Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

[mondblut]

I think it's fine for wizards to use big swords, if there are skills governing it that say "well you also basically suck at using swords, suck at using magic, etc." depending on your build.

Actually, there is no sensible reason for a person to not be capable at being good at both, providing his attributes are up to both tasks, and he has a plenty of time to invest into either.

This is called "multiclass". And when you're raking twice as much xp as your fighter and your mage, you're perfectly entitled to fully match their performance as a fighter and a mage alike.

 

[Infinitron]

But then it becomes a question of, why would you even have classes if you can make a mage that sucks at spellcasting but is great with swords?

Good question. J.E. obviously has the hots for classless systems, but in this particular game, the classes are basically a set of which talents (feats) you can acquire over the course of the game.

Classes are differentiated from one another solely by their talents. There is no class-specific BaB/THAC0 progression, hit dice, etc.

 

[mondblut]

No, that's not why he "removed" (removed from where?) immunities. He's simply not in favor of anything that can make you 100% invulnerable to something.

In Sawyer's world, you can defeat an Abrams tank with your fists, because a tank can't be 100% invulnerable to fists.

 

[eremita]

It is reasonable to abstract Intellect into damage, since Strength would logically affect melee attacks only, but there should still be some use for Strength in damage calculation. I have thought about the kinetic aspect of Strength once more, and it occurred to me that Strength also translates into explosive speed. This way even the spell-casting classes have definite utility for having invested in physical power.

Let's assume that the PoE character system has scale 1-10 point buy for attributes, with 5 being the baseline. Strength should signify the speed bonus the characters have when they enter combat, and now Constitution would also affect how long the character is able to uphold his state of adrenaline rush.

If STR > 5, PC's initial speed is multiplied via formula x1.(STR-5)
If STR = 5, no bonus nor malus.
If STR < 5, PC's speed baseline is actually x0.(STR+5), so the PC begins with regular 1x speed that slows down.

If CON > 5, PC's initial speed slows down -0.(11-CON), and PC will face a winding penalty round if his speed doesn't baseline evenly. For example, a STR 10 CON 7 character follows round speeds x1.5 => x1.1 => x1.1 (*another round) => x0.7 (winding) => x1.0
If CON = 5, PC always baselines without winding after the initial round.
If CON < 5, before returning back to baseline speed, the PC suffers an extra winding period of -0.1 for 5-CON rounds.

*PC gains a bonus speedy round whenever he is only 0.1 multiplier away from his baseline and then is set to have a winding penalty equal or greater than 0.3

The balancing might be less than ideal, but I think it would be very interesting to consider the tradesoffs whether to utilize front loaded berserkers that deal less damage, but disrupt enemy initiative, or trying to make a team that hits hard, but initially has difficulty to stay up with the opponents. You can imagine the pain if your group faces hostile spell-casters with high Strength and Constitution, since they may be able to outcast your mages for a good while.

Every Martial Artist would tell you that Strength =/= Explosive Speed...

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

But there is no multi class in PoE cause

Don't really understand his obsession. Even MOBAs and similar multiplayer shit has to be constantly patched so as to keep things from breaking. PoE will be broken.

 

[Gord]

In Sawyer's world, you can defeat an Abrams tank with your fists, because a tank can't be 100% invulnerable to fists.

PoE confirmed for Anime then?

 

[sea]

Actually, there is no sensible reason for a person to not be capable at being good at both, providing his attributes are up to both tasks, and he has a plenty of time to invest into either.

This is called "multiclass". And when you're raking twice as much xp as your fighter and your mage, you're perfectly entitled to fully match their performance as a fighter and a mage alike.

True. But the fear with multi-classing is that it can get very unbalanced very quickly, unless you cap the possible max XP of all characters, rather than level, or make multi-class only upgradable to max level / 2 or something. Not sure how it's being done in Eternity, if at all. Bottom line, in a class system there has to be some kind of trade-off; I have no problem with a fighter/mage that will never be as good as a dedicated fighter or mage.

 

[FeelTheRads]

PoE confirmed for Anime then?

Eh.. he's obviously immune to tanks so it doesn't work.

 

[Ravel myluv]

If I recall correctly (can't bother to search for the interview), Sawyer wants first and foremost to leave several options for each class (for sinstance, wearing armor for a monk), but he also did say that certain choices would be non optimal.

To a degree, he injects non-class gameplay in a class game. I think it's a good idea for immersion and credibility of the world.
If your magician wears an armor and wields a sword, just stop thinking about him as a magician, but as a warrior/mage instead.

It allows for less stereotypical gameplay too, as one could find a well protected rogue more fearsome than a 100% damage-built rogue.

In high difficulty modes, I suspect the non optimal choices will be punished, so overall everybody should be happy.

 

[DraQ]

That's why D&D's way of doing things is actually pretty logical - no it's not really "realistic" that you can't use a certain type of item, but I think it's also believable that a person of a given class wouldn't or couldn't physically. You could do stuff like "mage penalty for using swords -90%" but that seems pointlessly complicated and nobody's going to use a weapon that has that kind of penalty on it.

They may want to in specific situations, and specific situations are what separates interesting emergent gameplay from repetitive herpaderp.

Besides, wizard with right stats should have no problems.

Finally, Glamdring - if you're a talentless hack ripping off Tolkien, at least do it fucking right.

No, that's not why he "removed" (removed from where?) immunities. He's simply not in favor of anything that can make you 100% invulnerable to something.

In Sawyer's world, you can defeat an Abrams tank with your fists, because a tank can't be 100% invulnerable to fists.

 

[mondblut]

But the fear with multi-classing is that it can get very unbalanced very quickly

Unless your name is Josh, I don't see how that would be a problem. Unbalance is fun.

Also, most good games tend to be very light on respawns and random encounters, so a total sum of xp you could harvest is limited and known in advance to begin with. Plugging random spawn generators everywhere then running around screaming "zomg, the players will blob in power, how do I cripple them?!1" is fucking lazy.

 

[Lhynn]

DraQ , we are back the the stupid core of the matter, i dont care if there are skills that govern damage with weapons and are related to inteligence, that does make sense. What i care about is the raw damage you get from being stronger comes from your brainpower.
A bear is a strong animal, every single physical move he makes is charged with raw power, they are not smart moves, they are based on strength, they are also p. fast and accurate.
Even attacks that are not at full strength are generally faster and more powerful the stronger the one that executes them is, it increases your damage across the table, not just your "full power attack". If you want to apropiately represent the amount of base damage a bear would do, hed have to be fucking stephen hawking by sawyers illogical logic.

What does it matter if the object is animate or inanimate, we are talking about a general damage bonus that comes from swinging a stick, not how you happen to swing that very special stick or where the pointy ends up going into.

About AC, i agree that they should not be all into one single stat, but it does wonders simplifying shit, while staying in the realm of logical thought process. When it came time to do it i did fix that at my own table tho, but its not like i hate it or hate playing with it, i just use something better myself.

As for the other thinggy you answered to infinitron
Weapons, and everything really, should be built in a coherent way trying to closely resemble reality. I honestly dont give a fuck about balancing weapons as long as they are coherent in the game world and between themselves. Balance is a poisonus, idea that generally leads to bland and boring gameplay. Not about their purpose (tho it should be there), nor about damage, or balance or whatever the shit you believe they need to be.

They may want to in specific situations, and specific situations are what separates interesting emergent gameplay from repetitive herpaderp.

 

[Scruffy]

I before PoE is just "good for what it is", because Sawyer couldn't do everything he wanted to.

or because he could

 

[tuluse]

I have had the pleasure to work on a project where I just got to do whatever I wanted and that was pretty cool.

What is that?

North Carolina probably.

Too bad Microsoft didn't care enough about it to fund it to completion.

I was thinking Torn, but this sounds more likely since he could just say it was Torn if that was the case.

 

[Infinitron]

FeelTheRads About weapon-switching (and other things):

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63...tion-damage-vs-armor-and-a-tileset/?p=1306455

There will absolutely be circumstances where using a certain weapon, weapon type, spell, spell type against a specific enemy will be a tactically inferior choice, just as there is in A/D&D. The reason you have a party and the ability to switch weapons, spells, abilities, etc. is to allow you to adapt to the tactical requirements of different battles.

In 3E/3.5, if you have a character equipped with a mace and a character equipped with a longsword facing off against a zombie and a skeleton, insisting on attacking the skeleton with the longsword and the zombie with the mace will almost always be a bad tactic. Insisting on casting sleep against them is a bad tactic. If you cast Reflex-based AoE damage spells against rogues and monks, that's usually a bad tactic. Casting fireball at a red dragon is a bad tactic. If a tactic is never circumstantially bad, that's the death of tactical challenge. Why think of something else to do when the thing you've always done works just fine?

But just to make clear, in contrast to A/D&D, PE's weapon types will not be strategically inferior, i.e. bad even in the absence of context. There are a ton of weapons in every edition of A/D&D that are flat-out terrible on paper compared to other weapons. In 3E/3.5, it's usually Simple weapons, but there are plenty of Martial weapons that most people would never take. For example, why would I use a Heavy Mace when I could use a Morningstar? The latter weighs less, does the same damage, has the same crit range/multiplier, and two damage types (B/P vs. the Heavy Mace's B). Why would I use a Greatclub when I could use a Heavy Flail? The Heavy Flail weighs 2 lbs. more but has a higher crit range and has bonuses against disarming and when making trip attacks.

So if you want to make a dagger-wielding character, even a dagger-wielding fighter, that will absolutely be a viable choice in PE. If we do our jobs well, it should be roughly as viable -- and vulnerable to tactical challenges -- as a fighter who uses longswords or a pike. I wouldn't say that's usually the case in A/D&D. But there will be cases where Dagger Guy is going to run into problems against a particular enemy -- just as there will be for Longsword Guy and Pike Guy.

 

[cherry blossom]

Sawyer is so fucking annoying. So much self-important pretentious talk. Nothing to show for it. Somebody ought to run a tank over him while he is bicycling.

 

[uaciaut]

Seeing people keep trying to excuse this "str have 0 effect on damage, int affects it instead" shit is both depressing and annoying. It really is a cheap way to make int a non-dump stat for fighters and it's shitty because of this first of all.

 

[Delterius]

Sawyer is so fucking annoying. So much self-important pretentious talk. Nothing to show for it. Somebody ought to run a tank over him while he is bicycling.

I agree, Sawyer should stop posting on SA and haul his ass over to the Codex.

 

[Lhynn]

Seeing people keep trying to excuse this "str have 0 effect on damage, int affects it instead" shit is both depressing and annoying. It really is a cheap way to make int a non-dump stat for fighters and it's shitty because of this first of all.

its just a game, i dont think anyone here actually gives a fuck about that. The only thing i find insulting is people trying to either defend it or explain it.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

In Sawyer's world, you can defeat an Abrams tank with your fists, because a tank can't be 100% invulnerable to fists.

The way PE's armor system's probably going to work, the tank will be something like 80% invulnerable to fists.

 

[DefJam101]

Josh Sawyer should drop this project and begin work on a Fist of the North Star cRPG

 

[Grunker]

MAN IT'S LIKE THAT GAME CIVILIZATION WHERE AN ARCHER CAN DEFEAT A TANK IN THEORY

SUCH A SHITTY GAME

 

[tuluse]

In the first civ, a spearman could defeat a battleship.

 

[Delterius]

Abstractions man, maybe the archer found a strange magical ball that explodes when thrown. That's how he defeated the tank.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

MAN IT'S LIKE THAT GAME CIVILIZATION WHERE AN ARCHER CAN DEFEAT A TANK IN THEORY

SUCH A SHITTY GAME

Civ also doesn't allow for things like armor bypassing critical hits that can make sure that there's no hard ceiling.

Anyway, I don't mind it that much; both SPECIAL's and Sawyer's armor system work well enough because they involve both absolute and relative values (only Sawyer uses the relative value "under" and SPECIAL "over" the absolute value). They both create their own oddities, with SPECIAL resulting in PA reducing 50% of the damage of an atomic blast, and Sawyer's with the tank, but it both only really becomes apparent in such extreme examples.