Pillars of Eternity

^^Barbarian is supposed to be berserker class while fighter is the class that composes everything from thugs to knights that aren't holy knights like paladins

Thats actually another thing that is problematic with idea of making classes that have abilities of multiple classes in favor of actually having those multiple classes: It kinda drops roleplaying options when there are less class options. I mean, sure, classes are usually gameplay thing, but come on, on tabletop rpgs they are really important for role playing itself and even though in CRPG they are usually only gameplay thing, nobody pics a cleric or paladin when they plan to be evil overlord unless they go for irony

Yeah, the classes do fill distinct roles. A fighter can't really go in with a big axe and hit anything higher than his kneecaps, while a barbarian can't stand back with the wizard and make sure he doesn't get shivved; fighter's are a more flexible melee fighter, while barbarians are really just an all melee offense class.

I like playing both for that reason.

It's your God, they're your rules, you go to hell." - Mark Twain

Except Clerics aren't 90% identical to Fighters, like Barbarians are. Fighters and Barbarians both are strong and tough melee fighters who use passive modifiers to their basic attacks rather than spells. Wizards and Sorcerers both have familiars, have identical spell lists and the same armor penalties. Imagine if Dn D added a Shaman class, like previously sugested, which used Divine Nature spells, had animal companions and could shapeshift, but had some minor detail that "separated" them from Druids, and that would be the way Fighters/Barbarians and Wizzards/Sorcerers work. It doesn't help that Fighters and barbarians have almost no abilities as it is. If you merged the two into one class and gave it the abilities of both you have a slight chance of ending up with a class that's actually interesting.

@Druples: Err, I guess you haven't checked out D&D(or Pathfinder <_< I should check out my pathfinder book again, but as far as I'm aware, pathfinder is pretty much same as D&D but more traditional than 4 edition or something?) but... Druids and Shamans ARE classes in D&D. Druids use shapeshifting and nature magic(I forgot that <_<) while shamans have summoning wild beasts thing going on. I think both have animal companion or familiar of some sort as well.

Also, fighters whole thing is that they don't have special features of any kind besides weapon proficiency, they just get feats on level ups. Barbarians on other hand have abilities related to berserking and how they are barbarians and not from "civilization" and yadda yadda, but nobody keeps illiteracy thing in video games( and neither did pathfinder, I guess pathfinder makers realized how pointless it is to make them illiterate :P

edited 29th Jul '14 1:12:59 PM by SpookyMask

They don't need to make Barbarians inherently illiterate. If you use Intelligence as a dump stat, like most people do, they end up illiterate naturally.

"It's so hard to be humble, knowing how great I am."

Wait, Shamans are a real class? Are they from some kind of supplemental book? I don't remember them from the core book, and they don't appear in Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights.

Hehe, I always roleplay, so I don't tend to use a dump stat; I do tend to take more than a few points off Charisma, though, to create above-average fighters who really have no charm. It's fucking painful in game, except BG 2 where you get an 18 charisma ring early on, but kinda fun.

It's your God, they're your rules, you go to hell." - Mark Twain

^^Eh, there are more classes to most R Ps than corerulebook ones. Though in case of pathfinder, I think all basic classes besides magus(the mage fighter class), unless I forgot some class or don't have the correct book, are in corerulebook. In case of D&D they were probably added in non corerulebook and since Pathfinder is D&D 3.5 or something it has most of D&D basic classes in one book

So anybody here has actual experience with D&D instead of pathfinder to know when shaman were added? And if their beastmaster playstyle is sufficiently different from druids whatever thing? I keep forgetting what druids actually do... Heck, earlier I thought shamans were shapeshifting ones and druids were nature magic only, but apparently druids are shapeshifting ones?

EDIT: Okay, screwed up little, Pathfinder doesn't have shamans though D&D apparently does. Pathfinder druids include the whole shapeshifting nature magic animal companion beastmaster options in same packet from what I get from quick check? Also, I forgot classes from advanced classes book like alchemist and gunslinger and cavalier and whatever that weren't in pathfinder corerulebook

Turns out I should have just checked out wikipedia on shamans :P I'm too lateto read if they have any real differences to druids or not, too tired to stay up this long anyway

edited 29th Jul '14 1:44:53 PM by SpookyMask

So anyway, another RPS interview

I wasn't aware that Resolve is the replacement skill for charisma <_< Does it have combat effect? Is it one of old rpg stats with different name and traditional charisma stuff added to it?

Anyway, yeah, I like it that there isn't speech skill going on but there is still different unlockable dialog options. Cause otherwise I would die in combat due to putting everything into speech skill

Regarding barbarians, I think that I'd just like a "barbarian" class that did away with the "no armour, savage weapons only" business: think of Fafhrd, for example. From what I gather that might actually be feasible in Pillars of Eternity.

Thinking of classes, barbarians and the wizard/sorcerer dichotomy, has any information et been released on how they handle magic? I'm very fond of magic, and one of my biggest complaints regarding D&D is the Vancian system implemented for wizards.

(There are probably non-core classes in D&D that I'd like better than wizards and sorcerers, but as most of my D&D experience is in the computer games that use it, I have limited experience with those. Additionally, the wizard and sorcerer classes are arguably the "primary" arcanists of D&D; the flagship wielders of arcane magic, so to speak.)

(To be clear: I don't have a problem with Vancian systems in and of themselves, just with the specific D&D implementation. I think that a fun Vancian magic system could well be built.)

@Spooky: I think that I chose my examples poorly. :/

I see what you're saying. I suppose that I'm more a "fluff" person than a "crunch" person, however: stats don't interest me as much as concepts and names.

In all fairness, I should perhaps not have used an extant word there, or at least used something very, very obscure: D&D has a very large number of classes once one strays from the core classes. I was simply trying to suggest a class not derived from a D&D class, as opposed to pretty much using the core D&D classes.

A replacement for the two classes, yes.

No, not at all: just different classes. The fact that my example happens to combine the two is perhaps a failing of it as an example.

My complaint is not that the classes are lacking, just that they're the same old D&D classes.

Eh, I'm not sure that it need be that much more difficult to work with than the Vancian magic of D&D: much lies in the implementation, I think.

However, you do have a good point about it being suited to a game built around it—again, it was perhaps a poor example; appropriately, it was somewhat born from similar systems that I have in mind that would be intended as central mechanics to a game.

It was, in any case, off the top of my head, and so is likely unbalanced in some way. ^^;

That's pretty much what I meant: it's a new coat of paint over the bard concept, leaving the class feeling a little less generic, and a little more born of its world, than going with the D&D-style "bard" label.

edited 29th Jul '14 3:29:38 PM by ArsThaumaturgis

My Games & Writing

By the way, have they said anything about party limits? I know there are eight companions, but how many of those eight companions are we allowed to have? Is it a hard limit of 6 like Baldur's Gate and Planescape, or is it more like Arcanum and Fallout 2, based on a certain stat?

"It's so hard to be humble, knowing how great I am."

^I think they said its 6 with you being able to switch them whenever you want to something

^^Well, article I linked to does pretty much state they go for D&D CRPG nostalgia crowd so magic system is probably the same. But I can't say for sure.

Anyway, not sure how Vancian Magic storywise differs from other magic, but gameplay wise its just clicking a skill right? I'm just wondering that if you want different magic system for mages that differs from using skills as barbarian/fighter/whatever, you'd have to make game more complicated if you want to use magic <_< I guess you could do the "Magic needs talisman/lizard eyeballs/whatever to be used but everyone can use it" or something to balance that it isn't easily usable, but that could end up as frustrating. So the game which doesn't use the "click a spell, use it" would have to be balanced so that you can't use magic much and when you can use it it should be rather strong without being game breaking.

I do prefer the Dragon Age and MMO cooldown or mana point magic system though instead of "You can use magic this amount per day" thing though, but those aren't new systems either. Unless you meant you are fed up just with D&D's magic system instead of all common magic systems

Sorry if I'm again misunderstanding something ^_^; I'm easily confused

edited 29th Jul '14 11:11:40 PM by SpookyMask

Vancian magic is specifically "you can only use your magic this many times per day". Anything else is not vancian.

Huh ok

It's not Vancian. They ditched that in favour of a different system.

Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.

Huh, nice to hear that, whats the system in this game?

Aw, I can't find the specific details. Darn.

But J.E Sawyer talked about Vancian magic being kind of a relic of tabletop game design that wasn't really necessary when you can fiddle around with computers and have them do complicated dice rolling and math.

Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.

I'd probably give it a slightly more flexible definition—to my mind the core idea is "you have to store spells in your head, and you have a limited amount of storage space"—but that's the basic idea, yes.

The main issues that I have with the D&D Vancian system (well, that I recall offhand—I may be forgetting some at the moment), in the standard sort of computer RPG, at least, are:

• That wizards can become next to useless once they run out of prepared spells.
• That the player is asked to guess at what they'll want ahead of time.
• That low-level wizards have rather little utility.

In short, I find it limiting and frustrating.

(There are ways around the above: magical items provide a partial fix for the spell-slot issue, but are rather limiting and take up inventory space; and in a computer RPG one can abuse the rest mechanic to replenish spells or change one's loadout, but that can get a little immersion-breaking.

One can also go with the sorcerer class—if you're happy with giving up the flexibility of the wizard class. :/)

I do think that a Vancian system could be created that I'd enjoy (I even have an idea in mind); it's the D&D implementation that I dislike. From what I gather, tabletop D&D involves smaller, less frequent encounters than do most computer RP Gs; it may well be that D&D's system works well in that setting.

Ah, I'm glad to read it, and thank you for sharing that. ^_^

edited 30th Jul '14 9:02:20 AM by ArsThaumaturgis

My Games & Writing

I think one of their initial design ideas (though this was during the vertical slice phase) was for there to be specific tiers of spells according to their usefulness, and you would have a "pool" of points for each of these representing the number of times you could cast a spell of that tier before needing to rest.

I think an alternate idea they came up with was to have different cooldown timers and just eliminating rest, but I don't know if they went through with that at all.

Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.

So PC Gamer put up a video of the demo as well. I've heard it was more in depth than the other but I haven't had a chance to watch, so I'm putting it here anyway:

Umbran Climax◊

Kinda funny how while Sawyer goes through almost same speech(yeah, its obvious its bit scripted) and player does same first playthrough, each video so far is different :P In first one in this thread they got through the demo a lot before 25 minute mark, so they started out short playthrough as death godlike fighter and such, in second video they only played much, but they did it slower and you saw bit more stuff about solving the trap, I wonder what this long one has...

Damn, August 18th for backers! Only about a half month away!

Huh, the video explained how wizards use spells(and druids and one other class had different spell thing). Wizards apparently use spells based on what grimoire they are holding and there is cooldown... Umm... Was it when you switch grimoires? Short memory in these things xP

When is the release for non-backers?

"It's so hard to be humble, knowing how great I am."

Winter this year