Kiste
Augur
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2013
- Messages
- 680
-
Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.
"This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.
Pillars of Eternity Thread [Pre-Expansion]
- Thread starter undecaf
- Start date
ArchAngel
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2015
- Messages
- 20,215
Yes, because 40 people voting mean shit from a site nobody cares about. I have not even heard about that site until this moment and I have been playing PnP for 17+ years.
ArchAngel
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2015
- Messages
- 20,215
You forgot that that Type (Class) choice and Focus choice gives you special abilities that you can use each round if you want (unless they are passive bonuses). Also there are optional rules that come with the base book that let you use special attacks in exchange for less damage when you hit.. you know all the status effects you claim it does not have.
Adapting Numenera to be compatible with CRPG demands is pretty much exactly the same as creating a new system from scratch. There simply is nothing to adapt.
Behold Monte Cooks genius system design. I'll give you a 100% complete rundown of the whole combat system:
- monsters have difficulty level ranging from 1 - 10,
- look up the target number in the table, e.g. a level 2 monster has a target number of 6
- roll a D20 against it
- if hit, determine weapon damage (ALL light weapons do 2 dmg, ALL medium 4 dmg, ALL heavy 6 dmg)
- subtract your armor value (which is also a flat number based on what you're wearing or special abilities) from weapon damage
- a roll of 17 does 1 more damage, a roll of 18 does 2 more damage
- a roll of 19 does 3 more damage or a special result like knock back, whatever the fuck you want
- a roll of 20 does 4 more damage and a bigger special result like stun or whatever the fuck you can come up with
- apply damage
There are also 3 range levels (immediate, short, long) and you can move an "immediate" distance during your combat round as an additional action or a short range as a full action. Ranged weapons or abilities also have these ranges (i.e. a throwing knife is "short" and a bow "long") but it does not figure into the hit roll.
AND THAT'S THE EXTEND OF THE COMBAT SYSTEM. ALL OF IT. IT'S LITERALLY JUST ONE PAGE IN THE BOOK AND CAN BE SUMMED UP IN ONE PARAGRAPH.
If Torment: Tides of Numenera is based on this system, then many a Codexer head will explode.
Oh, yeah, and no combat EXP.
Also you forgot using effort which is action by action decision and a very important one because you spend points that are also your health points. You cannot move more than immediate distance and attack so you need to balance movement and attack as well. While base damage of weapons is 2, 4, or 6 it is modified by character skills, better gear and using effort (and critical hits).
And of course there are Cyphers that give crazy and random effects (randomly chosen when you get new ones, not random when you try to use them) and since you cannot carry more than a few and get a lot of them often you use them in each battle.
Oh and artifacts you acquire also often have active abilities.
So if you are stupid and don't know shit about Numenera, maybe you should not talk about it.
Shevek
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2003
- Messages
- 1,570
Its more famous sister site is board game geek but rpggeek is fairly known even if it isn't enworld or whatever.
DeepOcean
Arcane
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2012
- Messages
- 7,398
DnD system on infinity engine games is:
One handed weapons do 1d6 or 1d8 that averaged do 3 and 4 . (modified by magic weapons, abilities and atributes.)
Two handed weapons do something like 1d12 that averaged do 6.(modified by magic weapons, abilities and atributes.)
You attack enemy armor with your attack and d20, if you hit 20 (depending on the weapon or abilities), you crit.
Spells do the same thing but instead of attacking armor, they attack saving throws and their attack depend on their level.
This is as simple as it get but didn't stop people making good games using this system, so why Torment will be shitty because it has a slightly dumb down combat system?
You guys realize that PoE's worst problems have nothing to do with its combat resolution system right?
One handed weapons do 1d6 or 1d8 that averaged do 3 and 4 . (modified by magic weapons, abilities and atributes.)
Two handed weapons do something like 1d12 that averaged do 6.(modified by magic weapons, abilities and atributes.)
You attack enemy armor with your attack and d20, if you hit 20 (depending on the weapon or abilities), you crit.
Spells do the same thing but instead of attacking armor, they attack saving throws and their attack depend on their level.
This is as simple as it get but didn't stop people making good games using this system, so why Torment will be shitty because it has a slightly dumb down combat system?
You guys realize that PoE's worst problems have nothing to do with its combat resolution system right?
ArchAngel
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2015
- Messages
- 20,215
Still does not change the fact that 40 people only voted on it. I read many reviews and followed news after Numenera came out and it was praised by many people and they needed to print new copies all the time and on cons the lines in front of Numenera area was always the biggest.
Lhynn
Arcane
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2013
- Messages
- 9,869
System doesnt sound bad, much better than 3.5 and 4th D&D.You forgot that that Type (Class) choice and Focus choice gives you special abilities that you can use each round if you want (unless they are passive bonuses). Also there are optional rules that come with the base book that let you use special attacks in exchange for less damage when you hit.. you know all the status effects you claim it does not have.
Adapting Numenera to be compatible with CRPG demands is pretty much exactly the same as creating a new system from scratch. There simply is nothing to adapt.
Behold Monte Cooks genius system design. I'll give you a 100% complete rundown of the whole combat system:
- monsters have difficulty level ranging from 1 - 10,
- look up the target number in the table, e.g. a level 2 monster has a target number of 6
- roll a D20 against it
- if hit, determine weapon damage (ALL light weapons do 2 dmg, ALL medium 4 dmg, ALL heavy 6 dmg)
- subtract your armor value (which is also a flat number based on what you're wearing or special abilities) from weapon damage
- a roll of 17 does 1 more damage, a roll of 18 does 2 more damage
- a roll of 19 does 3 more damage or a special result like knock back, whatever the fuck you want
- a roll of 20 does 4 more damage and a bigger special result like stun or whatever the fuck you can come up with
- apply damage
There are also 3 range levels (immediate, short, long) and you can move an "immediate" distance during your combat round as an additional action or a short range as a full action. Ranged weapons or abilities also have these ranges (i.e. a throwing knife is "short" and a bow "long") but it does not figure into the hit roll.
AND THAT'S THE EXTEND OF THE COMBAT SYSTEM. ALL OF IT. IT'S LITERALLY JUST ONE PAGE IN THE BOOK AND CAN BE SUMMED UP IN ONE PARAGRAPH.
If Torment: Tides of Numenera is based on this system, then many a Codexer head will explode.
Oh, yeah, and no combat EXP.
Also you forgot using effort which is action by action decision and a very important one because you spend points that are also your health points. You cannot move more than immediate distance and attack so you need to balance movement and attack as well. While base damage of weapons is 2, 4, or 6 it is modified by character skills, better gear and using effort (and critical hits).
And of course there are Cyphers that give crazy and random effects (randomly chosen when you get new ones, not random when you try to use them) and since you cannot carry more than a few and get a lot of them often you use them in each battle.
Oh and artifacts you acquire also often have active abilities.
So if you are stupid and don't know shit about Numenera, maybe you should not talk about it.
ZagorTeNej
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 10, 2012
- Messages
- 1,980
Yeah, because PST is a genre classic due to its impeccable combat system and encounter design. Writing, C&C, quests, area design, atmosphere etc. will make or break this game, combat needs to be decent at most.
Oh, yeah, and no combat EXP.
Ehm, so?
ZagorTeNej
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 10, 2012
- Messages
- 1,980
Looking forward to endless banalce iterations and constant use of OP and nerfed, gotta level the playing field for PvP and Boss runs.
Kiste
Augur
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2013
- Messages
- 680
Most popular PnP designer after Gygax? There are shitloads of people in the D&D community who think that he's an utter dumbfuck. I'm not one of them, just for the record, but neither do I think he's the fucking Jesus of RPG system design.
He's mainly controversial because in his columns and blog entries and other stuff he wrote while he was still involved in D&D (and for a while after) he consistently displayed almost complete ignorance of how some of his Ivory Tower design ideas affected real world P&P D&D gameplay. And let's not forget that the game he designed (D&D 3E) was so fucked up that there was D&D 3.5E, which was basically a bugfixed version. And then there is Pathfinder, which is basically a bugfixed version of D&D 3.5E, which was still a fucking mess.
Probably his lowest point was when he tried to justify D&D3E's terrible character developement and its clusterfuck of feat chains, feat taxes, purposefully misleading feat descriptions and other wilfully obscure nonsense and unnecessary complexity with "rules mastery", i.e. the retarded idea that players who really know the rules well should be rewarded by being able to build better characters. And, according to Cooke, he got this great design idea form looking at what people enjoyed about Magic the Gathering, i.e. building clever decks and shit. Then he tried to apply this concept to D&D character development. He essentially admitted to putting bad choices into the system and concealing them to create this "system mastery" element.
Now, this concept is actually awesome for a CRPG system. Let the idiots play on easy and not put any thought into character development but make the system deep and complex so that the Sensukis and all the other autistic munchkins can treat it like a fucking math problem and come up with power builds that lets them solo the game on nightmare difficulty.
The problem was that D&D3E wasn't a CRPG system, it was a PnP system and in PnP, this concept turned out to be a fucking desaster. The sprawling complexity turned out to be utterly unmanageable so at some point after D&D 3.5E hit the bookshelves they simply said "fuck it" and just added to the complex mess by shitting out even more splat books... I mean, they didn't even TRY anymore because there was no point to it.
The "system mastery" element was even worse. Why on earth did Monte think this was a good idea in a non-competitive game like D&D? All he achieved was that the more casual DnD players (actually a majority of PnP players), who didn't spreadsheet the characters in advance, ended up with shit characters and the munchkins of the group ended up with optimized superheroes. What was the benefit here for your average D&D PnP group which probably consists of mainly casuals and maybe 1 or 2 munchkins?
This whole concept is so completely baffling in a PnP context that it's probably justified to call Monte Cook a dumbfuck based on this idea alone. I really can't shake the feeling that Numenera turned out to be so incredibly lightweigth because people have been giving him shit for years for being a guy who would do complexity just for the sake of complexity. There were a lot of people who were not particularly unhappy when Cook left D&D 5E developement due to "differences of opinion" for fear of him turning 5E into another overly complex clusterfuck.
Yes, that's exactly what I was commenting with a friend of mine today. If you count not how many distinct monsters you have, but for how many of them you have to adjust tactics, I doubt the number would be more than 3-4. That's what makes them so unmemorable.
Absolutely.
According to this, the number is pretty much the same. Yes, the answer did surprise me, because to me it felt like there was a lot more in BG. Maybe because some types of enemies used to cast specific spells, or cause specific afflictions (basilisks, sirenes, spiders, dopplegangers, gibberlings, etc.). I've almost finished replaying BG and will probably move on to BGII afterwards. I want to see and make sure for myself if I'm not overestimating the old titles or attributing qualities to them they didn't have.
The PoE table is ready:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1B_bCKzOQta97xfUHHk9p09T_7PowWLUJUTiYCBVXLMI/edit?pli=1#gid=0
My second reason for composing it, not counting the fact that the strategy guide is the single weakest strategy guide I've seen by Prima, was that I was under the impression that most of the time crush and burn damage are the best you can use. As you can see this is also confirmed. Even if you actually needed to adjust weapons to encounters, which you probably will need to do after one or more rebalance patches, for now you are best off with a crush weapon which has been enchanted to do burn damage too. War hammer would be best imo, because it can alternate as a pierce weapon.
Yeah, the new patch is out. The difficulty reverting to Easy isn't mentioned in the patch notes though. I'm pretty sure I haven't experienced the bug so far, but I wish I have been.
Last edited:
Gord
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2011
- Messages
- 7,049
Even if it's not resulting in total immunities and when keeping the current system - there are many creatures where it absolutely makes sense (and I almost suspect they somehow intended) that they can't be affected by some of the afflictions.
Yet in the end, with the current accuracy of most spells and the defenses of critters, afflictions will hit almost every time.
Sometimes it will result in a Graze, sure, but it will have some effect.
Assuming they intend to balance the game a bit, I think this is one of the things that should definitely be tackled, probably by plausibly increasing resistances and reducing accuracy of some spells.
In turn, the effect of some of the spells can be increased - when it hits with lower probability, make it count. Likewise, make it worthwile to buff my chars or debuff the enemy such that spells and abilities will succeed with higher probabilty/greater effect (hit vs graze).
LizardWizard
Prophet
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2014
- Messages
- 1,000
By fixing you mean porting to consoles.
ArchAngel
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2015
- Messages
- 20,215
There are always dumbfucks. More people liked 3e and 3.5e. Pathfinder only came to be because those same dumbfucks though 4e D&D was a good idea LOL
And who did they call to fix the mess with 5e? Monte Cook. And then they didn't let him fix it enough so he left and made Numenera which is much superior to D&D.
BTW, Monte was not only designer of 3e AND he was also not allowed to do how he wanted and that is why D&D 3e had flaws. Later he made Arcana Evolved which was a better version of D&D 3e.
Hatred
Unwanted
So you can hit 12 not far at all into act 3. Most of the enemies in the game are sub level 10. Literally 1 level 12 enemy and one version of Vithracks hit level 11.
Last edited:
ArchAngel
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2015
- Messages
- 20,215
For those that think D&D is only about combat, otherwise.. NO
Lhynn
Arcane
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2013
- Messages
- 9,869
You dont need much for anything else, as long as you have imagination and a good DM.
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2014
- Messages
- 4,201
Basically everything after ADnD 2nd edition is an abomination. There is a reason why the best settings were all released for the ADnD while 3rd edition got scraps. The reason is that in 3rd edition the game is basically just an addition to buildwankery. Who cares if your Punpun breaks everything in Fearun or Wisconsin? All you need is a broken build and a bunch of monsters. Also don't forget that Mone Cook is responsible for Faction Wars. An adventure so thrilling Avellone decided to completely ignore it while making Torment.
Bubbles
I'm forever blowing
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2013
- Messages
- 7,817
You might want to steal the info from the "Enemy DRs" tab in this spreadsheet. Looks like Crush/Pierce is actually the best combo, or Crush/Corrode for elemental weapons.
Yes, those averages are interesting, but in the game it's more important to use what will work against your type of enemy than what has the best average
Lhynn
Arcane
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2013
- Messages
- 9,869
Assuming you want to bother with that... i really dont. Now if some creatures were immune to different sources of damage....Yes, those averages are interesting, but in the game it's more important to use what will work against your type of enemy than what has the best average
As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.