Update #39: Non-Core Classes, Cooldowns, Attack Resolution, Damage vs. Armor and a Tileset!

[Sensuki]

Josh said he's got another system in mind, so I wouldn't be surprised if they end up going with his new idea after he's done playing around with it for a little bit. At least for the time being.

Edited January 26, 2013 by Sensuki

[Ieo]

Josh said he's got another system in mind, so I wouldn't be surprised if they end up going with his new idea after he's done playing around with it for a little bit. At least for the time being.

Ah, I love WIP. Confusing mess sometimes especially since we players have never seen a CRPG actually being made like this, but really interesting to see how things are squished and smeared in the process. 

[Lephys]

Here's what I've got so far regarding the problem with the original damage/armor system (SORRY FOR THE LENGTH!):

 

 
Look at the basics of the original system's formulas:

Crushing: base damage - DT > MDTDT

Piercing: base damage - (DT - DTN) > MDTDT

Slashing: base damage - DT > MDTDT

 
See, Piercing is always going to have lower base damage than slashing, but that's not in the formula. Base damage is variable, so the formula doesn't account for variable balancing of the damage values. It is completely unclear what the specific relationship is between Slashing, Crushing, and Piercing. In the same way, how do you know what the difference is between the various MDTDTs? You see, the SYSTEM knows, because the developers designed it, but the player doesn't know until you let him do the math. He cannot tell, based on how the system functions, HOW different the values are in relation to one another as the quality of weapons and armor scales throughout the game.
 
In NOT-the-original system, damage and DT still do the exact same thing (as they were already intuitive, by themselves). But now, you simply have a binary switch on whether or not there will be a bonus and whether or not there will be a detriment. Is it Light armor? Slashing weapons will get a bonus. They still have variable damage, and Light armor still has variable DT that makes perfect sense no matter the values, but you know whether or not to just subtract DT, or do something else. And that something else is always the same across the board, even though the end values can vary greatly (depending on the already-variable damage and DT values).
 
Here're the formulas for this type of system (a DT augment, I found, works better, so I'll go with that:
 

Slashing: base damage - DT(1.5)               against Light Armor

      base damage - DT                       against Medium armor

      base damage - DT(.5)                 against Heavy Armor

 

Piercing:  base damage - DT(1.5)               against Medium armor

      base damage - DT                       against Heavy armor

      base damage - DT(.5)                 against Light Armor

 

Crushing: base damage - DT(1.5)               against Heavy Armor

      base damage - DT                       against Light armor

      base damage - DT(.5)                 against Medium Armor

 
This is purely an example of the effects of a different system that treats all types with the same formula, respectively. Notice how, no matter what the damage or DT values, I know that Crushing gets SOME amount of bonus against Heavy armor and SOME amount of detriment against Medium armor, and Slashing gets SOME kind of bonus against Light armor and SOME amount of detriment against Heavy armor. How much of a bonus? Well, that depends on DT. The closer DT is to 0, the lesser the difference, across the board. The farther DT is from 0, the greater the significance, across the board.

 

BUT, Slashing isn't always better against Light armor than Crushing, even, because you don't know the damage of the Crushing weapon or the Slashing weapon. They can still be whatever you want, without the need for Crushing's damage to be deftly balanced at some certain amount lower than Slashing damage.

 

Want some enemies to not warrant quite so much "which weapon do I have equipped" worry? Easy. Drop their DT. If it's 0, it doesn't matter what kind of armor they have, or what kind of weapon you have. In the original system, this wasn't even possible, because two weapon types were almost ALWAYS worse than one of the weapon types (one weapon type was always significantly better than the other two, at least. There was never a neutral.) Want some enemies to really require some weapon choice? Easy, raise their DT. Want weapon variety? Awesome! Make a maul with 50 damage and a sword with 40. As long as the DT is higher, the maul will still have the advantage over the sword against heavy armor, and the sword will still have the advantage over the maul against Light armor.

 

Look at allllll the glorious dynamics you can play with, simply by changing the DT. 3 different enmies with the exact same DT, and 3 different weapons with the exact same damage value, and there's strategy to be had. Pick your targets, swap your weapons.

 

That's just with a basic DT adjustment, for a simplistic example. You can always get more interesting with it with the various effects and bonuses I mentioned in a previous example. The ones like bleed damage over time, extra critical damage, temporary DT reduction per hit (which would actually lower the enemy's DT value against all incoming damage), etc. That's just a handful. You could have a different slashing weapon with each extra bonus (or you could have those bonuses IN PLACE of the DT 1.5/.5 adjustment bonus.), and any combination of them, and any other interesting bonuses that can be thought up.

 

It can be as complexly far from the simple "Always use slashing vs light/piercing vs medium/crushing vs heavy" scenario as you want, and yet STILL, damage and DT and health always have the exact same relationship and significance.

 

Is that not easier to balance for whatever you want than the original system?

 

I'm well aware Josh has already said there will be a different system, but I felt it prudent to explore WHY the old system was unintuitive, in the interest of making sure any different one IS intuitive. Plus, there was still a lot of "I don't see what was wrong with the old system" going around after the announcement of the change. And if this forum's purpose isn't collaborative understanding, then what is it?

[Somna]

That chart started a cascade of thoughts.

 

First thought: How would weapons with multiple damage types be handled?  I'm assuming they're going to have two separate modes that need to be swapped between?

 

Second thought: The apparent attributes of the damage types appear to be:

Slashing - +25% base damage

Piercing - increase DT- and -25% base damage

Crushing - 2x MDTDT 

(In the sample chart, Piercing damage is ~75% of Crushing damage which is ~75% of Slashing damage, and the difference in values are NOT arbitrary)  

So will there be magic that exists to enhance each of those attributes, and is it restricted only working if you use that specific type of attack associated with the attribute?  

 

For example, if you use some sort of magic to enhance base damage on a weapon, will the effect only work if you make slashing attacks with the item?

 

Third thought: If there's a concern with magic increasing DT causing confusion on what to use, why can't it cause the beneficiary to simply look like he/she is wearing a special version of the new tier armor?  For example, Leather armor wearing also wearing a ring that gives +5 DT would look like someone wearing ghostly scale mail.  (And if it isn't enough to bump up a tier, it doesn't need a graphic.)

 

Fourth thought: If the same overall ranges were used but the individual ones were narrowed and based on the Piercing numbers, how would that turn out?  The tiers seem to be cleanly divided based on when Piercing starts losing effectiveness and when Piercing hits are not reduced any further.  For example, using the chart's numbers, instead of every 5 being a new tier of armor, it'd be more like 3/6/9, 20/23/26, 35/38/41, and you adjusted as needed based on what numbers Piercing attacks had. 

 

Fifth thought: How are firearms and regular magical protections going to interact with this?  Is Firearms going to be kind of a Crushing/Piercing hybrid in terms of stats?  Do magical barriers just artificially flatline the damage to the minimum amount so that the normally weak armor a traditional spellcaster wears is sufficient to stop the damage?

 

Sixth thought: Is it really that bad that increasing your DMG multiplier means you have an increased range of effectiveness?  They start overlapping more, but then maybe any adjustment to DMG multipliers should be in the realm of really powerful talents then.

[rivetHead]

While I think distinguishing damage type is interesting and has it's place in tactical combat, I'm concerned how the mechanic will actually manifest in gameplay and whether it will be, well.. fun. It will boil down to the frequency of weapon switching and how forgiving the UI is, but my knee jerk reaction to this mechanic is that it will quickly turn into a nuisance / chore. 

 

There are two reasons why I think this would be the case.

 

1. "The interesting tactical decision" only happens once when I first encounter a particular type of enemy or a type of loadout. After I figure out the optimal gear to counter them, subsequent encounters of the same type would just be rinse and repeat, and yet I still have to go through the micro management of weapon switching in order to optimize my combat performance. Another thing I wanted to point out is that the "choice" I'm making with damage type isn't really an interesting one with trade-offs, but rather about comparing stats and arriving at an optimal answer. Unless the intention of this system is to make the process of "figuring out the optimal weapon" fun, I see little reason to include a mechanic that makes you swap weapons all the time. Having said that, I really do like the fact that they are pushing to make the weapon types feel different in the game. That's awesome, I'm all for that, but I think there are more entertaining ways to make weapons feel and play differently. I'll get back to that later.

 

2. As hinted earlier the second reason is the amount of micro work. Picture this in an IE game for me. You see a group of half-orcs ahead, some wearing leather, some in mail, all wielding a mix of weapon types. You could take a guess at which orc will end up fighting whom, and optimize their gear accordingly, but if combat plays anything like the IE games it will quickly turn to chaos, and the amount of micro required to stay on top of things would quickly push combat out of "fun" and into "tedious". I don't have the game in front of me, so I'm not going to pretend I know more than anyone, but again that's just a knee-jerk reaction I had when I tried to picture the mechanic in action.

 

As I said above, I'm all for giving weapon and armor types unique characteristics, and most importantly, to make them play differently. Josh had mentioned somewhere that pole-arms will let you attack while standing behind a character. That's exactly the kind of weapon distinction I'd like to see. For argument sake I'm going to throw out an idea that flails, on top of the primary strike, will have a chance to hit anyone standing adjacent to the wielder, including friendlies. That's another example with interesting trade-offs. Flails will now be a great choice if you're surrounded by enemies, but terrible when used in a tight corridor where friendlies are near. What's neat about distinguishing weapons this way is that map design directly influences your tactics, and thus we capitalize on the fact that each map/area is custom made in P:E. Encountering the same enemy composition in a wide field versus a tight corridor would lead to wildly different tactics. Whereas if we distinguish weapons only by how they interact with DT, changes in map design and character placement would have little effect on your decision making. Obviously the DT based weapon distinction and the kind I'm proposing aren't mutually exclusive, and I'm not completely opposed to the former as long as the micro work is kept at a reasonable level. But if they make us do the weapon type / armor DT dance, instead of it being a mild effect that is applied to encounters, I'd prefer it if the effects were acutely evident, and makes those types of encounters few and far between. (Such as the occasional golem who is pretty much immune to everything but a few things)

 

I'm enjoying this discussion so far, keep it up and thanks for reading!

[Darkpriest]

I'm not that into reading all of the details of mechanics, because the main goal for me as a player is to have an enjoyable solution and not big math number crunching. I have enough of numbers in my daily job...

 

The goal of the system:

 

1) intuitive

2) allowing a big spectrum of viable combat builds (if I'm a -insert weapon- master I want to be able to overcome challenges with the trusty weapon - either add perks that help in that or not too math dependent system) - it leads to FUN.

 

If you want a more realistic system, then I'd rather have a TBC system, not RTwP. Then inventory also should be fairly limited on what you carry (one main weapon - sword, mace, musket, etc.), one side weapon (dagger, knuckles, pistol, etc.), some misc./utility slots, several armor/clothing/jewelry slots, which are locked once the combat starts. If you want to loot everything, then you have to travel with some sort of bought/rented pack mule on which you toss all the heavy stuff, while small things like, gems, money, etc. can be taken by the characters, without the mule you are left with a choice of either leaving the heavy stuff or swapping the one that you have on the one that you've found.

 

The point is:

 

To have fun and intuitive RT(wP) combat it has to be relatively simple yet with some meaningful TACTICAL decisions. I give two nice examples - SC2 from Blizzard, CoH/DoW from Relic. I'd say Relic's RTS games would be a better choice as they are more about terrain control and positioning while Blizzards heavily involve economy and build orders

 

If you want to have more number crunching games, I'd look to TBC system and then as an example would point to X-COM games, both new and old to get the best of two in terms of tactical combat and choice&consequence.

 

As a player I want to enjoy the RP element at the core and the combat be a fluid and fun experience, not a math chore...

Edited January 26, 2013 by Darkpriest

[Gumbercules]

Thinking about damage types some more, I'm becoming less enthusiastic about both the original system and especially the new system. I was originally excited by the simulationist properties of the original system, but thinking about it some more I don't think that constant weapon-swapping makes for a very fun or interesting system. The new system is worse still because it loses the elegant simulationism of the original system while further emphasizing weapon-swapping.

 

Whatever the final system looks like, I think it should have a minor influence on how people play the game compared to things that are more interesting and fun like spells/abilities, class roles, weapon/armor effects, and positioning. I mentioned that Mount & Blade has a similar damage type system, but during actual gameplay player skill plays a much larger role than damage type which just adds a bit of extra flavor. Similarly, in Project Eternity, players should notice slight differences in effectiveness when using different weapons against different armors, but it shouldn't be a major concern unless you're playing at a higher difficulty level or just really like to min/max.

[Valorian]

I can't wait to read about this new idea he had regarding armor mechanics.

[rjshae]

I can't wait to read about this new idea he had regarding armor mechanics.

 

So that it too can be overanalyzed to death?

[rjshae]

Thinking about damage types some more, I'm becoming less enthusiastic about both the original system and especially the new system. I was originally excited by the simulationist properties of the original system, but thinking about it some more I don't think that constant weapon-swapping makes for a very fun or interesting system. The new system is worse still because it loses the elegant simulationism of the original system while further emphasizing weapon-swapping.

 

I'm somewhere in the middle on this. Clearly there are circumstances where it makes sense to swap weapons, such as when you're facing skeletons and you're armed with an estoc, or when you're up against a boss monster and you need every advantage in order to win. But most of the time (~80%) I'd rather it be a secondary factor, compared to sound tactics. A muscular barbarian wielding a great axe should be able to hack down most foes, even when they are protected by the right armor vs. slashing weapons. I like Josh's overall thinking about the combat mechanics, but most of the time I want to be able to muddle through with decent weapons.

Edited January 26, 2013 by rjshae

[Valorian]

 

I can't wait to read about this new idea he had regarding armor mechanics.

 

So that it too can be overanalyzed to death?

Sure, someone has to point out the glaring flaws in the system, while others are too busy mashing the like button or pondering about important things like how many damage types should a flail have, hmmm.

[rjshae]

 

 

I can't wait to read about this new idea he had regarding armor mechanics.

 

So that it too can be overanalyzed to death?

Sure, someone has to point out the glaring flaws in the system, while others are too busy mashing the like button or pondering about important things like how many damage types should a flail have, hmmm.

 

Ah, so that's why you can't wait. Shrug.

[PurpleLlama]

This is some seriously technical stuff being discussed here, waaaay over my head most of it, but very interesting none the less. Someone mentioned the back of the butcher's shop metaphor, but I think it's a good thing. Many of us gamers will learn a new appreciation of how much work goes into these games.

 

Great update, some surprisingly fast progress being made and so far I'm liking everything I see and hear.

 

Starting fallout2 for the first time tonight, wish me Luck

[IndiraLightfoot]

 

Thinking about damage types some more, I'm becoming less enthusiastic about both the original system and especially the new system. I was originally excited by the simulationist properties of the original system, but thinking about it some more I don't think that constant weapon-swapping makes for a very fun or interesting system. The new system is worse still because it loses the elegant simulationism of the original system while further emphasizing weapon-swapping.

 

I'm somewhere in the middle on this. Clearly there are circumstances where it makes sense to swap weapons, such as when you're facing skeletons and you're armed with an estoc, or when you're up against a boss monster and you need every advantage in order to win. But most of the time (~80%) I'd rather it be a secondary factor, compared to sound tactics. A muscular barbarian wielding a great axe should be able to hack down most foes, even when they are protected by the right armor vs. slashing weapons. I like Josh's overall thinking about the combat mechanics, but most of the time I want to be able to muddle through with decent weapons.

 

^This is cannot be underlined enough:

Predictable game play must take precendence over systemic claims of realism. Say what you will about pre-4th ed D&D's AC, HP and Armor, but the outcomes of the system were rather predictable: Difficult bosses, lots of misses and rare critical hits, medium baddies, hits and some misses with a number of crits, and easy opponents, almost guarnteed hits and one-shotting them with plenty of crits was the norm if you're say a lvl 10 fighter thrashing thru a bunch of kobolds. Weapon swapping is interesting, but it should neber become a meta-gamey gimmick that you start to associate with PE's combat. Then PE's combat system is done for. In some MMOs, like GW2, for instance, you unlock weapon swapping at lvl 7 and then there's a 10 sec cooldown on it. Still lots of builds revolve around it.

 

Here's a weird thought right off the bat: What if we could use armor absorption, a bit like RQ instead, and perhaps a bit of linb picking, like VATS in New Vegas? At least this would work for the damage types bludgeoning and slashing. So when an armour takes a few hard blows it's done for. You can repair it (reasonably), but after the fight. This would of course affect combat a lot, making the first exchanges of blows more critical. I'm no number cruncher as far as damage systems go, but it would be interesting. Then your health and stamina really would matter.

[Valorian]

 

 

 

I can't wait to read about this new idea he had regarding armor mechanics.

 

So that it too can be overanalyzed to death?

Sure, someone has to point out the glaring flaws in the system, while others are too busy mashing the like button or pondering about important things like how many damage types should a flail have, hmmm.

 

Ah, so that's why you can't wait. Shrug.

No.

[rjshae]

The designers can probably make weapon swapping a less optimal tactic by putting in a time penalty for the swap. If you lose a full attack by swapping weapons, then the benefit of the swap may be outweighed by the extra attack you're effectively granting your opponent. Where it (weapon swapping) is probably a more interesting aspect is in cases where the opponent is going to take a substantial number of blows before they go down, such as the traditional one-on-one battle with the enemy's champion. In the case where you are going into battle against a mixed group of less challenging foes, it probably only makes sense to perform a weapon swap once at the start, before the ranks can close. Repeated battles against similar opponents will likely minimize the need for weapon swaps.

[Valorian]

Lol no. If you're doing 1 damage consistently, there is no other option other than swapping weapons. Losing an attack (and you'll attack cca every 2 seconds, or faster) is a laughable penalty.

Also, you seem to be oblivious to a much more important issue: enemies. Will they be able to swap weapons in all scenarios, the majority of times? Like humanoid PCs can? They won't and they shouldn't.

The designers can probably make weapon swapping a less optimal tactic by putting in a time penalty for the swap. If you lose a full attack by swapping weapons, then the benefit of the swap may be outweighed by the extra attack you're effectively granting your opponent.

[Hormalakh]

I am vehemently opposed to the idea of "lazy gameplay" where players expect to lazily pass through any and every combat scenario without tactics or strategy (i.e. just playing it for the story). This includes the comments being made regarding using only one weapon throughout the game (and only one armor) until you find the ubersword or the uberplate. Limiting tactics by disregarding two aspects of combat (weapon choice and armor choice) is NOT why I invested in this game. This game was not sold to the players that way and it should not cater to players who want that.

 

That being said, an obnoxious or overly unintuitive combat mechanic, is -I am sure- not wanted by most players. At this point, since there is another Armor vs DT mechanic coming up, I'll wait to see what that is before arguing for or against any mechanic.

Edited January 26, 2013 by Hormalakh

[rjshae]

I am vehemently opposed to the idea of "lazy gameplay" where players expect to lazily pass through every mob without tactics or strategy (i.e. just playing it for the story). This includes the comments being made regarding using only one weapon throughout the game (and only one armor) until you find the ubersword or the uberplate. Limiting tactics by disregarding two aspects of combat (weapon choice and armor choice) is NOT what I signed up for. This game was not sold to the players that way and it should not cater to players who want that.

 

It's pretty clear that you did not read the full comments since you're resorting to a strawman argument. To quote, "But most of the time (~80%) I'd rather it be a secondary factor, compared to sound tactics."

Edited January 26, 2013 by rjshae

[Hormalakh]

It's pretty clear that you did not read the full comments since you're resorting to a strawman argument.

Don't make me quote the entire last two pages of this thread.

 

edit: rereading your text, I did not direct my posting at you rjshae. You used the word "muddle" which I took to mean that it wasn't the most tactically sound of decisions (and probably allows you to beat some(/many?) of the mobs in a normal or easy difficulty) and unlikely to be the most effective way. 

 

I was directing most of my disagreement toward other posters.

Edited January 26, 2013 by Hormalakh

[rjshae]

 

It's pretty clear that you did not read the full comments since you're resorting to a strawman argument.

Don't make me quote the entire last two pages of this thread.

 

edit: rereading your text, I did not direct my posting at you rjshae. You used the word "muddle" which I took to mean that it wasn't the most tactically sound of decisions (and probably allows you to beat some(/many?) of the mobs in a normal or easy difficulty) and likely the least effective way. 

 

I was directing most of my disagreement toward other posters.

 

Okay. Yes, that is more or less what I meant by muddle. As was more-or-less pointed out by IndiraLightfoot though, if battles devolve into number crunching exercises then it's not going to be much fun. In most cases that trusty broadsword should be able to do the job, even if it is not the "perfect" weapon against a specific opponent. Generally I'd rather resort to weapon switching only in cases where a weapon is clearly not up to the task: like using a rapier against a knight in field plate armor.

Edited January 26, 2013 by rjshae

[Lephys]

Lol no. If you're doing 1 damage consistently, there is no other option other than swapping weapons. Losing an attack (and you'll attack cca every 2 seconds, or faster) is a laughable penalty.

Also, you seem to be oblivious to a much more important issue: enemies. Will they be able to swap weapons in all scenarios, the majority of times? Like humanoid PCs can? They won't and they shouldn't.

 

Good point is good. Although, for what it's worth, I believe Josh already stated that swapping weapons would take time (as opposed to not-swapping weapons taking "no time" as far as your as-often-as-possible attacks are concerned). So that should already be a thing, and it makes perfect sense.

 

But, yeah, that is, I think, the main problem with the original system. It doesn't really support ANY weapon-type favoring for lower-complexity encounters. Slashing is balanced by ALWAYS having higher base damage, so, if you run into a group of 0 DT enemies and your party is using maces and mauls, you're doing like half damage against all of them (suggesting that a giant hammer INHERENTLY does half the damage, when swung at something's skull, than a sword.). You don't HAVE to swap weapons, but there's always a REALLLLLY good reason to.

 

When all 3 damage types are handled in the same manner (relative to armor types), you can still have complexity, but it's a lot easier to balance the degree of difference between "good" and "bad" weapons against any armor type in any given scenario.

 

Basically, you can have your cake and eat it, too.

 

Of course, Josh's proposed new system DOES handle things this way, it would seem (as opposed to the original system's way), so now it's just a matter of ironing out details and balancing. Or, to clarify, I don't think that particular rigidity flaw from the original system exists in the newly proposed system, so, at the very least, it is better in that respect. We won't really know exactly how it well it deals with all other factors/problems until we know all the details.

 

 

So that it too can be overanalyzed to death?

 

 

On the contrary... this forum simply suffers from an immense shortage of underanalysis. ^_^

 

Seriously, though, it's perfectly constructive to analyze and discuss the potentiality of the system. Discussing such things is like mining for precious metals. We're just seeing what we can find that might be useful. Discussion is not restricted merely to arguing for or against the officially-proposed systems.

 

If we have to wait patiently for Obsidian to provide more details that they've worked out for the system, we might as well produce the possibility of some useful tidbit in these forum pages that they can use along the way, rather than refraining from discussing anything and eliminating the possibility all together.

[Hormalakh]

Okay. Yes, that is more or less what I meant by muddle. As was pointed out by IndiraLightfoot though, if battles devolve into number crunching exercises then it's not going to be much fun. In most cases that trusty broadsword should be able to do the job, even if it is not the "perfect" weapon against a specific opponent. Generally I'd rather resort to weapon switching only in cases where a weapon is clearly not up to the task: like using a rapier against a knight in field plate armor.

 

Then clearly we have no disagreements. I think the old mechanic did this well enough. Intuitive? Not at first.

[Lephys]

Then clearly we have no disagreements. I think the old mechanic did this well enough. Intuitive? Not at first.

 

 

... Or at second... or at third... .

 

I'm not trying to simply antagonize here, but I'd say that "at first" is kind of integral to intuitiveness. If you don't comprehend how something works until further study and/or explanation, then it isn't intuitive. It doesn't become intuitive once you understand it, or even the most complex things in the world would all eventually be intuitive. They're simply comprehendable, intuitive designating almost immediate or inherent comprehension.

 

It wouldn't be the end of the world if they had stuck with the old mechanic. I don't LOATHE it or anything. I just think it's unnecessarily restrictive in terms of weapon effectiveness (again, mace is ONLY good against heavy armor, because it's ALWAYS farrrrr worse than the sword versus Light/no armor), and the minimum amount of weapon effectiveness calculation is much higher than it should be (because it depends directly upon multiple factors even in the most basic of estimates.) That's all.

 

The new mechanic, so long as it is balanced correctly, can serve the same functions as the old, PLUS more. So, it's less restrictive (it's much easier to produce scenarios in which weapon choice is less significant and scenarios in which it is more significant), it's intuitive (not to mention probably makes it easier to balance all other factors of combat encounters), AND it can potentially do even more than the old mechanic. I don't think the new mechanic has any inherent flaws, in other words. It's implementation could always have flaws, though.

[Falkon Swiftblade]

Regarding class stuff in this update, I was reminded in the BG and IWD games one of my favorite things about those games was in the character creation choosing your characters voice, and having war cry's and the magic users casting spells by chanting and it was great to have banter between the party as we're going through too in those games. Hopefully you guys can do that here and push it a little more. Chanters should actually chant stuff like you were saying. Similar to Skyrim, that was pretty neat! Hopefully its not the same magic chant for all magic though.