Originally Posted by Stabbey
Originally Posted by Rack
I'm going to attempt to speak on Larian's behalf here, so just bear in mind this is my interpretation.

The existing system has 3 stats for 3 styles of combat

Strength -> Melee
Dexterity -> Ranged
Intelligence -> Magic

plus 3 stats of "Nice to have" for every class.

So while you could roll to hit into Dexterity or perceive stats into Perception the splits exist so every style of combat has its basic damage and some out of combat perk, but no more. The kickstarter post specifically states that this is not based on pure realism but an attempt to make balanced stats.


You've got that wrong. It's not one key and three "nice to have" stats.

A warrior who has a lot of strength but can't take a hit or make a hit is worthless. If you pump up both his CON and STR so he can take a hit, and do a lot of damage, but can't hit anything because of poor PER - he's also ineffective.

Meanwhile, a Wizard really does have one "must-have" stat for all his abilities and a bunch of "nice to have"'s. A ranger is in the middle, with 2 must-haves.

The problem is that it isn't balanced.


Well to be fair it was a complete supposition on my part, we can't possibly say whether the system is balanced or not at this stage, that depends entirely on the numbers. If it is balanced then a Strength 55 Perception 5 Warrior will still hit often enough and heavily enough to outdamage a Strength 30 Perception 30 Warrior. That's because all other factors being equal reliability is a desirable trait. (Unless the game is brutally difficult to the extent that no strategy is reliable and victory outright relies on luck)

Similarly a Warrior should be able to get by on significantly less Strength than a Wizard's Intelligence. That's because he will be much more reliant on Speed and Constitution.

I'm making assumptions here and you're quite right to call out that I really don't know which stat will be most important, but in the same vein it's impossible to say the system is unbalanced until we see the numbers.