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Message: <blockquote data-quote="squibbles" data-source="post: 8383268" data-attributes="member: 6937590">Responding to the Obsidian GDC vid in the OP, I think they really whiffed some things in Pillars of Eternity (admittedly, the designer is upfront about this). What's worst, I think, is that those more heavily abstracted abilities feel disjointed from human characteristics, i.e. Strength in 5e is muscle and athleticism, it makes sense; Might in PoE boosts damage and healing--what does that even mean? What type of person hits harder with a sword, burns hotter with a fireball, and also cures injuries better. It's extremely gamified. (Also, why on earth does Resolve give deflection, PoE's sort-of AC)Not that the goal is wrong, but it seems undesirable to create a battery of descriptive statistics that don't describe (demi)human(oid) traits.The designer goes into the game's optimization a little bit but, for reference, there is a ton of stat dumping in PoE. There is more within-class Ability build variety than 5e, but a lot of the evils of min-maxing are still there.Agreed, Intelligence is an issue (and not just because of its fraught socio-political associations). It has a clear meaning that could be better represented mechanically for more classes but, at bottom, its a player characteristic not a PC characteristic. It isn't obvious, for example, how to play a PC that is much smarter than you are and it might not be fun to play a PC that is much dumber than you are. I think it would be better off replaced with a term that represents a PC characteristic which is separated from the player, something like Knowledge.The other mental abilities have similar issues, but Wisdom and Charisma are easier to think of as PC traits, i.e. it just sounds compelling when he says it, or she just has the intuitive understanding to detect the lie.Or you 'rolled your scores at home' and played a PC with enough bonuses to be fun for you. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />The old bell curve was premised on the assumption that there would be lots of PCs, lots of PC deaths, lots of opportunities to roll better abilities if you got bad ones, and the general convention that you--the player--needed to be skilled at the game; a weak, dumb, klutz PC can still check for traps with a 10' pole.I think maybe the fix is to invert that bell curve design instead. Have bonuses escalate rapidly at lower ability scores but get diminishing returns at higher scores. Something like the following (while keeping the ASIs, the standard array, and point buy the same):1-3: -44-6: -37-8: -29: -110: 011: +112-13: +214-16: +317-19: +420 and up: +5This way it'd more costly to dump an ability, less beneficial to specialize in a single ability, and more beneficial to increase secondary and tertiary abilities--regardless of their actual mechanical benefits.(it'd also make non-variant humans suck less)</blockquote>

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