Redundant class abilities in PE

[Sacred_Path]

I hope that in PE, every additional party member can add something useful to the party. Don't make too many class abilities non-stackable; it should make a difference if you have one, two or three bards or paladins in the party, rather than profiting from only one of them at a time. If that means making these class abilities more offensive rather than defensive/ passive, so be it.

 

Of course this also has some overlap with the skills issue, like having different conversationalists/ scouts etc.

[Osvir]

Information on classes (also in signature):

http://forums.obsidi...etup-versus-ai/

I've marked the post (Page 1) with "Obsidian statements" on classes (big size).

 

As for the thread... I would first and foremost want the classes to have synergies between each other before having synergies with themselves. In other words, I'd rather a "Rogue", a "Fighter"and a "Chanter" work very well/great together rather than having "Chanter A", "Chanter B" and "Chanter C" work very well/great together.

 

Prioritize Party Synergy between all Classes and not just inside one Class. One Class' Leg might be another Class' Arm.

Edited November 7, 2012 by Osvir

[Sacred_Path]

Mods: feel free to merge this thread with some other about classes.

 

IMO, overall balance is more important than synergies, but I see your point. I'm coming from the angle of the completionist/ collector, and I don't want to end up always playing with exactly one paladin, one chanter, one priest and one [caster] to get all the buffs there are.

[-Zin-]

I would like to see synergies as well. For instance, that Rogues are compatible with Mages.

 

Rogues squirt some sort of oil on their enemies to make them lose balance and get lower attack rate and accuracy, but this also makes the enemies extremely vulnerable to fire spells, like fireball. Or enemies who are magically turned to stone/ice would be very vulnerable to a crushing blow from a warrior etc

[jezz555]

I would like to see fewer, but more utilitarian and powerful skills. In rpg's it seems like you typically either get a bunch of abilities, 80% of which do essentially the same thing or are functionally useless, or you only get a few but they are each very useful, and personally I prefer the latter category.

[Hormalakh]

Synergy is a good idea.

[J.E. Sawyer]

I think it's important to consider the perceived value of each individual skill/ability/talent/spell. I try to think from the player's perspective, "Why do I want to take this?" If I can't find a compelling answer compared to the other options, it needs to be improved and distinguished from the other options.

[Labadal]

That's good to hear. More often than not, a lot of rpgs have abilities/skills that are at a disadvantage compared to other abilities/skills. I'm no game designer, but I guess it's unavoidable when there are too many skills/abilities to choose from. I'm currently playing a fighter/monk in NWN2: MotB, and that game has a bunch of different classes and prestige classes. How on earth will you make all abilities/speels/feats (or whatever) equally interesting for the player?

[rjshae]

I would like to see fewer, but more utilitarian and powerful skills. In rpg's it seems like you typically either get a bunch of abilities, 80% of which do essentially the same thing or are functionally useless, or you only get a few but they are each very useful, and personally I prefer the latter category.

The problem with having just a few skills is that it starts to feel like DA:O, which made the skill system feel very vanilla.

 

If this approach is taken, I'd also like some means to tailor each of the handful of skills into particular sub-specialties. That is, you still get to spend points to increase selected skill ranks, but every few rank increases you get to select a focus for those skills. Take a Mechanics skill: that would give you skills with lockpicking, disabling traps, setting traps, repairing devices, and so forth. At, say, every two ranks, you could select a focus in one of those areas. Like +5% bonus in lockpicking padlocks, for example. At higher levels you would continue to improve in mechanics, but you could then also select a +5% in lockpicking doors. &c.

[Hassat Hunter]

The ME3 way? Fine by me, even if it wasn't really much of a choice, one of the 2 always seemed superior to me.

But that was just bad balancing anyway...

[Sylvius the Mad]

Information on classes (also in signature):

http://forums.obsidi...etup-versus-ai/

I've marked the post (Page 1) with "Obsidian statements" on classes (big size).

 

As for the thread... I would first and foremost want the classes to have synergies between each other before having synergies with themselves. In other words, I'd rather a "Rogue", a "Fighter"and a "Chanter" work very well/great together rather than having "Chanter A", "Chanter B" and "Chanter C" work very well/great together.

I see no value in prioritising one approach over another. Why not do it both ways, where some abilities work well combined with other abilities from other classes, while some ablities combine well with other abilities from the same class?

 

I say this as someone whose default party design is as-many-mages-as-I-can-find.

[jezz555]

I would like to see fewer, but more utilitarian and powerful skills. In rpg's it seems like you typically either get a bunch of abilities, 80% of which do essentially the same thing or are functionally useless, or you only get a few but they are each very useful, and personally I prefer the latter category.

The problem with having just a few skills is that it starts to feel like DA:O, which made the skill system feel very vanilla.

 

If this approach is taken, I'd also like some means to tailor each of the handful of skills into particular sub-specialties. That is, you still get to spend points to increase selected skill ranks, but every few rank increases you get to select a focus for those skills. Take a Mechanics skill: that would give you skills with lockpicking, disabling traps, setting traps, repairing devices, and so forth. At, say, every two ranks, you could select a focus in one of those areas. Like +5% bonus in lockpicking padlocks, for example. At higher levels you would continue to improve in mechanics, but you could then also select a +5% in lockpicking doors. &c.

 

Well I think in DA:O what kind of annoyed me was that the skills weren't especially utilitarian or powerful but you didn't get that many of them either. So it was like you had a fireball spell, and one that made you a spider and that was like it or for a rogue you had a couple little skills, but their was nothing especially cool or unique you could do with them, so you're points were basically wasted. Let's just not make the system like DA:O...ugh. I would prefer if the skills were handled more like AD&D, were there aren't a ton of spells, or skills, but they can each be seriously useful if you know what your doing and you can mostly avoid the crappy ones.

[jfood]

I think it's been stated that companions are more or less one per class, so the only way to go about a five chanter or paladin party would be through the adventurer's hall. Sharing a character class with one shouldn't be a redundant exercise or really prohibit their part in the narrative due to game mechanics and that's really an issue that needs to be addressed. Where companions of similar class really open up hooks and dialogue, there's more often than not a real, screaming in your face gameplay reason not to bring them along. I think that's an important issue, whether or not a five cleric godsquad of undying care of the adventurer's hall have their abilities stack is less pressing.

Edited November 8, 2012 by jfood

[Sacred_Path]

I think it's been stated that companions are more or less one per class, so the only way to go about a five chanter or paladin party would be through the adventurer's hall. Sharing a character class with one shouldn't be a redundant exercise or really prohibit their part in the narrative due to game mechanics and that's really an issue that needs to be addressed. Where companions of similar class really open up hooks and dialogue, there's more often than not a real, screaming in your face gameplay reason not to bring them along. I think that's an important issue, whether or not a five cleric godsquad of undying care of the adventurer's hall have their abilities stack is less pressing.

 

The adventurer's hall and possible party compositions is what will keep the replay value up. I personally don't worry about wether another character could take precedent over mine in the narrative, but that should be easy to avoid anyway. In all likelihood, there will be something about the main character that makes him so shpeshul he will certainly stand out, narrative-wise.

[mcmanusaur]

I think it's important to consider the perceived value of each individual skill/ability/talent/spell. I try to think from the player's perspective, "Why do I want to take this?" If I can't find a compelling answer compared to the other options, it needs to be improved and distinguished from the other options.

Additionally, one must consider the summation of these various skills/abilities/talents/spells, each with their own individual value, into meaningful wholes. In my experience, often many RPGs are- intentionally or otherwise- designed so that the next level of value hierarchy is the entire build. That is to say that there exists a "build" concept that a player is aiming for, and every individual part is specifically chosen to optimize that whole (ignoring for a moment the casual gamers). As far as I know traditional DnD tends to have a handful of fully viable builds per class, which is decent enough in itself. Perhaps it's just habit that keeps people forming parties with one barbarian, one paladin, one priest, one wizard, one ranger, and one rogue, but that seems to be the preferred method of obtaining a diverse party. Now, if you look at it in terms of actual roles- DPS, healer, crowd control, etc.- that opens up possibilities for maybe having complementary characters of the same class. Well, these roles are often as hackneyed and boring as the classes themselves (might Project Eternity break the mold in terms of roles, if keeping a traditional class set?), but for me the main question of this thread is how much overlap there should be between classes and roles. That said, this would probably be a smaller concern for Project Eternity than for an MMO. But how much should classes and roles intersect? Should there be one specific class that excels at each role, or should most of the classes be able to fulfill most rules to some extent? What are the costs for not min-maxing your character of whatever class into a role? Are there any benefits? How viable are builds that attempt to fulfill multiple roles? That determines the number of viable builds, and the variety within in each class.

Edited November 8, 2012 by mcmanusaur

[Jymm]

This makes me think of a related question. How much control will we as the player have over the development of the companion characters once they are in-party? A lot of games lock particular NPCs into fairly narrow roles through unique abilities and skill trees. If its more like D&D structure then you are free to build out in a variety of ways, but the companion's basic attribute scores and initial starting skills probably push you hard toward only one or two viable builds from there.

 

The adventurer's hall throws this all wide open for players that want to tinker with mechanics extensively. But for that to be cool you need a good variety of options for classes and for abilities within those classes. I'm wagering most players especially on their first playthrough will want to stick with almost exclusively Obsidian's excellently written companions and thus will have a known set of character build options with only one variable (the PC).

 

I have certainly found that in many games the balance is designed such that you can't really make a viable run without a party member in each of several roles. If you can't pick locks then big swaths of content are unavailable or needlessly tedious. If you don't have a mage then some puzzles can't be solved or some foes are almost insurmountable. Things like that. So playing a rogue type character and discovering you don't like / accidentally tick off / haven't yet unlocked the tank role character(s) becomes almost unplayable. If there were sufficient synergy between characters of the same class, or sufficient distinct build options to make two characters in similar roles useful, then it would free up the player more to pick what they want to play and still roll with the companions they most enjoy.

[Jorian Drake]

Water mage, honestly, fireball tossing is fun for a while but I had enough of Fire Mages, I do hope one can be a water magic/healing focused sorcerer.

 

Say what you want, but up til today the only remarkable depiction of water magic I can think of is from the Last Avatar series, so if the team has no idea how to make spellcasting animations interesting and refreshing consider to add martial arts movements like those in Avatar, especially the Fire and Water tribe ones were great in my own opinion.

 

(or perhaps create more than one magic casting style, and one could be "oriental" which would b e like that, and all would have different animations and maybe somewhat different mechanics/bonuses)

Edited November 9, 2012 by Jorian Drake

[Pshaw]

I'm a huge fan of cross class synergy. If you want similar stacking buffs I feel that they need to come from other classes. I dislike the idea of 3 bards all singing the same type of song and you getting it's bonus 3 times. I'm ok with 3 bards each singing a different song and you getting the benefits from each unique one.

 

Simply put in a fighter has a +5% damage shout and a priest has a +5% damage spell they should stack as they're both different spells even though they have the same effect. However I don't think that 6 fighters should all be able to stack the same +5% damage shout.

[Sacred_Path]

I dislike the idea of 3 bards all singing the same type of song and you getting it's bonus 3 times. I'm ok with 3 bards each singing a different song and you getting the benefits from each unique one.

 

Yes, pretty much this.

 

Also, a (cheap) way would be to make more class abilities offensive in nature.