Split from the AMA thread
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This discussion was created from comments split from: Beamdog Community Questions for the Larian AMA (scheduled at March, 12).
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OK, so it is not that big...
but you can wipe out the enemy in a single round.
I think those two statements do not go well together.
Anyway, I think if we look at XCOM it actually exemplifies how large moving first is. XCOM the game being known for brutal RNG and not pulling punches... has mercy on you when the enemy discovers you on it's turn, by just having them move into cover instead of really acting against you.
XCOM is entirely built around ideally having the enemy walk into an Overwatch Ambush or at least activate enemy pods early in your turn, when all your squard members can still act. 50% of XCOM strategy is making sure you have initiative and gameplay is built about making sure that you have it as long as you move carefully. It doesn't leave it up to a random roll.
If the entire party got to go first, let alone the sorcerer, I'd have to almost double the strength of a given encounter to compensate. That's not great over the longhaul (Although it can sometimes work out where the players overcome a major obstacle).
It's not a dealbreaker for me or anything, but I'd much prefer individual initiative rolls.
Best way around this is for the party to state their actions, then roll for initiative.
Yeeep, that's my concern too. Once spellcasters (especially high-level spellcasters) start coming into play, just one or two choice spells can radically alter the outcome of a battle; we've already seen how in older D&D games, a lot of battles comes down to who can get their Sleep/Fireball/Confusion spell off first. If the party goes first, and you have 2+ spellcasters capable of lobbing off incapacitating spells, then a lot of times the difference between an easy battle and a difficult battle will come down to who gets to go first (which means that making sure your party has a high Initiative member to tip the odds in your favour will basically become standard practice in party building. Not saying that that's BAD, but one of the things I like about D&D is how there's meant to be many paths to success.)
Of course, you can sorta build around this in encounter design by incorporating things like greater enemy numbers or making clever use of terrain, but if most enemy encounters are always your party vs a group that outnumbers you, or enemies are always positioned in ways such that targeting them all with AoE spells is difficult, then again, the player will notice and start to feel aggrieved that the odds always seem to be stacked against them. (ESPECIALLY if they don't have a high Init char and thus the enemy tends to go first, meaning that the difficulty becomes compounded.)
But the reverse (party losing initiative) will be interesting also unless the AI pulls it punches.
Ugh. I REALLY hope they don't do the whole "Here come reinforcements!" thing. They did that in Dragon Age 2, and I swear, I got SO annoyed at fights getting dragged out by 2 or even 3 times as many of the original starting enemies just popping out of nowhere (rappeling down ropes, jumping up from cave entrances, previously uninteractable corpses suddenly animating etc.) Not only does it feel incredibly artificial, but it also makes scouting practically useless. There's no point in scoping out the area ahead in stealth and going "OK, there's 5 enemies waiting in the alley, 3 muggers, 1 archer hiding up the back, and 1 mage in the adjacent room" if over the course of the battle, double that number are going to just spawn in out of nowhere from background doorways and from "upstairs windows" that you can't reach or interact with. :P
...Unless they do it like IWD2 where you have to destroy the war drums to prevent them from coming... or some other mechanic.
I think reinforcements are fine in specific fights, e.g. Sendai had reinforcements and it was ok. But it shouldn't happen every 2nd or even 3rd fight.
Yes, but those two battles you guys describe are special circumstances. "Boss fights", as it were. In DA2 it was happening in EVERY single fight. It made it nearly impossible to really plan for fights as you'd never really know what the enemy's true numbers were or where to position your party members. The only saving grace was that because the DA games worked off regenerating resources (mana/stamina), this meant that unlike D&D games where you usually need to conserve resources like spells until they're needed, you could basically just go full ham in every single fight with your most powerful abilities and then wait outside of battle for your resources to recharge. But repeat that for every fight and after a while it all starts to feel very uninspiring, like combat is really nothing more than giving you lots of damage sponge mooks for you to show off your moves on.
EDIT: Also, apologies to Julius for derailing the thread. XD
Are you implying that beings without gender are unworthy of romance???
Afaik, illithids don't have brothels and don't even indulge in other stimulants or mind-altering substances like drugs or alcohol that other races do. Whether that's because illithids have no interest in such activities, or something about illithid anatomy makes them incapable of feeling/experiencing such sensations is unknown. That said... because illithids experience the memories of the brains they devour, sensations included, I suppose it would be possible for a "decadent" illithid to deliberately instruct their slave to engage in a number of vices, so it could experience the sensations of them later when devouring the slave's brain.