No, a explorer in really dangerous places would learn a little of combat or hire mercenaries to help him in any game.
I feel like you're just reconfirming their point each time you say this. If the answer is that the RP build needs to optimize itself because the game is hard, then the game is not forgiving for RP builds.
A explorer in Stolen Lands with no combat capability would HIRE mercenaries to fight for him. Is not something hard to understand. And as the guy above said, a pure BARD party worked for him.
Anyway, if you wanna play a explorer with 16 INT that somehow is too dumb to realize that he needs mercenaries to survive on harder difficulties, then yes, the game doesn't allow pure RP builds
(...)I have spent 90 hours, having mostly a good time only to stuck because of what I feel is VERY BAD design. I have searched entire areas having Jaethal to run Perception checks with +38 bonus and non of those hidden locations she has foud is this bloody tomb. That makes me think I failed to activate this quest somehow along the way, even I'm 95% I have passed this ferryman/boatman encounter. What is bad design here is that those barb hordes events shouldn't activate until you have this quest activated too. It's the freaking main quest (I think) it shouldn't be dependant on some obscure encounter or high Perception skill. Yeah, I'm definitely on board with @JuliusBorisov with this game. Makes me wonder if I did a right thing backing WoTR. I fear it will be even more strateg game rather than crpg game.
It is how the things work on the P&P module which the game is heavily inspired.
And other games had some gimmickies. Fight the final boss on ToEE without finding the "skull" is insanely hard and find the skull is a gimmicky and behind skill checks.
You still can go to libary and ask/search info about the location of the tomb, make research, send scouts, you don't need to pass the PER check.
And as i've said many times, we should rate/judge games based on his propose. The propose of pathfinder games is to be a old school like games regardless of the modern "press A for awesome" mindset. So we should judge him compared to old school RPG's. Nor modern games which you don't need to think and can't fail. We already have 6465165486165468516854 games with a lot of awful modern mechanics.
Just compare Malignant Cloud with Cloudkill from Kingmaker.
Yep, I agree. The thing is, spells *have* to be lackluster in Deadfire (not so in the first game) because they are being balanced against the ability to use them in every single fight.
Wrong. On PoE1 your spells was per rest an was extremely weak. One thing is to have few casts per rest of cloudkill. Other thing is the same casting for Malignant Cloud. They changed it for "per encounter" on PoE 2 because you was using most of the time, your main weapon.
Most of PoE 1/2 spells seems like a very weakling version of spells which exists in tons of other games.
Everything that Obsidian did on PoE 1/2, they did better on previous games. The stronghold? Crossroad keep is far better. Spells, even the ultra nerfed version of nwn2 which requires spell fixes and warlock reworked to be playable seems better. Crafting weapons? On nwn2 crafting weapons was amazing, you find recipes, get the ingredients and can make weapons which deals a lot of damage. On PoE, every weapon creation is extremely ""balanced""
What to you is PoE spells being "weak" compared to D&D, for me is a very refreshing thing because I consider D&D spellcasting (in earlier editions) to be way overpowered (with the Cloudkill spell being precisely one of the worst examples of this issue). It is also why one of the very few things I like about 5e D&D is the extent to which they have downgraded the power of spells and spellcasting to be more equivalent to the power of melee and ranged combat. You clearly love D&D mechanics and consider it to be a pinnacle of RPG mechanics. I don't, and consider a lot of what's in D&D mechanics, and especially spells, to be quite ridiculous. Therefore for me, any developer trying to create a new RPG system that is as different from the D&D experience as possible (in mechanics only, not in storytelling and roleplaying) is a very good thing. So the PoE mechanics, again for me, is a HUGE improvement over D&D. Is it perfect? No, of course not. It certainly has plenty of room for further improvement. But it beats D&D hands-down any day.
Having said all of that, I am forced to accept that despite its immense flaws, D&D is what many, if not most, fans of classic, old-school RPGs are going to see as being some sort of "gold standard" for RPG mechanics because it's what's been around the longest and people are used to it the most.
As for WoTR, it will gonna be based in a different module without the kingdom management.
WotR's army management is shaping up to be a completely different beast than Kingmaker's take was. A first draft of it is already inside the alpha build. But it is still very early in development at this point in time. But from the current look of it the new management will be less "annoying" than Kingmaker's.
Having said all of that, I am forced to accept that despite its immense flaws, D&D is what many, if not most, fans of classic, old-school RPGs are going to see as being some sort of "gold standard" for RPG mechanics because it's what's been around the longest and people are used to it the most.
One reason why after all these years I still prefer The Dark Eye over D&D, or even Pathfinder, is because that tabletop game is not nearly as heavily combat focused as the other two. Its focus lies primarily with storytelling and outside-of-combat roleplaying. Far to many battles to be fought in the Forgotten Realms & Co if I have to be completely honest.
So the PoE mechanics, again for me, is a HUGE improvement over D&D.
One thing I did do was play all of Pillars of Eternity and about 90% of Pillars 2 (on turn based, not because I wanted to but because the game turns into a slideshow in real time because of the effects and lets face it, utter failure by Obsidian to optimise their game)
And I genuinely prefer how Icewind Dale plays (I'm playing it right now, pretty direct judgement). I didn't hate the combat or the mechanics in Pillars but I found them to be restrictive, dulled and lacking in the character of the Infinity games. The infinity engine's history of being designed for RTS gameplay shows in positive ways I think, its a very good skirmish simulator and I've just not played anything else similar that is anywhere near as good.
Kingmaker is probably the most directly similar, but I read in @JuliusBorisov post around page 60 of the Kingmaker thread, where he points out that the game doesn't have sensible output things in place like action symbols on character portraits. It does feel as a game it didn't learn from the Infinity games some important lessons in interface and design. Some changes made in those games that are deliberate changes from the source rules were made for very good reasons, I do notice a theme with Kingmaker is its problems seem to be slavish to the module its based on and the Pathfinder ruleset (and who's to say they worked that well in the original form, I feel like based on my own tabletop experience I'd be frustrated by design like that too)
No, a explorer in really dangerous places would learn a little of combat or hire mercenaries to help him in any game.
I feel like you're just reconfirming their point each time you say this. If the answer is that the RP build needs to optimize itself because the game is hard, then the game is not forgiving for RP builds.
A explorer in Stolen Lands with no combat capability would HIRE mercenaries to fight for him. Is not something hard to understand. And as the guy above said, a pure BARD party worked for him.
Anyway, if you wanna play a explorer with 16 INT that somehow is too dumb to realize that he needs mercenaries to survive on harder difficulties, then yes, the game doesn't allow pure RP builds
(...)I have spent 90 hours, having mostly a good time only to stuck because of what I feel is VERY BAD design. I have searched entire areas having Jaethal to run Perception checks with +38 bonus and non of those hidden locations she has foud is this bloody tomb. That makes me think I failed to activate this quest somehow along the way, even I'm 95% I have passed this ferryman/boatman encounter. What is bad design here is that those barb hordes events shouldn't activate until you have this quest activated too. It's the freaking main quest (I think) it shouldn't be dependant on some obscure encounter or high Perception skill. Yeah, I'm definitely on board with @JuliusBorisov with this game. Makes me wonder if I did a right thing backing WoTR. I fear it will be even more strateg game rather than crpg game.
It is how the things work on the P&P module which the game is heavily inspired.
And other games had some gimmickies. Fight the final boss on ToEE without finding the "skull" is insanely hard and find the skull is a gimmicky and behind skill checks.
You still can go to libary and ask/search info about the location of the tomb, make research, send scouts, you don't need to pass the PER check.
And as i've said many times, we should rate/judge games based on his propose. The propose of pathfinder games is to be a old school like games regardless of the modern "press A for awesome" mindset. So we should judge him compared to old school RPG's. Nor modern games which you don't need to think and can't fail. We already have 6465165486165468516854 games with a lot of awful modern mechanics.
As for WoTR, it will gonna be based in a different module without the kingdom management.
How exactly is asking about for info in library work? Where exactly can find this library? I have already sent two of my companions as scouts (option was enabled after reaching some level of Espionage I believe), but it didn't reveal this tomb for me. And now there is no way to send scouts to other regions. Also how exactly should I do research fro this particular event? I believe you cannot choose which project the game offers you in particular moment of the game. Events just show up. Or am I missing something?
What to you is PoE spells being "weak" compared to D&D, for me is a very refreshing thing because I consider D&D spellcasting (in earlier editions) to be way overpowered (with the Cloudkill spell being precisely one of the worst examples of this issue). It is also why one of the very few things I like about 5e D&D is the extent to which they have downgraded the power of spells and spellcasting to be more equivalent to the power of melee and ranged combat. You clearly love D&D mechanics and consider it to be a pinnacle of RPG mechanics. I don't, and consider a lot of what's in D&D mechanics, and especially spells, to be quite ridiculous. Therefore for me, any developer trying to create a new RPG system that is as different from the D&D experience as possible (in mechanics only, not in storytelling and roleplaying) is a very good thing. So the PoE mechanics, again for me, is a HUGE improvement over D&D. Is it perfect? No, of course not. It certainly has plenty of room for further improvement. But it beats D&D hands-down any day.
Having said all of that, I am forced to accept that despite its immense flaws, D&D is what many, if not most, fans of classic, old-school RPGs are going to see as being some sort of "gold standard" for RPG mechanics because it's what's been around the longest and people are used to it the most.
Log into any non modded nwn2 server. THE """"""BLANCED""""" nerfs that they did only made EVERYONE TO BE WEAPON MASTERS on their server. And yes, are EXTREMELY WEAK compared to P&P. The biggest example is black tentacles/chilling tentacles for warlocks.
On P&P it has a caster level + 8 to hit and grpple. On NWN2 a fix +5 to grapple meaning that everyone with a AC of 25+ is immune. A warlock greater invocation and his most iconic invocation being worthless is NOT BALANCED. And i don't care about balance. Immersion and fun is far more interesting than balance.
PoE 2 managed to be worse in this regard than even NWN2.
In a ravenloft novel which i don't exactly remember the name, the Count lured a army to a fortified place with a single cloudkill spell, slayed a the enemy army. the few survivals dropped their weapon in despair and tried desperately to climb the wall to escape the poisonous gas. On 3.5e, this spell insta slay or deal CONSTITUTION damage to anyone inside the fog depending on the target hit dice. On Pathfinder Kingmaker it can deal 2~4 CON damage every single round and end slay a army of weaklings(and it lasts a minute per caster level). Exactly like the original rules and the novel. And enemies use this spell against the player too.
And 5e spells still far better than PoE 1/2 spells. NOt great as 2e and 3.5e. A lv 17 warlock on 5e can deal 4*(d10+cha mod) or with max cha, or 4d10+20 at will. It is more than a lv 20 warlock on 3.5e with eldrithc blast. 42 average damage VS 9d6 or 31.5 average. Warlocks on 3.5e has his strength on his much more powerful at will invocations(all nerfed on nwn2). And 40 damage on low number 5e is far more than 30 on 3.5e, my bet is that 40 damage is like 90 damage on 3.5e...
PoE mechanics makes no sense. "Wizards are scholars highly intelligent intellectuals, now let create a low int wizard which work out every day to have stronger fireballs and be deadly with a arquebuss which can only hit targets few meters.
But is not only Obsidian modern games which are lacking for spell lovers. Bioware for eg, Baldur’s Gate 2 had over 300 spells. If you consider the spell like abilities from monsters, around 400(and many spells can produce a lot of different effects. Only wish could produce dozens of different effects). Dragon Age Origins, from the same developer, just 91. And inquisition only 29. And all of then are lackluster.
Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous and Pathfinder Kingmaker are the unique games with near perfect spellcasting in almost 20 years. If you wanna solve everything, knights on armor, insect swarm, golems and etc; with fast swinging blades, there are already 684654641654 games to be played.
I feel quite confident WoTR should be a better game than P:K, at least because everything I read about that game (interviews and comments) confirm the developers acknowledge the problems of the first game.
That's very unfortunate you spent 90 hours in the game and ended with a disappointment, @Cahir, but in a way, I saw it coming, based on your previously shared opinions. My own cure from a similar disappointment was just to move on and play what you think is fun, without any need to research what is good and what is bad and what could be better, which game is worse or better etc. In my case, I switched to playing SoD and then BGII:EE with a character I finished BG:EE with, and I really had fun, I'm still having fun with it.
I haven't closed the door entirely on P:K (I have 79 hours in it) and will try again. But PoE took me more than 150 hours to start enjoying it. It still doesn't stop me from criticizing the game, but I found a way to enjoy it.
Yeah, the difference for me between PoE and P:K is that PoE is boring and P:K is frustrating. I really want to finish P:K, but in the other hand I don't feel any urge to play PoE whatsoever. I was meant to start my epic EET run, but was distracted with coordinating SoD translation project, which was re-booted recently with new strong team assembled. So it needs to be postponed for a couple of weeks, but it will be my gaming priority.
I really hope, Owlcat will take all the feedback they've got from people playing Kingmaker to heart, and deliver crpg game not strategy game.
What to you is PoE spells being "weak" compared to D&D, for me is a very refreshing thing because I consider D&D spellcasting (in earlier editions) to be way overpowered (with the Cloudkill spell being precisely one of the worst examples of this issue). It is also why one of the very few things I like about 5e D&D is the extent to which they have downgraded the power of spells and spellcasting to be more equivalent to the power of melee and ranged combat. You clearly love D&D mechanics and consider it to be a pinnacle of RPG mechanics. I don't, and consider a lot of what's in D&D mechanics, and especially spells, to be quite ridiculous. Therefore for me, any developer trying to create a new RPG system that is as different from the D&D experience as possible (in mechanics only, not in storytelling and roleplaying) is a very good thing. So the PoE mechanics, again for me, is a HUGE improvement over D&D. Is it perfect? No, of course not. It certainly has plenty of room for further improvement. But it beats D&D hands-down any day.
Having said all of that, I am forced to accept that despite its immense flaws, D&D is what many, if not most, fans of classic, old-school RPGs are going to see as being some sort of "gold standard" for RPG mechanics because it's what's been around the longest and people are used to it the most.
Log into any non modded nwn2 server. THE """"""BLANCED""""" nerfs that they did only made EVERYONE TO BE WEAPON MASTERS on their server. And yes, are EXTREMELY WEAK compared to P&P. The biggest example is black tentacles/chilling tentacles for warlocks.
On P&P it has a caster level + 8 to hit and grpple. On NWN2 a fix +5 to grapple meaning that everyone with a AC of 25+ is immune. A warlock greater invocation and his most iconic invocation being worthless is NOT BALANCED. And i don't care about balance. Immersion and fun is far more interesting than balance.
PoE 2 managed to be worse in this regard than even NWN2.
In a ravenloft novel which i don't exactly remember the name, the Count lured a army to a fortified place with a single cloudkill spell, slayed a the enemy army. the few survivals dropped their weapon in despair and tried desperately to climb the wall to escape the poisonous gas. On 3.5e, this spell insta slay or deal CONSTITUTION damage to anyone inside the fog depending on the target hit dice. On Pathfinder Kingmaker it can deal 2~4 CON damage every single round and end slay a army of weaklings(and it lasts a minute per caster level). Exactly like the original rules and the novel. And enemies use this spell against the player too.
And 5e spells still far better than PoE 1/2 spells. NOt great as 2e and 3.5e. A lv 17 warlock on 5e can deal 4*(d10+cha mod) or with max cha, or 4d10+20 at will. It is more than a lv 20 warlock on 3.5e with eldrithc blast. 42 average damage VS 9d6 or 31.5 average. Warlocks on 3.5e has his strength on his much more powerful at will invocations(all nerfed on nwn2). And 40 damage on low number 5e is far more than 30 on 3.5e, my bet is that 40 damage is like 90 damage on 3.5e...
PoE mechanics makes no sense. "Wizards are scholars highly intelligent intellectuals, now let create a low int wizard which work out every day to have stronger fireballs and be deadly with a arquebuss which can only hit targets few meters.
But is not only Obsidian modern games which are lacking for spell lovers. Bioware for eg, Baldur’s Gate 2 had over 300 spells. If you consider the spell like abilities from monsters, around 400(and many spells can produce a lot of different effects. Only wish could produce dozens of different effects). Dragon Age Origins, from the same developer, just 91. And inquisition only 29. And all of then are lackluster.
Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous and Pathfinder Kingmaker are the unique games with near perfect spellcasting in almost 20 years. If you wanna solve everything, knights on armor, insect swarm, golems and etc; with fast swinging blades, there are already 684654641654 games to be played.
Like someone else said earlier, you keep making our points for us. You clearly love having super-powerful spellcasting in your RPGs. I hate it. I want to be able to play any character other than a spellcaster and have my character be just as powerful as any spellcaster. So we clearly have different ideas of what makes a game fun for us. And that's ok, so long as D&D games are not the only cRPGs available out there for people to play.
One reason why after all these years I still prefer The Dark Eye over D&D, or even Pathfinder, is because that tabletop game is not nearly as heavily combat focused as the other two. Its focus lies primarily with storytelling and outside-of-combat roleplaying. Far to many battles to be fought in the Forgotten Realms & Co if I have to be completely honest.
Yes I also much, much prefer the storytelling and roleplaying and character developing aspects of an RPG. The outside-of-combat parts of the game should significantly outweigh the combat parts of the game. Otherwise, I can't consider it a true *roleplaying* game. It is merely a tactical combat game with some RP elements mixed in, and that's not an RPG.
What to you is PoE spells being "weak" compared to D&D, for me is a very refreshing thing because I consider D&D spellcasting (in earlier editions) to be way overpowered (with the Cloudkill spell being precisely one of the worst examples of this issue). It is also why one of the very few things I like about 5e D&D is the extent to which they have downgraded the power of spells and spellcasting to be more equivalent to the power of melee and ranged combat. You clearly love D&D mechanics and consider it to be a pinnacle of RPG mechanics. I don't, and consider a lot of what's in D&D mechanics, and especially spells, to be quite ridiculous. Therefore for me, any developer trying to create a new RPG system that is as different from the D&D experience as possible (in mechanics only, not in storytelling and roleplaying) is a very good thing. So the PoE mechanics, again for me, is a HUGE improvement over D&D. Is it perfect? No, of course not. It certainly has plenty of room for further improvement. But it beats D&D hands-down any day.
Having said all of that, I am forced to accept that despite its immense flaws, D&D is what many, if not most, fans of classic, old-school RPGs are going to see as being some sort of "gold standard" for RPG mechanics because it's what's been around the longest and people are used to it the most.
Log into any non modded nwn2 server. THE """"""BLANCED""""" nerfs that they did only made EVERYONE TO BE WEAPON MASTERS on their server. And yes, are EXTREMELY WEAK compared to P&P. The biggest example is black tentacles/chilling tentacles for warlocks.
On P&P it has a caster level + 8 to hit and grpple. On NWN2 a fix +5 to grapple meaning that everyone with a AC of 25+ is immune. A warlock greater invocation and his most iconic invocation being worthless is NOT BALANCED. And i don't care about balance. Immersion and fun is far more interesting than balance.
PoE 2 managed to be worse in this regard than even NWN2.
In a ravenloft novel which i don't exactly remember the name, the Count lured a army to a fortified place with a single cloudkill spell, slayed a the enemy army. the few survivals dropped their weapon in despair and tried desperately to climb the wall to escape the poisonous gas. On 3.5e, this spell insta slay or deal CONSTITUTION damage to anyone inside the fog depending on the target hit dice. On Pathfinder Kingmaker it can deal 2~4 CON damage every single round and end slay a army of weaklings(and it lasts a minute per caster level). Exactly like the original rules and the novel. And enemies use this spell against the player too.
And 5e spells still far better than PoE 1/2 spells. NOt great as 2e and 3.5e. A lv 17 warlock on 5e can deal 4*(d10+cha mod) or with max cha, or 4d10+20 at will. It is more than a lv 20 warlock on 3.5e with eldrithc blast. 42 average damage VS 9d6 or 31.5 average. Warlocks on 3.5e has his strength on his much more powerful at will invocations(all nerfed on nwn2). And 40 damage on low number 5e is far more than 30 on 3.5e, my bet is that 40 damage is like 90 damage on 3.5e...
PoE mechanics makes no sense. "Wizards are scholars highly intelligent intellectuals, now let create a low int wizard which work out every day to have stronger fireballs and be deadly with a arquebuss which can only hit targets few meters.
But is not only Obsidian modern games which are lacking for spell lovers. Bioware for eg, Baldur’s Gate 2 had over 300 spells. If you consider the spell like abilities from monsters, around 400(and many spells can produce a lot of different effects. Only wish could produce dozens of different effects). Dragon Age Origins, from the same developer, just 91. And inquisition only 29. And all of then are lackluster.
Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous and Pathfinder Kingmaker are the unique games with near perfect spellcasting in almost 20 years. If you wanna solve everything, knights on armor, insect swarm, golems and etc; with fast swinging blades, there are already 684654641654 games to be played.
Like someone else said earlier, you keep making our points for us. You clearly love having super-powerful spellcasting in your RPGs. I hate it. I want to be able to play any character other than a spellcaster and have my character be just as powerful as any spellcaster. So we clearly have different ideas of what makes a game fun for us. And that's ok, so long as D&D games are not the only cRPGs available out there for people to play.
If i an playing Warthunder, i wanna use a Me 262 and powerful 4x 30mm cannons and a jet engine. If i an playing a post apocalyptic RPG, i wanna use deadly anti materiel rifles with explosive rounds, 45-70 lever action brush guns to hunt dangeous mutant animals, in a high fantasy i wanna use powerful spells and so on. PoE 2 had both, firearms AND spells and both are extremely lackluster...
Anyway, i an glad that PFWoTR will have a even greater magical system. With Lichdoom, something that i don't see since M&M VIII and some mods.
"You can turn defeated bosses into Undead and take them on as your companions. "
This is me being a narrative nerd but if swords are as strong as magic, why would anyone take the time to learn magic? Unless learning magic is as easy as learning swords. Unless it's like, a wizard can cast fireball and deal 30 damage
a sword deals 8 damage, but then warriors can get a magic sword that deals extra fire damage making it 8+22. So magic is better by itself, but warriors scale with items better. Idk, I'm just being obtuse lol
This is me being a narrative nerd but if swords are as strong as magic, why would anyone take the time to learn magic?
A valid question. And my answer would be because there are so many other things you can do with magic besides just blowing up people and things. That's precisely what's missing in present-day cRPGs: using magic in creative ways outside of combat.
If I were to rank-order how I like playing my RPGs, and specifically how I prefer to resolve encounters in RPGs, it would be:
Talk my way through it
Buy my way through it
Sneak my way through it
Melee combat
Missile weapons combat
Spell combat
This is me being a narrative nerd but if swords are as strong as magic, why would anyone take the time to learn magic? Unless learning magic is as easy as learning swords. Unless it's like, a wizard can cast fireball and deal 30 damage
a sword deals 8 damage, but then warriors can get a magic sword that deals extra fire damage making it 8+22. So magic is better by itself, but warriors scale with items better. Idk, I'm just being obtuse lol
Well, in reality swords was mostly backup weapons by a reason. They aren't effective as pop culture portraits. Against wild animals, spears are the best weapons, against armor, hammers and polearms. This talking melee, ranged combat shown far more effective than melee in many occasions. See Battle of Agincourt, where English longbowman was with no calvary, with poor equipment, surrounded, with a fraction of enemy numbers and despite it managed to defeat the enemy.
Magic is IMO the high fantasy version of firearms. A grenade is not that different than a fireball. A golem is not that different than a securitrom(new vegas)
A valid question. And my answer would be because there are so many other things you can do with magic besides just blowing up people and things. That's precisely what's missing in present-day cRPGs: using magic in creative ways outside of combat.
This point i agree. Arcanum allow you to use necromancy to TALK to a dead NPC and resolve problems in a different way. Despite Arcanum not having a deadly necromancy, with Wail of The Banshee single handily ending encounters, has one of the best necromancy ever due it.
Pathfinder Kingmaker allow you to recruit Golems to your city, to use undead workers to build things and so on.
This is me being a narrative nerd but if swords are as strong as magic, why would anyone take the time to learn magic? Unless learning magic is as easy as learning swords. Unless it's like, a wizard can cast fireball and deal 30 damage
a sword deals 8 damage, but then warriors can get a magic sword that deals extra fire damage making it 8+22. So magic is better by itself, but warriors scale with items better. Idk, I'm just being obtuse lol
Well, I dont have a great answer - but people do things they're good at/interested in.
Why would someone spend 4 years at a university to learn applied mathematics when they could probably spend those same 4 years learning a discipline of engineering and make more money?
It relates to what they're interested in, and what they want to spend their life doing.
I think D&D 5e has done a tremendous job of really balancing out the classes, so that a wizard feels just as powerful as a fighter in most combat scenarios - but they arent interchangeable. The fighter does more consistent damage and has better defenses, but the Wizard has better burst damage and CC, not to mention utility for the group.
The only class in 5e that's somewhat poorly balanced at the moment is the Ranger, who get a lot of class features that are so niche that they're clearly less useful than a Paladin or other hybrid type character.
I know a lot of people dont care much about balance, but as a perpetual DM, it's pretty important to me to keep things balanced so my players are enjoying themselves at the table.
As a parting thought on the issue: I find the importance of early level enjoyment to be far more significant than late level enjoyment. I rarely find it important to compare the tactical viability of that level 17 warlock against a level 17 paladin. The comparison of a level 5 warlock against a level 5 paladin is more meaningful to me.
BallpointMan, if Fallout New Vegas had limited the firearms range to 15m to balance then with melee, do you think that FNV would be better?
Hello, false equivalence? How are you today?
The balance between fire arms and melee is that melee doesn't need to scrounge for ammo. Sure, you can attack from a distance, but not indefinitely. When I played Fallout, nothing did more damage for me than my bare fist build. It also meant I never had to repair my weapons. But I ALSO had to get in close. It also made fighting, say, Deathclaws a lot more dangerous.
I think D&D 5e has done a tremendous job of really balancing out the classes, so that a wizard feels just as powerful as a fighter in most combat scenarios - but they arent interchangeable. The fighter does more consistent damage and has better defenses, but the Wizard has better burst damage and CC, not to mention utility for the group.
The only class in 5e that's somewhat poorly balanced at the moment is the Ranger, who get a lot of class features that are so niche that they're clearly less useful than a Paladin or other hybrid type character.
I know a lot of people dont care much about balance, but as a perpetual DM, it's pretty important to me to keep things balanced so my players are enjoying themselves at the table.
As a parting thought on the issue: I find the importance of early level enjoyment to be far more significant than late level enjoyment. I rarely find it important to compare the tactical viability of that level 17 warlock against a level 17 paladin. The comparison of a level 5 warlock against a level 5 paladin is more meaningful to me.
Yes as I also said earlier, I do believe 5e has done a really good job of bringing melee classes to equivalence with spellcasting classes, and as someone who pretty exclusively likes playing melee/rogue type characters, that is really welcome. The flip side of this is that 5e imo has moved D&D even further towards combat over the outside-of-combat elements of RPGs.
Interesting point about the ranger class. I am currently in a 5e game playing a ranger with the gloom stalker kit, and he's doing just fine. His AC is a bit low and so he takes a lot of hits, but he dishes out quite a lot of damage too, in both two-weapon melee and ranged, plus providing decent secondary support spellcasting.
BallpointMan, if Fallout New Vegas had limited the firearms range to 15m to balance then with melee, do you think that FNV would be better?
@ThacoBell basically summed up my response, but I'll add a few things.
First - in a single player game like FNV, I'm less interested in the balance of what works better. I'm sure that some builds are flat out better than others. The balance in a single player game that I care about is balance of fun gameplay. Ideally, I'd like FNV to have melee and ranged combat be equally enjoyable, even if they're unequal in power.
In a multiplayer game, balance becomes a bigger issue. PF:KM is a single player game at heart, but it's based on having a party of multiple characters under a ruleset that would normally expect there to be multiple people playing at the same time (Table top).
Second - I dont want there to be some arbitrary range limit on firearms in FNV to balance it. I'd want the enjoyable to be balanced more deftly. Thac0 gave some good examples of reasons how/why that might be.
Yes as I also said earlier, I do believe 5e has done a really good job of bringing melee classes to equivalence with spellcasting classes, and as someone who pretty exclusively likes playing melee/rogue type characters, that is really welcome. The flip side of this is that 5e imo has moved D&D even further towards combat over the outside-of-combat elements of RPGs.
Interesting point about the ranger class. I am currently in a 5e game playing a ranger with the gloom stalker kit, and he's doing just fine. His AC is a bit low and so he takes a lot of hits, but he dishes out quite a lot of damage too, in both two-weapon melee and ranged, plus providing decent secondary support spellcasting.
Edit to reply since I didnt see this beforehand.
Did you play 4e perchance? 5e has improved upon out of combat roleplaying over 4e, but I'll admit it is worse than 3.5. Its combat is way better than 3.5, so I think it's all about what's important to you (Which, I know is obvious to say. Just putting it out there).
For me 5e has threaded the needle of good combat and good out of combat roleplaying. Great at neither (TBH - 4e was better at combat for the most part. Maybe a little long, but much more tactically interesting). It's mostly tied with 3.5 for me, and slowly pulling ahead.
About the Ranger: I think Gloomstalker is a XGE archetype, right? The Ranger in my party is a Hunter out of the PHB. Maybe the new Archetypes have been balanced better in the end?
Things like favored terrain and some weaker spell casting options are pretty rough when compared to what Paladins are getting (Great saves, healing, good spell selection for their table).
I'll admit my sample size isnt large. What level is your Gloomstalker?
I believe Unearthed Arcana has attempted to fix Rangers, FWIW.
Did you play 4e perchance? 5e has improved upon out of combat roleplaying over 4e, but I'll admit it is worse than 3.5. Its combat is way better than 3.5, so I think it's all about what's important to you (Which, I know is obvious to say. Just putting it out there).
For me 5e has threaded the needle of good combat and good out of combat roleplaying. Great at neither (TBH - 4e was better at combat for the most part. Maybe a little long, but much more tactically interesting). It's mostly tied with 3.5 for me, and slowly pulling ahead.
About the Ranger: I think Gloomstalker is a XGE archetype, right? The Ranger in my party is a Hunter out of the PHB. Maybe the new Archetypes have been balanced better in the end?
Things like favored terrain and some weaker spell casting options are pretty rough when compared to what Paladins are getting (Great saves, healing, good spell selection for their table).
I'll admit my sample size isnt large. What level is your Gloomstalker?
I believe Unearthed Arcana has attempted to fix Rangers, FWIW.
I skipped 4e altogether, and have started playing 5e only very recently. Yes for me, 5e comes across as having improved combat quite a bit over 3.5e (and also spellcasting by effectively reducing its potency though I imagine that is a post-Spellplague consequence) but at the expense of various RP elements. So in net, it is worse than 3.5e for me.
Yes gloomstalker is an archetype out of XGE. My character is 11th level. The gloomstalker archetype provides some really interesting and versatile alternative abilities to replace standard ranger abilities, so works pretty well. But you are right in that at the end of the day better to play paladin or even just a straight-up fighter.
BallpointMan, if Fallout New Vegas had limited the firearms range to 15m to balance then with melee, do you think that FNV would be better?
Hello, false equivalence? How are you today?
The balance between fire arms and melee is that melee doesn't need to scrounge for ammo. Sure, you can attack from a distance, but not indefinitely. When I played Fallout, nothing did more damage for me than my bare fist build. It also meant I never had to repair my weapons. But I ALSO had to get in close. It also made fighting, say, Deathclaws a lot more dangerous.
This while my stealth anti materiel rifle sniper with explosive rounds can 1~2HK this tough guys like deathclaws and supermutants...
[
First - in a single player game like FNV, I'm less interested in the balance of what works better. I'm sure that some builds are flat out better than others. The balance in a single player game that I care about is balance of fun gameplay. Ideally, I'd like FNV to have melee and ranged combat be equally enjoyable, even if they're unequal in power.
.
I believe that melee on new vegas should be a HARD challenge.
Firearms needs to fell like firearms and melee weapons like melee weapons.
The gunplay of HEllgate London is trash exactly because they tried to balance it with melee, so firearms has no range, skills that allow you to """snipe""" had cooldowns, you can't hit enemies at 20m with most magical and gun skills and so on.
[
I believe that melee on new vegas should be a HARD challenge.
Firearms needs to fell like firearms and melee weapons like melee weapons.
The gunplay of HEllgate London is trash exactly because they tried to balance it with melee, so firearms has no range, skills that allow you to """snipe""" had cooldowns, you can't hit enemies at 20m with most magical and gun skills and so on.
I dont really see why they cannot both be powerful. Is it unrealistic? Of course - but then we are playing a post apocalyptic game based on an alternate timeline that doesnt really make sense in a large majority of ways: Realism went out of the window long before a sledgehammer became as powerful as a shotgun.
@kanisatha Regarding 4e: Dont blame you. I ended up coming around to it a bit in the end, but it was still clearly worse than 3.5 (and 5e now, with hindsight).
Interesting to hear about the Gloomstalker. I'm always having to try to give the ranger I play with an edge here and there. I'll look at what the Gloomstalker brings to the table and see if I can use that to bring him up to everyone else's level.
Did you play 4e perchance? 5e has improved upon out of combat roleplaying over 4e, but I'll admit it is worse than 3.5. Its combat is way better than 3.5, so I think it's all about what's important to you (Which, I know is obvious to say. Just putting it out there).
For me 5e has threaded the needle of good combat and good out of combat roleplaying. Great at neither (TBH - 4e was better at combat for the most part. Maybe a little long, but much more tactically interesting). It's mostly tied with 3.5 for me, and slowly pulling ahead.
About the Ranger: I think Gloomstalker is a XGE archetype, right? The Ranger in my party is a Hunter out of the PHB. Maybe the new Archetypes have been balanced better in the end?
Things like favored terrain and some weaker spell casting options are pretty rough when compared to what Paladins are getting (Great saves, healing, good spell selection for their table).
I'll admit my sample size isnt large. What level is your Gloomstalker?
I believe Unearthed Arcana has attempted to fix Rangers, FWIW.
I skipped 4e altogether, and have started playing 5e only very recently. Yes for me, 5e comes across as having improved combat quite a bit over 3.5e (and also spellcasting by effectively reducing its potency though I imagine that is a post-Spellplague consequence) but at the expense of various RP elements. So in net, it is worse than 3.5e for me.
Yes gloomstalker is an archetype out of XGE. My character is 11th level. The gloomstalker archetype provides some really interesting and versatile alternative abilities to replace standard ranger abilities, so works pretty well. But you are right in that at the end of the day better to play paladin or even just a straight-up fighter.
First - in a single player game like FNV, I'm less interested in the balance of what works better. I'm sure that some builds are flat out better than others. The balance in a single player game that I care about is balance of fun gameplay. Ideally, I'd like FNV to have melee and ranged combat be equally enjoyable, even if they're unequal in power.
In a multiplayer game, balance becomes a bigger issue. PF:KM is a single player game at heart, but it's based on having a party of multiple characters under a ruleset that would normally expect there to be multiple people playing at the same time (Table top).
Agree with a lot of what you said in this post, but just like to add a few thoughts to these points. I think a CRPG of this specific type (party, tactical combat) should be balanced towards encouraging a diverse party. I.E. on the hardest difficulty settings you should have an easier time in beating the game with a diverse party. An ideal game would also include the possibility of doing things like a solo run or an all-paladin party. But those should be more difficult or perhaps even only do-able on lower difficulties.
And I'm fine with the game designers even breaking from some of the pen-and-paper rules to achieve those goals. CRPG's have certain inherent advantages (i.e. easy dice rolling) and certain inherent disadvantages (limited plot branching) compared to the tabletop game. It's fine to embrace that. A combat system balanced for diverse parties is one that's going to support the broadest array of builds for a protagonist -- so long as the recruitable NPC selection is also broad.
4e is the most balanced D&D edition and the awfullest one. If you wanna lackluster, i suggest to check the Sawyer games.
Icewind Dale -> Good scrolls are extremely hard to find and a lot of monsters with high magical resistance. I never soloed IWD as a Mage, but IWD:EE as a Sorcerer can be soloed only if you pick melee based spells. At least the "nerf" of magicians in that game is by making harder to find scrolls and having monsters resistant to magic, not due butchering the rules; is the unique game of him with satisfying spellcasting.
Neverwinter Nights 2 -> They destroyed most arcane classes. When i played unmodded, i had a hell of a torment and was using most my companions. Without spell fixes and warlock reworked, playing as any arcane caster means that you will spend most of your time making weapons for the martial guys and playing the martial guys on your party. P&P mods fixes it and make playing as a arcane caster more interesting.
Fallout: New Vegas -> No magic and despite Sawyer hating magic, firearms on this game are the greatest of all RPG's that i saw. While on FL3 you can only use "Shotgun shell"(as if every shell is the same), on new vegas you can use flechette, buckshot, slugs, dragon breath(...), anti materiel rifles can use armor piercing, explosive and incendiary rounds and so on. You can also aim with firearms and etc.
Pillars of Eternity -> Despite having magic and firearms, both are extremely lackluster. Heavy crossbows, arquebusiers, etc; has few feet of range and spells are always a very lackluster version of the typical D&D spell. Malignant Cloud is just a extremely nerfed version of Cloudkill. In the first game, you not only had far less powerful spells but also had ultra limited casts per rest and limited resting. 2 casts per rest of 3.5e cloudkill is completely different than 2 casts of Malignant Cloud. It got changes on second game, so now spellpower is a important variable and the ultra nerfed spells are per encounter, BUT the lack of necromancy, conjuration being restricted to few offensive low duration spells and weapons, lack of OHK spells, etc; makes the spell casting on PoE 1/2 extremely lackluster.
4e is the most balanced D&D edition and the awfullest one. If you wanna lackluster, i suggest to check the Sawyer games.
4e was not well received, but this isnt because it was balanced. 4e lacked significant skill diversity (One of 3.5's greatest strengths), abandoned vancian spell casting rules, made significant tactical errors in releasing core player classes in a series of annualized PHBs, and lastly made lore changes that upset a lot of people.
Those are the (major) reasons the edition failed. Not because a fighter and a wizard were well balanced with respect to one another.
5e is still fantastically well balanced, and it is currently very very well liked by the table top community. It also fixed the vast majority of those issues I cited above (Some of them are a bit to personal taste. I think most people like the lore at present more than 4e's lore, but dislike that it was mostly just handwaved).
5e is still fantastically well balanced, and it is currently very very well liked by the table top community. It also fixed the vast majority of those issues I cited above (Some of them are a bit to personal taste. I think most people like the lore at present more than 4e's lore, but dislike that it was mostly just handwaved).
Moon druids (also known as God mode druids), Abjuration wizards with warlocks`armor of shadows (AKA Infinite shield of force wizards) and rangers (4 years in a row voted worst class and unfunniest class) beg to differ.
And just don´t let me start about OP Sentinel+Polearm master feats and Lucky feats and the fact that those are at the same level as Keen mind or Actor.
5e`s a fun edition to play, but balance is not his strongest point.
There is no such thing as true balance in a video game. As someone who has played World of Warcraft for years, this is not an opinion, but a fact. Developers are always chasing a mythical notion "balance" that is, quite frankly, mathematically impossible to achieve. And this is always done to appease a vocal minority who INSIST, at all times, on playing the most cutting-edge, optimized spec at any given time. There is always going to be a best spec, a best talent point allocation, a best gearing option. When nerfs or patches come, those changes will inevitably make something ELSE the best. It's just an endless cycle of stupidity. Whatever happened to playing a class because you liked the aesthetics and abilities??
If you are playing an MMORPG with competitive factions and PVP of course it matters what builds are the best, like the WOW game you mentioned, LOL, etc... or even NWN online servers (When´s the last time you saw a high-level bard or a melee fighter that is not a weapon master?).
If you want to play the class that you want because you liked the aesthetics and abilities but the class is unplayable or awful and are not in demand so you do not find groups that need your class and you fail to level up at the same pace as the others and you stay always behind, Big guilds do not let you join, you cannot sell your account if you do not want to play anymore, etc....
Of course, you want some balancing so you can play the character you want because if you´re unlucky it´s unplayable you´ve never got to see it and the competitivity of the game will force you to play a particular set of builds...
If you are talking single-player games, or TTRPG games like PNP D&D, Pathfinder, etc, now is that when you (usually) can play any character or class you fancy.
Halfling whip-wilder barbarian? yeah, why not.
Playable Commoner class all the way! Who needs adventurers anyway? The townsfolk can solve their own problems just as well I say. And occassionally save a world from certain doom or two ?
Comments
A explorer in Stolen Lands with no combat capability would HIRE mercenaries to fight for him. Is not something hard to understand. And as the guy above said, a pure BARD party worked for him.
Anyway, if you wanna play a explorer with 16 INT that somehow is too dumb to realize that he needs mercenaries to survive on harder difficulties, then yes, the game doesn't allow pure RP builds
It is how the things work on the P&P module which the game is heavily inspired.
And other games had some gimmickies. Fight the final boss on ToEE without finding the "skull" is insanely hard and find the skull is a gimmicky and behind skill checks.
You still can go to libary and ask/search info about the location of the tomb, make research, send scouts, you don't need to pass the PER check.
And as i've said many times, we should rate/judge games based on his propose. The propose of pathfinder games is to be a old school like games regardless of the modern "press A for awesome" mindset. So we should judge him compared to old school RPG's. Nor modern games which you don't need to think and can't fail. We already have 6465165486165468516854 games with a lot of awful modern mechanics.
In how many modern games i can do that?
As for WoTR, it will gonna be based in a different module without the kingdom management.
What to you is PoE spells being "weak" compared to D&D, for me is a very refreshing thing because I consider D&D spellcasting (in earlier editions) to be way overpowered (with the Cloudkill spell being precisely one of the worst examples of this issue). It is also why one of the very few things I like about 5e D&D is the extent to which they have downgraded the power of spells and spellcasting to be more equivalent to the power of melee and ranged combat. You clearly love D&D mechanics and consider it to be a pinnacle of RPG mechanics. I don't, and consider a lot of what's in D&D mechanics, and especially spells, to be quite ridiculous. Therefore for me, any developer trying to create a new RPG system that is as different from the D&D experience as possible (in mechanics only, not in storytelling and roleplaying) is a very good thing. So the PoE mechanics, again for me, is a HUGE improvement over D&D. Is it perfect? No, of course not. It certainly has plenty of room for further improvement. But it beats D&D hands-down any day.
Having said all of that, I am forced to accept that despite its immense flaws, D&D is what many, if not most, fans of classic, old-school RPGs are going to see as being some sort of "gold standard" for RPG mechanics because it's what's been around the longest and people are used to it the most.
One reason why after all these years I still prefer The Dark Eye over D&D, or even Pathfinder, is because that tabletop game is not nearly as heavily combat focused as the other two. Its focus lies primarily with storytelling and outside-of-combat roleplaying. Far to many battles to be fought in the Forgotten Realms & Co if I have to be completely honest.
One thing I did do was play all of Pillars of Eternity and about 90% of Pillars 2 (on turn based, not because I wanted to but because the game turns into a slideshow in real time because of the effects and lets face it, utter failure by Obsidian to optimise their game)
And I genuinely prefer how Icewind Dale plays (I'm playing it right now, pretty direct judgement). I didn't hate the combat or the mechanics in Pillars but I found them to be restrictive, dulled and lacking in the character of the Infinity games. The infinity engine's history of being designed for RTS gameplay shows in positive ways I think, its a very good skirmish simulator and I've just not played anything else similar that is anywhere near as good.
Kingmaker is probably the most directly similar, but I read in @JuliusBorisov post around page 60 of the Kingmaker thread, where he points out that the game doesn't have sensible output things in place like action symbols on character portraits. It does feel as a game it didn't learn from the Infinity games some important lessons in interface and design. Some changes made in those games that are deliberate changes from the source rules were made for very good reasons, I do notice a theme with Kingmaker is its problems seem to be slavish to the module its based on and the Pathfinder ruleset (and who's to say they worked that well in the original form, I feel like based on my own tabletop experience I'd be frustrated by design like that too)
How exactly is asking about for info in library work? Where exactly can find this library? I have already sent two of my companions as scouts (option was enabled after reaching some level of Espionage I believe), but it didn't reveal this tomb for me. And now there is no way to send scouts to other regions. Also how exactly should I do research fro this particular event? I believe you cannot choose which project the game offers you in particular moment of the game. Events just show up. Or am I missing something?
Log into any non modded nwn2 server. THE """"""BLANCED""""" nerfs that they did only made EVERYONE TO BE WEAPON MASTERS on their server. And yes, are EXTREMELY WEAK compared to P&P. The biggest example is black tentacles/chilling tentacles for warlocks.
On P&P it has a caster level + 8 to hit and grpple. On NWN2 a fix +5 to grapple meaning that everyone with a AC of 25+ is immune. A warlock greater invocation and his most iconic invocation being worthless is NOT BALANCED. And i don't care about balance. Immersion and fun is far more interesting than balance.
PoE 2 managed to be worse in this regard than even NWN2.
In a ravenloft novel which i don't exactly remember the name, the Count lured a army to a fortified place with a single cloudkill spell, slayed a the enemy army. the few survivals dropped their weapon in despair and tried desperately to climb the wall to escape the poisonous gas. On 3.5e, this spell insta slay or deal CONSTITUTION damage to anyone inside the fog depending on the target hit dice. On Pathfinder Kingmaker it can deal 2~4 CON damage every single round and end slay a army of weaklings(and it lasts a minute per caster level). Exactly like the original rules and the novel. And enemies use this spell against the player too.
And 5e spells still far better than PoE 1/2 spells. NOt great as 2e and 3.5e. A lv 17 warlock on 5e can deal 4*(d10+cha mod) or with max cha, or 4d10+20 at will. It is more than a lv 20 warlock on 3.5e with eldrithc blast. 42 average damage VS 9d6 or 31.5 average. Warlocks on 3.5e has his strength on his much more powerful at will invocations(all nerfed on nwn2). And 40 damage on low number 5e is far more than 30 on 3.5e, my bet is that 40 damage is like 90 damage on 3.5e...
PoE mechanics makes no sense. "Wizards are scholars highly intelligent intellectuals, now let create a low int wizard which work out every day to have stronger fireballs and be deadly with a arquebuss which can only hit targets few meters.
But is not only Obsidian modern games which are lacking for spell lovers. Bioware for eg, Baldur’s Gate 2 had over 300 spells. If you consider the spell like abilities from monsters, around 400(and many spells can produce a lot of different effects. Only wish could produce dozens of different effects). Dragon Age Origins, from the same developer, just 91. And inquisition only 29. And all of then are lackluster.
Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous and Pathfinder Kingmaker are the unique games with near perfect spellcasting in almost 20 years. If you wanna solve everything, knights on armor, insect swarm, golems and etc; with fast swinging blades, there are already 684654641654 games to be played.
Yeah, the difference for me between PoE and P:K is that PoE is boring and P:K is frustrating. I really want to finish P:K, but in the other hand I don't feel any urge to play PoE whatsoever. I was meant to start my epic EET run, but was distracted with coordinating SoD translation project, which was re-booted recently with new strong team assembled. So it needs to be postponed for a couple of weeks, but it will be my gaming priority.
I really hope, Owlcat will take all the feedback they've got from people playing Kingmaker to heart, and deliver crpg game not strategy game.
Like someone else said earlier, you keep making our points for us. You clearly love having super-powerful spellcasting in your RPGs. I hate it. I want to be able to play any character other than a spellcaster and have my character be just as powerful as any spellcaster. So we clearly have different ideas of what makes a game fun for us. And that's ok, so long as D&D games are not the only cRPGs available out there for people to play.
Yes I also much, much prefer the storytelling and roleplaying and character developing aspects of an RPG. The outside-of-combat parts of the game should significantly outweigh the combat parts of the game. Otherwise, I can't consider it a true *roleplaying* game. It is merely a tactical combat game with some RP elements mixed in, and that's not an RPG.
If i an playing Warthunder, i wanna use a Me 262 and powerful 4x 30mm cannons and a jet engine. If i an playing a post apocalyptic RPG, i wanna use deadly anti materiel rifles with explosive rounds, 45-70 lever action brush guns to hunt dangeous mutant animals, in a high fantasy i wanna use powerful spells and so on. PoE 2 had both, firearms AND spells and both are extremely lackluster...
Anyway, i an glad that PFWoTR will have a even greater magical system. With Lichdoom, something that i don't see since M&M VIII and some mods.
"You can turn defeated bosses into Undead and take them on as your companions. "
source https://forum.owlcatgames.com/t/things-we-know-about-the-sequel-to-pathfinder-kingmaker/15191
a sword deals 8 damage, but then warriors can get a magic sword that deals extra fire damage making it 8+22. So magic is better by itself, but warriors scale with items better. Idk, I'm just being obtuse lol
A valid question. And my answer would be because there are so many other things you can do with magic besides just blowing up people and things. That's precisely what's missing in present-day cRPGs: using magic in creative ways outside of combat.
If I were to rank-order how I like playing my RPGs, and specifically how I prefer to resolve encounters in RPGs, it would be:
Talk my way through it
Buy my way through it
Sneak my way through it
Melee combat
Missile weapons combat
Spell combat
Well, in reality swords was mostly backup weapons by a reason. They aren't effective as pop culture portraits. Against wild animals, spears are the best weapons, against armor, hammers and polearms. This talking melee, ranged combat shown far more effective than melee in many occasions. See Battle of Agincourt, where English longbowman was with no calvary, with poor equipment, surrounded, with a fraction of enemy numbers and despite it managed to defeat the enemy.
Magic is IMO the high fantasy version of firearms. A grenade is not that different than a fireball. A golem is not that different than a securitrom(new vegas)
This point i agree. Arcanum allow you to use necromancy to TALK to a dead NPC and resolve problems in a different way. Despite Arcanum not having a deadly necromancy, with Wail of The Banshee single handily ending encounters, has one of the best necromancy ever due it.
Pathfinder Kingmaker allow you to recruit Golems to your city, to use undead workers to build things and so on.
Well, I dont have a great answer - but people do things they're good at/interested in.
Why would someone spend 4 years at a university to learn applied mathematics when they could probably spend those same 4 years learning a discipline of engineering and make more money?
It relates to what they're interested in, and what they want to spend their life doing.
I think D&D 5e has done a tremendous job of really balancing out the classes, so that a wizard feels just as powerful as a fighter in most combat scenarios - but they arent interchangeable. The fighter does more consistent damage and has better defenses, but the Wizard has better burst damage and CC, not to mention utility for the group.
The only class in 5e that's somewhat poorly balanced at the moment is the Ranger, who get a lot of class features that are so niche that they're clearly less useful than a Paladin or other hybrid type character.
I know a lot of people dont care much about balance, but as a perpetual DM, it's pretty important to me to keep things balanced so my players are enjoying themselves at the table.
As a parting thought on the issue: I find the importance of early level enjoyment to be far more significant than late level enjoyment. I rarely find it important to compare the tactical viability of that level 17 warlock against a level 17 paladin. The comparison of a level 5 warlock against a level 5 paladin is more meaningful to me.
Hello, false equivalence? How are you today?
The balance between fire arms and melee is that melee doesn't need to scrounge for ammo. Sure, you can attack from a distance, but not indefinitely. When I played Fallout, nothing did more damage for me than my bare fist build. It also meant I never had to repair my weapons. But I ALSO had to get in close. It also made fighting, say, Deathclaws a lot more dangerous.
Interesting point about the ranger class. I am currently in a 5e game playing a ranger with the gloom stalker kit, and he's doing just fine. His AC is a bit low and so he takes a lot of hits, but he dishes out quite a lot of damage too, in both two-weapon melee and ranged, plus providing decent secondary support spellcasting.
@ThacoBell basically summed up my response, but I'll add a few things.
First - in a single player game like FNV, I'm less interested in the balance of what works better. I'm sure that some builds are flat out better than others. The balance in a single player game that I care about is balance of fun gameplay. Ideally, I'd like FNV to have melee and ranged combat be equally enjoyable, even if they're unequal in power.
In a multiplayer game, balance becomes a bigger issue. PF:KM is a single player game at heart, but it's based on having a party of multiple characters under a ruleset that would normally expect there to be multiple people playing at the same time (Table top).
Second - I dont want there to be some arbitrary range limit on firearms in FNV to balance it. I'd want the enjoyable to be balanced more deftly. Thac0 gave some good examples of reasons how/why that might be.
Edit to reply since I didnt see this beforehand.
Did you play 4e perchance? 5e has improved upon out of combat roleplaying over 4e, but I'll admit it is worse than 3.5. Its combat is way better than 3.5, so I think it's all about what's important to you (Which, I know is obvious to say. Just putting it out there).
For me 5e has threaded the needle of good combat and good out of combat roleplaying. Great at neither (TBH - 4e was better at combat for the most part. Maybe a little long, but much more tactically interesting). It's mostly tied with 3.5 for me, and slowly pulling ahead.
About the Ranger: I think Gloomstalker is a XGE archetype, right? The Ranger in my party is a Hunter out of the PHB. Maybe the new Archetypes have been balanced better in the end?
Things like favored terrain and some weaker spell casting options are pretty rough when compared to what Paladins are getting (Great saves, healing, good spell selection for their table).
I'll admit my sample size isnt large. What level is your Gloomstalker?
I believe Unearthed Arcana has attempted to fix Rangers, FWIW.
I skipped 4e altogether, and have started playing 5e only very recently. Yes for me, 5e comes across as having improved combat quite a bit over 3.5e (and also spellcasting by effectively reducing its potency though I imagine that is a post-Spellplague consequence) but at the expense of various RP elements. So in net, it is worse than 3.5e for me.
Yes gloomstalker is an archetype out of XGE. My character is 11th level. The gloomstalker archetype provides some really interesting and versatile alternative abilities to replace standard ranger abilities, so works pretty well. But you are right in that at the end of the day better to play paladin or even just a straight-up fighter.
This while my stealth anti materiel rifle sniper with explosive rounds can 1~2HK this tough guys like deathclaws and supermutants...
I believe that melee on new vegas should be a HARD challenge.
Firearms needs to fell like firearms and melee weapons like melee weapons.
The gunplay of HEllgate London is trash exactly because they tried to balance it with melee, so firearms has no range, skills that allow you to """snipe""" had cooldowns, you can't hit enemies at 20m with most magical and gun skills and so on.
I dont really see why they cannot both be powerful. Is it unrealistic? Of course - but then we are playing a post apocalyptic game based on an alternate timeline that doesnt really make sense in a large majority of ways: Realism went out of the window long before a sledgehammer became as powerful as a shotgun.
@kanisatha Regarding 4e: Dont blame you. I ended up coming around to it a bit in the end, but it was still clearly worse than 3.5 (and 5e now, with hindsight).
Interesting to hear about the Gloomstalker. I'm always having to try to give the ranger I play with an edge here and there. I'll look at what the Gloomstalker brings to the table and see if I can use that to bring him up to everyone else's level.
Gloomstalker pairs very well with the assassin.
Agree with a lot of what you said in this post, but just like to add a few thoughts to these points. I think a CRPG of this specific type (party, tactical combat) should be balanced towards encouraging a diverse party. I.E. on the hardest difficulty settings you should have an easier time in beating the game with a diverse party. An ideal game would also include the possibility of doing things like a solo run or an all-paladin party. But those should be more difficult or perhaps even only do-able on lower difficulties.
And I'm fine with the game designers even breaking from some of the pen-and-paper rules to achieve those goals. CRPG's have certain inherent advantages (i.e. easy dice rolling) and certain inherent disadvantages (limited plot branching) compared to the tabletop game. It's fine to embrace that. A combat system balanced for diverse parties is one that's going to support the broadest array of builds for a protagonist -- so long as the recruitable NPC selection is also broad.
4e was not well received, but this isnt because it was balanced. 4e lacked significant skill diversity (One of 3.5's greatest strengths), abandoned vancian spell casting rules, made significant tactical errors in releasing core player classes in a series of annualized PHBs, and lastly made lore changes that upset a lot of people.
Those are the (major) reasons the edition failed. Not because a fighter and a wizard were well balanced with respect to one another.
5e is still fantastically well balanced, and it is currently very very well liked by the table top community. It also fixed the vast majority of those issues I cited above (Some of them are a bit to personal taste. I think most people like the lore at present more than 4e's lore, but dislike that it was mostly just handwaved).
And just don´t let me start about OP Sentinel+Polearm master feats and Lucky feats and the fact that those are at the same level as Keen mind or Actor.
5e`s a fun edition to play, but balance is not his strongest point.
If you want to play the class that you want because you liked the aesthetics and abilities but the class is unplayable or awful and are not in demand so you do not find groups that need your class and you fail to level up at the same pace as the others and you stay always behind, Big guilds do not let you join, you cannot sell your account if you do not want to play anymore, etc....
Of course, you want some balancing so you can play the character you want because if you´re unlucky it´s unplayable you´ve never got to see it and the competitivity of the game will force you to play a particular set of builds...
If you are talking single-player games, or TTRPG games like PNP D&D, Pathfinder, etc, now is that when you (usually) can play any character or class you fancy.
Halfling whip-wilder barbarian? yeah, why not.