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

[Roguey]

I'm not sure when the "DPS dagger-wielding thief/rogue" archetype first appeared, but regardless of its origins, I detest it. If you're wearing cloth pajamas or a leather jerkin and are carrying only a dagger and perhaps a bow/crossbow, the last place you want to be is anywhere near a battlefield facing properly trained, armed, and armored opponents, let alone wild animals or mythological creatures. That's not to say that thieves/rogues shouldn't be capable of assisting their party with ranged weapons or by ambushing an enemy before fleeing back to the rear rank, but their expertise shouldn't lie in direct combat. Their damage potential is highly situational or supplemental. Their primary purpose is to scale walls, spot and disarm traps, pick locks, sneak around stealing things, carry out silent assassinations, perhaps work people over with their silver tongue, and so on.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy/prequel, early D&D, and dungeon crawler cRPGs respected this notion that burglars, thieves and rogues weren't mythical ninja-like creatures, and required the protection of trained warriors in their party if they expected to survive. P:E will allow mid-combat backstabs and other such rubbish, if I recall correctly, which... is annoying, but expected.

"Realism" is laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame. So is the idea that a class should be worse at combat than any other class in a combat-focused game.

 

[Roguey]

This is something that concerns me as well -- the constant "this is tactics" in regards to talking about 3 weapon types (piercing, bludgeoning, slashing) is absolutely silly. All that it will necessitate will be "hit enemy -- see low damage feedback due to resistance -- switch to appropriate weapon". No one is going to think "Ahh, John here will be my slasher and Jamal will be my bludgeoner" and somehow alternate which char is doing what. They'll just carry a spare weapon. Or more likely, not even bother at all just like in every other IE game that wasn't a magical golem or a demilich.

You know there's going to be a lot more than one kind of piercing, bludgeoning, and slashing weapon? Two different kinds of the same type aren't going to be equal. Moreover, he's said there will be a lot of fights in this game where you have to fight groups of enemies with mixed armor types. Prioritizing who gets taken out when is tactical.

Bleh. I _want_ my dagger to be a worse weapon than a short-sword.

Daggers are piercing weapons, short swords are slashing. Daggers are very likely to be worse than a short sword when it comes to fighting enemies with no or light armor.

 

[861129]

"Realism" is laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame. So is the idea that a class should be worse at combat than any other class in a combat-focused game.

A thief-type character isn't necessarily "worse at combat" even if he can't handle a fighter in direct hand-to-hand. Scouting, sneaking, backstabbing, setting traps etc. can be just as useful in a good combat system. The argument isn't necessarily about realism (although the combat should make sense to some degree consistent with the game's overall sensibility), but about tactical variety.

 

[Zero Credibility]

Daggers are piercing weapons, short swords are slashing. Daggers are very likely to be worse than a short sword when it comes to fighting enemies with no or light armor.

Does that mean that a dagger could be better than a short sword against heavy armor? Ugh, I hope not. A dagger when compared to a short sword should be lighter, cheaper, easily concealable, could be thrown and would be somewhat easier to use if combatants are actually grappling. With anything else, it should be inferior to short sword. It can't do as much damage, has very short reach, and is more difficult to parry with.

Anyway, what happens if I decide to stab somebody with my short sword?

 

[Lancehead]

Does that mean that a dagger could be better than a short sword against heavy armor?

No, it would be better in mid range DT because piercing weapons get armour bypass bonus. That bonus becomes insignificant in high DT regions.

 

[Roguey]

A thief-type character isn't necessarily "worse at combat" even if he can't handle a fighter in direct hand-to-hand. Scouting, sneaking, backstabbing, setting traps etc. can be just as useful in a good combat system. The argument isn't necessarily about realism (although the combat should make sense to some degree consistent with the game's overall sensibility), but about tactical variety.

Josh has stated that rogues will not hold up in direct combat like a fighter would. They need to be flanking which requires the enemy to be engaged with another of your allies. Aside from backstabbing, most of those abilities you listed aren't useful in a combat situation. Having a class that's only good for pre-fight preparation who then becomes useless is boring and lame.

Does that mean that a dagger could be better than a short sword against heavy armor?

In the old system and without strength modifiers, fast piercing weapons would do 2.88 damage against 45 DT. I don't know if a short sword would be considered a fast or one-handed weapon but it doesn't matter because they do 4.86 and 7.92 points of damage respectively (note these aren't actual damage values but the intended ratios). So no, a dagger would not be better than a short sword against heavy armor.

Ugh, I hope not. A dagger when compared to a short sword should be lighter, cheaper, easily concealable, could be thrown and would be somewhat easier to use if combatants are actually grappling. With anything else, it should be inferior to short sword. It can't do as much damage, has very short reach, and is more difficult to parry with.

All of what you've written here has everything to do with your ~expectations~ of how things "should" work and nothing to do with the design of Project Eternity.

Anyway, what happens if I decide to stab somebody with my short sword?

The rules of the game say you can't.

 

[861129]

Daggers are piercing weapons, short swords are slashing. Daggers are very likely to be worse than a short sword when it comes to fighting enemies with no or light armor.

Does that mean that a dagger could be better than a short sword against heavy armor? Ugh, I hope not. A dagger when compared to a short sword should be lighter, cheaper, easily concealable, could be thrown and would be somewhat easier to use if combatants are actually grappling. With anything else, it should be inferior to short sword. It can't do as much damage, has very short reach, and is more difficult to parry with.

Anyway, what happens if I decide to stab somebody with my short sword?

Daggers being effective against heavy armor would actually make sense in terms of realism, since a shorter blade has more leverage and can be more easily manouvered into gaps in the armor while striking at heavy armor with a sword isn't very effectove. I don't think there's much use implementing details like this if the omission makes for a better system, though.

 

[Gord]

A thief-type character isn't necessarily "worse at combat" even if he can't handle a fighter in direct hand-to-hand. Scouting, sneaking, backstabbing, setting traps etc. can be just as useful in a good combat system. The argument isn't necessarily about realism (although the combat should make sense to some degree consistent with the game's overall sensibility), but about tactical variety.

Josh has stated that rogues will not hold up in direct combat like a fighter would. They need to be flanking which requires the enemy to be engaged with another of your allies. Aside from backstabbing, most of those abilities you listed aren't useful in a combat situation. Having a class that's only good for pre-fight preparation who then becomes useless is boring and lame.

So is playing a mage once your mana/spells are used up. In before automatic mana regeneration in combat/unlimited spells with cool down.
It all comes down to how they manage to translate it into gameplay.
The modern (single player) aRPG paradigm that every class has to do perform equally in combat is pretty boring as well.
Far too often it turns into simple graphical variety (you get to kill enemies either with big swords, big bows, or colorful spells, but it ultimately all plays the same).

 

[Infinitron]

FFS this shit is getting repetitive.

 

[Roguey]

So is playing a mage once your mana/spells are used up. In before automatic mana regeneration in combat/unlimited spells with cool down.

Eternity will have basic at-will spells for mages to cast when they're out of per-encounters and dailies, yes.

 

[Gord]

TBH, I only read the latest additions to this thread every couple of days, so I'm not really able to tell whether something is repeated...

 

[Zero Credibility]

All of what you've written here has everything to do with your ~expectations~ of how things "should" work and nothing to do with the design of Project Eternity.

Yes, "should work" as in "should work in reality". And I understand that PE isn't actually going for realism in combat, I just consider that a damn shame.

 

[861129]

A thief-type character isn't necessarily "worse at combat" even if he can't handle a fighter in direct hand-to-hand. Scouting, sneaking, backstabbing, setting traps etc. can be just as useful in a good combat system. The argument isn't necessarily about realism (although the combat should make sense to some degree consistent with the game's overall sensibility), but about tactical variety.

Josh has stated that rogues will not hold up in direct combat like a fighter would. They need to be flanking which requires the enemy to be engaged with another of your allies. Aside from backstabbing, most of those abilities you listed aren't useful in a combat situation. Having a class that's only good for pre-fight preparation who then becomes useless is boring and lame.

I disagree. A scouting/tracking skill could be extremely useful if the game was designed in such a way that the element of surprise/planning actually mattered on either side of the fight. Traps are directly useful in combat. It doesn't follow that the thief has to be useless at hand-to-hand (or ranged!) combat, either - only that the emphasis be on the implementation of the thief's variety of skills rather than having these skills as useless vestigial aspects on a different kind of fighter. THAT, to me, is boring.

If there's backstabbing or flanking in combat, I think limiting that to the thief is kind of dull as well.

 

[Raghar]

Daggers are piercing weapons, short swords are slashing. Daggers are very likely to be worse than a short sword when it comes to fighting enemies with no or light armor.

Short swords are primary thrusting weapons as well. Curved blades are primary slashing. One of few uses of slashing with daggers and short swords is a defensive slash.

 

[Blaine]

"Realism" is laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame.

That's the standard counterargument used to justify wildly nonsensical bullshit, yes, but it doesn't apply here. Actual "realism" would mean no wizards, no mystical equipment or consumables, fighters in full plate mail without horses becoming fatigued after a mile or two, extremely limited carrying capacity taking both mass and dimension into account, all characters being wounded or killed in just a few hits (and taking weeks or months to recover, if they ever do), et cetera. Not to mention, there would be no "adventurers" other than state-sponsored expeditions and wandering vagrants, and thieves would mostly just accost people on the street or burgle houses rather than "go adventuring."

Arguing against the dodgy, double dagger-y, poison-y, Japanese mythological ninja-esque super-thief isn't an argument for realism per se, it's an argument to keep the "power level" of such characters in line with other character types in the setting—fighters, clerics, and wizards, for example. Magic is fictional, yes, but it's not such a stretch to imagine that it exists. What is difficult to imagine is the ninja-esque super-thief, since people are not fictional and such characters typically use no magic, yet far exceed what human beings are actually capable of. It's like having a Dragon Ball Z character in Lord of the Rings.

So is the idea that a class should be worse at combat than any other class in a combat-focused game.

Every class must be equally good at combat, eh? And what utility skills do fighters bring to the table? Can they pick locks? Detect traps? Scout ahead? Hide? Your mindset is so intensely decline, I can hardly stand it. Then again, you consider all cRPGs ever made to be mediocre or bad with only a few good bits here and there, and believe P:E will be the first "nigh-perfect" cRPG ever made, so....

I expected you to leap to the game's defense, by the way. In this thread, you're nothing if not predictable.

 

[Zero Credibility]

Daggers being effective against heavy armor would actually make sense in terms of realism, since a shorter blade has more leverage and can be more easily manouvered into gaps in the armor while striking at heavy armor with a sword isn't very effectove. I don't think there's much use implementing details like this if the omission makes for a better system, though.

In order to slip a dagger through a weak spot in the armor (relatively speaking - joints on a plate armor would still be protected with chain), the opponent would have to at the very least be grappled if not immobilized somehow. This is something that would be very hard to do in a straight up fight against an opponent that knows what he's doing. He isn't just going to stand there and give the knife fighter the time to close in, find a weak spot and then push his dagger in. Really, there is a reason why soldiers used heavy weapons and not knives against heavy armor - because heavy weapons have the biggest chance of getting through to cause at least some damage. Dagger was used if you couldn't use your main weapon for some reason (or it was all you had).

 

[Infinitron]

That's the standard counterargument used to justify wildly nonsensical bullshit, yes, but it doesn't apply here. Actual "realism" would mean no wizards, no mystical equipment or consumables, fighters in full plate mail without horses becoming fatigued after a mile or two, extremely limited carrying capacity taking both mass and dimension into account, all characters being wounded or killed in just a few hits (and taking weeks or months to recover, if they ever do), et cetera. Not to mention, there would be no "adventurers" other than state-sponsored expeditions and wandering vagrants, and thieves would mostly just accost people on the street or burgle houses rather than "go adventuring."

That's what I call a "Simulationism of Fools" argument. People will argue that something in an RPG is "unrealistic", but they're not talking about our actual reality. They're talking about the consensus-based "reality" of accepted RPG norms. Those norms and standards have become such an ingrained part of the genre, that when somebody attempts to overturn them, it seems like a violation of "reality".

"Daggers do 1-4 damage, short swords do 1-6 damage! That's how it works! Why are you changing it? Why are you ruining our genre?!"

Guys: There is nothing holy, or important, or monocled about making a short sword universally more powerful than a dagger. It's just a random detail that you've gotten used to.

 

[Jasede]

I hate change. Change is bad.

Yeah, indeed, change is never good. They changed Daggerfall into Oblivion and they changed AD&D into 4th Edition.
I don't like things that are different...

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

I'm not sure when the "DPS dagger-wielding thief/rogue" archetype first appeared, but regardless of its origins, I detest it. If you're wearing cloth pajamas or a leather jerkin and are carrying only a dagger and perhaps a bow/crossbow, the last place you want to be is anywhere near a battlefield facing properly trained, armed, and armored opponents, let alone wild animals or mythological creatures. That's not to say that thieves/rogues shouldn't be capable of assisting their party with ranged weapons or by ambushing an enemy before fleeing back to the rear rank, but their expertise shouldn't lie in direct combat. Their damage potential is highly situational or supplemental. Their primary purpose is to scale walls, spot and disarm traps, pick locks, sneak around stealing things, carry out silent assassinations, perhaps work people over with their silver tongue, and so on.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy/prequel, early D&D, and dungeon crawler cRPGs respected this notion that burglars, thieves and rogues weren't mythical ninja-like creatures, and required the protection of trained warriors in their party if they expected to survive. P:E will allow mid-combat backstabs and other such rubbish, if I recall correctly, which... is annoying, but expected.

I concur generally, although I don't have a huge problem with the mid-combat backstabs as long as they are risky to pull off. The positioning should be difficult, but the major obstacle should really be the light armor limitation - sure you could get in close for a backstab, but then you'll be exposed to quite a few very angry enemies. Plate-armored warriors could handle that, but leather-clad rogues should go down quickly in the face of a focused assault.

To me the decline of the skill-focused Rogue is more about an unwillingness of designers to make skill requirements high enough that a traditional thief/rogue is necessary. Spells that allow disarming of traps, unlocking doors and so on don't help.

 

[Shadenuat]

"Good" rogues, just like "good" mages, require a lot of handmade stuff in your game, writing and preparation. Even in most banal D&D session there is a huge difference between making a tower full of kobolds, or making a ruined tower with a map of it's windows and locked doors (for climbing), traps, enemy scouts (to backstab and avoid straight fight), possible ambush sights and so on.
In a Sawyeristic language: remember your player has Ancient Poetry, and plan accordingly.
What was the last game which had levitation to cross pits for Mages? Inquisitor? And Morrowind before it? Developers don't have money because of Shepard to create mage-specific off-combat content, and you want recon, locks, traps and climbing for rogues. Hah.

 

[hiver]

Daggers being effective against heavy armor would actually make sense in terms of realism, since a shorter blade has more leverage and can be more easily manouvered into gaps in the armor while striking at heavy armor with a sword isn't very effectove. I don't think there's much use implementing details like this if the omission makes for a better system, though.

In order to slip a dagger through a weak spot in the armor (relatively speaking - joints on a plate armor would still be protected with chain), the opponent would have to at the very least be grappled if not immobilized somehow. This is something that would be very hard to do in a straight up fight against an opponent that knows what he's doing. He isn't just going to stand there and give the knife fighter the time to close in, find a weak spot and then push his dagger in. Really, there is a reason why soldiers used heavy weapons and not knives against heavy armor - because heavy weapons have the biggest chance of getting through to cause at least some damage. Dagger was used if you couldn't use your main weapon for some reason (or it was all you had).

Well then, what if effectiveness of daggers in straight up combat would be connected to immobilizing heavier armor opponents first?
After all, the historic moment where heavy plate armor became officially outdated, the battle of Agincourt, provides quite clear reasons for weaknesses of heavy armor soldiers.
Mud, long bows, and peasants wrestling, tripping and knifing the knights that got stuck in the mud.

/

Also... guys... if a heavy armored soldier goes after you with a knife... that doesnt seem so fantastically fairy, does it?

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

After all, the historic moment where heavy plate armor became officially outdated, the battle of Agincourt, provides quite clear reasons for weaknesses of heavy armor soldiers.
Mud, long bows, and peasants wrestling, tripping and knifing the knights that got stuck in the mud.

Yeah, while we're talking about how daggers are unrealistically effective, lets also talk about how armor is unrealistically easy to wear. If we were going to be super-realistic in terms of full-plate armor, then you would have to take a horse into the dungeon just to move around.

Actually, that would be an amazing troll; allow the player to scrimp and save to get that amazing set of full-plate armor only to have them finally put it on and...be stuck in place at the shop counter, unable to move.

TL;DR - plausibility within the reality defined by the game and supported by the willing suspension of disbelief is far more important than "realism".

 

[DraQ]

"Realism" is laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame. So is the idea that a class should be worse at combat than any other class in a combat-focused game.

Bleh. I _want_ my dagger to be a worse weapon than a short-sword.

Daggers are piercing weapons, short swords are slashing. Daggers are very likely to be worse than a short sword when it comes to fighting enemies with no or light armor.

Roguey,

kindly GTFO.

 

[hiver]

No need to go for complete immobility trolling.

Mages and priests are there, let them use magic to immobilize, slow down or trip heavy armor. Make ranged (long)bow skill (and maybe heavy arrows) really useful?
Plus equipment such as some kind of alchemical "bombs" ... and so on.

Shame P:E wont have weight of armor limiting the speed of soldiers, though... at least i think that was confirmed, right?

But, there are other possibilities to do that, as noted above.

 

[Grunker]

I'm not sure when the "DPS dagger-wielding thief/rogue" archetype first appeared, but regardless of its origins, I detest it. If you're wearing cloth pajamas or a leather jerkin and are carrying only a dagger and perhaps a bow/crossbow, the last place you want to be is anywhere near a battlefield facing properly trained, armed, and armored opponents, let alone wild animals or mythological creatures. That's not to say that thieves/rogues shouldn't be capable of assisting their party with ranged weapons or by ambushing an enemy before fleeing back to the rear rank, but their expertise shouldn't lie in direct combat. Their damage potential is highly situational or supplemental. Their primary purpose is to scale walls, spot and disarm traps, pick locks, sneak around stealing things, carry out silent assassinations, perhaps work people over with their silver tongue, and so on.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy/prequel, early D&D, and dungeon crawler cRPGs respected this notion that burglars, thieves and rogues weren't mythical ninja-like creatures, and required the protection of trained warriors in their party if they expected to survive. P:E will allow mid-combat backstabs and other such rubbish, if I recall correctly, which... is annoying, but expected.

"Realism" is laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame. So is the idea that a class should be worse at combat than any other class in a combat-focused game.

Agree completely Roguey! People arguing that Rogues should suck at combat and weapons should be viable "because real life" are retards. So I disagree with Blaine, and agree with you. What has the world come to. However, you still fail to answer this:

As with the longsword/dagger discussion he ends of with, it is, of course, a perfect illustration of the binary and uninteresting system they seem to be going for (as seen with rock-paper-scissors armor system and now weapons types). For all his criticism against D&D weapon types, switching weapons still isn't a tactical choice, it's just rock-paper-scissor (daggers are bad against X and good against Y). Compare this to systems like GURPS where the weapons are so completely different from each other you can't compare them on such a binary scale.

D&D goes for "this deals more damage but this has higher crit chance."

Sawyer criticizes this and opts for a "this works against X, this works against Y."

All the while better systems have long since started actually making weapons behave very differently, with no clear "good" choices or "good against X" type stuff.

The ironic part is that I don't mind D&D's version. It's good, clean, simple, which is why it ends up being binary, but that's the price you pay. What I mind is Sawyer giving the impression that he's invented star travel just because he's switching from one binary system to another.