Update #40 - Multiclassing Part II

[draego]

 

I believe they stated the accuracy will be the same for all classes to start. I think health and defense will start different. 

 

That's curious... could we get a source and reasoning on that?

 

 

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/158677319?t=46m36s 

[Enoch]

 

I believe they stated the accuracy will be the same for all classes to start. I think health and defense will start different. 

 

That's curious... could we get a source and reasoning on that?

 

See the July 12th Twitch stream.  Here's the excerpt from the transcript:

 

 

Will Accuracy, Deflection and Stamina be influenced by class like Pillars of Eternity, or will all classes have the same base values?

JS: Accuracy is actually normalized acr—like, the starting values for classes, for Accuracy, are the same across the board. Other values are still class dependent. If you do multiclassing it averages those things.

 

Accuracy is such a sensitive value, overall we were looking— throughout the game—overall we were looking for a number of ways to reduce the number of things that contributes to your total Accuracy score because it's so incredibly important, and there are so many places to get teeny bits put on or taken off.

 

So, some of the things are still affected by classes; Accuracy is not one of them. That's just zeroed out, essentially, for everybody.

 

And some futher explanation on the SawyrTumblr:

 

 

“How well someone can handle weapons” includes, much more importantly, weapon-based abilities.  As I said last night in the stream, if you give a wizard the same base Accuracy as a fighter or ranger, hand them a sword or a bow and insist on making weapon-based attacks, you have no spells that will directly use those weapons, so you’re not actually getting much out of it.

 

While your wizard is thinking, “Oh my god, hilarious, I have the same base Accuracy as the ranger next to me.” while making standard attacks, the ranger next to them is using Wounding Shot on a Marked Prey target that their animal companion is tearing to pieces.  The passive and active abilities connected to weapon use are far more meaningful than the base Accuracy differences between classes.

 

It’s true that a wizard could summon a weapon and use that, but we artificially inflate the Accuracy of those weapons to account for the wizard’s shortfall.  And this brings me to the best reason for eliminating class differentiation between base Accuracy values: it muddies the waters and results in all sorts of weird behind-the-scenes adjustments to get things to work properly.  Spellcasters have built-in Accuracy bonuses on spells, martial classes wind up being the most accurate classes to use scrolls, etc.

 

Pillars 1 had a ton of things that contributed to Accuracy, so much so that it became very hard to track and balance.  By effectively eliminating input sources, we make the remaining contributors more meaningful and compress the overall range of values.

[Sedrefilos]

This is also a nice axample of how you shouldn't poll your design ideas to the public. People voted for 3.5 style multiclassing, recieving an ADnD instead, because, when tested, the first was not good and, obviously, as a designer of your game, you know better. Now we'll have all this derrailing talk about how one style would have been better than the other (of course without having tested the game, as usual)

 

@Josh Sawyer and team: guys, just design what you think its best for the game and then present to us so we can discuss only about that.

[TheisEjsing]

Awesome news guys! This is gonna be really nice for the min-max'ers and creative players out there. Personally I don't often multiclass. I'm too much of a purist. Which is why I'm happy there is no purist multi/sub class, so I won't be compelled to play it. :D I might give Pathfinder another try thou, the last game I played a Pathfinder in was sadly a huge disappointment. 

Edited September 22, 2017 by TheisEjsing

[Sedrefilos]

I'm gonna play pure all spellcasting classes 'cause max level spells tend to be very impressive and I don't want to miss any hehe. I'm probably gonna multiclass the more "grounded" classes like warrior or barbarian or monk.

[JerekKruger]

I'm gonna play pure all spellcasting classes 'cause max level spells tend to be very impressive and I don't want to miss any hehe. I'm probably gonna multiclass the more "grounded" classes like warrior or barbarian or monk.

 

That's currently my plan too, although I could see having both a Wizard and a Fighter/Wizard say, since I'll get my max level spells from the pure Wizard anyway.

[leo1984]

really cool update! I like this system design!

[MortyTheGobbo]

 

I'm gonna play pure all spellcasting classes 'cause max level spells tend to be very impressive and I don't want to miss any hehe. I'm probably gonna multiclass the more "grounded" classes like warrior or barbarian or monk.

 

That's currently my plan too, although I could see having both a Wizard and a Fighter/Wizard say, since I'll get my max level spells from the pure Wizard anyway.

 

 

I plan to run a Fighter/Rogue, but I do hope that those classes get something a bit more impressive on the highest levels this time around.

[jimnms]

Announcements

 

The time to pledge for Deadfire high-tier items is coming to an end. If you want to get an item in the game, you have until next Friday, September 29th, to pledge for that tier. After that, they will no longer be available. The tiers this affects are as follows:

• Create a Super-Pet

All other tiers will remain open until October 31st, so mark that date if you want to up your pledge or let your friends know to get in on Deadfire early!

 

I asked a question a question back in February about the super pet tier and never got an official answer. I had an interesting idea of how my pet would be found and her requirements for joining your party (because she wouldn't follow just anyone) and what her buff could be. I never finalized my pledge on the backer portal because I was still thinking about upgrading, but I'd like to know if what I want to do is possible before I drop that kind of money.

[JerekKruger]

I plan to run a Fighter/Rogue, but I do hope that those classes get something a bit more impressive on the highest levels this time around.

 

Well at the very least there's no sign of the Play Dead icon on the Rogue skill tree, so fingers crossed that's gone.

[limaxophobiacq]

If spells and abilities are mostly the same as in PoE 1 (with the 'level' of abilities not being strongly correlated to the actual power level), multiclasses seem like they'll be really powerfull. A 'Celebrant' Priest/Troubadour with minor avatar dragon trashing with ~35 Might and Int and +50% linger sounds pretty good to me.

[MortyTheGobbo]

 

I plan to run a Fighter/Rogue, but I do hope that those classes get something a bit more impressive on the highest levels this time around.

 

Well at the very least there's no sign of the Play Dead icon on the Rogue skill tree, so fingers crossed that's gone.

 

 

That was a stark reminder of Pillars' D&D roots. Wizards get to stun-lock a whole group of enemies and the rogue... gets to pretend they're dead.

[JerekKruger]

If spells and abilities are mostly the same as in PoE 1 (with the 'level' of abilities not being strongly correlated to the actual power level), multiclasses seem like they'll be really powerfull. A 'Celebrant' Priest/Troubadour with minor avatar dragon trashing with ~35 Might and Int and +50% linger sounds pretty good to me.

 

As it is presented at the moment I think that, unless you really want a high level ability that a multiclass character can't get, multiclassing seems the better option. Of course rebalancing old abilities may well change that.

[draego]

 

If spells and abilities are mostly the same as in PoE 1 (with the 'level' of abilities not being strongly correlated to the actual power level), multiclasses seem like they'll be really powerfull. A 'Celebrant' Priest/Troubadour with minor avatar dragon trashing with ~35 Might and Int and +50% linger sounds pretty good to me.

 

As it is presented at the moment I think that, unless you really want a high level ability that a multiclass character can't get, multiclassing seems the better option. Of course rebalancing old abilities may well change that.

 

 

I think lots of the abilities will also scale with power level so single classes may have that also. Their abilities are just better even if they are the same as multiclass. Like sneak attack, prob carnage, animals, and spells (maybe not all but we know some do) scale so multiclasses will always have weaker versions. the question becomes how much weaker. is it worth going single for stronger abilities. But yes also they need to make the final abilities good so as to make it painful to choose versatility of multiclass. 

Edited September 22, 2017 by draego

[Gromnir]

As it is presented at the moment I think that, unless you really want a high level ability that a multiclass character can't get, multiclassing seems the better option. 

 

 

 

well, there is a bit more to it.  is a frequent mistake to only consider the power o' endgame builds.  even the sooper-groovy poe builds is often only genuine fantasamagoric for the last 1/3 o' the game.  people observe how op ________ is w/o recognizing how mediocre or sub-par such a build is for the first 2/3 o' the game. a single-class deadfire character is gonna be receiving higher level abilities quicker than multiclasses throughout the game.  like it or not, and in spite o' obsidian best efforts, classes is gonna have noticeable leaps in power at specific level thresholds 'cause o' the availability o' particular talents or abilities or whatever.  single class characters is gonna hit power thresholds quicker. is a mistake to narrow focus on endgame.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[limaxophobiacq]

 

 

If spells and abilities are mostly the same as in PoE 1 (with the 'level' of abilities not being strongly correlated to the actual power level), multiclasses seem like they'll be really powerfull. A 'Celebrant' Priest/Troubadour with minor avatar dragon trashing with ~35 Might and Int and +50% linger sounds pretty good to me.

 

As it is presented at the moment I think that, unless you really want a high level ability that a multiclass character can't get, multiclassing seems the better option. Of course rebalancing old abilities may well change that.

 

 

I think lots of the abilities will also scale with power level so single classes may have that also. Their abilities are just better even if they are the same as multiclass. Like sneak attack, prob carnage, animals, and spells (maybe not all but we know some do) scale so multiclasses will always have weaker versions

 

 

So dragon trashed might be something like (Power Level)*X damage and minor avatar might give +(Power Level) to attributes rather than flat numbers? Yeah that would cut down the power level of multiclasses significantly, I was thinking it was now just a cap on the level of abilities you can take but from the description of the Lifegiver subclass it seems it still affects the strength of your spells/abilities.

[draego]

 

 

 

If spells and abilities are mostly the same as in PoE 1 (with the 'level' of abilities not being strongly correlated to the actual power level), multiclasses seem like they'll be really powerfull. A 'Celebrant' Priest/Troubadour with minor avatar dragon trashing with ~35 Might and Int and +50% linger sounds pretty good to me.

 

As it is presented at the moment I think that, unless you really want a high level ability that a multiclass character can't get, multiclassing seems the better option. Of course rebalancing old abilities may well change that.

 

 

I think lots of the abilities will also scale with power level so single classes may have that also. Their abilities are just better even if they are the same as multiclass. Like sneak attack, prob carnage, animals, and spells (maybe not all but we know some do) scale so multiclasses will always have weaker versions

 

 

So dragon trashed might be something like (Power Level)*X damage and minor avatar might give +(Power Level) to attributes rather than flat numbers? Yeah that would cut down the power level of multiclasses significantly, I was thinking it was now just a cap on the level of abilities you can take but from the description of the Lifegiver subclass it seems it still affects the strength of your spells/abilities.

 

 

I know they gave the example of the wizards missile spell getting more missile on greater power levels. stuff like that dont know how it works for all spells   

Edited September 22, 2017 by draego

[limaxophobiacq]

 

As it is presented at the moment I think that, unless you really want a high level ability that a multiclass character can't get, multiclassing seems the better option. 

 

 

 

well, there is a bit more to it.  is a frequent mistake to only consider the power o' endgame builds.  even the sooper-groovy poe builds is often only genuine fantasamagoric for the last 1/3 o' the game.  people observe how op ________ is w/o recognizing how mediocre or sub-par such a build is for the first 2/3 o' the game. a single-class deadfire character is gonna be receiving higher level abilities quicker than multiclasses throughout the game.  like it or not, and in spite o' obsidian best efforts, classes is gonna have noticeable leaps in power at specific level thresholds 'cause o' the availability o' particular talents or abilities or whatever.  single class characters is gonna hit power thresholds quicker. is a mistake to narrow focus on endgame.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

OTOH, in the early game the multiclasses are very close behind single class in powerlevel, and at level 1-2 and 4 multiclass seems strictly superior.

[limaxophobiacq]

I know they gave the example of the wizards missile spell getting more missile on greater power levels. stuff like that dont know how it works for all spells   

 

I knew it worked like that in the original idea of the mutliclass system, I just thought that everything about that system was scrapped now.

[Gromnir]

 

 

As it is presented at the moment I think that, unless you really want a high level ability that a multiclass character can't get, multiclassing seems the better option. 

 

 

 

well, there is a bit more to it.  is a frequent mistake to only consider the power o' endgame builds.  even the sooper-groovy poe builds is often only genuine fantasamagoric for the last 1/3 o' the game.  people observe how op ________ is w/o recognizing how mediocre or sub-par such a build is for the first 2/3 o' the game. a single-class deadfire character is gonna be receiving higher level abilities quicker than multiclasses throughout the game.  like it or not, and in spite o' obsidian best efforts, classes is gonna have noticeable leaps in power at specific level thresholds 'cause o' the availability o' particular talents or abilities or whatever.  single class characters is gonna hit power thresholds quicker. is a mistake to narrow focus on endgame.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

OTOH, in the early game the multiclasses are very close behind single class in powerlevel, and at level 1-2 and 4 multiclass seems strictly superior.

 

very true.  level 3 would appear to be the first time the single class enjoys a real advantage... and such is fleeting 'cause it again disappears at level 4.  'course levels 5-18...

 

given the level cap, and how the watcher is initial depowered in deadfire, it would not surprise us at all if the game functional starts characters at level 3 or 4, or at least gets us to such levels extreme quick.  would makes initial multiclass advantage even less significant if we got something akin to the nwn2 start, eh? 'course such is only a guess but it would address the initial imbalance.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[rjshae]

Presumably if and when they increase the level range to beyond 20, multi-classed characters will eventually have access to the more powerful abilities now available only to single-classed characters. I'll be curious to see if they ever explore "epic" level campaigns.

 

What would happen, I wonder, if this system were adopted to allow a player to select a second class at a higher level, adopting the same progression scheme?  Would it lead to unfavorable character designs?

[draego]

 

I know they gave the example of the wizards missile spell getting more missile on greater power levels. stuff like that dont know how it works for all spells   

 

I knew it worked like that in the original idea of the mutliclass system, I just thought that everything about that system was scrapped now.

 

 

Ye spells and abilities scale giving single class an advantage with power. 

Edited September 22, 2017 by draego

[Piero]

I was more interested in conceptual descriptions of the subclasses rather than mechanical descriptions :c

[Blades of Vanatar]

Overall I am thrilled about this update..... but they can't come up with a better name than 'Contemplative' for a Monk Priest? It's... boring. This is a fantasy CRPG for crying out loud. We have the awesomeness of a Corpse Eater paired with a Contemplative?

 

Come on Josh we know the team is much more creative than that!

 

This game is going to have ENDLESS replay with all of the build choices. Oh YEAH!

[rjshae]

Kind Wayfarers - Flames of Devotion (Sword and the Shepherd) heals nearby allies.  Does less damage against enemies vulnerable to Sneak Attack. - Cannot multiclass with priests of Berath, Magran, Wael, or Skaen.

 

Does this (somewhat) nerf the rogue class, if you multi-class priest/rogue?