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All of the Abilities and Talents that convert a percentage of Grazes to Hits, Hits to Crits, Crits to Hits, etc. operate the same way. When the first result occurs through the modified "die roll", the game does a second check to see if that result is converted. E.g., if 20% of Grazes are converted to Hits, the game will check every time a Graze is rolled. However, it only shows up in the log if it actually converts.
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Nov 11, 2014 19:00
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 16:36 |
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I'm happy with how the almanac turned out. It's great if you need planting dates for crops (some fictitious) using Eora's 16 month calendar.
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Nov 11, 2014 19:40
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The almanac is presented as an in-world document written by one author and heavily supplemented, edited, and annotated by three bickering pseudepigraphal scribes of The Hand Occult over the decades since the original's release. Compared to the collector's book, it has a more "grab bag" feeling to its content, including stories, riddles, and personal opinions.
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Nov 11, 2014 21:12
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Dr Subterfuge posted:
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Nov 11, 2014 21:46
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Oh I love stuff like this. Is it written as an interplay of schools of thought or more just straight-up characters that disagree?
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zedprime posted:Is it wrong to assume the team had recently read "S" before getting started on this feature? 
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Nov 12, 2014 01:47
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Clever Spambot posted:I want to say they've said the plan is to give them all unique icons but i cant find any quotes about it.
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Nov 14, 2014 01:22
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prometheus12345 posted:What is with the passive talents/abilities, will they also get their own icon?
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Nov 14, 2014 03:22
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Jastiger posted:Serious question. Can any creature of any size be gibbed, i.e. crit hitting a dragon and gibbing it? A pre order hangs in the balance to this question.
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Nov 14, 2014 08:40
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One of our programmers dumped a bunch of money into his stronghold to up the Prestige but neglected all of the hirelings and other things that increased Security. Almost immediately, huge amounts of his tax income were being swiped by bandits and he suffered brutal attacks. Meanwhile, one of our producers upper her Security but hired scumbags that lowered the stronghold's Prestige to negative numbers, so it's secure, but all she gets are scumbag visitors. Good times.
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Nov 14, 2014 21:19
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It's not central to the plot like Crossroad Keep is in NWN2. If you don't invest in it, it pretty much chills out in the background and is unobtrusive. If you start investing in it, it becomes much more involved and requires more management. The UI has a dedicated stronghold interface that can be accessed from anywhere in the game. Only events like attacks require your presence, and even in those circumstances you can just tell your hirelings to handle it for you if you're willing to accept some losses (kind of like Mount & Blade: Warband).
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Nov 14, 2014 22:11
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Sensuki posted:rope kid, are there gonna be encounters in this game where there's a lot more enemies than the party? Some of the BB encounters (on Hard) have like groups of 7 spiders of different types, and the Menpwgra/Forest Lurker encounter in the Dyrford Crossing got beefed up to have some Pwgras as well. Although the Icewind Dale games in particular had some nice encounters with 10+ enemies, some of those were really fun, such as the Drow encounter in the Dorn's Deep Tombs. quote:btw about a year ago you mentioned there was an encounter in the vertical slice that could only be beaten by some of the members of the team. Is that encounter in the BB? I know that we don't have access to at least two of the VS areas though (such as the Valley of Hector).
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Nov 18, 2014 02:35
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I think this came up at some point in the past, but hanging and decapitation (via sword or axe) are common when it's being handled by "the state". In rural parts of Dyrwood it's usually hanging or being beaten to death by a mob.
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Nov 18, 2014 04:11
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Gyshall posted:Will there be examples of this in game?
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Nov 18, 2014 17:06
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I don't think characters get stuck inside of each other anymore (at least not that I've seen), but they do have problems with getting jammed up together.
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Nov 20, 2014 01:24
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Demiurge4 posted:If you go with feats why not remove dialogue dice rolls entirely and have various grades of a skill. So you could have different lore skills for different fields, such as arcane(expert), history(trained) and a number of other skills that carry into that. Sensuki posted:Adventurers spawn inside the PC when you create them.
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Nov 20, 2014 09:07
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The relative values of Might and Accuracy are largely dependent on the content you're dealing with. Remember that Accuracy targets all defenses and that the Backer Beta shows a segment of content in a vacuum. If you are regularly attacking into defenses that exceed your Accuracy, then yes, you need every point of Accuracy you can get. You have three primary avenues of dealing with a defense that exceeds Accuracy: increase your own Accuracy, decrease the target defense (many afflictions do this), or switch the defense you are targeting (easiest for casters). IME, it is not too hard to get an Accuracy vs. defense advantage. Might also has to be understood in the context of Damage Threshold and Damage Reduction. DR values tend to be very low, but DT can easily swallow up the lion's share of damage output. You can make Crits more frequent by increasing Accuracy if you already have an advantage, but if you've dumped Might, you're trying for Crits just to get your damage output high enough to deal with moderate to high DT. In the absence of content (i.e., specific scenarios), Might and Accuracy cannot be objectively compared. The point of our system has never been to achieve perfect balance. I've stated this so many times I don't think I could go back and count them all. The point has always been to make a player feel that if they build an Attribute array in a certain way for their character, they can get something good out of it. I don't think the vast, vast majority of players care at all if, in the final tally, a point of Might gives them a 6.5% greater damage output when compared to all attacks at target level creature throughout the game vs. a point of Perception -- or vice-versa. But again, that final tally for Might vs. Perception largely depends on what content you're doing, with what characters/equipment, and how you choose to deal with various Accuracy vs. defense or damage vs. DT shortfalls.
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Nov 23, 2014 18:35
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Yeah, that's pretty much the intention for the system. In our play week, people seemed to like investing in either/both Might and Perception. Perception also increases range for spells. Many of the support-oriented spells (especially on the priest) have very limited base range.
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Nov 23, 2014 20:21
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It's pretty difficult to balance skill options in a class- and party-based game (as evidenced by how much D&D's various editions and their knock-offs struggle with it). For personal benefits, skills either need to feed into existing systems (which can make balancing difficult) or they need to have a special function within a niche. The latter is how the skills work currently. Athletics interacts with Fatigue, Lore (now) interacts with scrolls, Survival interacts with consumables, and Stealth and Mechanics have their own subsystems. Athletics is the only one that exists to offset a penalty. I need to think about it some more, but it's definitely the odd one in the current lineup. Crafting and enchantment are much, much cheaper now. Some of the recipes had their cp cost reduced by 90%. The stronghold upgrades are still huge money sinks but no one seemed to mind in our internal test. We've thought and talked about higher levels. The system is set up for a standardized progression. I assume we'll have to tweak aspects of it, but it's meant to scale into future games.
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Nov 24, 2014 21:19
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On a related note, in our internal play week, devs typically overlooked quarterstaves even though they do very high damage and have the advantage of reach.
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Nov 25, 2014 20:51
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Yeah, I think it's just due to their expectations. The only time it was really a hindrance was when people were coming up against things that were really vulnerable to Crush and kept overlooking the quarterstaff someone already had equipped. I think the best we can do is try to be clear about how everything works and regularly communicate what's going on. There are plenty of weapons that do Crush damage. If someone ignores quarterstaves, it's certainly not the end of the world -- but they are pretty darn good, especially for characters attacking from behind allies.
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Nov 25, 2014 21:04
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You will have to switch weapons semi-regularly depending on the enemies you're fighting. All characters start with two weapon sets they can quick switch between. There is both an in-game bestiary with monster stats and you can also see a creatures' Damage Thresholds when you attack them/hover over their selection circle. Many weapons have a "best of" damage type quality that makes them more flexible against a wider range of enemies. Swords (pierce/slash), great swords (pierce/slash), war hammers (crush/pierce), wands (crush/pierce), sceptres (crush/slash), rods (pierce/slash), and pollaxes (slash/crush) all have this feature. When they calculate damage, they apply whatever type is stronger given the target's DTs. When I did my recent play test, I liked dual-wielding sword/mace with my rogue. All three (weapon) damage types covered and the mace negated a portion of the target's DT.
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Nov 26, 2014 01:49
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It wasn't actually arbitrary. We discovered that crafting in large batches could sometimes cause the game to hang/crash so we brought it down into a range that didn't cause that problem. Still annoying, but that was the reason.
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Nov 26, 2014 03:08
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I think so, yeah.
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Nov 26, 2014 04:22
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Diomedes posted:I understand that perfect balance is impossible. And while I appreciate what you've explained, looking through the talent list there's one that causes me concern that the system you've outlined will break down - savage strike. If one point in perception gives two points in accuracy, 17 points of perception gain enough to roughly offset the penalty of -15 accuracy, in exchange for +50% damage, whereas 17 might wouldn't give half of that damage increase. For a fighter or other primarily melee character, it would seem a no brainer that if you want damage, pump perception instead of might and get that talent. Sensuki posted:in v333 Wands and Rods were not best of damage type, has this been fixed?
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Nov 26, 2014 07:30
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The personal inventories are associated with the individual characters in data, so as they join or leave the party, the things they have come or go with them. Some players prefer to keep types of items with individual characters. This was actually the main reason why we had individual inventories to begin with.
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Nov 26, 2014 18:52
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Sensuki posted:(Took these just then, v333) 
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Nov 26, 2014 19:15
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That is now an option you can toggle.
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Nov 26, 2014 19:51
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We're working on it. Still a lot of bugs to fix and spells/weapons/talents/abilities to balance.
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Nov 26, 2014 20:20
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Optionally, the stash can be accessed when you rest or whenever you are in an area where resting is not permitted. If you have that disabled, it can be accessed anywhere. It does have (effectively) unlimited space.
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Nov 26, 2014 21:09
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The web VFX have never looked right or scaled properly. Kaz and our VFX artists are also going to do a general pass on all effects for overall size/clarity/duration to help keep the field mostly clear.
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Nov 27, 2014 06:55
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Through Irish orthography (and the orthography of other languages that adopted the Latin alphabet a long time ago), it's relatively easy to understand classical Latin pronunciation. Cultures create digraphs or adopt foreign letters to fill gaps that the adopted orthography doesn't accommodate, e.g. /v/ in Irish. Latin did this with "ph" because Φ used to represent a distinct sound from /f/. When English eventually dropped thorns (Þ) and eths (Ð), we replaced them both with th (which is pretty stupid if you think about it). A lot of languages adopted y because they didn't have anything else to to represent the sound in a loanword, which is why it often winds up being called variants of "i grec" or "Ypsilon". That being said, Irish also has a lot of complex pronunciation rules due to how slender and broad vowels affect the consonants between them. Initial consonant mutation is also very weird looking to most EFIGS speakers. Interestingly, since Cornish really didn't have a standardized orthography until about the 20th century, it's one of the easiest Celtic languages for English speakers to read. Contemporary Irish orthography still has its roots in Old Irish orthography, which was adapted from Latin in the 8th century.
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Nov 28, 2014 03:17
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Sensuki posted:Why were targeting indicators changed? Despite being elaborate the new ones don't interact with selection circles properly and add to the visual clutter. There was nothing wrong with the IE style ones. The selection circles and targeting indicators need to support displaying Engagement, so his iterations are working toward that.
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Nov 29, 2014 02:16
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Dolash posted:I'll hear stuff like this sometimes where people will want all stats to be useful to all classes and be able to build a melee mage if they want, but nobody ever asks for the reverse and hopes their fighter can be fragile and cast spells. When it comes to fighters, I think a lot of people do like the idea that they can make a smart fighter, charismatic fighter, etc. and play to those stats. It's much easier in 3E+ than it was in 2nd Ed., but you still often need to dig through splat books to find a way to make it work.
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Nov 30, 2014 03:01
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Sea Otter posted:So, what made you keep the different factors share the same resource pool, ropekid?
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Dec 2, 2014 20:53
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That was an oversight. They will be worth base 80 (meaning ~12 when you sell them) in the next BB update.
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Dec 3, 2014 03:05
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All of the firearms had their Accuracy penalties reduced and they all received DT Bypass. The arquebus has the highest, with -12, so it effectively ignores standard plate/fine brigandine/exceptional breastplate.
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Dec 3, 2014 18:57
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BTW, there was a bug with how someone had set up the ranger animal companions. They were sharing their DT with the ranger instead of using their natural (pretty high) DT and inherent DT bonuses they gain as the ranger gains levels. I fixed that a little while ago and I believe it's in the current BB build.
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Dec 3, 2014 19:01
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There's one ranger in the entire Backer Beta and you can position your characters to stomp his face in ahead of time since the group he's with is neutral to you until you provoke them. I don't think that's a good test sample of how viable enemy rangers and animal companions are. There's nothing inherently terrible about a ranger's defenses. Their Endurance could probably be raised to equal the fighter's.
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Dec 3, 2014 21:15
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Yes, that a sound strategy and one that in the current BB never can be challenged because the sole ranger you encounter can be group-hugged by the entire party immediately prior to initiating combat.
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Dec 3, 2014 21:42
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Sensuki posted:I dunno, in encounters where I might have to get through some melee enemies to get to a Ranger, using AoE spells and ranged weapons to kill it while ignoring the companion and attacking other melee units instead would probably be the strategy I would employ (supposing I had AoE spells left in the adventuring day).
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Dec 3, 2014 22:34
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