Pillars of Eternity Thread [Pre-Expansion]

[A horse of course]

Eye of Drog is cheesy because it's designed to be broken cheese. 4x Damage and paralysis? Consistently hits even final boss and hardest optional boss with reasonable accuracy? WTF?

It makes the fight (and any other in the game) trivial. What would you define as cheese? Only exploits?

It's a powerful, max-level Mage spell. It's intentionally inserted, balanced and playtested by the developers. It has roughly a 30% success rate. Yes, a successful petrify probably does more than any other spell to ensure success in that fight, but there are several lower-level spells that are vastly more useful than max-level direct damage spells in that encounter, some of which I'd barely touched since the early game. I barely used Eye of Drog in other fights because the low success rate and 20-second effect meant that other max-level spells were more useful in most other situations.

Cheese means exploits or abusing game mechanics to varying extents, without actually cheating or breaking the game. Resting after every single fight and returning to town for camping supplies after every 2-6 encounters would be cheese (and totally pointless) in most people's opinion, I think. I cheesed a few levels of Endless Paths sometimes by drawing out enemies until most of the group had reset and returned to their original position before attacking stragglers. I don't feel guilty about it because all it did was save me a few camping supplies and actually took far longer than simply resting and blowing the whole group away would have anyway.

Trigger warning: Max level spell

 

[Bleed the Man]

I'll say this for Pillars of Magical Cement: It's better than Oblivion.

You're a cruel man

I'll say this for Pillars of Magical Cement: It's better than Oblivion. [cruel]

 

[Bleed the Man]

iono, the codex has been rife with Oblivion/FO3 apologists of late,

Then we need a purge.

I prupose to go full Thaos with these people.

 

[A horse of course]

iono, the codex has been rife with Oblivion/FO3 apologists of late, it's always wise to remind people that Oblivion was the worst game ever made

PoE is p. gud in comparison

loverslab elevated Oblobian to greatness. Can they do the same with PoE?

 

[Blaine]

oblivion has no redeeming qualities, absolutely none.

Oblivion has two redeeming qualities when compared to Skyrim: a superior UI (although it's still consolized) and better dungeon design (although it's still shit).

That's a lot like comparing a couple kernels of corn from one pile of shit to a couple peanuts from another pile of shit, but it's still something.

 

[Perkel]

Numenera is a rules lite system made to make tabletop sessions smoother. (not exactly compatible with the demande of crpg design) Reviews of it have been middling. I do hope Torment doesnt suck but all I hear from development sounds really nebulous. Showing off tons of dialogue trees and how they work isn't setting my world on fire.

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.

Honestly i can see it working if they will go crazy with artifacts and other systems.

Let's say you have an artifact shield which will than will absorb 50% of projectiles up to 3 attacks. After getting even 1 projectile absorbed you gain ability to release projectile/s to selected target.

Still i am going completely blind into TToN so i don't really research stuff aboyt Numenera.

 

[Seari]

Who cares about Torment's combat anyways.

 

[Roguey]

Who cares about Torment's combat anyways.

A lot of people, otherwise they would have made a Walking Dead-style RPG.

 

[Irenaeus]

Who cares about Torment's combat anyways.

A lot of people, otherwise they would have made a Walking Dead-style RPG.

What's a Walking Dead-style RPG?

 

[Bleed the Man]

Who cares about Torment's combat anyways.

A lot of people, otherwise they would have made a Walking Dead-style RPG.

What's a Walking Dead-style RPG?

It's a Bioware RPG, without the combat.

Hamburger Hepler wet dream.

 

[Bonerbill]

iono, the codex has been rife with Oblivion/FO3 apologists of late, it's always wise to remind people that Oblivion was the worst game ever made

PoE is p. gud in comparison

loverslab elevated Oblobian to greatness. Can they do the same with PoE?

skyrim is better for deviancy

oblivion has no redeeming qualities, absolutely none. in my codexian mind i'm never giving oblivion more than 0/10 absolutely never

fuck oblivion

Oblivion has better quests and quest design. Skyrim's main quest and guild quests are crap.

 

[Lhynn]

Who cares about Torment's combat anyways.

A lot of people, otherwise they would have made a Walking Dead-style RPG.

What's a Walking Dead-style RPG?

Its an RPG with endurance and health mechanics.

 

[Blaine]

In the context of a storyfag cRPG, and especially if you're a LARPfag, I believe combat can be important in the sense that it paints a better picture of each character. How characters conduct themselves during combat adds to their "flavor," so to speak.

In real life, one of the first questions someone will ask upon meeting you for the first time is: "So, what do you do?". What we do with our lives defines us to a great extent, like it or not. A character's role in combat will help to define them, too. In Pillars of Eternity, my Monk has a different "feel" than my Wizard, even when combat isn't happening. My Monk wears leather armor and a hood much like Aloth, and is also an elf, but doesn't sit in the back like a giant pussy sweating over a book and fondling a rod. Instead, she sprints to the front and fists things with self-flagellatory enthusiasm.

 

[Irenaeus]

A female elf fist. I'm scared already.

 

[Western]

What I really dislike about it (on Hard) is the super-high speed of the attack and the *lel, your party is dead* amount of damage in combination, since it makes defending against it almost impossible and means reload unless you park most of your party two screens away.

Using scrolls of paralyze, etc. seems only cheesy to me in so far as they can be acquired easily in large quantities. Preventing the dragon from using his breath attack (which itself is really cheesy) seems almost unavoidable to me, which means that you will need to use some sort of strong CC spell for it, given the tools at your disposal.
The alternative is probably to use hit and run tactics for most of your party.

Apparently Will and Reflex are his weakest points, so you will need to target this. It's also quite funny to charm him and have him use the breath attack on his entourage.

On an unrelated note, has anyone else seen those "X has arrived at the stronghold seeking employment" messages? I've gotten two. The first time, I traveled someplace (about a day and a half); the potential hireling arrived and left all in one go. The second time, I received an arrival message, and couldn't find the potential hireling either in the events tab of the stronghold pane, the hirelings tab, or anywhere at the stronghold. I never received an "X has left" message for that one, either.

Seems buggy as fuck.

Yes, constantly. Maybe I misunderstood something about it, though?

Had a tough time against the dragon as well, though I was helped by a bug where the dragon didn't turn hostile, after I got the scale breaker talent. So I proceeded to go around it and kick the crap out of its allies before it turned on me. I had it down to half health but half my party was down at that stage and it was about to finish me with a breath attack when a summoned ogre managed to land a lucky crit and take over a 100 damage off it, killing it.

 

[Blaine]

I think tower shields should reduce the damage from breath and cone AoE attacks by 1/2 or more, from a character's front quadrant. My characters almost all use small shields (Eder uses a medium) due to Obsidian's apparent system-wide failure to take scaling into account. The extra deflection from sized-up shields is an absolute joke later on in the game, because: 1.) losing 4 or 8 Accuracy when your total Accuracy is ~80 is far more damaging than losing 4 or 8 Deflection, since a frontline character's total Deflection will be something like ~110-120 or more; and 2.) thanks to Exceptional and Superb enchantments, the actual size of a shield is only a modest factor in the protection it provides, especially with Sword and Shield Style.

That, or it should add substantially to Reflex in addition to Deflection, above and beyond the Sword and Shield Style bonus.

I guess the iconic image of a knight sheltering from dragon breath behind his tower shield just isn't balanced enough to have made it into the game.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

To be honest Baldur's Gate 2 also didn't have anything like that. Tower raised your AC and missile protection but that's it.

 

[Blaine]

Hard difficulty. Tank lost 27 health, and that's it. Only per-encounter stuns and knockdowns used. No consumables used. Used food and had rested bonuses, but clearly didn't really need them. Dragon exploded into crit chunks.

Obshitian, are you even trying?

Spoiler

Combat log:

Spoiler

 

[Irenaeus]

tower shields should reduce the damage from breath and cone AoE attacks by 1/2 or more, from a character's front quadrant

That I agree to. I use tower shield for larping purposes. I wish they made sense mechanically, but this system is not made to be realistic.

 

[Athelas]

Has anyone done a 'kill everyone' playthrough? You seem to get a glimpse at someone's soul whenever you kill any plot-critical NPC's that provides you with the necessary information and progresses the story. Pretty neat solution - it's what I thought PS:T should have done with the 'speak with dead' ability.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

I'm sure that there is an instant game-over when you kill one plot-critical NPC (I think it was lady Web) so it's probably impossible.

 

[Blaine]

I'm sure that there is an instant game-over when you kill one plot-critical NPC (I think it was lady Web) so it's probably impossible.

That's some lazy game development right there.

I finally got around to Teir Evron after doing almost everything else in the game, including all the bounties and purchasing absolutely every useful-to-me limited-availability item, and tons of ingredients, potions, scrolls, and food besides. Spoke with Hylea, discovered that Pallegina has mommy issues. Figures.

 

[Irenaeus]

Isn't Pallegina a proxy for Sawyer?

 

[Bubbles]

Yeah, she's basically a Joshy Sue.

 

[Bleed the Man]

I'm sure that there is an instant game-over when you kill one plot-critical NPC (I think it was lady Web) so it's probably impossible.

That's some lazy game development right there.

Lady Web is too essential to the plot. If you were able to kill her the main character wouldn't have any way to know what Thaos is going to do next.

I don't have a problem with a character like that being from a practical standpoint unkillable, I have more issues however with characters like Icantha, who you can't kill pretty much just because, with the soul reading thing making perfect sense as a mean to know what you need from her for the plot to advance. With Lady Web wouldn't be possible to use that.