Figure 5.įigure 5.: Uniformly Balanced System (UBS) a system in which every character build is equally powerful, cf. The opposite of a VBS would be a Uniformly Balanced System (UBS), i.e. Figure 4.įigure 4.: Variably Balanced System (VBS) We may call such a situation a Variably Balanced System (VBS), cf. Similarly, there are possibly some uber-builds, which make the game too easy. legal character configurations which are not powerful enough to be comfortably playable. If I understand this correctly, the problem with D&D is that there are many “trash builds”, i.e. damage output) you have do decrease another (e.g. This is pretty intuitive – usually you have a limited number of attribute points to spend, and so if you want to increase one parameter (e.g. one build would be more offensive, another more defensive. Builds lying on the same “frontier” would be similarly powerful, however they may achieve their power in different ways, e.g. This could be analogous to Pareto frontiers. We can also try to establish a notion of how good (powerful) a particular build is. Figure 2.įigure 2.: Different classes of builds in the configuration space offense-oriented and defense-oriented, cf. Figure 1., where build B has the highest damage output, while build C is the most survivable one.įigure 1.: Character build configuration spaceīased on these ideas, we may try to divide all possible builds into classes, e.g. So, you could have multiple builds, each with different scores in damage output and survivability. For brevity, let's assume these are the only two – I find two dimensions easier to visualize than seventeen, or one hundred twenty-three, or lady-knows-how-many-there-actually-are. For example, two of these objectives could be damage output and survivability. In fact, there are many things you would want to optimize, which makes min/maxing a multi-objective optimization problem. Most people talking about min/maxing use hard facts, objective truth and gargantuan Excel spreadsheets. This whole “enjoyment” thing seems pretty subjective and ethereal. You build a better character, so that playing with it gives you more pleasure.īut what makes one character better than other? What? On the meta-level, I'd say it's your enjoyment. Every time you level up a character or equip some shiny new gear, you're optimizing something. For me, this is really just another flavor of good ol' optimization problems. In other words, how do I build a character? How do I build a party?Ī lot of talk about character/party builds gravitates around the so-called min/maxing. So far so good.īut how do I navigate this brave new world of Might, Constitution, Dexterity, Perception, Intellect and Rhesuses? (Or was that Resolve?) So I started reading and it seems the news (OK, it's pretty old news, but new to me) is fantastic: the devs at Obsidian are experimenting with the ancient RPG formulas in an attempt to make something fresh, approachable and enjoyable for newcomers and veterans alike. And, frankly, that's great – it means that PoE will possibly be an exciting and refreshing adventure in terms of gameplay mechanics.īut still, what do I do with those unwieldy numbers? So I asked myself: how do I make those numbers sing?Īfter some time spent nudging them here and there, I realized that my past experience with Infinity Engine games and their AD&D mojo wouldn't get me far on this particular journey. In return, the game launched a volley of numbers at me. Pillars of Eternity Guidebook, Volume OneĪ few days ago I bought the game and launched it. Time and culture may have shaped Eora’s borders, piety may have strengthened them, and conflict may have shattered them, but all things sprout from a shared root in the vast unknown.
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