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For some reason Ituumak has a movement speed of 0. Buffs to his movement speed allow him to move again at the speed being added (the only one I could easily find that could effect a ranger's companion animal was the chant Blessed Was Wengridh, Quickest of His Tribe) No clue what caused it, but some stuff that might logically relate that took place between when I last saw my good pup move and when I noticed his crippling disability: I put the boots of speed on Sagani for a while, and then took them off. I got revive companion and used it several times, including atleast one time where he died immediately on being revived. I loaded my cloud save from another computer for the first time. Kind of a bummer since I have a lot invested in Sagani, and I can't imagine she's taking it well that her hunting companion has been crippled.

In battle, Itumaak is moving incredible slow, probably at half speed. Out of battle, moves completely normal. I've had the new 3.01 patch for a bit and it didn 't happen until recently, last couple days. Tried restarting game, removing her from party, resting, nothing works.

For those of you unhappy with the need to walk slowly to be able to detect hidden objects, I've just made a mod to "fix" this. With the mod, Stealth Mode uses the normal run animations. Currently only supports Windows and not compatible with the IE Mod. When I get more time, I'll figure out how to incorporate it into the IE Mod. Get the mod from Nexus.

Please help! I do not understand how many attack can i do per second if my weapon fast/slow/average!

Hi there -- I wanted to open a discussion on what sorts of statistics should be modelled in weapons, and why. What should the numbers inherent a weapon do? How realistic or simple should this be? Should this be simplified to fit gaming and fantasy tropes? Should it be informed by realism? What are the pros and cons of each? Here are some quotes, sans images, from a guy who knows what he is talking about on different forum on this topic: "Size (thus suitability for different types of fighting, as in indoors / outdoors, in a grapple or not) Reach (largely a function of size) as in, a 'To hit' bonus. Ways to hurt people (piercing, cutting, smashing... and how good they are at each). In DnD terms this is three things, attack type, basic damage, and critical hit threat range. Defensive value (as in, an 'Armor Class' bonus like a shield gets) as I said before, there is really no reason not to model this. Speed (trickier to handle - see below) Armor - Piercing ability (some weapons were made specifically for piercing armor) usually fairly simple though standard DnD rules combine evasion with armor so that makes it harder. Grappling ability (many weapons had hooks or spikes designed to help with grappling from a distance, the classic examples being the halberd or the bill) You can start with the actual features of the weapons, and then try to see what you could fit into a game. The European longsword 1300 - 1600 In real life a longsword is made to cut and stab with equal efficiency, as well as fend off enemy attacks. If you know what you are doing (i.e. a Feat) you can bash with the hilt and choke up (half-sword) to make it better for armor-piercing (stabs only). It's long and has pretty good hand protection making it good for defense, it has pretty good reach, and it's pretty fast partly due to being light (most real ones are about 3 lbs) and partly due to having an iron pommel, which helps a lot with balance. Hard to break. The late Medieval dagger 1200-1500 In real life, a dagger is very fast weapon. Most types (like the roundel depicted here) are made to stab primarily, though some others are for cutting too. It's got limited defensive ability, just a little reach (better than nothing though, since Medieval daggers were often a foot or more long). Unlike in almost all Role Playing Games, Daggers are extremely lethal! US Army stats on bayonett wounds and the FBI statistics on injuries from violent crimes show a knife with blade more than 8" long is one of the most lethal things you can get attacked with, statistically, and most Medieval Daggers were a lot longer than that (and more strongly made, less likely to snap). Daggers, unlike swords, tend to be good at armor-piercing (and / or getting around armor by finding gaps). Very hard to break. The Medieval Battle Axe In real life, an axe is good at cutting, mainly. Almost opposite to the cliche, battle axes tend to be made lighter (with thinner blades) and better balanced than axes made for cutting wood, but they are not as balanced as a sword. For a big (I'm thinking Danish / Viking style) axe, medium reach, fairly low speed (smaller axes would be much faster), some value for defense but limited hand protection makes that a little dicey. Due to their shape axes are also good for hooking shield rims and arms and so on, i.e. grappling from a distance. Some axes are made with special armor-piercing features (a back spike) but these are rare on older ones. The haft can be broken. Medieval Spear Very good reach, not as good speed, very good at thrusting, but the ones with larger blades can cut well too, pretty good for defense if used two-handed. Pretty good at armor-piercing. Not good at close range. Staff Blunt damage only, very good reach, very good defense, not as good at very close range. Mace Heavier (but not as much as you might think) than a sword or an axe, medium reach, medium defensive value (enhanced somewhat by the inertia of the thing) bludgeon damage only, good at destroying armor. Indestructible. So converting these into generic stats: Longsword Reach 4, Defense 3, Speed 3, cut / thrust, damage 1-10, crit threat 19-20, armor piercing and bludgeon damage ability by Feat. Normally too long to use at close (grapple) range except with special Feat. Hardness 6 Dagger Reach 1, Defense 1, Speed 5, thrust, damage 1-8, crit threat 18-20, armor-piercing. Hardness 8 Battle Axe Reach 3, Defense 2, Speed 2, cut, damage 1-12, crit threat 18-20, grapple +1 (from melee distance). Hardness 4. Flanged Mace Reach 2, Defense 3, Speed 1, bludgeon, damage 1-10, crit threat 18-20, armor-piercing +2. Hardness 12. Spear Reach 5, Defense 3, Speed 2, thrust, damage 1-8, crit threat 18-20, armor-piercing. Too long to use at close (grapple) range. Hardness 4 Staff Reach 5, Defense 4, Speed 3, bludgeon, damage 1-6, crit threat 20. Too long to use at close (grapple) range. Hardness 4. Now in DnD you might only be able to model a couple of these features, but it wouldn't necessarily add a lot more complexity to say, most weapons can be used for defense as well as offense, swords can stab as well as cut, short weapons can be used in grapple, and so on. Differentiating the weapons a little bit (in ways other than just damage) makes them a bit more interesting and more useful to flesh out the personality of different characters, monsters and NPC's, IMO." Back to me... now, that is a very realistic way of looking at these things, but it doesn't necessarily feel like fantasy, and being that realistic might make gameplay worse or better -- in a broad theoretical sense, what sorts of things SHOULD weapons be useful in doing, for the benefit of the game? There is also the question of, 'When pairing down what statistics weapons should have, should you start from a fantasy/cultural consciousness as your basic starting point for what attributes to have, or should you start from a realism/historic starting point? Assume that you end up with the same amount of relevant attributes at the end -- 2, 3, 4, 5, whatever. What is the better starting point, and why?'

Hello, I'd like to talk a bit about the flow of combat or more specifically combat speed. I believe this is intricately tied to the mechanics, so it's probably better discussed now than later. I think that extremes are unfeasible: If combat is too fast, I foresee two outcomes. Either it will become very twitchy (fast reactions and command giving; think competitive strategies) or it will require pausing the game very often. While this is basically the essence of real-time with pause I believe it can detract from game play as well as aesthetics if it's TOO often. As a practical example of a game in which combat was not cohesive with the rest of gameplay (perhaps due to my expectations) I would give DA2 in which I often got that "adrenaline-y" feeling while killing stuff, then just running forward to the next encounter, like I was doing in Torchlight. Or if you want to try and recreate the "too much pausing" feeling, play an IE game at higher FPS (AI updates/s). On the other hand if it's too slow, combat can seem stretched and frustrating (unintentionally so). I don't really have any game with this at the top of my head, but let's say IWD2 at the lower levels. You know, when you have little to no special attacks/spells and just have to whack some orcs over the head (or rather whack the air around them) for what seems to be an eternity. I personally didn't find it too engaging to just set it on attack and wait until something dies... What are the tools to balance this? The first would be time units. In IE games we have so-called personal rounds, which are to my understanding closed time intervals in which the character can act between movements. These define the maximum possible actions of a character over a certain period of time. Time is neatly stored in small packets, the length of which can then be manipulated to achieve the desired effect. There were conflicts when the rules would require more than physically possible to show, but I think with a new ruleset that can be avoided. Something more specific would be attack rolls (rules?). 10 attacks per round with a 5% chance to connect with each would be just annoying to me. Conversely making every attack connect is much simpler, but may have other drawbacks (lessened "realism", the loss of a layer of gameplay,...) Hand in hand with this I would put damage done and enemy HP. Perhaps it's a matter of personal taste, but it throws off my suspension of disbelief, when the PC is a high dmg/low hp thing and the enemies low dmg/high hp punching bags. I believe the same rules should apply to everything within a world, not have them separate for the player. However, yes, it's pretty obvious that these can be easily manipulated for different combat speeds. Not so direct - combat actions available to the player. There is probably no one on this board that would say that too many options is a bad thing (me included). Yet I also believe this is a non-trivial question. The more optimal players will use everything at their disposal. The more direct players will not. This can prove to be a divide in player experiences (resulting in complaining and "you're not playing it right" retorts) and while I don't think that the game has to be "accessible" (as it is often presented), I believe it should offer some uniformity (at least in the broad sense). Now games have always had a few ways of handling this, the foremost being (companion) AI. Besides difficulty, AI can also influence the flow of combat for the player, how often pausing is needed and how often some repetitive orders need to be issued. I consider AI to be a cover for the people that want to be less involved, or just be there to lessen the load of the more involved ones, providing a closer experience. Even better programmable AI - I thoroughly enjoyed the "Tactics" in the DA line. However there is in my opinion a big issue with companions doing stuff automatically in a game such as PE (or IE engine) and that is the usage of finite resources (assuming you can't rest every 10 feet). In these games the player cannot just look at each encounter individually, but must take in consideration a whole series of them and perhaps even have some extra resources "just in case". This simply cannot be done effectively artificially. I believe the number of classes we have can be exploited to some extent here, transferring some micromanagement around or at least limiting it. Some classes can be perhaps intentionally more involved for advanced players, however I suspect that wouldn't be met with much enthusiasm (dividing players). Action duration. A balanced and diverse approach would work well here I guess, with some things taking longer than others to accomplish. I can't really say what would be ideal as this would require specific times and information. I see this as a big and important part though, affecting a lot of strategic aspects. The only thing I would add is that I would like to see consistency throughout the adventure - not 5 times faster swinging at high levels. That's about it from me, post your thoughts .