Pillars of Eternity, Obsidian's new CRPG in the vein of Baldur's Gate

The Engagement system isn't very good. Does the IE mod still break achievements?

Droigan_sl said:

The Engagement system isn't very good. Does the IE mod still break achievements?

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Its attacks of opportunity streamlined. Whats to hate about it? Besides the fact that you cant provoke them? Its a bit one sided.

I havent tried to confuse engaged mobs and see if they disengage and get hit? Anyone try?

The engagement system could be a little bit more malleable, but otherwise I had no problem with it. It really is, literally, streamlined OoP's.

I'd like to see fighters with some way to interact with that system besides for "FACEFIIIIIIRST" charges. The game does start to suffer from a bit of ability bloat though, and it suffers from the pseudo-realtime direction they went with it. If it were turnbased you could give fighters kick/trip/grapple/distract and whatever, but if you tried to do that with the way they've got you pausing every 2 seconds to issue commands it would just be tedious.

I do like that mobs aren't completely braindead, and they'll turn off your tank to smack your skirmisher. I mean there's good and there's bad in those decisions.

I've charmed engaged mobs and they don't get smacked. Since they're still technically hostile red circles when they're confused, I expect that they do take a parting smack.

I don't mind engagement, it's more the general pathfinding and how fast non tanks get flattened that annoys me. I also don't like the armor system, I would have really preferred a more generic "these classes wear this" system

yeah. the attack speed penalty seems hardly relevant. The variance isn't big enough. and DR is far too powerful a stat.

Classic DnD has arcane spell failure, as well as AC vs dex bonus. so light armors gave you "avoidance" with good dex scores making them essentially as good as heavy armor, for low dex chars.
Presumably here, light armors should give reflex or deflection to counteract the lack of DR.

Caliane_sl said:

yeah. the attack speed penalty seems hardly relevant. The variance isn't big enough. and DR is far too powerful a stat.

Classic DnD has arcane spell failure, as well as AC vs dex bonus. so light armors gave you "avoidance" with good dex scores making them essentially as good as heavy armor, for low dex chars.
Presumably here, light armors should give reflex or deflection to counteract the lack of DR.

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I prefer D&D 3.5 where your ability scores ( Str, Con, etc ) have greater influence on skills and abilities.

shabushabu_sl said:

I prefer D&D 3.5 where your ability scores ( Str, Con, etc ) have greater influence on skills and abilities.

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I think PoE ends up with more interesting stat decisions than DnD.

However, the armor thing definitely is a balance issue. I feel like any character not in plate is making a mistake.

Caliane_sl said:

yeah. the attack speed penalty seems hardly relevant. The variance isn't big enough. and DR is far too powerful a stat.

Classic DnD has arcane spell failure, as well as AC vs dex bonus. so light armors gave you "avoidance" with good dex scores making them essentially as good as heavy armor, for low dex chars.
Presumably here, light armors should give reflex or deflection to counteract the lack of DR.

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Its almost backwards where you need to pump dex to get higher armors. In a fluff aspect it makes no sense.

radditsu_sl said:

Its almost backwards where you need to pump dex to get higher armors. In a fluff aspect it makes no sense.

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DnD you mean? in Pillars, dex has no relation to armor at all.
In DnD, AC or armor class is a measure of avoidance, not damage reduction. Either you move, and the attack misses.. or the attack is deflected off your physical armor. granted you can point out confusion here vs a reflex save. which is kindof the same things, just vs different attacks. but since dex does both. there you go.


Dex bonuses are maxed. so, no pumping Dex doesn't just give you more armor then a plate wearer. And to point it out, Dex bonus can be negated by a number of things. like being prone, encumbrance, etc. anything that would logically stop your character from manually moving out of the way of an attack, will remove the dex bonus.

SRD:Armor - DD Wiki
this does of course point out the obvious... dnd systems are complicated.

I do like armor being DR, it makes a lot more sense than DnD armor, where you keep getting missed but when you get hit you take full damage.

khalid_sl said:

I do like armor being DR, it makes a lot more sense than DnD armor, where you keep getting missed but when you get hit you take full damage.

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You're thinking in video game terms not "what if". In a simple scenario armor prevents a sword blade from going into your chest. Once the blade goes through you "take damage". Basically, up until someone stabs you in the arm pit you "take no damage". That's the DnD idea.

Caliane_sl said:

DnD you mean? in Pillars, dex has no relation to armor at all.
In DnD, AC or armor class is a measure of avoidance, not damage reduction. Either you move, and the attack misses.. or the attack is deflected off your physical armor. granted you can point out confusion here vs a reflex save. which is kindof the same things, just vs different attacks. but since dex does both. there you go.


Dex bonuses are maxed. so, no pumping Dex doesn't just give you more armor then a plate wearer. And to point it out, Dex bonus can be negated by a number of things. like being prone, encumbrance, etc. anything that would logically stop your character from manually moving out of the way of an attack, will remove the dex bonus.

SRD:Armor - DD Wiki
this does of course point out the obvious... dnd systems are complicated.

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No i mean to use abilities quickly in heavier armor i need to pump dexterity. Essentially you use heavier armors the more you pump dex. In DnD it allows you to wear lighter armors. In pillars...heavier.

ah, I see what you were referring to now.



And yeah, HIT points in Dnd is also like that, and often confused. its essentially what endurance is in this. Its not a measure of your "lifeforce", or health, or anything. it also is a measure of your ability to fight, and avoid hits.
Realistically, a single hit can kill you. THAT is a critical strike. A crit is just a blow that actually lands. While most blows, just tire you out, or compromise your ability to fight back. and that is also while maiming, etc is also separate effects. I mean, if you are a 400 hp fighter with 10 hp left... you are not the black knight hobbling along as just a torso trying to bite their ankles off. you are just exhausted, and the next hit you take will probably be fatal.

Patch it up for GoG edition.

I have finished finally, basically done nearly all quests and so forth and I have to admit I kinda like it better now, than I did in the middle of the game.
Apart from Thaos only really gaining a profile in act3 the main story is actually solid and alot of sidequests are quite nice substories.

I still think it is too much fighting and alot of it is in addition repetitive instead of less packs but more tactical and challenging fights.

Mechanic-wise I'd say several things don't add up, but that being said, it's the first instance of a totally new system, so I give them leeway in some parts. With other things I don't really understand how it made it part QE. The pathing just to name one and also I fucking loathe that they made casters agro magnets by mere presence and then made the main enemytype a blinkstriking ghost over the course of the whole fucking game. There are other things that made me beyond angry in my playthrough, but well, maybe they will keep on fixing it.

Balancing is another thing that I think was done sloppy in parts. Maybe they lacked the time to test it, but I some things are just fucking stupid.
Petrify for example is a fucking joke and I can't really fathom how anybody could design that effect this way and give it out so freely in form of traps and spells. I literally killed the adra dragon in 5 seconds before the trap ran out in level 10 I think. It felt so wrong that I thought of loading and trying it again without the trap.

Overall I put in like 60 hours including about 20 hours of solo PotD, so that speaks for itself I guess.
Still I think alot of things are a lackluster, like the companion quests, the actual impact of caed nua and or enchanting just to name a few, but to be fair:
Overall its pretty good and I would hope that they expand on this.

I kinda would like a multi or dual class mechanic. I know DnD has it because of generic archtypes. But a nwn2 ish multi class system would be fun

khalid_sl said:

I think PoE ends up with more interesting stat decisions than DnD.

However, the armor thing definitely is a balance issue. I feel like any character not in plate is making a mistake.

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I agree on both points. I like that stats all seem to contribute more fluidly to the character over all vs. DnD, where you stacked your primary attribute and then threw points into dex/con for survivability, never looking at any other stat (has anyone playing a DnD based system ever put a single point in Charisma besides paladins...). Making int impact area of effect, might impact damage etc etc like PoE does makes for more challenging, and ultimately more meaningful decisions.

The armor thing though, yeah. They need to make the spread much larger for plate vs. leather as far as attack speed is concerned or have dex impact the DR of lighter armors. I tried a few builds where I enchanted some superb leather with might etc for a dps type build, but the attack speed increases were simply not enough to offset the loss of survivability given how many ranged and teleporting mobs that bypass the tanks are in this game. Likewise with a shield. Every character I had eventually ended up with one weapon-set being 1 hander+shield -- less of an issues since you have more than one weapon set and can swap in combat, but same principle.