Sunwader's page

My expectations for the launch would be to be positively surprised by a game that have collected the essence of role-playing tabletop game. The opportunity the choose between a straight forward gaming style or a more deceiving strategic plotting ingenious preplanned complex game style. To me it's all about the first 30 seconds which makes me love or hate the game. I hope creativity and innovation will be rewarded in the game play.

Yay for item de-cay!

Just give me my mending spell and I will be good :)

Snowbeard wrote:

Sunwader wrote:

Would be nice if you could have like 10 presets for a disguise or alter self spells

I think the player should provide his own disguise. Otherwise we'll soon have a list on the net that says beware of butchers with a bloodstained apron, an old lady with a silver cane, and 8 others.

I'm pretty sure he means custom made preset disguises, so you don't have to make one up every time you disguise yourself.

Could be wrong, though.

Yeh, I would imagine that if you want to infiltrate a given settlement or work a diplomatic angle or maybe you need to present yourself in a special way to engage in business you will have like a preset look and present yourself as a given identity.

I.E. Hey I'm Gunner the dwarven blacksmith, or I'm shayna the elven priestess or whatever :)

Would be nice if you could have like 10 presets for a disguise or alter self spells

the alignment, and good vs evil discussion reminded me of a game I ran many years ago. Often players chose their characters based on their own wishes and maybe also their own believes or personality. This game I had premade some toons my players could chose from, and it was just your varies classes. I had made a complete personality for the characters with nevrotic fears and personality quirks. It was different, but ended up beeing kinda fun. I guess for gaming purposes the boxing players into a role with a given alignment makes things a bit easier, otherwise you would kinda have to start on true neutral and your actions would determine your alignment. Hard piece to program when actions might be based on very different motivations.

Not sure if I'm thinkin right, but can't you just count putting something in someones corpse as giving it to the person ?

I wonder, in the mix of alignment, reputation, is there room for individual relations (maybe just to important npc's) as in trust or fear etc ?

I wouldnt mind spending some time on making good content if there was a potential bonus for making quality stuff. I would imagine that goes for more people.

I'm just thinking aloud...its easy to focus on the purpose of a given building, but in theory making a building could be generic, and the stuff put in there would determine what roles the building could support. i.e a furnace, smithy, oven for baking bread, anvil, etc.

So if you build a boat you could in theory put in an oven for making bread and start a river bakery :)

Yeh, just thinking aloud :)

A little on the side maybe but hope I can use wizard mark to label my stuff :)

Imagine the graphical animation fun from combat including grappling. Only missing like optional autogenerated "cutscenes" from the "dice rolls" ;)

I wonder, if you transform someone into a small animal and a player kills the animal or its killed by another wildlife animal, how will that work out flagwise and xp wise :)

I guess calculated on the server would be like DM rolling the dice hehe

I'm not too worries about the damage spells, think utility spells will be harder. Imagine a charm person spell variant working on low levels but extended time period, who want to be someones bixxh...I mean friend for a week ;)

Well usely if you have a spell doing X damage, spell research would make able to change the properties not make it lvl 1 spell doing 1000x damage.

Would be fun if the tracking skill made tracks/clues stand out and not just a autonomous ability :)

I hope at least there will be a difference between structures depending on what they are built for. For instance if its supposed to withstand an army attacking and have small easy to defend entrances and build into the mountain, or casa del view showing off the ocean view to your mates, or a secret hideout under the ground with only teleport in and out

wish there they would go like the whole nine yard or whatever the expression are. Like using factors like sound/noise, footprints will show even if your invisible etc.

reminds me hope detect magic will properly show the school of magic

small stuff can do a lot of damage, like poisoning the army water/food supply

I hope rope trick will be a safe place at least hehe

I though hideouts could be only accessibly by the owner or by invite ?

As a elven wizard I would love to have me a privat study deep in the woods, maybe inside a massive tree or built in one.

Nihimon wrote:

LordDaeron wrote:

How about a friend who "loots" you just to prevent you from being looted by enemies? And return your stuff for you, will he be flagged?

Yes, and a lot of your stuff will get destroyed too.

Friends don't loot their friends' corpses. They stand guard over them until their friends can return and loot the husk themselves.

Yup, though it would be nice to see something like a DRAG mechanic (with permissions of course) to get fallen (or even stunned/immobilized) comrades out of harms way. You could balance it by requiring 1 hand free and significant movement penalties on the dragger.

That would be something that even newbie characters could be usefull for in combat...doesn't take any skill to drag...just guts.

Might even be wildlife predators who drag their kill to a more suitable place to eat ;)

sounds good to be, for every action there are consequences. An passing army would bring business to them who offer their services, put strains on resources, but maybe also bring a rare opperunity to settlements who need a little extra force in handling their problems.

I guess having the standard spells but beeing able to "tune" them by doing research would be interesting....

Anyone considered having actually people "playing" DM in the online game ?

I guess that what contracts/quests a player decide to do when gives the choice between different types of adventures might give some clue to what encounters the player prefer.

I would assume that npc spawning means encounter spawning, and if there isnt like a 1000 different plots and variations I would be dissapointed hehe

It would be cool if the game system could read your character profil and see your ambitions, goals, fun factors etc and spawn encounters feeling appropriate for the individual player or group :)

Sunwader wrote:

Neadenil Edam wrote:

There is a lot of angst about what characters will be viable.

I think its important to realise this will be a beta.

Whilst clearly many hope their beta character may carry through to give them a head start in the real game there is no guarantee this will happen. A beta is just that and substantial changes may yet take place.

In a tabletop game players moan about characters or classes beeing overpowered etc, but if your clever enough you can "win" by any character in a rpg tabletop because only imagination is the limit.

I hope that in some way the pathfinder online will feel the same. Every player have a character to fit their play style, but what makes the character powerful is the player beeing clever and not limited by the framework of the game.

In PnP it's also a lot about what d20 results you get. I really hope the engine in PFO uses d20 to determine stuff.

True but there are both open and closed rolls of the dice, and the DM's job is to make sure the random adds to the fun factor and not the grief :)

There is a lot of angst about what characters will be viable.

I think its important to realise this will be a beta.

Whilst clearly many hope their beta character may carry through to give them a head start in the real game there is no guarantee this will happen. A beta is just that and substantial changes may yet take place.

In a tabletop game players moan about characters or classes beeing overpowered etc, but if your clever enough you can "win" by any character in a rpg tabletop because only imagination is the limit.

I hope that in some way the pathfinder online will feel the same. Every player have a character to fit their play style, but what makes the character powerful is the player beeing clever and not limited by the framework of the game.

I hope that you wont get flagged in general/simplified. I would think that making the encounter/act known would go through some chain of events before it became public. If someone attack a caravan and kill everyone, someone will have to look for clues if they want to find out who did it, if there are no witnesses. If the bandits allow someone to live the attack will be known to public but the identify still might be unknown if the bandits were disguised in some way. If someone in the caravan escapes they might alert someone and they might come to the rescue, or they might start tracking down the bandits. It might seem like a hard thing to handle in a game but I believe that small clever decisions on a small level will give the game a big boost on the bigger picture.

Being wrote:

In_digo wrote:

Hmm I guess I should put off my ranger then... What to do for beta...

*thinks*
...so it's pretty easy to knock people out of fast travel as a bandit, then? ;)

Well, what else is a companionless Druid to do than sit in the bushes by the road with some pals with one hand on an anchored rope tied to a tree on the other side?

Obviously!

I wonder if fast travel will take into considerations in what manner your travelling. One could be a heavy armored warrior on a war horse trampling through the area careless of any attention it might bring. The other could be a wizard flying on a horse protected by invisibility, nondetection, carrying a darkness stone using his glasses of true seeing.

u never know :)

Nihimon wrote:

Bluddwolf wrote:

I would like to see a system where a solo character would have a smaller aggro radius, than that of a group.

I think this is a really good idea, and I encourage you to post it in its own thread.

Unless the entire party is snuggled up against each other, how does a single player not have a smaller aggro radius than a party spread over fifteen or twenty feet by default?

Agree, and there should ofcourse also be different between riding through the area on grass or rocks, or silently walking from shadow to shadow and be as silent as u can.

You will look like a xmas tree if someone look at you with a detect magic spell ;)

The Leadership feat also lets you create armies of intelligent beings. I've yet to meet a DM that hasn't banned that feat though.

In my opinion the problem is when a player chose a feat/ability and doesnt have to do the "work", and the DM lets the player gets away with it :)

I'm just gonna play with a scenario here...imagine a classic good settlement vs an evil settlement, or any settlement vs settlement that feel the need to extinguish the other. My point is just to show how many quest/missions there are for every type of playing style.

Both will probably have some type of army, military force, depending on their settlement regarding how easy it is to defend one of them will strategize and attack or a defend. First they might send someone to try diplomacy, maybe infiltrate the settlement and report back to their home settlement. They can sabotage to help the attackers or the other way around. The point is that some stuff you want to do with the whole army, some stuff you want a group of people and sometimes its useful to send a single person. Before the army stand head to head on the battlefield or attacking/defending a settlement they would probably want as much intelligence as they can gather.

During the attack a group might offer a distraction so someone can sneak into the settlement and sabotage, when food storage is burning, or the ammunition storage is destroyed (insert whatever u want here), the army could start a siege or an attack. The complexity and the feeling of contributing to a common goal is what I enjoy at least. If you can make a scenario which opens up "unlimited" possibilities its up to the players to decide how they want to strategize.

I believe there is room for every player style, and maybe the contract system will handle it. One goal could have a lot of contracts/tasks involved.

hmm..where did I put that mending spell ;)

I hope the system will handle "faking alignment" as in pretend your evil for infiltrating a group of bandits, discover their lair before turning on them. The other side could be someone infiltrating a caravan of good alignment people pretending to be a mercenary good but turn on them and take their stuff for yourself.

Maybe some of the good discussions could be sticky or something ?

Whatever system used I hope it will be easy to do tactical maneuvers like breaking line of sight or simular.

I want to play a wizard, and I hope to grow herbs for herbalism/alchemy :)

What it looks like it reads is that everything on your corpse is lootable except what is threaded, gear worn or carried. So if you have a nice sword and some pretty nifty armor you want to thread it but if that uses all your available threads then you will lose your bag of holding and your boots of speed.

@Daeron Binding your items would kind of defeat the point of the system, that of making dieing and killing meaningful. Either the 'bound' object would be something you thread or since only you would be able to use it the guy looking your husk would just leave it behind and thus destroyed.

Even though it doesnt follow logics and physics you could simply give people looting a chance to get a copy of gear on the corpse. So basicly if you have envied someones sword or gear piece you could get a copy from the corpse without neccesary take it from the player, its a game after all. In a tabletop game you wouldnt take something from the players unless it contributes in teaching them a lesson or a bigger purpose ending up in more fun.

I like the basics, except what might seems like a general lizards pouring out of the temple. If I would look at this with a DM's eyes, I would first look at the motivation and goals for their existence. For instance they struggle for survival and feel pushed from every angle and seek to establish their presence once for all. In the temple they found ancient clues to their ancestry. There could even be a quest encounter (alignment dependent) helping them to translate ancient text and reveal a summoning ritual which they will try to perform in order to become a powerful entity in the region. Other quests lines could be stopping whoever trying to help them or just enter and stop the summoning ritual.

I kinda like the basic idea of action and consequence, based on many factors. Imagine the possibilities of one person attacking or a group attacking. Maybe both of the guards think its a quick kill and attacks, or one attacks and one run back into the temple to alert the rest. Could be that if a group attacks both of them run back and barricade themselves, since they only have to stand off until they have finished their summoning ritual. Even of there is a group they might try to do a stealth kill of the 2 guards in order to evaluate the situation, but the clock should start ticking when the encounter starts. If you can implement this living and breathing combination of action and consequence you will make an adventure that can be totally different depending on how the players decide to proceed.

leperkhaun wrote:

I am against auto controlled formations.

I think the challenge of formations should be exactly like what the challenge of formations is, getting a group of people to work together in the heat of battle.

Teamwork is what separates a mob from an army. Players should have to practice being in formation, they should have to practice changing formations quickly and efficiently.

Whats the pay off for all of this work, well you are in a formation and you get bonuses for doing so. teamwork and formations is what will allow a smaller group of well disciplined players defeat a large rabble.

Staying in formation, changing formation should be based on player skill. Some skills should allow more leeway so that unit cohesion can be kept if small mistakes are made, but ultimately it should be the player who is responsible for maintaining the formation not the game.

I'm not against this, it sounds equally awesome. But I'm more skeptical as to making it work. It sounds a lot like attempting to simulate formations in too granular detail, and then attempting to get that to work with the intended gameplay results of eg reducing zergs, armies consisting of various unit formations acting tactically in their 00's if not early 000's (?) with a lot of graphical effects going off and various contexts eg sieges, number of factions involved and potentially anywhere on the map (no instancing battleground, as far as I'm aware).

It's very ambitious - and very worth doing if possible!

The other way to look at formations is what problems does it solve, and is it worth developing this system to overcome those problems, whatever they may be? I think the mass zerg combat is a huge problem in massively multiplayer fantasy games, so definitely think it's worth solving.

Could be just me but I fail to see the problem in implementing formation. With the different formations countering different enemy strategies you need a leader/follow structure contolled by a choice for every member of the formation to use their "fall in" ability. When used you will use whatever formation or strategy the leader decide if its, stand against incoming horses with spears, or shields up to protect from a mass rain of arrows. If your leader dies anyone with the proper skills can take lead or the members of the formation will have a harder time succeeding and keeping the formation.

There is always a way to counter another attack or strategy. From a giant's point of view people stacking just makes it a lot more fun to make a "strike" or for someone to soak them all in oil and light it.

When it comes to the reward it is important that it is as much rewarding to be part of a group as beeing the leader.

To me the game system itself has usely been just a source of inspiration, the more rules and stuff you add the more some players will loose focus and become "rule" addicts, always trying to find that special "edge". In my opinion the difference between a good and a bad game is the DM's knowledge and experience, the ability to understand the individual player need and source for inspiration and what makes them get excited. Personally I really enjoy and reward players thinking outside the box, so basicly you make a framework for them to play with, and hope they do something crazy. Only stopper would be a DM or a game framework restricting creativity and innovation.

Looking back at what I write I hope it make some sense lol.

I kinda liked some of the player content handling coming in neverwinter online, and that ppl can donate

I wonder when we can start making dungeons ;)

I would imagine there could be a passage through a mountain, maybe a secret/hidden way through a dangerous country. When traveling from A to B you might have to consider a number of possibilities, like traveling by, air, river/water, road or underground.