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'Pillars of Eternity' and Proper Attribute Tuning

GDC Festival of Gaming

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While designing the Kickstarter-backed Pillars of Eternity, Obsidian Entertainment promised to stay true to a classic RPG trope: the 6-attribute spread. In this GDC 2016 talk, Obsidian's Josh Sawyer explains both the history of this RPG design constraint, and how they evolved its concepts to make a functional RPG for the modern era.

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20 Comments

@kaptenteo 3 years ago (edited)

I personally love the ruleset for Pillars. I was so glad they moved away from the min-maxing of D&D and it made it a lot more exciting to create more fun and personalized characters. There was still room to optimize and min-max if you wanted to, but I never felt encouraged to do so; it felt like a choice, rather than an obligation. In that sense, I feel they certainly achieved what they set out to do, when they designed the rules for Pillars.

@IsaacJoshi 5 years ago

Sometimes these talks make me want to buy a game more than any amount of marketing

@khjuu12 2 years ago (edited)

Coming back to this after playing a paladin in bg3, and realising I was playing 'wrong' if I built a character that could count past 10 without borrowing someone else's fingers.

Such a cool talk.

@76mmM4A1HVSS 9 years ago

Who wouldn't want a mindbogglingly specific "niche" panel topic? This is good.

@EldritchAugur 9 years ago (edited)

Companion stats barely matter once you get a bunch of good gear. After a fair few hours you can boost companion stats into whatever you like with rings, cloaks and enchantments anyways. My rogue has like 25 might because of all the equipment he has and I still had enough to boost my other party members as well.

And I do like the shift away from stats being "the most important thing ever skill be damned if you picked bad stats" kind of system that characterized older CRPG's. In Pillars your stats aren't as important as your tactics and your party composition. There are so many buffs whether they be from gear or from spells that you can play the game in almost any way you want and I think that's genius design.

@bigbyrd7755 7 years ago

13:18 And now I finally understand why the berserk AoE works the way it does.

@TransoceanicOutreach 3 years ago

I tried to play PoE five years ago and gave up because it was so hard to understand what the different attributes were about and how to min/max for different classes. Having watched this I now understand that it's not really something you need to do in this game, and the reasons make sense. I am now playing it again.

@MrJamesyboi121 5 years ago

Ironically, I'm about 8 hours into Pillars 2 (never played one) and this makes me want to re-roll. Mighty Wizard....

@sergeylysyi511 5 years ago

Every playsession of Pillars i ask myself like 'how did they get to this design of attributes?'. Glad this talk was made and published open.

@windblownleaf6450 3 years ago

Josh is such an amazing speaker. I could listen to him talking about RPG design for hours.

@shangoat2008 10 years ago

Khalid is my favorite BG companion, I even named my Dwarf Paladin in WOW after him...

@TDurdenArt 6 years ago

The better companions mod made me laugh. That 3 perception, haha. I'm personally not a fan of the companions, myself, but I appreciate the thought that went into them.

@LemonMoon 2 years ago

Josh sawyer always look different every time I see him

@fierypickles4450 4 years ago

Would love this guy to be the designer for the kotor remake. A lot of the points he said, i was guilty of doing in kotor, just dumping stats in one place, or having a centralized stat that i could focus on entirely. In eternity, i kinda enjoy thinking about my stats and builds thoroughly

@BobMotster 7 years ago

Playing Pillars Of Eternity in 2019, I have to say that the guys at Obsidian achieved all the goals they set for themselves.
After not partaking in any D&D activities for a decade I had no problem getting into PoE's stats system and making a viable build without screwing it up completely from the very beginning.
Then it took me 20+ hours of playtime before I reached a point where I tangibly felt the need to acquire new gear and/or talents to boost some aspects in preparation for future harder encounters.
I am confident that the character building process will be just as smooth, intuitive, forgiving and entertaining even to a person who has never heard of D&D.

@dkytbm 10 years ago

Watched it before, but I find myself watching again. Very well-thought out and insightful. If any other game devs are watching, I think this is a really good point: "If something is required for viable play, why is it optional?" -- meaningful choices vs. illusion of choice.

@GabryelFile 6 years ago

POE has everything that I ever wished for BG/IWD. What a game!

@trashpanda5869 6 years ago

First time I’ve seen that Sawyer didn’t run outta time lol.

@ThomasAndersonPhD 2 months ago

Exceptional talk, still great 10 years later. Love when a speaker paces their talk correctly and leaves time for questions.

@dtt719 1 year ago

8:56 Adnd got around this through magic items. By 13th level you were likely to find an item that boosted your Str to 18 even 18/00 or higher. Honestly much sooner that 13th. It was part of the motivation to go out dungeon diving