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Game News Project Eternity Kickstarter Update #65: Ciphers

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Tags: J.E. Sawyer; Obsidian Entertainment; Pillars of Eternity

In this week's Project Eternity Kickstarter update, lead designer Josh Sawyer describes the Cipher, which is the game's equivalent of the traditional D&D Psionicist class.

Contemporary ciphers are fighting casters, like the Glanfathan "mind hunters" who invented the discipline. When engaged in physical combat, they use an Ability called Soul Whip to contact and drain the psyches of their targets. Recognizable by the purple flames that engulf a cipher's weapons, Soul Whip generates a Focus resource that ciphers can use to power their abilities. Though ciphers begin combat with a modest amount of Focus, their more advanced techniques demand large expenditures of Focus. Additionally, repeated uses of even minor powers will quickly drain a cipher's Focus, requiring them to dive into physical combat to generate more.

Cipher powers are not limited to mental manipulation. They have abilities that allow them to use a target's soul energy to "leak" and burst into flame, to generate a physical shockwave of that knocks down everyone behind the target, or even to bend back toward the cipher, creating a field of protective energy around him or her.

With the exception of Soul Whip, all cipher powers require Focus and a nearby target other than themselves, one with a "housed" soul. In practical terms, this means that ciphers must always target a nearby ally or an enemy with their powers. It is impossible for them to target themselves, a distant target, or open ground.

Here is a sampling of some of the cipher's abilities:
  • Soul Whip (Modal) - At close range, the cipher's weapons generate fields of parasitic energy that lash out at a target's soul. The Soul Whip mode reduces the amount of damage caused, but each successful hit briefly lowers the target's Psyche defense and generates Focus for the cipher (attacks Psyche).
  • Mind Wave - The cipher violently intrudes into an enemy's mind, Stunning the target (attacks Psyche) and generating a cone of concussive force behind him or her that can knock down anyone in its path (attacks Fortitude).
  • Soul Shock - The cipher causes an ally's soul to "crack" and violently release energy into the physical world. The resulting explosion of electrical (Shock) energy damages everyone nearby except the target (attacks Reflexes).
  • Psychovampiric Shield - The cipher drains Intellect from enemies and uses it to temporarily increase his or her Deflection. The increase in the cipher's Deflection is dependent on how much Intellect he or she successfully drains from victims (attacks Psyche).
  • Mind Blades - The cipher uses the souls of nearby enemies to generate attacks against the subjects themselves. Each target is attacked once by a slashing "mind blade" which then moves on to the next nearest enemy up to a maximum of five targets (attacks Deflection).
  • Recall Agony - The cipher causes the target to re-experience the pain of a wound moments after the target originally suffered it. The damage is a percentage of the original value, but it ignores the armor of the target (attacks Psyche).
  • Ectopsychic Echo - The cipher and an ally generate a bolt of psychic energy that periodically rebounds between them, causing Crush damage to anyone caught in the area (attacks Reflexes).
The update also comes with a pretty cool lore dump describing the origins of the ciphers and their powers. Also, note that it's apparently confirmed that "Intellect" will be one of the game's attribute scores.
 

Hobz

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Would be nice if you could resolve a situation by lowering the opponent's Intellect enough that you can now talk your way through it with simple rhetoric and logical fallacies, but I guess i'm just wishing PE had crisis too.
 

Cosmo

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Mmmh...
I just hope this class won't have obvious better conversation possibilities than the others (everyone can have social skills from what i gather, but no only ciphers can read minds, so...).
 

Rake

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Mmmh...
I just hope this class won't have obvious better conversation possibilities than the others (everyone can have social skills from what i gather, but no only ciphers can read minds, so...).
I hope the opposite. I want ciphers to be able to read minds and force persuade like in KOTOR2, wizards to be able to charm,dominate etc. The mundane classes are at a disadvantage here, but i don't realy care. They can have the advantage in other areas.
 

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Nothing wrong with class checks, but I doubt Ciphers can just read people's minds at will. Don't they have to hit them with a purple glowy sword first? :smug:
 

Cosmo

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Nothing wrong with class checks, but I doubt Ciphers can just read people's minds at will. Don't they have to hit them with a purple glowy sword first? :smug:

I'll admit that them being somewhat combat-focused mitigated my fears a bit.
I hope the opposite. I want ciphers to be able to read minds and force persuade like in KOTOR2, wizards to be able to charm,dominate etc. The mundane classes are at a disadvantage here, but i don't realy care. They can have the advantage in other areas.

I don't think it's a good thing, and besides that would go against Sawyer's design philosophy. A better solution IMO would be for party members to interject during conversations, which would get rid of character inequalities in favor of group synergy.
 

sser

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I'm not that well initiated into the genre, but it sometimes feels like the approach to spells and strategy in MOBAs is coming over to RPGs lately.
 

Suicidal

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Seems kinda Jedi-y, but I like that they are putting effort into making every class feel and play differently.

I'm not that well initiated into the genre, but it sometimes feels like the approach to spells and strategy in MOBAs is coming over to RPGs lately.

You are kinda right - the sample abilities presented in this update seem like they were taken out of a MOBA game. Many of the spells and skills in MOBA games differ greatly between each other and each has very specific effects that are usually not shared by other skills. It can work both well and badly depending on the implementation, but as a person who places great importance on variety of mechanics in games, I like this direction.
 
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Oesophagus

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I hope the opposite. I want ciphers to be able to read minds and force persuade like in KOTOR2, wizards to be able to charm,dominate etc. The mundane classes are at a disadvantage here, but i don't realy care. They can have the advantage in other areas.

Tanks should be able to intimidate, a'la IWD
 

Athelas

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Come to think of it, I see a distinct lack of skills like Fear/Horror, Mind-control, etc. Or will those be the domain of other magic classes?
 

Mantic

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Nothing wrong with class checks, but I doubt Ciphers can just read people's minds at will. Don't they have to hit them with a purple glowy sword first? :smug:

I'll admit that them being somewhat combat-focused mitigated my fears a bit.
I hope the opposite. I want ciphers to be able to read minds and force persuade like in KOTOR2, wizards to be able to charm,dominate etc. The mundane classes are at a disadvantage here, but i don't realy care. They can have the advantage in other areas.

I don't think it's a good thing, and besides that would go against Sawyer's design philosophy. A better solution IMO would be for party members to interject during conversations, which would get rid of character inequalities in favor of group synergy.
The fuck r u talking about. Having Ciphers be able to get special information by making read minds checks during dialogue would be awesome by definition, especially if no other class can do it. I assume the game is going to be based around the Player char only being able to start convo, so it would create cool opportunities for re-playability. Play the game again with a Cipher for cool psychic dialogue clues, make detect lie checks with greater precision, etc.

Group synergy would take out the best possibility of a mind-reading character, being able to know something about an NPC that he/she doesn't know you know, like if they're lying. How would interjections work with that? "Hey Boss this guy just told you a lie man".
 
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Cosmo

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Group synergy would take out the best possibility of a mind-reading character, being able to know something about an NPC that he/she doesn't know you know, like if they're lying. How would interjections work with that? "Hey Boss this guy just told you a lie man".

Yep. Trying hard i see.
To see good examples of the whole party participating to dialogs, just go and check IWD2 and SoZ. Til then, let the grown up talk.

By the way, Sawyer, being who he is, won't permit certain classes having a blatant advantage like the one you want ; at least i don't think so.
 
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Rake

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Nothing wrong with class checks, but I doubt Ciphers can just read people's minds at will. Don't they have to hit them with a purple glowy sword first? :smug:

I'll admit that them being somewhat combat-focused mitigated my fears a bit.
I hope the opposite. I want ciphers to be able to read minds and force persuade like in KOTOR2, wizards to be able to charm,dominate etc. The mundane classes are at a disadvantage here, but i don't realy care. They can have the advantage in other areas.

I don't think it's a good thing, and besides that would go against Sawyer's design philosophy. A better solution IMO would be for party members to interject during conversations, which would get rid of character inequalities in favor of group synergy.
The fuck r u talking about. Having Ciphers be able to get special information by making read minds checks during dialogue would be awesome by definition, especially if no other class can do it. I assume the game is going to be based around the Player char only being able to start convo, so it would create cool opportunities for re-playability. Play the game again with a Cipher for cool psychic dialogue clues, make detect lie checks with greater precision, etc.

Group synergy would take out the best possibility of a mind-reading character, being able to know something about an NPC that he/she doesn't know you know, like if they're lying. How would interjections work with that? "Hey Boss this guy just told you a lie man".
It will be. Ziets said so.
 

Rake

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Group synergy would take out the best possibility of a mind-reading character, being able to know something about an NPC that he/she doesn't know you know, like if they're lying. How would interjections work with that? "Hey Boss this guy just told you a lie man".

Yep. Trying hard i see.
To see good examples of the whole party participating to dialogs, just go and check IWD2 and SoZ. Til then, let the grown men talk.

By the way, Sawyer, being who he is, won't permit certain classes having a blatant advantage like the one you want.
But it won't be that way. Only the main char will be able to talk like PS:T. Other char will be able to talk in scripted instances but outside player control.
 

Cosmo

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But it won't be that way. Only the main char will be able to talk like PS:T. Other char will be able to talk in scripted instances but outside player control.

That changes nothing to my point. If they can participate even in the least, that means there's possibly some modicum of party synergy going on in dialogs.
 

Athelas

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Why wouldn't they be able to go for a combination of both? Have companions interject spontaneously, and have some of the dialogue options consist of things like 'hey, could you read his mind for me'? I think Torment had a few instances of that - you could ask some of the companions to translate the dabus language when you were talking to a dabus.
 

Cosmo

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Why wouldn't they be able to go for a combination of both? Have companions interject spontaneously, and have some of the dialogue options consist of things like 'hey, could you read his mind for me'? I think Torment had a few instances of that - you could ask some of the companions to translate the dabus language when you were talking to a dabus.

This is a good example, yes.
 

Rake

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Why wouldn't they be able to go for a combination of both? Have companions interject spontaneously, and have some of the dialogue options consist of things like 'hey, could you read his mind for me'? I think Torment had a few instances of that - you could ask some of the companions to translate the dabus language when you were talking to a dabus.
Yes, they maybe do that.
 

4too

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The Three Market-eers!


Quoting the Quotes said:


Cipher powers are not limited to mental manipulation. They have abilities that allow them to use a target's soul energy to "leak" and burst into flame, to generate a physical shockwave of that knocks down everyone behind the target, or even to bend back toward the cipher, creating a field of protective energy around him or her.

:o


Ciphers = Psionic-s = Marketers!

The class that will always know where to finger "teh" Awesome™ button!





4too
 

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