The best of both worlds ( more DnD in PoE )

[Madscientist]

A lot of people complain that they like old DnD games more than PoE and they feel like PoE "dumped down" a lot of things.

Personally I like deadfire and I am happy they got rid of some old mechanics but I make some suggestions anyway.

This is not about begging the devs to change things, I just want to discuss this stuff.

If some people like the ideas and have nothing better to do, they can make a mod and test if it makes the game better.

 

some suggestions:

 

- In DnD if you roll a 1 its always a miss and if you roll a 20 its always a critical hit. Lets apply this to PoE where you have a 1D100.

  + If you roll a 1 it is always a miss

  + If you roll a 2-5 its a miss, but it can be upgraded to a graze if you have a miss->graze item or talent

  + If you roll a 6-10 it is a graze if it would be a hit or crit normally. You can upgrade it to a hit with the right item or talent

  + If you roll a 91-95 you will hit, even if it was a miss or graze normally. You will crit if you would crit without this rule ( result of all rolls above 100)

  + If you roll a 96 - 99 you will crit, even if you would miss, graze or hit otherwise

  + If you roll a 100 you will always crit.

  + If you are the target of an attack you can use items or talents to downgrade the attack unless the enemy rolls a 100. So if you have super high   defenses and the enemy rolls a 99 you get a crit but you have the chance to downgrade it to a hit. If the enemy rolls a 100 you will always get a crit.

 

Result: Even chars with very high defenses will not be completely immun to attacks and even chars with low acc have a small chance to hit the enemy.

 

- Spell protection and its removal

At the moment we have several buffs but only one spell to remove them: arcane dampener.

If you have an inspiration and you are hit by an affliction of the same attribute they will cancel each other and you end up with no effect. I want to keep this. Lets apply this principle to all spells:

  + Some buffs increase AR. If you cast a spell that lowers AR it will remove the buff. If your AR is reduced and you cast an AR buff, it will remove the debuff. In both cases you will have no effect as result. Spells work normally if the target does not have an AR effect. At least you have to graze the target, nothing will happen on a miss. It will work for every spell that effects AR, even if the spell causes other effects as well. For example expose vulnerabilities would remove iron skin and flame shield and the target would have no effect anymore. If you are under the effect of expose vulnerabilities and you cast iron skin it would remove the debuff but not give you a buff. This would be the new version of the breach spell from BG2.

  + Remove the spell "arcane damper" and add the spell "dispell magic". This spell will remove all effects that influence your accuracy or defenses. It will remove all positive and all negative effects. It will remove all effects of a spell if this spell has an acc or defense effect and other effects as well. This spell will remove things like "mirror image" or "devotions of the faithful"

  + Create a spell that removes the effects of spells that protect you from spells or that reflect spells.

 

Result: bring back some of the magic vs counter magic stuff

 

- You can cast all spells any time, no matter if we are in combat or not.

We keep the deadfire system, but with a twist. Your resources are refilled when you end the next combat. A chanter who normally starts combat with 3 phrases could summon skelletons before combat but then he starts combat with zero phrases. A cipher who would start combat with 20 focus could cast one lv2 spell or two lv1 spells before combat, but then start combat with zero focus. A rogue could use smoke veil to get past chars with high sneak detection but he starts the next combat with less guile. You can "cheat" the system if you let one char start a combat, become invisible and run away and then all chars get their resources back when combat ends, but it would still be better than the curent system.

 

- You can cast any spell on any target. So you could cast dispell magic on an enemy to remove mirror image or you can cast it on yourself to remove a debuff. You could heal or buff enemies if you like. Hostile AoE spells are already OK but maybe some friendly spells could effect the enemy as well. Like you cast an AoE heal or buff and all creatures in the base area will get the effect while only friendly creatures in the extra area from int will get the effect.

 

- When I say "spell effect" I mean every effect from any spell, item, potion or food. So a debuff that lowers AR would remove any effect that buffs AR, no matter where it comes from. There are only two exceptions:

  + You cannot dispel the effects of equipment. The enemy cannot dispell the effects of your rings of deflection or protection for example.

  + It does not work for things that effect an area and not a character. So you cannot remove the effects of "circle of protection" for example.

 

- Some people think that martial chars are too powerful compared to casters. I have a spell for it: disarm

descriptin: The caster focusses his energy on the weapon(s) the enemy has equipped. They get hot and begin to glow. If the target gets crit it receives small fire damage and drops all weapons on the ground. If the target gets hit it drops one weapon on the ground and receives low fire damage. In case of a graze the target does not drop a weapon but it takes low fire damage. It has no effect on unarmed chars. If the target loses a weapon it can continue to fight unarmed, change to a different weapon set or try to pick up the weapon and equip it again, which causes a disengagement attack and takes some time.

 

- We could also add a spell "true seeing" which would make hidden things visible, including stealthed or invisible enemies and hidden things that can be found with high perception. This would lower the need to have a high per char in the party.

 

 

 

Thats it for now.

Do you have more ideas to improve the system without changing the fundamental game mechanics?

Like everything is acc + 1d100 - defense and the result can be miss, graze, hit or crit.

Edited July 6, 2018 by Madscientist

[Lord_Mord]

Haven't thought it through to be honest, but at first glance, I like it.

[Jelei]

I'll refer to your points with numbers, because I don't want huge quotes.

 

1) No. 1% chance of always miss, 1% chance of always crit are negligible. They are meaningless. And why add more power to the rng in general?

 

2) No. I like the idea of Dampener being "dispel" - not caring about whether the effect is positive or negative. Magebattles that devolve to nothing but stripping off the layers of defence one by one were never fun or good gameplay, even in BG2.

 

3) No. This leads prebuffing, and we know where that leads. Also, if you could save resources you know what would happen. People would leave easy encounters alone, just to farm resources for harder fights later in the game. And this sounds even more stupid than prebuffing.

 

4) Maybe. More micromanagement in casting and optimizing INT, I don't see this as a really good thing.

 

5) Maybe. The idea is not inherently bad but a little meh. I could see this one working.

 

What I would personally like to see? Making casters reasonable, and if someone doesn't do it, I might mod it in myself. Remove per encounter casts and put them in line with the rest of them. They get a resource just like every other class (maybe double the growth rate?). Spell cost is either the PL (if resource growth doubled) or PL/2, rounded up. Give all spells + 5- 20 accuracy bonus, scaling with power level.

[Rheios]

 

3) No. This leads prebuffing, and we know where that leads. Also, if you could save resources you know what would happen. People would leave easy encounters alone, just to farm resources for harder fights later in the game. And this sounds even more stupid than prebuffing.

 

4) Maybe. More micromanagement in casting and optimizing INT, I don't see this as a really good thing.

I don't really mind prebuffing, since I think most of POE's buff spells being cast in combat makes them less worth casting when compared to another fireball or enemy debuff. There's instances, like trying to protect against mind control or when you can net the whole party, where they can be slightly more beneficial but for my part I mostly just spike damage. 

 

And micromanagement in general is fine with me but there's a reason I turned off party AI and other people love it.  I agree with the INT thing here, though