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Yikes.
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Jun 7, 2019 22:19
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Preparing for any 2nd Ed. fight when you're higher than 8th level: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dxICJHd518&t=32s
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Feb 20, 2020 21:10
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Verisimilidude posted:*starting to buff up in bg3 with a 5e ruleset*
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Feb 20, 2020 22:15
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ProfessorCirno posted:BG2 made crafting good by just making it extended itemization rather then customizable crafted stuff. In a sense it basically wasn't a crafting system - it was just that obtaining speific items took multiple steps.
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Feb 26, 2020 22:55
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MoaM posted:Is there somewhere I can read the rulebook, or is it a buy-only thing? Just look up 5e SRD and you'll find a few sites that can let you read the rules.
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Feb 27, 2020 23:44
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Arivia posted:except bg2, siege of dragonspear, nwn1, etc etc etc
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Feb 28, 2020 01:49
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Rookersh posted:BG3: The Black Hound was nothing like BG1/2.
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Feb 28, 2020 21:46
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:no one would be mad at all
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Feb 28, 2020 22:06
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itry posted:Fun fact: PoE was supposed to be turn-based but most of the backers voted against it.
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Mar 1, 2020 03:30
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Again, to be clear, The Black Hound was never intended to be a BG game in spirit or name. I was the sole designer on it for well over a year and it was designed to be its own thing (insomuch as a party-based 3.5 game in the Dalelands can be its own thing). Interplay put "Baldur's Gate III" on the front of the name against the objections of the team.
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Mar 1, 2020 22:42
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It used the same tech that Van Buren (cancelled Fallout 3) used, so it was a 3D engine with a rotating camera. The levels were all custom geometry and had pre-baked lighting with the ability to override that with dynamic lighting. We were trying to contrast the look of NWN, which was tile-constructed and used purely dynamic lighting. It was 3E D&D (not 3.5 as I wrote earlier) and focused heavily on faction and companion (16, probably too many, honestly) relationships. Combat was a big focus, RTwP, though I had wanted a TB toggle (at that time, it was effectively impossible for me to get anything made TB as the sole gameplay mode). I had wanted to incorporate climbing, jumping, and a lot of skills that got less limelight in the IE games. It had a lot of small communities, one big community (Archenbridge), and a few mid-sized communities like Highmoon. And a ton of dungeons. Too many, really. The scope was enormous. I have no idea when that dang game would have been done. The art pipeline was a headache, but the levels did look quite pretty for the time. The main character was a blank slate, which was more popular back then than it is now. You became the guide of a British isles-style black hound that was attempting to haunt the antagonist for her misdeeds while she got up to more epic misdeeds. In that sense, there were some superficial similarities to the opening of Pillars, but the rest of the plot was completely different. E: Also, the tone was more serious overall and the themes were more mAtUrE.
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Mar 1, 2020 23:04
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Bholder posted:Weren't parts of Black Hound used for Dark Alliance or I misremember things? Not as far as I know... ? Maralie Fiddlebender (from IWD2) was a companion in The Black Hound, but that's about it.
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Mar 1, 2020 23:08
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Yeah, AD&D didn't require much system knowledge to break, especially as implemented in BG1. Even without metagame knowledge about items, making a "good" fighter was as simple as getting a good percentile 18 Strength + 18 Con + 18 Dex, putting on heavy armor, and maxing out weapon specialization as quickly as possible. Even for spellcasters, BG's spells could usually be easily divided into "destroy everything" and "do nothing worthwhile". BG2 pulled from the Spell Compendiums and some other splat books to build their core mage battle mechanics, but character building and equipment selection were still really straightforward.
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Mar 2, 2020 00:14
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Meyers-Briggs Testicle posted:[it was changed shortly after release]
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Mar 2, 2020 00:38
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Meyers-Briggs Testicle posted:ive always wondered what those balancing decisions are like. was it a known issue before release? or did someone read initial reports of players saying "hell yes slicken is OP" Sometimes we have debates about the relative power/perceived power of individual spells/powers/items and watch for community discussion around them after they go live.
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Mar 2, 2020 01:43
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Anno posted:Obsidian’s focus on world building and proper nouns gave me so much more to work with in terms of creating a character that felt right in the world in a way that I thought about constantly. It was just a different level of investment. I don't think that is "the way" to build or present a world, and by Deadfire we pulled back a lot (especially in character creation) on the text, but that was the goal I had with the first game. I understand why some players don't like it and why other developers don't build/present their settings in that way.
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Mar 4, 2020 03:00
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Nephthys posted:As someone who actually only got around to finishing Deadfire a few days ago I can confirm that the ending is one of the weakest in any rpg I've ever played.
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Mar 4, 2020 03:11
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The only reasons we were able to do iterative writing passes on Deadfire were because we had scheduling data from Pillars 1 to work with and we had 5 full-time writers (in contrast to 2 on Pillars 1). Everything took longer to do on Pillars 1 because we built up the engine from the basic Unity middleware package. On most games, we have more writers and we have an engine that's already built to handle branching, conditional dialogue. Regardless of quality differences, it's not reasonable IMO to compare the scope of Pillars 1 to other Obsidian games. Other than Pathfinder: Adventures, it's the lowest budget game we've made to date. I mean, you can still think the writing sucks, but the scope was much smaller than anything else we had done at that time.
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Jun 4, 2020 21:46
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We can always do better with time management, but I don't know if HZD is an appropriate comparison. That game had a €45 million budget and was in development for 6 years, 4 in full production. I have a pretty good sense of when things are going to be out of scope and when more time is needed, but I don't dictate our timelines, our budgets, or even our feature sets.
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Jun 5, 2020 18:19
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Yes, Novac/REPCONN/Helios One was the first region we built for F:NV. Dyrford/Clîaban Rilag was the first area we built for Pillars. Tikawara/Poko Kohara was the first area we built for Deadfire. I always try to pick something near the middle of the game so if there are problems we can't work out, the dip in quality will be less noticeable.
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Jun 17, 2020 16:41
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It's an older book and a bit outdated, but Angus Fraser's The Gypsies covers the origins and European history of the Romani pretty comprehensively. It helps to understand a lot of the confusion about their origins, European nomenclature, and the murky differences between Romani ethnicities and the "Gypsy"/"Traveller" way of life that has been adopted elsewhere, e.g. the UK and the United States. It is frustratingly complicated and a lot of people (especially in the US) are wholly ignorant of the complexities around the terms.
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Jun 19, 2020 21:40
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ANOTHER SCORCHER posted:A lot of people don’t actually play D&D, they just read the books and imagine themselves playing. It drops to about 20% for any non-D&D TTRPG.
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Jun 21, 2020 23:18
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The old TTRPG industry joke goes, "You know to make a small fortune in the tabletop RPG market? Start with a large fortune." WotC and Paizo make (some) money on D&D/Pathfinder and most other TTRPGs either lose a colossal amount of money or don't make much. Meanwhile, Steve Jackson uses Munchkin profits to continue making 4th Ed. GURPS book I'm not sure anyone buys.
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Jun 21, 2020 23:23
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Chairchucker posted:I hope they don't limit the number of cool things we can wear tbh. I think Attunement is good because it doesn't necessitate getting rid of items, item types, etc. and it addresses the potential for obscene stacking without requiring stacking rules. You can collect and keep all of the goodies you find, you just can't benefit from them all simultaneously.
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Jul 10, 2020 00:04
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Avalerion posted:Heavy armor in kingmaker is kind of a trap anyway because
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Jul 11, 2020 16:27
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Captain Oblivious posted:Please stop inventing fictional armor classes. So you can have concept artists, modelers, texture artists, and riggers create 1/3 of your armor options as trash that players are supposed to ignore. Cool!!!!
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Jul 11, 2020 20:04
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Fruits of the sea posted:The BG1 npcs each have at most, a couple conversations over the course of the 40+ hour game. Half of those interactions are quest related, and most of the rest are inter-party conflicts where they try to kill each other or ditch the party.
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Aug 5, 2020 20:32
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I like Xan. 
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Aug 6, 2020 07:08
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Taear posted:To go back to the discussion about BG1 - at least for me when BG1 was released there'd not been any RPGs for absolutely loving ages. 
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Aug 19, 2020 22:58
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Blockhouse posted:anyone who worships Shar is going to be an rear end in a top hat almost by definition I've always thought psychokiller Sharrans seemed incongruent with her vibe.
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Oct 8, 2020 14:41
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Deltasquid posted:Gary Gigax' vision in 1988 d20 for non-weapon proficiency checks started in 1st Ed. Oriental Adventures, Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, and Wilderness Survival Guide (mid-80s). And yes, some people are fanatically attached to having a d20 at the core of checks.
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Nov 27, 2020 03:22
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Mordaedil posted:d20's are usually preferred over d10's because d20's are fairer dice. All d20's are created using a very specific geometric shape, while d10's can vary by printer and be kinda unbalanced. inthesto posted:While I believe that quality of d10s is far more variable than d20s http://www.markfickett.com/stuff/artPage.php?id=389 All dice vary in design by manufacturer: overall size, face size, point and edge treatment, casting material, and, when opaque, filler. When I've received bags of defect dice, d20s by far have the highest representation. Of the standard D&D dice, d20s are the most complicated and have the smallest faces. Even if they don't have visible defects, they often have bias. I don't particularly care, personally. If I wanted ultra fair dice (which, let's be honest, most players wouldn't perceive the distribution of anyway), I'd use CNC dice from Norse Foundry or just stick to d6s and play GURPS. rope kid fucked around with this message at 05:34 on Nov 28, 2020 |
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Nov 28, 2020 03:17
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piL posted:Two or more dice begin to emulate a normal curve, which is fine when that's what you want to do, but it causes very specific effects, so using multiple dice should be an intentional choice. Are players still going to try to stack bonuses as high as they can whether the core resolution mechanic is 1d20, 2d10, or 3d6? Judging by every game I've seen/played in, yes. Is the character with the highest bonus always going to be the one who attempts the action? Yes. Will players balk at attempting certain high difficulty actions because of the die curve? Maybe. Most players don't really view the flat distribution of a d20 or a d100 rationally. When you say "this will succeed on a roll 4 or higher on d20" many players roll with incredible confidence and are stunned when a 1, 2, or 3 comes up. 15% is a significant chance of failure, but it doesn't register that way. In D&D, especially at low levels, when you're a specialist in an area and the die doesn't favor you, it feels lovely. That's why people are talking about this. It's not about the rational analysis of probability. If you're rolling 2d10 and you will succeed on a roll of 4 or higher, you have a 97% chance of success. Failing is 1/5th as likely as it would be on the d20. Conversely, rolling 15+ always feels unlikely, whether you're on a d20, 2d10, 1d12+1d8, or 3d6. Is it particularly significant that rolls of 15+ start to diverge dramatically with more dice? I don't think so, because the player already knows their chances are not good and are not expecting success. If the roll required is something lower, like 12 or 13, the differences between the distribution are small enough that most players will not register the difference. 
rope kid fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Nov 29, 2020 |
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Nov 29, 2020 18:02
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change my name posted:That's one minor change that Larian implemented that I really like: putting your to-hit chances up as percentiles. It makes it much clearer whether what you're attempting to do is reasonable or not. Even in a game like Disco Elysium, I'd argue that the sting of blowing a check with a nominal 3% chance of failure (rolling a 2 on 2d6) would feel less devastating if it were represented as "3 or higher on 2d6". To most people, rolling a 2 on two six-sided dice feels much closer/more probable than "3% chance of failure".
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Nov 29, 2020 18:24
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piL posted:It's used in dice games of old to fog up probabilities to make gambling less certain. Its used in simulation when things are expected to follow that distribution, like fires of warships. quote:The value of a a d20 is the uniform nature for the DM; mainly because the DM has an easier time identifying what a +1 or +2 will do, and its easier to anticipate a linear progression path when following. A DC 22 compared to a 20 is an equal change of difficulty as a 16 to an 18 and its easy for them to spit off. quote:This isn't a useful feature in the video game because there's no DM, so sure, axe it. But nothing you described as benefits don't also happen if you just lower low-end DCs by 2/increase high-end DC by 2, or make skill checks fixed value gates. quote:But why is 2d10 the right number? Why not 3d6+1? Why not 3d7-1? Why not 4d5? 10 coins? A floating point pull from a Normal(10.5, 4.2)? quote:I think ultimately, because you're selling dnd which has has used the d20 as an icon for a long time. There's a value to making something that matches what people remember playing years ago but can't now, or is like a popular rpg podcast, or what they see when they're inspired to buy a PHB and some dice are all far more important to the product's aesthetic than changing the RNG method. It's worth noting that from a development perspective, while it may not be trivial to allow 2d10 as an optional core resolution mechanic, it would not be particularly difficult. rope kid fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Nov 29, 2020 |
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Nov 29, 2020 21:29
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Turds in magma posted:What the hell is the point of being a wizard?!! What is the point of 5e DnD?!!?! I don't want loving WoW where every class gets balanced into some homogeneous mush.
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Jan 27, 2021 21:47
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When I was working on IWD1, there was a section of the game that half (roughly) of QA was getting blocked by, which was the Idol fight in Lower Dorn's Deep. One of the testers got really angry in the bug feedback and came to my office to complain to me about the difficulty. He said that it was "literally impossible" to get through the fight. I said, "Not for me," and I turned to one of our designers, Kihan Pak, and asked him. He said it was also fine. The tester was really mad and demanded to see how I did it. I fired up the game, went to the transition point, and started casting all of my buffs from longest duration to shortest. The process took, IDK, 30-45 seconds at least. The tester was mystified. "What are you doing?" "Pre-buffing... ?" "How often do you do this?" "Before every big fight, pretty much." Kihan nodded and said, "Yeah, every big fight." This divide started to typify different types of players and designers at Black Isle: those who pre-buffed (and floated through the game) and those who didn't (who suffered every step of the way). There's nothing particularly clever or brain-busting about pre-buffing. It's just seeing the utility and performing the same rote actions -- give or take one or two optional variations -- every time. Which is why people wind up automating it as much as possible. And at that point, if it's just becoming part of the expected party capability before every fight with no opportunity cost, why does it need to exist?
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Feb 1, 2021 22:18
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Shockeh posted:I genuinely don't know the solution
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Feb 2, 2021 01:29
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Nickoten posted:I'm not sure I'd agree that 5e effectively combats pre-buffing. The point of pre-buffing is to 1) save on action economy when combat starts, accomplishing more in the same amount of time, and 2) be able to leverage an existing buff during your first action. These things still hold true for 5e, it's just that you're casting one major buff each per spellcaster and you're casting spells other than buffs when combat begins. It's far less than 2e or 3.5e, sure, but the extra steps are still there and it's still kind of an annoying thing to do.
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Feb 6, 2021 02:33
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Nickoten posted:I agree with what I think are both of your conclusions (that 5e does it better than many versions of D&D and concentration is a good idea); I just don’t think 5e is really there yet and I’m not sure how having played since Basic is a supporting point to what you’re saying.
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Feb 7, 2021 22:34
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