AI would know that the Rogue is there (they just wouldn't be able to see it). So the AI Fighter would still stand his ground, and the Ranger might even stick closer to the Fighter. - Everything above about "Stand-Outs": AI Reactivity to the situation, from their perspective. Tactical Statistic Management (Health, Stamina, [Food & Water?]) - Resting limited to once every 16th in-game hour, Sleep less and your Stamina suffers ([stamina Sickness]) -- 1. Wilderness Resting (World Map). Worst Stamina Gain. No Resting Bonus+Potential Random Encounters -- 2. Camp Resting (Locations). Camp Bonus. Costs resources to light a fire. -- 3. Inn Resting (Towns). Inn Bonus. -- 4. Stronghold Resting (Stronghold). Best Stamina Gain. Stronghold Bonus. - Limited Carrying Capacity - Weight Modifying Stats - Time Passes on your Characters (Aging) and can eventually die of old age (Again, Main Character Dies, game goes on. Adventurer's Hall Companions 100% in attempts to beat the game). - Adventurer's Hall Companions cost money, a lot of it. Leaves if not economically maintained. - Option to turn Adventurer's Hall "Off" entirely. Closed for Business. - No Descriptions. Spells or Abilities have no description, the Player would have to do the Spell/Ability, observe it/the effects and then explain it. - No Map/Minimap equivalent (Draw your own in "Paint" software or with physical Pen & Paper) - No "Updated My Journal". Write everything yourself using an In-Game Journal/Notepad. Write down what NPC's talk about, Quests, objects and observations. Whatever. A game diary/experience. Stamina Example: -- Stamina is 100%, as you fights and wander and time passes, you gradually get lower (say, 80%). -- At 80% you are still at full capacity and gains all "bonuses" from Resting. -- At 60% you choose to drink a glass of water or, heck, eat something. Stamina raises to 70%. -- After a while, you hit 25% or less, and you start to see some minor penalties (Been awake too long? Fought too many battles and made bad moves? Remember: If you lose 75% after Resting in an 1 in-game hour, you wouldn't be able to Rest again) -- At 0% in battle, you would obviously pass out and make a better target [Fainted] -- After battle, gain 10% Stamina to survive with for a while. -- "Waiting" or "Meditating" or maybe even "Gathering Energy" could place one of your characters inactive during combat to tick some extra +1% Stamina Points. Let's call it [short Rest]. Basically the character taking a breather. Again, maybe drinks some water. Life Points instead of Health Points: -- Starting with 10/10. -- As you level up, you gain more (13/13 for instance). If you'd lose 1 LP, down at 9/10, gain a level, you'd be at 12/13. -- Life Points can not be healed. A One-Time-Choice Quest perhaps, "Do I want to Heal all LP or do I want to ressurect a fallen companion?" kind of thing. -- A Life Point is something you can lose in a simple mistake in battle. -- A Life Point would also be lost due to [Aging] -- A game could be played without losing a single Life Point if playing through the game fast enough, but it'd be a challenge to do so for sure. ... and a side-dish option - Game does not end when Main Character dies (Only when the full party dies. In a way, like X-COM missions, you can lose 3 guys but still win with 1 guy. I envision a game (not necessarily PE, but maybe inspiration~). The same goes for Icewind Dale, if one of your characters dies (and you are playing without ressurect) you can still beat the game. Why? Because I believe my [Diamondman] concept is so difficult that your main character could and 70%-80% chance of going down (unless playing really slow, resourceful and thoughtful). And World Map Traveling: - Costs Stamina - Realms of Arcania/Fallout/Ultima+Baldur's Gate Traveling System. -- Be a small (scaled to size of the world, or Fallout Incognito wise) "Ultima"-esque figure/icon on a large beautiful canvas. -- Get a horse, add an appropriate icon. Travels faster, in case there are "Events" in the world that you can intercept. -- Xenonauts Radar Concept, but mobile as the party moves. See a Caravan Icon nearby? Intercept or ignore it, potentially even see some Bandit Icons take over the Caravan. Gives the Player Choice "Do I want to engage in this Random Event now or do I want to observe what happens?". -- Can Rest in the Wilds (or "Wait") - Adventure Game Obstacles: "You need the Monocle of Mirrors to open the 'Gate'" And of course, the most important aspect: - Random Hellfire and Reign of Chaos meteors with demons. TL;DR: Braaaaiiinsssstorm

Looking through the PE wiki just now, I realized that there wasn't much information on level advancement. Since I couldn't find anything solid, I want to get a general feel how the community feels about it. 1. Should the growth of stats like accuracy, defense, skill points, and health/stamina be dependent on class? 2. Should stat growth be more exponential or linear? 3. How often(if at all) should attribute growth happen? 4. At what rate should a character get talents, and should some classes get them faster than others? 5. How should the XP requirement for leveling up be determined?

If some don't like Vanacian and many don't like cooldowns, what then? Here's an idea: Fatigue * EDIT: in case you havn't figured it out yet, red is health, green is morale * Lets say your mage starts the day with 100 fatigue (or 1000.. higher numbers might be better for balancing and nuances) He and the party go traveling. They've been on the road for 2 hours and the mages maximum fatigue has gone down, so now he's at 90/90. Max fatigue goes down as the day goes by and as you do physicly demanding things (long journesy, running, etc..). Even if you don't cast any spells, you will need sleep. So your group runs into some orcs. Battle starts. You launch a pretty powerfull spell that costs 15 fatigue. Roughly 10% of that costs is drawn from MAX fatigue. Your max fatigue has now dropped down to 88. However, your regular fatigue will regenerate by roughly 1 point per second. In 15 seconds the mage will be at 88/88. He can cast antoher spell immediately or wait. Had he/she cast a less pwoerfull spell, the max fatigue would have been reduced only by 1 point. Either way, as time passes and the battles go on, the MAX fatigue drops. At 25% the character (any character, fighter or mage) becomes tired. It's harder to focus, but not by much. At 0% the characte is dead tired. He cna still continue to fight and move, but the penalties become severe. Miscasting becomesalmost a certanty. The only way to recover MAX fatigue is by resting. Yes resting. Resting should be a part of any true RPG. It gives inns and villages a clear purpose. It is a safe haven to gather information, prepare, stock up, rest and heal. I'd propose even healing to be very difficult. A natural and slow process. Healign spells don't heal fully - they give back only a small amount of HP (and a character cannot be healed over 50% wihout rest), but increase natural regeneration. - Note it would still take hours for critical wounds to heal. Without healing magic it might take days. This even more gives a feelign of a real adventure and resource managment. Pulling back and regrouping becomes not onnly a valid tactic, but sometimes necessary (realistic, no?). Also, leaving a wounded companion in the inn to recouperate while you take another companion with you for a while becomes an enticing prospect. Personally, I'd rather have a few powerfull spells that I can't cast all of the time, and having to resort to a crossbow/staff/sword often enough, thanto have easily spammable low-level spells. That just sucks. More like Gandalf, less like Hawke.