Pharazon's page

Because of the way skills work now, I don't know if I fully agree about needing to maintain skill monkey type roles since you can do nearly anything untrained with a pretty negligible penalty.

But the idea of maintaining a way to create the various types of Monks that we have seen in the past is something I fully support. I think you could probably accomplish most of what you are looking for by having them adjust the signature skill area to read:

Choose 3 from the following as your signature skills:
-Acrobatics
-Athletics
-Crafting
-Medicine
-Religion
-Stealth

I think early survival may be a concern for the monk as the bonus from expert unarmored defense may not be enough if you build more strength than dex and aren't using crane stance. I'm not sure if the ability to be more mobile will make up for the roughly 3 AC less you will have than a fighter. Our group has it listed as a concern at this point since it looks like every monk would be basically forced in the early levels to prioritize getting bracers of armor. A mandatory item likely indicates something missing from the class so we are dry running encounters this weekend to see how some of the classes feel in comparison to each other before level 10.

@Pharazon

First let me reassure you that I agree it would be better to have true night. But I also agree with Ryan that I'm going to want to play on an even playing field.

I keep bumping into problems with the 'reduced draw distance' idea, even though it is elegant in most respects.

At night if there is a campfire a mile off I am going to see it clearly, even though it is over 120' away. If I move and I pass some sort of object between me and that distant campfire it will occlude the view of the campfire.

If I am in a great hall in a dungeon and a sconce of oil is lit in a distant hallway I'm not only going to see that lit sconce but also the shine off the polished table, the glimmer of the utensils on that table, I;m going to see the seams in the flagstone paving the floor of the hall and all are farther than 120' (and some closer).

If I am outside at night and there are stars in the sky I will be able to see the sillohuette of the mountain as well as the fir trees.

It won't work to simply not draw what is beyond 120'.

Okay now that we are on the same page :) I think these are good points but first I can't think of a game right off that will show you a campfire over a mile away.

I think you are more in the realm of realism, which I would love to have myself, but I don't think is possible even from much larger companies with much larger bank rolls. I think the solution is to get the "feeling" of the night correct as best that you can with as much realism as you can within the bounds of the engine and the system.

For example you could potentially use "set pieces" of terrain to handle some of what you mentioned. A town way off in the distance is a known point so are the mountains beyond that. You wouldn't necessarily need a draw distance greater than your immediate vicinity to draw that as it is almost a background to your immediate area. So potentially two layers. the not quite so detailed background of mountains, and large set pieces and then the rendering of your immediate surroundings of trees shrubs, overturned carts, etc.

I admit handling campfires, assuming you can create them adhoc and are not known points, would need more thought to a decent solution. But that's what game companies are for. I am but one person so I definitely don't have all the answers.

But overall it should be possible to create a more real night than currently exists in the MMO space (lets face it there really aren't night cycles just less bright times of day) in PFO. It won't be completely real or observe every rule of the real world but it should be a step beyond what we have and we are already suspending disbelief for those.

--Pharazon

Pharazon wrote:

... if you can not see something your client would never be told about it...

That's exactly what I said. That means the determination of whether or not you can see something has to be made on the server.

Yeah I think we're both on the same page mostly. The only disconnect is that I don't agree with some of the concerns expressed by others in thread over the concerns of extra load on the server. In relation to not having a true night phase, yes, there would be more load on the server.

But my point was that if you look at the load on the server to accomplish a true night phase that it would be no more taxing than running large scale combat where invisibility has to be checked for. When I am adventuring at night am I likely to ever need more visibility checks than a person during the day engaged in large scale combat where my opponents and allies both have access to invisbility? I don't believe so.

This is why I don't see having the server handle visibility in the night to avoid the potential rendering exploits, to be an issue. There may be other technical limitations but I don't agree with the extra server load portion being an issue like some people have suggested.

It would make sense for the system to work something like the following as well:

Player A finds armor. based on quality it has 2-3 default looks that it can have. You don't get to pick how the armor you find looks as normal.

Player B creates armor. Based on quality and skill he has between 2 and 10 different looks he can choose from when crafting said armor. Adds variety to the craft and higher skill gives access to rarer and more intricate models of armor.

Player C has found armor and likes the bonuses but not the look of the armor. He goes to player D to have the armor glamoured where he now has access to a slot on his character screen to "equip" a piece of armor that replaces the look of his current armor. Because glamour in Pathfinder isn't restricted to the same type of armor or armor at all, any armor or cosmetic garb (dress shirt, trousers, dress, etc) can be equipped.

Dyes IMO should not simply be an item to be purchased but more of a service. You find the tailor who using a trade window of sorts performs the dyeing of your armor, with more options for dyeing the armor and more colors being available to those with higher skill in tailoring.

I think you are over estimating how complex the system actually is or under estimating how important the threat of pvp is for this type of game. Without the threat of unprovoked combat traders and crafters would have no fear of moving their goods from one hex to another and doing so would have a severely negative impact on the economy. In addition there would be no need for guards or smugglers which are directly created by the players who choose to try and prey on the good.

From a complexity standpoint the system itself is not that bad. The players that do not want to pvp can hire others to protect them or to move and sell their goods without leaving the safe zones themselves. If they do move their own goods maybe they take skills that will let them move their goods in secret via stealth or maybe they don't travel the roads directly instead taking a more round about path.

If they are killed by another player then they have two options that they can use to punish the player who killed them. First they can simply take out a contract in which they add the names of anyone capable of collecting the contract to it. This prevents the killers friends from collecting the bounty and gives me the opportunity to get revenge even if I'm not capable myself. Second if you really want to punish the player you can level the death curse which again acts like a contract where I can specify people that can kill my killer. And while under the curse the killer has to worry about losing gear that they have "threaded" to themselves which creates a much larger risk for them.

The only real issues I see right away with the system is that the killer needs to be forced to keep any threaded gear on that they had at the time of the kill so they cant simply equip crappy gear until the curse goes away. And the curse timer needs to only go down while they are online. Other than that the system is very simple.