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

[Ninjerk]

I wonder what a "brilliant weakling fighter" will do in P:E combat.

 

[Blaine]

I wonder what a "brilliant weakling fighter" will do in P:E combat.

No doubt he'll "spot weaknesses" and "anticipate" and "counter-attack" and "out-maneuver" and such.

The thing is, having an IQ of 200 doesn't translate into developing those abilities except in anime and the minds of Western dorks. They're gained through training, experience, and intangible physical talents only.

 

[Excidium]

Ah, my bad

It's coolio

Also I disagree that later editions "did it better". In AD&D it worked for the game, and it's a fucking dinosaur system (of which 2nd edition is merely a rules revision instead of a complete redesign like all the editions that followed are to the previous one) so give it a break. in third edition the more common 8-13 range still has very litle impact on the character's capabilities, high abilities are much less AWSUM and the modifier system Monte and co. devised has to be the dumbest thing ever. D&D/d20 must be the only game where a characteristic increase doesn't do shit half the time.

I should go to sleep, accidentally edited my previous post thinking I was posting a new message

 

[Ninjerk]

More broadly, I think it's the talent vs. skill misunderstanding. That applies to more people than just dorks.

 

[Space Satan]

I wonder what a "brilliant weakling fighter" will do in P:E combat.

Monkey Island style. Fight by swearing and throwing insults at your enemy, eroding their concentration and will to fight.

 

[Excidium]

I wonder what a "brilliant weakling fighter" will do in P:E combat.

No doubt he'll "spot weaknesses" and "anticipate" and "counter-attack" and "out-maneuver" and such.

The thing is, having an IQ of 200 doesn't translate into developing those abilities except in anime and the minds of Western dorks. They're gained through training, experience, and intangible physical talents only.

Actually that wouldn't be so bad mind you because I'm totally expecting the so-called mundane abilities to be full retardo shit like ricocheting arrows and similar things.

 

[Blaine]

What I want to know is how the muscular, dim-witted magic users will play. Perhaps the baritone voice of a stupid giant Chanter will result in more powerful incantations, while an illiterate swamp donkey will be able to bat orlans out of the park with her Grimoire Slam.

 

[Excidium]

What I want to know is how the muscular, dim-witted magic users will play. Perhaps the baritone voice of a stupid giant Chanter will result in more powerful incantations, while an illiterate swamp donkey will be able to bat orlans out of the park with her Grimoire Slam.

http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Muscle_Wizard

 

[Hormalakh]

oh man, didn't think he'd actually respond. Anyway, yeah I'm sort of disappointed that some of you guys are so willing to just settle for something that could be more. It seems like most people agree that a well-implemented design COULD allow for great combat as well as improved RPG gameplay (stats mattering outside of combat), but some seem to be content with just great combat.

I dunno, I've always liked cRPGs and people's Let's Plays when they were invested in their character and tried to play them properly.

It would be great if RPGs would start rewarding players for being consistent with their characters just like RL DMs do.

 

[coffeetable]

Hormalakh, you know what the best cRPG role playing experience of the last 20 years was? Alpha Protocol. Despite being a buggy pile of shit, it gave a greater range of character development than anything else I've come across. Hell, it even rewarded consistency. And in did it without an ability score is sight. You role played through actions and words instead of stats, and it worked really goddamn well.

 

[Duraframe300]

Something Awful has decided to close up again for non-users, btw.

 

[Hormalakh]

Hormalakh, you know what the best cRPG role playing experience of the last 20 years was? Alpha Protocol. Despite being a buggy pile of shit, it gave a greater range of character development than anything else I've come across. Hell, it even rewarded consistency. And in did it without an ability score is sight. You role played through actions and words instead of stats, and it worked really goddamn well.

But from what I've read about AP (I haven't played it, I need to get a new computer before I can catch up with the last decade's worth of shi...er I mean games), it seems that the "characters" you can RP are still limited as compared to the older RPGs like Fallout/Arcanum/etc. You're either a suave motherfuc... (shut your mouth), a murdering bastard, or good guy jim. That's not a lot of RP possibilities.

In fact, they aren't "roles" at all. The roles are only distinguished by one "filter:" that of the dialogue system.

Take Arcanum instead. You can be a technologist that builds robots to kill, a herbalist that is beautiful and charming, a wizard that takes no shit from no body, a jack of all trades, a perceptive gunslinger, a dumb brute, a smart melee fighter, and so on. Then you can choose dialogue options that even further define your character. The possibilities are much more varied!

 

[Kane]

"Hey Josh, can I roleplay dumb brutes in P:E?"

> THE ABILITY SYSTEM IN D&D IS TOTAL SHITE HERE HAVE A LOAD OF NERD BABBLE ABOUT IT GOD I HATE D&D SO MUCH GRRRRRR

 

[imweasel]

"D&D is shit! I'm gonna do it better!" really is Sawyer's general response to any negative comments about P:E's mechanics.

It doesn't at all -- conceptually or the specific example you gave. You can very easily make a dumb brute fighter character in PE and role-play him or her as such. You can also make a brilliant weakling fighter character and role-play him or her as such. The difference between doing this in PE and, for example, D&D, is that in PE this is a fully viable character concept who emphasizes different elements in comba

I wonder what combat role my dumb as shit yet very charismatic and agile wizard will have in Sawyer's "superior, better than that D&D shit" system.

 

[DraQ]

First, do we know anything about stat system in PE?

You can describe your character exactly how you think of them: in terms of their reactions.

Except:

1. If you could model human behaviour and reactions you'd have a true AI. Which we don't.
2. For player character(s) it's the player who determines their reactions, take that away and you have an ungame.

Stats aren't meant to determine personality or any such shit. They are meant to broadly define the characters in terms of what they can and cannot do by asking following questions:
-how smart is the character?
-how strong?
-how well coordinated they are?
-how perceptive?
-are they nimble?
-can they move fast?
-do they have strong will?
-how's their stamina?
-are they good at swaying other people?

and so on.

It's an abstraction, but it's a good abstraction, because it's rooted firmly in reality.

What I want to know is how the muscular, dim-witted magic users will play. Perhaps the baritone voice of a stupid giant Chanter will result in more powerful incantations, while an illiterate swamp donkey will be able to bat orlans out of the park with her Grimoire Slam.

TBH, I don't see the point of supporting obviously gimped builds, so unless you cast from innate talent rather than studies in the setting, there should be no dumb wizards.

Having minimal stat requirements for given class is perfectly fine - fighter who is weak, slow, poorly coordinated and tires easily is a dead fighter.

That I'm against dump stats doesn't mean I'm against primary stats as well.

Still, once you've satisfied class requirement, there should be no obvious optimal way to allocate the remaining points. You could choose to make your fighter super strong, or super agile, or something in between, but you should also benefit enough from making them smart or charismatic that this would be a tempting option.

The very point of attributes is that they have much broader applicability than particular skills. If you fail at implementing that, you might just as well go bethesda on them.

 

[Infinitron]

First, do we know anything about stat system in PE?

Only what was revealed in the Codex Q&A.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

I wonder what a "brilliant weakling fighter" will do in P:E combat.

No doubt he'll "spot weaknesses" and "anticipate" and "counter-attack" and "out-maneuver" and such.

The thing is, having an IQ of 200 doesn't translate into developing those abilities except in anime and the minds of Western dorks. They're gained through training, experience, and intangible physical talents only.

So, combat should rely exclusively on skill point spending then? That's what training, experience and intangible physical talents are.

To favour fallout-like skill point spending over attributes is a legit position, but it's not really the "IE style" which is what we are going for here.

I mean that 120kg bodybuilder won't be able to fight a 60kg wimp who knows how to fence in a sword duel, if he himself doesn't. Realistically speaking all of the things you mention rely on str, agi, int and reflexes (which is a subgroup of agi?) outside of skill points.

 

[Blaine]

So, combat should rely exclusively on skill point spending then? That's what training, experience and intangible physical talents are.

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm on the subject of base statistics. "Skill points" would be spent for weapon proficiencies, certainly, but experience is represented by character levels in a level-based system, and the bonuses/abilities a character receives at each level are typically based on its class. Those factors overlap to represent training and experience. Intangible physical talents might be perks or feats. Attributes such as the obvious Strength aid in hitting harder, swinging larger weapons faster, and carrying more stuff; Stamina might keep those swings going for longer. Being able to win a quiz bowl doesn't do shit during individual skirmishes, though. In my view, all attributes being equally useful for a fighter and changing mainly the flavor and style of its attack and defense strategies based on what is chosen is silly. In physical confrontations, size, reach, and strength matter a lot, just as intellect and memory matter if you need to memorize and comprehend arcane grimoires.

'Course, there's a reason I abandoned class- and level-based systems in favor of point-buy, skill-based systems many years ago. I hate class- and level-based systems, though they're passably tolerable in cRPGs.

To favour fallout-like skill point spending over attributes is a legit position, but it's not really the "IE style" which is what we are going for here.

Since IE-style attributes were AD&D and that's what Josh explicitly wants to avoid, I'm not sure we're on the same page here.

I mean that 120kg bodybuilder won't be able to fight a 60kg wimp who knows how to fence in a sword duel, if he himself doesn't.

Right, but I'm talking about a 120kg body builder who does know how to fence.

It's mainly the "quiz bowl smartsfighter" and "knucklehead meatwizard" extremes I object to, since they're pretty retarded.

 

[Kem0sabe]

This Attribute doesn't equal personality discussion is why i enjoy character background options, like Arcanum, but more integrated into the game, this would allow for extended role playing opportunities without having to dump points into "social" stats that would be otherwise useless.

 

[Grunker]

I can't believe we're actually having the Child's First D&D Debate of what stats are considered realistic. The Codex fucking blows my mind sometimes. You can already see the OPEN SYSTEMS vs. CLASS-BASED SYSTEMS debate coming from a mile away.

It's like people weren't alive the last twenty years.

 

[Blaine]

I can't believe we're actually having the Child's First D&D Argument of what stats are considered realistic. The Codex fucking blows my mind sometimes.

I figured you'd be along shortly to mock while contributing nothing. I started playing D&D right around the time you first learned the alphabet, kiddo. This is a cringeworthy line of discussion, indeed, but it's not my personal preference of subject matter that necessitates it—it's the way Josh has chosen to approach the issue of character attributes in a shitty class- and level-based system.

 

[Arkeus]

I like how you didn't even mention D&D in your question but he starts blabbering about it. Of course compared to D&D/d20 any system is wonderfully open and well designed. Still there's a difference between making every ability useful and making it all offer the same benefits for everyone.

Well.... he knows who Hormalakh is, and should be aware of the discussion here. Seriously, everyone here was comparing it to DnD, so of course he will answer based on the context of the covnersation here.

Boohoo Sawyer is awful because he actually look at the context...

 

[Grunker]

I can't believe we're actually having the Child's First D&D Argument of what stats are considered realistic. The Codex fucking blows my mind sometimes.

I figured you'd be along shortly to mock while contributing nothing.

Cry me a river.

You tell me why we aren't having this discussion about Wasteland? About Shadowrun: Returns? About anything. We only have this discussion once in a while in one of the Codex' worst staple threads: the yearly workshop thread about how to make systems more realistic. That's where people discuss there own personal pet ideas displaying without a shadow of doubt that they haven't reflected for two seconds on the attempts already made. And this discussion is completely fucking irrelevant for a game like PE.

We're having this discussion on the topic of PE specifically because Josh and Roguey inspire butthurt. Someone saw that Josh wanted to make attributes universal, cried "OMG MMO!" and the stream of butthurt continued to flow.

You know, when it comes to systems I disagree with Josh a lot more than I agree with him. Everywhere else I'm the one criticizing him and other people defend him. Yet here the criticism is constantly some brainless idiot discussion like "oh, a wizard slamming someone with a book, how silly" or "I want realistic attributes like they used to make them."

 

[Blaine]

I'm gonna have to start Puushing Grunker's posts before responding to them, since he's making a habit of editing them several minutes after.

 

[Grunker]

I'm gonna have to start Puushing Grunker's posts before responding to them, since he's making a habit of editing them several minutes after.

Yeah, changing the Danification "argument" to the more proper "debate" must really have hurt your ability to reply, lol.

That said, sometimes I notice mistakes, and I edit them. If you weren't sitting there, ready to click reply the instant I click save, it would hardly be an issue.