2983

People forget about 1st edition bards. Those were mofo’s you did not mess around with.

2984

Mostly because they were actually Fighter-Rogue-Druid quad-classed monsters with 15+ in nearly every stat.

2985

Been a long time since I even owned 1st ed books, but I thought they were triple classed. Start off as a fighter, put a handful of levels into thief, and then switch over to 1st-level bard that could cast druidic spells and had some poetic skills.

I had one back in 1979, wielding a vorpal blade. My DM, Schnegelburger (you can’t make that name up) hated him.

2986

Yeah something like that. They were more or less 4 classes: Fighter, Thief, Druid, Bard, though the Druid and Bard parts were more or less combined in the Bard class. They needed no stat below 10 and like 3 or 4 at 15+.

2987

Hah, Wizardry I was similar. Why make a fighter when you can reroll stats until you get to make a Lord?

I think. Or maybe you had to have xyz stats to upgrade to your advanced class.

It’s been a long time, and I was like 6.

2988

Playing RPGs as a young kid is something else. I remember brute-forcing through the Xeen series with everyone in Obsidian gear, because I didn’t really grasp the idea of resistances (I was older than 6, mind you.)

(I don’t actually know how sub-optimal it is, I just remember dying a lot to various ranged attacks, and reloading.)

2989

Just beat Concelhaut. Had to cheat it, leading a few of his mobs out per pull, kill them, repeat until only the lich was left, and then it was pile-on city. He still took out two of my party before dying though.

2990

You said vorpal blade. Fucking BS things.

"Rolled a 19…ohh that was supposed to be the main badass that threatened our whole group with death?..Well so what loot did we get then?

2991

Literally a 10% chance to instantly win against nearly anything. Per swing.

2992

My bard tended toward evil. Killed a silver dragon with a 20 on his first attack. Schnegs was pissed.

2993

Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

2994

Okay, I was considering posting this a while ago, but somehow never got around to it. Now I have to!

In 2016, Josh Sawyer gave an extensive presentation about PoE’s attribute system at the GDC. Fact of the matter is, they really tried to change up the classic formula. Their primary design goals were “no bad builds” and “no dump stats”. This had interesting ramifications (e.g. class abilities not being tied to attributes) and I think their system actually succeeded in a way. In Divinity Original Sin, for instance, I felt you could easily get stuck with your character built, wheras this seemed like less of a problem in Pillars. I would say this though: Pillars did a terrible (!) job of communicating their design philosophy to new players (when creating my characters, absolutely nothing gave me the idea that a high intelligence barbarian could be awesome). Second point: an overly balanced game isn’t actually all that fun. If everything has little impact, I, as a player, have little impact. Pillars items, for instance, were so overly balanced that I simply didn’t care about them.

The presentation explicitly talks about the “companions are awful” critique at 34:55. It is quite thoughtful, so do check it out.

Last observation: you Americans have an unhealthy obsession with D&D! It seems to be the reference point for just about anything!

2995

The problem is that their system is so convoluted with a UI that just makes it worse. I still don’t really know if a spell I cast that reduces dexterity by 3 does much. I can look at what dexterity affects, but in the heat of combat, it doesn’t mean much to me. How much of an attack speed reduction is that? How much of a reflex deduction is that? They constantly tell me stat adjustments, but I never know how good or bad they are.

To make matters worse the character sheets are a mess of bonuses without giving a summary. Heck, I can enchant a piece of armor to give me a 15% bonus to recovery, but instead of telling me the armor has a 35% recover stat, it tells me on one line it is 50% and then on another line further down that it’s reduced by 15%. I can use a ring of +3 resolve, but it is not reflected on my character sheet. Even worse I can use a cape of +9 deflection, and on some characters my defection doesn’t change, on others it does. Is there some sort of stacking rule I am missing? Is it a bug? The whole UI is a confusing mess.

I really enjoy the game, but I have given up on understanding how it works. I either don’t understand it, or there are still numerous bugs.

Tyranny, while it still has problems, I found it much easier to understand. Really hoping POE2 reflects that.

2996

The stacking rule is: nothing stacks. Literally nothing.

So if your Resolve isn’t showing up, you have other Resolve items. Same for Deflection/Saves. He has some other piece of gear that’s give a Deflection bonus.

The only exception I can think of is shields and feats or whatever they’re called. A shield will stack with a +Deflection ring and so will any feats or abilities, but as far as gear that has just a flat +(whatever) on it, they never stack with each other. A ring of +3 Resolve and a helm of +2 Resolve gives you +3 Resolve, the helm is doing nothing for you at all.

2997

And in fact, in your character sheet will list as being “suppressed” and grayed out.

2998

I’ve had this problem too and it was killing the game for me. Then I started doing some napkin math and suddenly it dawned on me how powerful some of the talents or spells are. 5 accuracy doesn’t sound much but if you have 50 accuracy that’s 10% which is pretty significant - even more so once you realize that all combat rolls are on the same scale. My high PER cypher was mopping the floor with enemies because I stacked accuracy like it was going out of style.

This system unfortunately falls in the same trap as many other RPG systems - you need some meta knowledge about the game and its mechanics to really develop the feel for relative strength of abilities and talents

2999

I don’t hate the Pillars mechanics. That said…

My big problem with the Pillars system is that it’s just not intuitive at all, particularly the stats. Int boosts the size of your Barbarian’s sweep attack because…reasons? Resolve something something deflection? Say what you will about the tenets of Dungeons and Dragons, at least it makes obvious sense on the face of it: Strength lets you hit things harder, Constitution lets you take more hits, Dexterity lets you avoid hits more easily. Yes, Wisdom is a little muddy and no designer in the history of the game has ever had a damn clue what to do about Charisma, but the core slots into place very neatly indeed.

They (Obsidian) very much fell prey to the balance uber alles disease as noted upthread, which I’ve ranted about so very many times in this context and others. But I’m weird…I get stabby when people start worrying about +1 this and -1 that in these kinds of games. Ah well.

Still all in on Pillars 2, obviously.

3000

Thanks. I wish it said suppressed on the inventory screen. At level 15, my character sheet is huge with all the bonus and skills. Guess I missed that.

3001

That would be really helpful.

3002

I got to the point where when I’d equip something I’d watch then numbers on the left side and make sure they changed. If they didn’t I’d know I had something else applying said bonus. It wasn’t ideal, but it worked okay.