Game News Pillars of Eternity Kickstarter Update #90: Post-PDXCon Preview Blitz + New Screenshots

[Athelas]

Raising Might doesn't actually make mages hit hard by itself. Wizards have very low physical accuracy, so a lot of their attacks end up being misses and grazes, negating any damage boost they may get from Might.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

its low-level rules that are merely meant to facilitate a highly abstracted form of tactical combat

The attribute system doesn't do just that though, it's a (major?) part of roleplaying through the stat checks in dialogue/events and melds into the game's background through that whole adra silliness. This is the schizophrenia people complain about: the attributes are simultaneously "merely meant to facilitate a highly abstracted form of tactical combat" and a part of the game's roleplaying and lore in a wholly incoherent way. Intelligence is simultaneously a generic AoE stat and adra focused smarts that let someone solve a difficult puzzle (bad example).

In making this incoherence work, the tactical combat aspect has to a degree "poisoned" the high level roleplaying and lore with its unimaginativeness: instead of a fantasy world with an interesting variety of alien, unique laws and logics, everything is guided by midi-chlorians adra; instead of building my character with future dialogue and event checks in mind, I'm left juggling accuracy and damage stats to best suit my approach to the tactical combat.

 

[Athelas]

That's...not really the case at all. The dialogue checks in the game are all very logical, and do what you'd expect from the stats (i.e. Perception makes you notice subtle facial tics of an NPC). Your immersion isn't going to be ruined because this game has a different stat spread than D&D.

I haven't yet encountered a Might check in dialogue though, suspiciously enough. There was one opportunity to intimidate some characters, but it was through a Resolve check.

 

[Irenaeus]

I like D&D stats, magic and lore. This new shit I'll have to wait to play the game and see. I don't like what I'm hearing, tho.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

The attribute system doesn't do just that though, it's a (major?) part of roleplaying through the stat checks in dialogue/events and melds into the game's background through that whole adra silliness. This is the schizophrenia people complain about: the attributes are simultaneously "merely meant to facilitate a highly abstracted form of tactical combat" and a part of the game's roleplaying and lore in a wholly incoherent way. Intelligence is simultaneously a generic AoE stat and adra focused smarts that let someone solve a difficult puzzle (bad example).

In making this incoherence work, the tactical combat aspect has to a degree "poisoned" the high level roleplaying and lore with its unimaginativeness: instead of a fantasy world with an interesting variety of alien, unique laws and logics, everything is guided by midi-chlorians adra; instead of building my character with future dialogue and event checks in mind, I'm left juggling accuracy and damage stats to best suit my approach to the tactical combat.

Yeah, but the idea is that even if you do decide to build your character around dialogue/event checks you want to pass/engage in he'll still be effective in combat regardless of the class, a consequence of even traditional dialogue opening stats being combat stats at the same time unlike in say PST where choosing such stats would automatically gear you toward playing a mage class. It aims to please both minmaxers and storyfags with their very different approaches to gaming.

It's a system with a ton of issues (no matter how much they're dismissed by Josh and his groupies) but it could result in fiddling with stats a lot more than in IE games regardless of the class which would add significant replay value.