Attributes

[thorbjorn.carlsen]

I would like to se some minor changes in the attributes:

 

Might: Take the "damage dealing for mages" out of might and in to  resolution. This would improve the wizard with less attributes to focus on.

 

Resolution: Take "+ to defence" out and into dexterity. This would improve dexterity.

 

 

Result:

 

Might -> strength (dnd-style). Strength/might would still be very strong.

 

Dexterity: Stronger and more focused.

 

Resolution: Just as strong, but more focused on some classes like wizard.

 

I think this would improve the system  lot.

 

Cheers! )

[Durgarnkuld]

Why.

Just why ^^

Wizards have about as many attributes to focus on as anyone else. Just depends on the style of wizard you wanna play.

D&D Strength isn't the holy grail, stop pretending it was, is or ever will be. It's actually garbage and just as mislead as dexterity for a lot of weapons and styles and how they actually work.

Dex is already a very strong attribute and would be just as overblown as in DnD with that change. I really appreciated their take on that, not to have it improve like 50 statistics but be a clear important and already streamlined stat.

 

If we take defense out of Resolution it becomes the good old Charisma. AKA useless **** dumpstat no one ever cares about but feels good about having raised it because it's cool and edgy to raise useless stats and not be that power gamer.

Nah, no thanks. Resolution is actually what I always wanted out of a leader stat.

 

EDIT:

Don't get me wrong: Pillars stats aren't the holy grail either. I'm not saying you can't improve upon those core ideas. Give Resolution DR ignore, give Endurance some DR - you can play with those statistics and get some better results for other builds and so on. But not by stripping good footing of its identity for no good reason other than: well it's then like that bad stat in that other game I know and I want what I know!

Edited April 18, 2017 by Durgarnkuld

[tinysalamander]

[PizzaSHARK]

Why.

Just why ^^

Wizards have about as many attributes to focus on as anyone else. Just depends on the style of wizard you wanna play.

D&D Strength isn't the holy grail, stop pretending it was, is or ever will be. It's actually garbage and just as mislead as dexterity for a lot of weapons and styles and how they actually work.

Dex is already a very strong attribute and would be just as overblown as in DnD with that change. I really appreciated their take on that, not to have it improve like 50 statistics but be a clear important and already streamlined stat.

 

If we take defense out of Resolution it becomes the good old Charisma. AKA useless **** dumpstat no one ever cares about but feels good about having raised it because it's cool and edgy to raise useless stats and not be that power gamer.

Nah, no thanks. Resolution is actually what I always wanted out of a leader stat.

 

EDIT:

Don't get me wrong: Pillars stats aren't the holy grail either. I'm not saying you can't improve upon those core ideas. Give Resolution DR ignore, give Endurance some DR - you can play with those statistics and get some better results for other builds and so on. But not by stripping good footing of its identity for no good reason other than: well it's then like that bad stat in that other game I know and I want what I know!

 

Skills are the solution to dump stats.  Additionally, there should be dump stats for given classes because this is a team based game - you want a team of specialists, not a team of generalists.  The Fighter has no use for Resolve if someone else is going to be the party's "face," although tying skills like Intimidate to Resolve can make it useful and valued even for a non-"face" Fighter.

 

Feat requirements or changes to armor, items, etc also reinforce the value of stats.  Part of the reason stats feel so unimportant and "weak" in Pillars is because they affect almost nothing outside of their MMO-like minor stat adjustments.  There are no talents which require certain minimum attributes, skills are independent of attributes, certain weapons don't rely on certain attributes, etc.

[Aleh1811]

I would like to se some minor changes in the attributes:

 

Might: Take the "damage dealing for mages" out of might and in to resolution. This would improve the wizard with less attributes to focus on.

 

Resolution: Take "+ to defence" out and into dexterity. This would improve dexterity.

 

 

Result:

 

Might -> strength (dnd-style). Strength/might would still be very strong.

 

Dexterity: Stronger and more focused.

 

Resolution: Just as strong, but more focused on some classes like wizard.

 

I think this would improve the system lot.

 

Cheers! )

I think you would be creating a lot of dump stats that way. It would make mix maxing much more common. Edited April 18, 2017 by Aleh1811

[PizzaSHARK]

 

I would like to se some minor changes in the attributes:

 

Might: Take the "damage dealing for mages" out of might and in to resolution. This would improve the wizard with less attributes to focus on.

 

Resolution: Take "+ to defence" out and into dexterity. This would improve dexterity.

 

 

Result:

 

Might -> strength (dnd-style). Strength/might would still be very strong.

 

Dexterity: Stronger and more focused.

 

Resolution: Just as strong, but more focused on some classes like wizard.

 

I think this would improve the system lot.

 

Cheers! )

I think you would be creating a lot of dump stats that way. It would make mix maxing much more common.

 

 

Min maxing is already common among players that, well, want to min max.  For virtually every class and role, Might and Intelligence are god stats, Constitution and Resolve are dump stats, and Dexterity and Perception sort of occupy a "well, they're nice to have, but..." range.

 

Every class wants to do damage, which makes Might attractive - even pure tanks want Might, because the AI takes into consideration the potential incoming damage from a DA when it decides whether or not to chase that juicy, squishy Wizard rather than stick to your chufty, crunchy tank.  Might also influences spell intensity, including amount of healing spells do... including a Fighter's Constant Recovery and the Veteran's Recovery talent.  Might also increases the very important Fortitude defense, which is used to defend against most hard control effects like Prone, Stun, and Paralyze.

 

Every class also has skills that have durations (whether buffs or debuffs), and every class can (and usually will) make use of scrolls... which is also affected by your Intelligence score.  So every class also wants Intelligence.  Oh, Intelligence also increases the AOE of all of these abilities (where applicable) and increases the important Will defense, used to resist dangerous control effects like Charm and Dominate, as well as common debuffs like Frightened.

 

Paladins want Might and Intelligence to increase the size of their auras, make their Lay on Hands heal for more and last for longer (which also heals more), and to increase the duration of their exhortations.  Fighters value Might and Intelligence to increase the throughput and duration of their Constant Recovery, increase the duration of their Knock Down and Vigorous Defense, to increase the AOE and duration of their Clear Out.  Wizards want that Might to increase the damage of their spells, Priests want Might to increase the healing of that Consecrated Ground and they want Intelligence to increase its AOE and duration, etc.

 

 

By comparison, almost no one wants CON or RES.  Now, it's not usually a good idea to take too many points from them (with RES being more important than CON, unless you're ranged), but investing points into them is usually a bad idea.  If you're worried about getting interrupted, just chug a potion of spirit shield.  The difference between 10 CON and 14 CON in terms of END and HP isn't substantial enough to justify robbing your MIG and INT scores, and you get Fort bonuses from Might anyway.  RES gives you an incredibly small boost to Deflection, making it really not worth the investment.

 

Similarly, Perception gives tiny boosts to ACC and decent boosts to Interrupt... but if you want to interrupt people, just pop a potion of Merciless Gaze to crit more often (because crits always interrupt) or take the Interrupting Blows feat.  Dexterity is much more useful, but suffers from diminishing returns to the point that while some DEX is advisable, it's usually better to maximize your INT and MIG instead (for all but a few builds.)

 

 

I'm just left with the opinion that people who think Pillars' system is at all better than the D&D systems it was built from (3E and beyond, I don't think anyone will argue that 2E is better than what Pillars does) just don't really know that much about it.

 

 

Like virtually everything else in Obsidian games, it's a solid idea but badly balanced/executed.  I think with some love and polish, the Pillars system could be pretty great.  But as it stands in Pillars 1, it's pretty lousy.  Obviously Obsidian agrees, since it sounds like they have some substantial changes on the docket for Deadfire.  I'm interesting to see how they apply lessons learned.

Edited April 18, 2017 by PizzaSHARK

[Fenixp]

It's effectively the first iteration of a more or less new system, PizzaSHARK. I agree with your points (to an extent, tank with dumped CON isn't particularly effective in my experience), but I want Obsidian to work with it and improve it (in many areas) as opposed to completely obliterating and remaking it into another DnD clone.

[DigitalCrack]

 

 

 

Why.

Just why ^^

Wizards have about as many attributes to focus on as anyone else. Just depends on the style of wizard you wanna play.

D&D Strength isn't the holy grail, stop pretending it was, is or ever will be. It's actually garbage and just as mislead as dexterity for a lot of weapons and styles and how they actually work.

Dex is already a very strong attribute and would be just as overblown as in DnD with that change. I really appreciated their take on that, not to have it improve like 50 statistics but be a clear important and already streamlined stat.

 

If we take defense out of Resolution it becomes the good old Charisma. AKA useless **** dumpstat no one ever cares about but feels good about having raised it because it's cool and edgy to raise useless stats and not be that power gamer.

Nah, no thanks. Resolution is actually what I always wanted out of a leader stat.

 

EDIT:

Don't get me wrong: Pillars stats aren't the holy grail either. I'm not saying you can't improve upon those core ideas. Give Resolution DR ignore, give Endurance some DR - you can play with those statistics and get some better results for other builds and so on. But not by stripping good footing of its identity for no good reason other than: well it's then like that bad stat in that other game I know and I want what I know!

Skills are the solution to dump stats. Additionally, there should be dump stats for given classes because this is a team based game - you want a team of specialists, not a team of generalists.

Except this is counter to the design philosophy of character building for pillars which was "all builds are viable." Whats the benefit of forcing people to min max? why should that be the only viable way to fix the current "issues" with stats?

[PizzaSHARK]

It's effectively the first iteration of a more or less new system, PizzaSHARK. I agree with your points (to an extent, tank with dumped CON isn't particularly effective in my experience), but I want Obsidian to work with it and improve it (in many areas) as opposed to completely obliterating and remaking it into another DnD clone.

 

Yeah, I'm not saying to scrap it.  I think it has plenty of potential, it just needs some polish and tuning.  Like half of the systems in the game, really.  Like you said, it's a first iteration and Obsidian was definitely already stretched thin trying to get out what a massive game Pillars turned out to be.  Balance was probably on the least concern list, and that was the correct decision.

 

 

 

 

Why.

Just why ^^

Wizards have about as many attributes to focus on as anyone else. Just depends on the style of wizard you wanna play.

D&D Strength isn't the holy grail, stop pretending it was, is or ever will be. It's actually garbage and just as mislead as dexterity for a lot of weapons and styles and how they actually work.

Dex is already a very strong attribute and would be just as overblown as in DnD with that change. I really appreciated their take on that, not to have it improve like 50 statistics but be a clear important and already streamlined stat.

 

If we take defense out of Resolution it becomes the good old Charisma. AKA useless **** dumpstat no one ever cares about but feels good about having raised it because it's cool and edgy to raise useless stats and not be that power gamer.

Nah, no thanks. Resolution is actually what I always wanted out of a leader stat.

 

EDIT:

Don't get me wrong: Pillars stats aren't the holy grail either. I'm not saying you can't improve upon those core ideas. Give Resolution DR ignore, give Endurance some DR - you can play with those statistics and get some better results for other builds and so on. But not by stripping good footing of its identity for no good reason other than: well it's then like that bad stat in that other game I know and I want what I know!

Skills are the solution to dump stats. Additionally, there should be dump stats for given classes because this is a team based game - you want a team of specialists, not a team of generalists.

Except this is counter to the design philosophy of character building for pillars which was "all builds are viable." Whats the benefit of forcing people to min max? why should that be the only viable way to fix the current "issues" with stats?

 

 

How is tying skills to attributes min-maxing?  Have you never played D&D or Pathfinder?

[DigitalCrack]

 

It's effectively the first iteration of a more or less new system, PizzaSHARK. I agree with your points (to an extent, tank with dumped CON isn't particularly effective in my experience), but I want Obsidian to work with it and improve it (in many areas) as opposed to completely obliterating and remaking it into another DnD clone.

Yeah, I'm not saying to scrap it. I think it has plenty of potential, it just needs some polish and tuning. Like half of the systems in the game, really. Like you said, it's a first iteration and Obsidian was definitely already stretched thin trying to get out what a massive game Pillars turned out to be. Balance was probably on the least concern list, and that was the correct decision.

 

 

Why.

Just why ^^

Wizards have about as many attributes to focus on as anyone else. Just depends on the style of wizard you wanna play.

D&D Strength isn't the holy grail, stop pretending it was, is or ever will be. It's actually garbage and just as mislead as dexterity for a lot of weapons and styles and how they actually work.

Dex is already a very strong attribute and would be just as overblown as in DnD with that change. I really appreciated their take on that, not to have it improve like 50 statistics but be a clear important and already streamlined stat.

 

If we take defense out of Resolution it becomes the good old Charisma. AKA useless **** dumpstat no one ever cares about but feels good about having raised it because it's cool and edgy to raise useless stats and not be that power gamer.

Nah, no thanks. Resolution is actually what I always wanted out of a leader stat.

 

EDIT:

Don't get me wrong: Pillars stats aren't the holy grail either. I'm not saying you can't improve upon those core ideas. Give Resolution DR ignore, give Endurance some DR - you can play with those statistics and get some better results for other builds and so on. But not by stripping good footing of its identity for no good reason other than: well it's then like that bad stat in that other game I know and I want what I know!

Skills are the solution to dump stats. Additionally, there should be dump stats for given classes because this is a team based game - you want a team of specialists, not a team of generalists.

Except this is counter to the design philosophy of character building for pillars which was "all builds are viable." Whats the benefit of forcing people to min max? why should that be the only viable way to fix the current "issues" with stats?

How is tying skills to attributes min-maxing? Have you never played D&D or Pathfinder?

saying that there "should be dump stats" is what I was referring to. That was one thing that always drove me nuts in BG games was having to dump stats.. you could never have generalists that were effective. Pillars is at least close to having all builds be decent and going for a more d&d approach would be a step back imo. Not to say I disagree with everything you propose, just that dumping should be neccessary.

[PizzaSHARK]

Dumping isn't necessary in D&D, either.  Charisma is often a dump stat for warriors, but a number of useful utility skills your party may expect you to have operate off of Charisma (or require a "feat tax" to make them operate off a different attribute, like Strength) meaning you can't just completely dump it.  Handle Animal is a class skill for a lot of warrior classes, and it may be that your usual "skill monkey" classes can't afford to invest into it much... so it's your job to be the guy that calms down the horse when you're sneaking past the stables, and if you dumped CHA you're going to fail and the enemy camp will be alerted and you're in the **** now.

 

 

Seriously, people that think tabletop D&D even really has "dump stats" just don't play tabletop much, or maybe have really bad DMs.  There are stats of "least concern," but that is not at all a bad thing.  A Fighter might not particularly want to focus on Wisdom, but they aren't likely to dump it either since it controls their Will save (with Will and Fortitude being "the important ones") and influences their Perception skill (and failing a Perception check could mean you don't get to act in a surprise round, or that you get surprised by those goblins that were hiding in a dark corner) so outright dumping it is a bad idea.  Dumping was only a "thing" in the Infinity Engine games because they only had a limited number of scenarios a player could encounter and so it was pretty easy to engineer situations where your terrible WIS and CHA never really became a hindrance (this is also partly the fault of 2E's byzantine structure, something that went away in 3E and beyond.)

 

 

Honestly, the Pillars system is not very far removed from modern D&D and Pathfinder, except that its attributes have very little impact on performance and that all of the classes are essentially generalists rather than specialists (no proficiencies, identical attack progression, etc.)  I honestly dislike the Pillars system quite a bit, but it's forgivable because Obsidian had so much on their plate and while the system is rather bland, it's functional.  I'm interested to see how Deadfire changes things, and particularly how the tabletop edition turns out.

Edited April 18, 2017 by PizzaSHARK

[Aleh1811]

 

 

I would like to se some minor changes in the attributes:

Might: Take the "damage dealing for mages" out of might and in to resolution. This would improve the wizard with less attributes to focus on.

Resolution: Take "+ to defence" out and into dexterity. This would improve dexterity.

Result:

Might -> strength (dnd-style). Strength/might would still be very strong.

Dexterity: Stronger and more focused.

Resolution: Just as strong, but more focused on some classes like wizard.

I think this would improve the system lot.

Cheers! )

 

I think you would be creating a lot of dump stats that way. It would make mix maxing much more common.

 

Min maxing is already common among players that, well, want to min max.  For virtually every class and role, Might and Intelligence are god stats, Constitution and Resolve are dump stats, and Dexterity and Perception sort of occupy a "well, they're nice to have, but..." range.

 

Every class wants to do damage, which makes Might attractive - even pure tanks want Might, because the AI takes into consideration the potential incoming damage from a DA when it decides whether or not to chase that juicy, squishy Wizard rather than stick to your chufty, crunchy tank.  Might also influences spell intensity, including amount of healing spells do... including a Fighter's Constant Recovery and the Veteran's Recovery talent.  Might also increases the very important Fortitude defense, which is used to defend against most hard control effects like Prone, Stun, and Paralyze.

 

Every class also has skills that have durations (whether buffs or debuffs), and every class can (and usually will) make use of scrolls... which is also affected by your Intelligence score.  So every class also wants Intelligence.  Oh, Intelligence also increases the AOE of all of these abilities (where applicable) and increases the important Will defense, used to resist dangerous control effects like Charm and Dominate, as well as common debuffs like Frightened.

 

Paladins want Might and Intelligence to increase the size of their auras, make their Lay on Hands heal for more and last for longer (which also heals more), and to increase the duration of their exhortations.  Fighters value Might and Intelligence to increase the throughput and duration of their Constant Recovery, increase the duration of their Knock Down and Vigorous Defense, to increase the AOE and duration of their Clear Out.  Wizards want that Might to increase the damage of their spells, Priests want Might to increase the healing of that Consecrated Ground and they want Intelligence to increase its AOE and duration, etc.

 

 

By comparison, almost no one wants CON or RES.  Now, it's not usually a good idea to take too many points from them (with RES being more important than CON, unless you're ranged), but investing points into them is usually a bad idea.  If you're worried about getting interrupted, just chug a potion of spirit shield.  The difference between 10 CON and 14 CON in terms of END and HP isn't substantial enough to justify robbing your MIG and INT scores, and you get Fort bonuses from Might anyway.  RES gives you an incredibly small boost to Deflection, making it really not worth the investment.

 

Similarly, Perception gives tiny boosts to ACC and decent boosts to Interrupt... but if you want to interrupt people, just pop a potion of Merciless Gaze to crit more often (because crits always interrupt) or take the Interrupting Blows feat.  Dexterity is much more useful, but suffers from diminishing returns to the point that while some DEX is advisable, it's usually better to maximize your INT and MIG instead (for all but a few builds.)

 

 

I'm just left with the opinion that people who think Pillars' system is at all better than the D&D systems it was built from (3E and beyond, I don't think anyone will argue that 2E is better than what Pillars does) just don't really know that much about it.

 

 

Like virtually everything else in Obsidian games, it's a solid idea but badly balanced/executed.  I think with some love and polish, the Pillars system could be pretty great.  But as it stands in Pillars 1, it's pretty lousy.  Obviously Obsidian agrees, since it sounds like they have some substantial changes on the docket for Deadfire.  I'm interesting to see how they apply lessons learned.

Well I can agree with the fact that attributes should have higher influence. But I still like how obsidian managed each attributes area of effect over what you propose.

[Durgarnkuld]

 

Skills are the solution to dump stats.  Additionally, there should be dump stats for given classes because this is a team based game - you want a team of specialists, not a team of generalists.  The Fighter has no use for Resolve if someone else is going to be the party's "face," although tying skills like Intimidate to Resolve can make it useful and valued even for a non-"face" Fighter.

 

Feat requirements or changes to armor, items, etc also reinforce the value of stats.  Part of the reason stats feel so unimportant and "weak" in Pillars is because they affect almost nothing outside of their MMO-like minor stat adjustments.  There are no talents which require certain minimum attributes, skills are independent of attributes, certain weapons don't rely on certain attributes, etc.

 

 

 

 

I can't say I agree at all. First of: I think skills are rather a symptom of DnD stats beging garbage in some departments and a lousy attempt at a solution for their glaring weaknesses.

I like having skills, but them being tied to certain attributes doesn't have that much of an impact with some, makes them even obsolete. Why invest in attributes if I can just skill it.

 

How does a team based game constitute for dumpstats - that don't have or should exist at all, if you ask me. As long as different classes do different things with them, utilize them in interesting, unique ways, I see no problem. And just because a stat isn't a dump stat, doesn't mean I have to specialize in it. I can just take my companions in different ways.

 

Why do I want a team of specialists? That depends entirely on the campaign, setting, set of characters, challenges, playstyle etc. You can achieve a well rounded group a number of ways, not only by your black-white approach.

 

I don't know what you did with your runs - I for one could finally take points in a leader stat as a tank and frontliner. Because it IS useful, even if you have a face already. 

 

I agree that stat requirements enforce value on them. But I can't say thats always a good thing. Well, Charisma is a useless stat? But you have to take it, if you want ... er ... well this feat we just invented! See how useful charisma is, guys? It is simple gating of content. Nothing magical or clever or even well thought out. I think of it as lazy. Where you see the solutions, I see problems.

 

 

 

 

Min maxing is already common among players that, well, want to min max.  For virtually every class and role, Might and Intelligence are god stats, Constitution and Resolve are dump stats, and Dexterity and Perception sort of occupy a "well, they're nice to have, but..." range.

 

 

Every class wants to do damage, which makes Might attractive - even pure tanks want Might, because the AI takes into consideration the potential incoming damage from a DA when it decides whether or not to chase that juicy, squishy Wizard rather than stick to your chufty, crunchy tank.  Might also influences spell intensity, including amount of healing spells do... including a Fighter's Constant Recovery and the Veteran's Recovery talent.  Might also increases the very important Fortitude defense, which is used to defend against most hard control effects like Prone, Stun, and Paralyze.

 

Every class also has skills that have durations (whether buffs or debuffs), and every class can (and usually will) make use of scrolls... which is also affected by your Intelligence score.  So every class also wants Intelligence.  Oh, Intelligence also increases the AOE of all of these abilities (where applicable) and increases the important Will defense, used to resist dangerous control effects like Charm and Dominate, as well as common debuffs like Frightened.

 

Paladins want Might and Intelligence to increase the size of their auras, make their Lay on Hands heal for more and last for longer (which also heals more), and to increase the duration of their exhortations.  Fighters value Might and Intelligence to increase the throughput and duration of their Constant Recovery, increase the duration of their Knock Down and Vigorous Defense, to increase the AOE and duration of their Clear Out.  Wizards want that Might to increase the damage of their spells, Priests want Might to increase the healing of that Consecrated Ground and they want Intelligence to increase its AOE and duration, etc.

 

 

By comparison, almost no one wants CON or RES.  Now, it's not usually a good idea to take too many points from them (with RES being more important than CON, unless you're ranged), but investing points into them is usually a bad idea.  If you're worried about getting interrupted, just chug a potion of spirit shield.  The difference between 10 CON and 14 CON in terms of END and HP isn't substantial enough to justify robbing your MIG and INT scores, and you get Fort bonuses from Might anyway.  RES gives you an incredibly small boost to Deflection, making it really not worth the investment.

 

Similarly, Perception gives tiny boosts to ACC and decent boosts to Interrupt... but if you want to interrupt people, just pop a potion of Merciless Gaze to crit more often (because crits always interrupt) or take the Interrupting Blows feat.  Dexterity is much more useful, but suffers from diminishing returns to the point that while some DEX is advisable, it's usually better to maximize your INT and MIG instead (for all but a few builds.)

 

 

I'm just left with the opinion that people who think Pillars' system is at all better than the D&D systems it was built from (3E and beyond, I don't think anyone will argue that 2E is better than what Pillars does) just don't really know that much about it.

 

 

Like virtually everything else in Obsidian games, it's a solid idea but badly balanced/executed.  I think with some love and polish, the Pillars system could be pretty great.  But as it stands in Pillars 1, it's pretty lousy.  Obviously Obsidian agrees, since it sounds like they have some substantial changes on the docket for Deadfire.  I'm interesting to see how they apply lessons learned.

 

 

 

This whole post is just ... I feel it's just wrong. There is WAY more wiggle room in Pillars with your "undesired" stats than in most DnD, if we talk strictly stats. If you only think there are two worthwhile stats I pity your lack of imagination. A lot of people had fun with different approaches and different play styles that are possible.

 

What I can give you is: there is room for improvement, there has to be change. But that doesn't take away from a spark of greatness, when I see it.

I don't see many people claiming Pillars was better. But it's different, it's another take on the core ideas and ideals, another spin, fresh wind. I don't want that cookie cutter DnD stuff in this crowd funded project. And if you want it, I guess you should donate to another cause. I think Pillars would lose a lot of interesting direction that is worth exploring if we just jam it into the "old and known, never change anything, 'cause it's perfect" shoes.

 

And no, I have 15 years of DnD under my belt. You can leave your assumptions at home, where they belong. You first talk about "you want specialists" and than go into detail of the wisdom fighter. Leave that to the druid then, eh? ^^

Thing is: handle animal? Just boost INT, more beneficial than this "good use of charisma". Why not dump Wisdom? I just take "insert OP prestige class out of extra book Y for 59.99" that has high will saves.

Honestly, dumping stats, even in table top, is so easy with DnD, it isn't even funny.

Edited April 18, 2017 by Durgarnkuld

[MortyTheGobbo]

Pillars' attributes are hardly ideal, and I do hope Obsidian will take a new approach to them in Deadfire. But using D&D attributes and skills like something to strive for is a very bad joke. D&D attributes are just about functional enough; D&D skills have been a mess in pretty much every edition. Honestly, D&D would do just fine without attributes - people have made elegant solutions for doing it in 5e. Because the way you advance them is just that predictable for any given character type.

 

People keep calling for turning Might into more traditional Strength. Congratulations - you've just made it the ideal dump stat for 50% of character concepts. This time, it's not even a D&D thing. Strength being less useful than other physical attributes is a pretty common thing. Dexterity being the "god stat" is a meme in White Wolf games for a reason. Strength as it's usually portrayed just isn't useful to characters who don't actively duke it out in melee. Maybe archers, if we tie strength to bow damage (which, of course, can't really apply to crossbows and guns).

 

It's far easier to reward a physical character for having good intelligence, charisma or whatever, than to reward a brainy/quick/etc. character for being beefy. And vice versa, to punish such characters for having low "dump stats". Making Might a universal damage and health attribute was a pretty unusual way of going about it. The only real problem with it is that whoever wrote scripted interactions didn't get the memo, and it's consistently portrayed as physical strength, which it's not supposed to be.

 

What I hope Obsidian does in Deadfire is basically to keep trying to actually achieve their original goal - make all attributes useful. But that's not a problem with the concept, it's a problem with balance.

[DigitalCrack]

concerning weapons I believe they are moving all that out of talents and actually adding something like prroficiencies for weapons. I am interested to see that plus the revamped skill system, so I am sure they have changes planned with stats. Interested to see what thats going to look like. Who knows maybe we will actually get an update that highlights their ideas for these things soon.

Edited April 18, 2017 by DigitalCrack

[rjshae]

Hmm, this topic has already been heavily debated with little consensus reached between the two sides.

 

The main concern seems to be that dealing direct damage is the only way to build a good Wizard (or a good Druid for that matter). This is simply a false assertion. However, I do think it's incumbent upon the developers to make it possible to build a Wizard that can inflict direct losses on the enemy forces without the need for a high Might score. That might require things like providing more longer duration spells that apply damage over time. For example, maybe your wizard will need to exchange a Fireball spell for a Pool of Fire spell.

Edited April 18, 2017 by rjshae

[rjshae]

Whoops, double-post -- sorry.

Edited April 18, 2017 by rjshae

[Wormerine]

I would love to see a redesign of the system for PoE2 but I do like underlying ideals. I do like that every class benefits from every stat. I feel like there is more choice now, and when creating new character I think about what I want to be, not what this class needs. Sadly, due to the lower impact of the stats it might be a bit smoke and mirrors. I like how the skills work, but I would like to see more tangible impact from each skill.

[rjshae]

I would love to see a redesign of the system for PoE2 but I do like underlying ideals. I do like that every class benefits from every stat. I feel like there is more choice now, and when creating new character I think about what I want to be, not what this class needs. Sadly, due to the lower impact of the stats it might be a bit smoke and mirrors. I like how the skills work, but I would like to see more tangible impact from each skill.

 

I just tried working an example. In D&D v3.5, a +2 Con adds a +1 to hp total. For a fighter, a 1d10 hp/level gives an average of 5.5 hp/level. So the +1 hp increases the total for the fighter by about 18% for a +2 Con. In PoE, a +2 Con gives a +10% health and endurance. It's similar for Str and damage: +2 Str increases long sword 1d8 (~4.5) by +1, for a 22% damage bonus. In PoE a +2 Mig gives a +6% damage bonus.

 

To me it looks like PoE has scaled attribute impacts back by roughly half or more. But that may be to balance out lack of level scaling for spell damage, as well as other factors. I think we would need to look at the entire picture.

[injurai]

Imo, I really like the direction that Obsidian has gone in. Could they clean or tweak things? Yeah, but I like what they gave us in PoE more than anything we tend to see in traditional attribute systems. Even most modern games don't really manage to get attributes right, despite trying to make them user friendly. Bioware and Bethesda are the low hanging fruit to pick on. But even FromSoftware is plagued with dump-stats, though one might argue that is an intended feature for them.

[Wormerine]

 

I would love to see a redesign of the system for PoE2 but I do like underlying ideals. I do like that every class benefits from every stat. I feel like there is more choice now, and when creating new character I think about what I want to be, not what this class needs. Sadly, due to the lower impact of the stats it might be a bit smoke and mirrors. I like how the skills work, but I would like to see more tangible impact from each skill.

 

 

I just tried working an example. In D&D v3.5, a +2 Con adds a +1 to hp total. For a fighter, a 1d10 hp/level gives an average of 5.5 hp/level. So the +1 hp increases the total for the fighter by about 18% for a +2 Con. In PoE, a +2 Con gives a +10% health and endurance. It's similar for Str and damage: +2 Str increases long sword 1d8 (~4.5) by +1, for a 22% damage bonus. In PoE a +2 Mig gives a +6% damage bonus.

 

To me it looks like PoE has scaled attribute impacts back by roughly half or more. But that may be to balance out lack of level scaling for spell damage, as well as other factors. I think we would need to look at the entire picture.

Now that's a discussion well beyond my knowledge of D&D and game design overall, but now I wonder how much impact attributes should have. Sure, in a classless RPG (like fallout1&2) the attributed define your characters and decide on how you will interact with the world. In a class based RPG how much should they really impact your character? The class already more or less defines your role. The PoE system allows to shift towards certain play styles of said class (focus on DPS, AOE, buffs/debuffs, status effects) but not completely redefine the class.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

The attributes need tweaking and Health, Accuracy, and Deflection should be based more on Constitution, Perception, and Resolve. But the system is decent in theory and wouldn't be improved by spliting magical and physical damage.

[Sedrefilos]

Why fix something that's not broken? Pillars stats is one of the things the game did great, imo. Exemplary to future games of the genre that want to use stats.

[PizzaSHARK]

Hmm, this topic has already been heavily debated with little consensus reached between the two sides.

 

The main concern seems to be that dealing direct damage is the only way to build a good Wizard (or a good Druid for that matter). This is simply a false assertion. However, I do think it's incumbent upon the developers to make it possible to build a Wizard that can inflict direct losses on the enemy forces without the need for a high Might score. That might require things like providing more longer duration spells that apply damage over time. For example, maybe your wizard will need to exchange a Fireball spell for a Pool of Fire spell.

 

Actually, I'd say damage focused Wizards are pretty weak compared to control focused Wizards (particularly early in the game and on higher difficulties where those AOE blinds, confuse, etc just end up having more impact than a Fireball that grazes for 35 damage on a 120 END pool.) That said, even a control focused Wizard will probably want a missiles spell or some other nukes in their active spell lists and will probably be autoattacking at least some of the time... so, you want Might too.

 

You can justify skimping Might on a Wizard, but I can't think of any viable Wizard build that wouldn't invest strongly into Intelligence.  You don't really need extra CON because the returns are so poor, you don't need RES because you can just drink a Spirit Shield potion for a Concentration bonus, and both DEX and PER tend to underperform relative to MIG and INT in terms of combat effectiveness (though both are more valuable than CON and RES.)

 

This actually applies to most characters and most builds.  MIG and INT are simply the strongest stats in the game by a considerable margin and even tanks would be ill advised to skimp on MIG.

 

 

Imo, I really like the direction that Obsidian has gone in. Could they clean or tweak things? Yeah, but I like what they gave us in PoE more than anything we tend to see in traditional attribute systems. Even most modern games don't really manage to get attributes right, despite trying to make them user friendly. Bioware and Bethesda are the low hanging fruit to pick on. But even FromSoftware is plagued with dump-stats, though one might argue that is an intended feature for them.

 

 

I like the concept but it needs a lot of work.  Stats in Pillars don't have enough impact and don't have enough control over important stats.  I'd like to see less emphasis on base Deflection etc and more emphasis on Deflection derived from stats, etc.  A character with 18 RES should be substantially better in the areas that stat controls than a character with 10... but that's not how it works out.  Even MIG and INT, arguably the best stats in the game, have relatively minor differences unless we're talking about a very large delta (like 8 vs 18 or something.)

 

From Software absolutely has dump stats in their games, and it was a very obvious design choice for DS2.  Adaptability had some uses, but was primarily a sinkhole for XP in order to increase the stat you actually cared about, Agility.  It actually worked really well, because it was designed around it from the start.  If you wanted really good rolls with lots of iframes (so your dodge timings didn't need to be precise), you had to "dump" a lot of XP into what you'd probably otherwise regard as a weak stat.  Believe it or not, this design, this intended dump stat design actually created a considerable amount of build diversity.  Someone planning on hiding behind a shield probably didn't need to "dump" XP on Adaptability, but then they wouldn't have an effective roll in the event they run into something they can't easily block their way past.

 

The attributes need tweaking and Health, Accuracy, and Deflection should be based more on Constitution, Perception, and Resolve. But the system is decent in theory and wouldn't be improved by spliting magical and physical damage.

 

Yes.  A Wizard with 18 CON is still incredibly squishy and will still need to rest after a few fights, so why even bother investing the stats there?  You just don't get enough return on your investment into "passive" stats like CON and RES in the current iteration, which is probably why INT and MIG feel so much stronger - who needs defense if they're dead or stunned?

 

 

Why fix something that's not broken? Pillars stats is one of the things the game did great, imo. Exemplary to future games of the genre that want to use stats.

 

These type of threads would not be common if Pillars' system wasn't broken.  It's functional, but that's about the best that can be said for it.  There's clearly a reason Obsidian are putting a sizable amount of effort into tweaking and revamping the character creation system for Deadfire.

[Guest 4ward]

^ when i played Pillars with my INT 8 wizard i pretty much steamrolled through the main game (hard/expert mode). Can't tell you anything else about him since i deinstalled the game long ago. I did that because from BG2 i'm used to deal with spells as they are designed and in this kind of game where i can move, reposition and click wherever and where combat is decided in the first few seconds, INT didn't matter to me. I think the attributes are just flavour for the roleplayers in us. It should be mainly about decision-making during combat shouldn't it? My sorcerer didn't care about stats, no stat was important in particular, what i did during combat was what made him viable and fun. I think Obsidian did a good job of keeping that flavour and weakening attributes' impact, it's just that they forgot about the reactivity of BG2 combat. Perhaps, it would be an improvement if attributes would decide on the amount of available abilities and not on their design (effect radius/duration), dunno, just IMO.