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I would like to hear everybody's favorite role-playing custom party. My favorite was probably my first playthrough with customs. which included Luke a mountain dwarf drifter veteran of many wars. Unbroken/Shieldbearer. Una his right hand a Blood thirsty loner wood elf who is an expert hunter. Bleak Walker/Assassin (build from Fextralife) Kaden the bloodthirsty warrior island amaua out for revenge after his entire family got killed by some principi pirates. Devoted/Berserker Alde a former slave wild orlan who still believes in Eothas despite what he has done. Eothas/Troubadour Sullivan a nature godlike human hated and blamed for everything bad by his superstitious human village Evoker/Ascendant This was mine let me hear yours! Feel free to write as much as you want I will read everything.

Hello again, I couldn't find a thread referring to this, so I might as well make one where we can discuss this properly. Being a sucker for roleplaying, I always tend to build up an extensive background on my party as soon as the game starts. I wear certain equipment on city areas for roleplaying purposes, refuse to take in certain characters according to my allignment: the works. However, I wish PoE had a little feature implemented that could make all this roleplaying much more easy and inmersive: A second equipment tab for clothing. Much like in other installments, this tab would have no effect on the character aside from pure cosmetics and would allow players to roam the world dressed in fine Vailian shirts or flamboyant hats that have no space in combat (rags are okay too, just keep it clean, you filthy barbarian ). PoE already has such an interesting variety of clothing options and cosmetic features that the addition of this tiny feature would bolster its roleplaying potetial through the roof. Also, body gestures and interactions similar to those in NWN 1 would be nice, but I get that's too much to ask. Waiting to see your feedback on this one! IcosahedronXIII.

Please discuss your thoughts, ideas, complaints, suggestions etc. on Pillars of Eternity here.

A simple thread for community brainstorming, suggesting possible feats or traits that allow different builds and methods of role-playing. Weak of body/Strong of mind You were born the runt of the litter, weak of body and with a Soul that was broken and shattered, and you suffered. But you would not give up, you would not die and you would not accept that only the strong deserve life. You fought against this injustice, you struggled tooth and claw to survive, against everything that life could throw at you. Your resolve became as iron, and your will was unbreakable. Effect: Might suffers a substantial penalty but all Soul powers and spells (but not physical melee and ranged attacks) gain a significant damage bonus from Resolve, allowing the classic archetype of the frail but powerful spellcaster to be built. Restriction: Can only be taken by spellcasters, Ciphers, Wizards, Druids and such.

Pillars of Eternity is a Role-Playing Game. One would think that role-playing would be important in a game like PoE, and that it's systems would be designed around it. That is however just not the case with the attribute system. This thread will be about the attribute system and it's effectiveness in making a character from a role-playing perspective. It will not be about attribute balance. It is also aimed at PoE's lead designer, Josh Sawyer. I'm going to compare Obsidian's Neverwinter Nights 2 attribute system(d&d) to Pillars of Eternity. I'm not saying the former has a perfect system, it does't. It is flawed, but it works for role-playing. First let's take a look at NwN2 attribute system and ask ourselves what every attribute does for our character, purely role-playing. -Strength How strong is my character? Physical strength. -Dexterity How agile is my character? Motor skills. -Constitution How tough is my character? Healthiness. -Intelligence How intelligent is my character? Smarts. -Wisdom How wise is my character? Knowledge, common sense, good judgement, perception, enlightenment, faith and religion. -Charisma How charismatic is my character? Attractiveness, force of personality, ability to lead. All of these attributes make sense and it is easy to build and describe a character with them, because they are intuitive. You can tell what each of them does just by looking at them. Wisdom and Charisma are however "flawed", but that doesn't mean that they don't work. Let me explain. Wisdom and Charisma encompass a very wide set of characteristics(for lack of a better word), and a lot of times you have to choose between these characteristics when building a character. Let's say you want to make a wise character but you don't want him to have strong faith. So you pump Wisdom and you just turn a blind eye. Let's say you want to make a fearsome orc character that has a very strong personality. So you pump Charisma and you turn a blind eye, because he's really ugly. You choose between these characteristics. Now let's look PoE's attribute system and do the same. Dexterity, Constitution and Intelligence remain the same. Strength, Wisdom and Charisma are either missing or replaced. -Might How mighty is my character? How powerful is my character? Physical strength? The ability to be effective at something? No idea. Apparently it's the strength of a character's soul and physical strength. -Perception How perceptive is my character? Insight? Sherlock Holmes? The ability to perceive something through your senses. -Resolve How determined is my character? Stubbornness? Devotion? Faith? The determination to solve a problem. Perception is just a subtype of Wisdom and a poor replacement for it. Resolve is interesting, because it's kind of missing in d&d, but I guess one could put it under Wisdom, but not really. Perception and Resolve don't work in a 6 attribute system, mainly because charisma is sacrificed to make room. Might could work as a replacement for strength, if it actually effectively replaced it. Currently it's confusing and it doesn't work because it describes a character's physical strength and the strength of a character's soul. Might has the same problem as Wisdom and Charisma do in d&d, but to a much greater extent. Basically you have to turn a blind eye to make a character who is physically weak, but has a strong soul. The current attribute system does not work for role-playing. You can't describe a character with it, and it is unnecessarily confusing and unintuitive. I understand that Obsidian wanted to do a unique attribute system that is different from d&d, but this just doesn't work. It is a flawed design.

Based on recent E3 previews -.-.- Congratulations ! The hype, recognition & anticipation received is well-deserved and all I have to add is how proud I feel that I have backed this project. From one GM & RPGamer to another, congrats on making the dream come true !

I already knew that The New Kid, a.k.a. "Sir Douchebag", would be a silent protagonist. However, I always took that to mean that, while the player character wouldn't have a VA, there would still be some kind of dialogue system - like in other Obsidian games. But, after watching the gameplay trailer, I'm not so sure anymore... To me, RPGs are all about interactive dialogue and moral choices. That's the reason I've never really liked jRPGs (okay, that's not completely true - I used to love them back in the mid-'90s, but that was a long time ago). I knew this game would have FF-esque combat when I pre-ordered it, but I also knew there would be character customization and that it was being developed by Obsidian, so I assumed it would be more "western" in terms of dialogue and decision making. Was I wrong? As a fan of both South Park and Obsidian Entertainment, I'm sure I'll enjoy the game no matter what, but I would still like to know: will there be any kind of (interactive) dialogue system?

While I nonetheless expect this to be somewhat controversial, I want to start this off by saying that I appreciate Infinity Engine games for what they are, and this thread is not about what Project Eternity should be. Rather, I ask what Project Eternity is, which is very related to what Infinity Engine games are, or even more broadly DnD-based cRPGs. The reason is that I have noticed an increasing overlap in the past several years between the "action/adventure" and "RPG" or "role-playing game" genres, and it got me thinking about what the difference between them actually is. The obvious realization is that most players don't actual roleplay in any significant capacity when they play so-called RPGs, so where does that leave the genre? Certainly some of this apparent contradiction might have to do with the fact that different players define role-playing differently, but there are certain a substantial proportion of player who can hardly be said to roleplay at all. In some ways I think action/adventure games and role-playing games might exist along a spectrum, with the ideals of one genre at either end, and most games inhabiting the continuum in between. Where do Infinity Engine games, or Project Eternity, fall on this spectrum? I for one feel that the amount of combat focus (which perhaps just comes with any DnD-based game) is somewhat action/adventure-oriented, and at times the games feel more linear than some others that feature more open worlds. Additionally, certain aspects of characters are de-emphasized and the interactivity of the world is quite limited (ability buy property and so on). This leads me to believe that the majority of games marketed as RPGs are in fact action/adventure games glorified in certain manners, rather than games designed with holistic roleplay in mind. Please leave your thoughts on these questions and vote in the poll as I am sure the results will be quite informative to me.

I'm curious how the community in general will be playing PE.

I both like and dislike what I've been reading about the companion characters in the party. Deep stories and so on are great, but there is a downside. Dragon Age is a good example of having a few very deep NPCs to add to the party. The characters in Origins were mostly all fantastic, and I enjoyed them, but there were a couple of issues. 1) The NPCs got so much camera time and were so interesting that I felt my PC was somewhat overshadowed. It felt a lot like I was just there to be a witness to all the cool things happening to these other characters. By necessity, I was somewhat of a voiceless "straight man". I could make decisions that affected the outcomes of some of those stories, but as a role-player, my character's personality didn't really matter, and didn't have a chance to evolve. 2) Again, by necessity, there was a trade-off for such depth: quantity. Every character in Origins was more or less essential to the main storyline (though some less than others). Although you could only have a couple of companions "active" at one time, they were ALL in the party. This kind of killed the replay value for me - I actually tried replaying the game as a different class, but after I was done with the different origin story, there was nothing new left to see. Exact same characters, exact same personal stories, exact same decisions. Again, decisions could be made differently, but it just didn't feel worth it to see the predictable flip sides to the first playthrough. So what are my suggestions? A) Lots of companions. Even if this means some are shallow. Not every companion needs to come with 20 hours of gameplay for their personal questline. (In fact, I'm fine with it if none do, but that's me.) Temple of Elemental Evil and Baldur's Gate nailed it pretty well; I always felt like I had a great deal of choice in who I brought along. B) "Finishable" companions. You don't see this enough. I love to see companion storylines with a beginning, middle, and end. Once you've helped the fallen knight clear his name, maybe he wants to return to court and go back to serving the King instead of following you around for the rest of his life. Once the lovestruck sorceress rescues her fiance, she marries him and quits adventuring. Maybe these characters will come back later, but they don't need to stay in my "stable" until the end of time. And then of course there're the characters who end up having to sacrifice their lives to truly fulfill their destinies. It's just lame to see every NPC default to becoming your eternally devoted servant after completing their other objectives. Make their stories make sense. Maybe a few people will want to sleep in the same room with me every night for the rest of their lives, but not every one. C) Companions with requirements. It's wonderful when an NPC is picky about who they team up with. An evil character who won't team up with a paladin. A paladin who will only team up with a cleric of the same faith. A guy who will only team up with you if you complete a quest in a certain (ideally non-optimum) way. D) Mutually exclusive companions. This is a big one. Again, in Dragon Age or Mass Effect, you can't help but "catch 'em all". Characters who hate each other, a thief who won't team up with a rival thief, a halfling with a fear of half-orcs (or vice versa), and of course people with interesting story or quest-related reasons not to work together. This also includes characters who will leave you if you make certain decisions, and others who will stay with you only if you make certain decisions. See the first couple of Jagged Alliance games to observe how beautifully this can be done. (I really enjoyed hiring a "snitch" character who would spy on the rest of the team and report on any friction. Best of all was waking up one morning to find a character simply gone ... another squad member had murdered him in the night and disposed of the body without a trace. I assume. I never proved it.) These are all ways to let the player see several different party configurations throughout the course of a playthrough, without resorting to "Oh, I want to hire this guy now, so I guess I'll fire you." They also help with replay value.