Leaderboard

I do believe in myself like that, I wake up every morning dreading my inevitable collapse.

The whole idea behind the stats system was to allow builds to be versatile. It's flat wrong to say "Classes 100% lack uniqueness" - that would mean they're literally identical, which obviously isn't the case. I much prefer PoE's approach to DnD's. It's great that any class can use any weapon and that all stats are relevant to all classes - it reduces some of the frankly tedious complexity of building a character while enabling flexibility.

Solasta got a new trailer.

Last few days I've been thinking about why I actually dislike Deadfire overall. I got into some balance, mechanics discussions in Deadfire and about why Deadfire sales were not so good and I'm coming to somewhat simple conclusion that isometric rpgs, especially nowadays stopped being RPGs at its core. So what are they you ask me. Well they are dumbed down combat games. Let me expand on that statement by talking about classes design. We got all sorts of generic classes like rogues, fighters, barbarians, priests, paladins etc. All of these classes, multiclass or not are homogenised to be combat viable, all have some sort of damage, cc, single target, aoe, some sort of healing, damage mitigation, some have higher mobility than others (thats probably the biggest factor that differentiates classes). But all of these classes have no class unique soft skills nor ways to be rewarded for them in game. What I mean why that? When Im thinking about my idea of approach to isometric RPG and its classes I'd focus on RPG element of the class and invent ways to reward player for roleplaying his class. Let's say you're a priest? Ok. How about we throw some cursed items into the world so that when someone from party touches them they have some nasty debuff and only priest can help to remedy that, or bless some items. Or if you enter some area devoted to some deity, your party isn't very well off with that God and you get insanely debuffed and some fight breaks out in that place. As a priest you can actively pray/profane (as a channeled ability) to chosen deity to shield rest of the party from negative effects - this way you both roleplay a priest, he's doing something useful for combat, even tho its not strictly combat oriented ability like a buff,debuff and your party have to actively protect you from interruptions, otherwise you loose your protection and opposing deity throws balance into enemy favor. Such simple idea but for some reason void in nowadays rpgs. A priest in PoE, Deadfire and few other games that came out last few years is just a mage with spells that have more of sunshine animations. This could play into another class lets say rogue... you got this nasty place watched by a God you're not on good terms with, well you have a rogues and give lockpicking, sneaking, pickpocketing to them as unique class skills. Then have him open that secret passage that bypasses that room or sneak him in to steal Idol of the God and then profane, bless it with priest to loose its power. Examples multiply... Wizards - give them teleport spells etc Basicly whole game is about simple combat that is closer to hack'n'slash number crunching than RPG, the only RPG element is dialog which doesn't even have that much importance in the game - I mean the only time dialog options actually have any meaningful impact in the game is if you're paladin/priest and you have to follow your disposition, but even then it matters only for combat as it gives you some numeric advantage - you are not stripped of your beneficial powers as paladin for comitting crime against your god, you're not hunted down as a false priest. Dialog boils down to flavour and sometimes offers a way to grab XP without fighting and that would be fine if you had to be diplomat char with high charisma but no - you don't really need diplomacy to avoid combat most of the time. Actually most soft skills in Deadfire, Intimidation, Diplomacy, Religion, Arcane, Metaphysics function as placeholder dialog activators for non-violent quest resolutions and as a steroid for items. I'm wondering if PoE3 if it ever comes will find its way to be real RPG. PoE1 wasn't much better when it comes to the above but it was a first release and at that it actually had some atmosphere to it, dark catacombs that felt vile, cruel lord that hanged people on trees, some really dark quests. I always thought sequel to PoE1 would expand on RPG elements for combat like examples above, instead it tried to be more complex character builder, combat sandbox but ended up as a game without much RPG substance. In a way I'm glad it failed because maybe they will revise and turn into more oldschool RPG oriented ideas for next game. What do You think folks?

I think the main issue with SC rogue is not the SC part, but just how good MC is with this class as it gets almost all of the benefits without losing much.

It's out now

Dergano Ploi was born in Aedyr - his parents are elven Aedyrean Ambassador Laxon Ploi and deceased human Aerdyrean fleet officer Lt. Leanna Andra Ploi. Although Dergano Ploi had little exposure to the military world of his mother, he attended the fleet academy as well as university and earned an advanced degree in "philosophy of mind". He then served as the captain's counselor aboard the Aedyrian flagship "Venture" before joining the Shieldbearers of St. Elcga and leaving active military service. He is also trained in diplomacy, beguiling, languages and linguistics, often making him a valued first contact team member. Again, it's his skills in interpersonal contact which can help to turn the tides in difficult encounters. He's also able to give valuabe advices which will protect his team members as well as using tactical positioning, confusing and marking the enemy so that his fellow team members can deliver the killing blow. Dessert is his favorite part of a meal, and one of his greatest favorites and weaknesses is cookies and cakes. Paraphrasing famous Aedyrian philosopher-humorist Wirt Hogas, he always says "I never met a pastry I didn't like" - Rauatai Sweet Pie is his very favorite. He also likes to trow the dices and once beat some cretin smug in a celler in Stalwart at "Dozens". "If you're looking for my professional opinion as counselor: he's nuts." - Dergan Troi to his comrades when meeting Lord Raedric - =================================== Counselor Ploi =================================== Difficulty: PotD v. 3.03 -------------------------------------------------------------- Class: Paladin (Shieldbearer) -------------------------------------------------------------- Race: Wood Elf (alternative: Island Aumaua) -------------------------------------------------------------- Background: Aedyr - Colonist -------------------------------------------------------------- Stats (char creation): MIG: 15 CON: 08 DEX: 08 PER: 15 INT: 17 RES: 15 -------------------------------------------------------------- Skills: Stealth 0, Athl. 2, Lore 6, Mech. 0, Surv. 14 -------------------------------------------------------------- Talents (a=auto, r=recommended, !=important) Intense Flames ® Shielding Flames (!) Scion of Flame ® Shielding Touch ® Weapon Focus: Soldier Weapon & Shield Style Deep Faith Arms Bearer (!) Abilities Flames of Devotion Coordinated Attacks(!) Distant Advantage (a) Faith and Conviction (a) Inspiring Triumph ® Lay on Hands ® Sacred Immolation ® Reinforcing Exhortation (or Aegis of Loyality if no priest) Sworn Enemy (!) Zealous Focus ® --------------------------------------------------------------- Items (*=additional echantments by me; !=important, r=recommended): Weapon set 1: Cladhaliath (*durgan refined, *marking, *coordinating, *burning lash) & Outworn Buckler (*legendary, *durgan reinforced) Weapon set 2: arquebus Weapon set 3: arquebus Boots: Boot of Zealous Command Head: Munacra Arret Armor: Osric's Family Breastplate, then Ryona's Breastplate Neck: Cloak of Protection Belt: Coil of Resourcefulness Rings: Ring of Changing Heart, Ring of Deflection Hands: Spirit Spiral Quick slots: scrolls & figurines ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hi! Another colaboration of Jojobobo and me. This time I evolved a char concept around Jojobobo's idea of having a Shieldbearer who is kind of a diplomat and using Sworn Enemy + Zealous Focus + charm to generate a lot of charm-crits (because Sworn Enemy's ACC bonus works with everything). With this a paladin could somewhat substitute a cipher (when it comes to mind control) and add even more usefulness to his class. Since it only takes two abilities (that you can always make use of with a paladin) I tried to spin this idea of a diplomat/supporter/mind controller further and make this paladin a jack of all trades when it comes to support besides the usual Lay on Hands and stuff. So I threw together some of the nice build ideas that are already out, namely the Darcozzi Forward Obrserver (buff ACC) by Torm51, Sh!t's on Fire (high FoD damage) by limaxophobiacq and the Rauatai Captain (buff deflection) by SImpleEnigma - kudos to the authors of those builds. Check out their stuff, too. Then I shook the whole thing and out came this whizkid: 1. Boosting party's deflection (and other defenses): 1.a. Shielding Touch (+12 single ally) The Shieldbearer can use several abilites and items to raise his comrades' deflection. First of all there's Shielding Touch. To my surprise, despit being a passive addition to Lay on Hands, it works like Reinforcing Exhortation - this means it doesn't stack with other non-passive deflection buffs like Cautious Attack, Shields for the Faithful and also not with Reinf. Exhortation. But it's still good because team members that need healing from Lay on Hands usually are under attack - and that deflection comes in handy then. It's also good that it works on yourself (Reinf. Exh. doesn't). 1.b. Shielding Flames (+10 AoE): This is even better. When using FoD you will provide +10 deflection for nearly all party members (with high INT the AoE is realy big). +10 doesn't sound like too much - but it stacks with everything, and that's great. 1.c. Outworn Buckler (+5 to all defenses AoE) Everybody knows it's one of the best shields in the game. The herald bonus stucks with everything - with high INT you'll cover the whole party - awesome 1.d. Inspiring Triumph (+7 to all defenses AoE) Another AoE deflection buff. On kill you will raise deflection by +7 in the same AoE as Shielding Flames and it also stacks with everything! So when you shoot somebody with intense FoD + Scion of Flame + Sworn Enemy and he dies the whole party will instantly get +17 deflection - nice. Later, with Sacred Immolation, it will be triggeres all the time. It's an awesome synergy. 1.e. Reinforcing Exhortation It seems to be better than Shielding Touch since both don't stack, but seriously you can't have enough deflections boosts because they don't last forever. Once a shielding touch expires or if you want to give deflection only without healing, this is good. If you feel it's too much redundance with Shielding Toch, use Aegis of Loyality instead - it beautifully fits the theme and is very useful if you don't have a priest (which I had). All in all you can pile up +47 deflection on a single target, +22 in a big AoE and +12 to all other defenses in the same AoE. This guy turns even squishy party members into (tiny) tanks. 2. Providing ACC for an ally 2.a. Coordinated Attacks (+10 single ally) It's like marking - if you attack an enemy and one of your party members does this as well, he will get +10 ACC which will stack with everything else. 2.b. Marking Weapon (+10 single ally) Like above. It's like Coordinated Attacks on a weapon. Stacks with everything 2.c. Zealous Focus (+6 AoE) What can I say - you know it. You will boost the ACC of a single ally by 26 points if you attack thge same target. If you flank, you will provide the equivalent of 36 points of ACC. This is extremely helpful against tough enemies which are difficult ot hit or to disable. With this guy, annoying dragons and such with affliction like prone, stun etc. is easy. 3.: Crit-charming or -dominating 3.a. Whisper of Treason With Munacra Arret you can get an early item with 3 uses per rest which has fast cast. It also has +10 ACC which is nice. I took Enigma's Charm first but retrained because it has this annoying 5 sec delay and is an average cast. I seldomly used it, so I took something else instead. Later you can buy Spirit SPiral which will give you 3 more per rest. 3.b. Sworn Enemy +15 ACC for your charms, fast cast, no hit roll, lasts for the whole encounter, has an awesome range and also will give you +20% damage when the time comes that your charms wear off - nice! 3.c. Zealous Focus: +6 ACC for your charms 3.d. Ring of Changing Heart: the dominate effect has no ACC bonus and it's only 2/rest, BUT it can be cast outside of combat, and that can be a big plus. 3.e. Distant Advantage: the main reason (besides the background) I took Wood Elf. +5 ACC for your charms. SInce Sworn Enemy has such a long range, most of the time the enemy you want to charm is far away so this works. And what most people forget: it also works with the edges of your Sacred Immolation if the AoE is big enough and also gives you +5 deflection and reflex against distant enemies. This is good against spells and arrows as well as wing slams or breath attacks. You can pile up +36 ACC for your Whispers and +26 for your Dominations. It nearly always crits. A crit with Whisper oT with high INT leads to a charm that lasts longer than 20 sec. By the way I insta-crit-charmed all dragons (which were not immune) right at the start of the encounter which makes those fights a lot easier. 4.: Killing Stuff 4.a. Distant Advantage: with your arquebus shots you will have +5 ACC as well as for enemies which are at the edges of your Sacred Immolation. 4.b. Zealous Focus +6 ACC for everything, including FoD and Sacred Immolation. 4.c. FoD +50% burning lash and +20 ACC with that two arquebuseses. 4.d. Intense Flames +25% lash for your FoD arquebuses 4.e. Burning lashes on all your weapons 4.f. Scion of Flame Boosts the cumulated burning lashes from 100% to 120% - most of the time your additional burn damage will be higher than the original damage from the arquebus. With this, killing a weak foe and triggering Shielding Flames as well as Inp. Triumph is easy. It also boosts yout Immolation of course. 4.g. Coordinating on your Cladhaliath Since you always want to attack a foes that another team member attacks in order to trigger marking and stuff (see above), coordinating is one of the best enchantaments for you. Sure, your spear is not a dps tool and you are fairly slow without any big dmg mods, but the high ACC and the +25% bonus damage are nice nonetheless. 4.h. Mob Justice or The Mercyless Hand or Second Skin (optional) Mob Justice not only adds to the ACC of spear and coordinating, but also lets you get Cladhaliath a lot earlier. Tkis also counts if the paladin is not the MC. The Merciless Hand can balance out the lower crit damage of arquebuses. Since your high ACC with FoD often leads to crits, this talent would be a good pick. Second Skin is not so superuseful here, but if you don't want to use Cladhaliath (or want if for a different char) then Shame & Glory is your only single handed melee alternative. This also works of course if the paladin is not the MC, like with Mob Justice/Dozens. 4.i. Runner's Wounding Shot (optional) When using an Island Aumua, you can take Runner's Wounding Shot and an additional arquebus. Skip Deep Faith then. This will deal similar damage than an FoD shot - instead of 90% burniung lash you will have 80% raw DoT. With the Coil of Resourcefulness your switching works well without any talent. 5.: Tanking Defenses are great (as always with paladins). With Ryona's Breastplate and Outworn Buckler as well as Weapon & Shield Style you can take over the role of the main tank or a second tank or play an offtank role, it doesn't matter much. Your defenses are good enough to tank dragons for a short time (until the charms or the disabling works). Alltogether you will have a very sturdy frontliner who can - boost deflection/all defenses up to +47(single), +27/+12 (AoE) - raise the ACC up to 36 (flank+single) and +16 (flank+AoE) - charm up to 6 times per rest and dominate 2 times rest - most of them crits - tank & kill Enjoy!

Galactic treaty!

Nothing exists in a vacuum. If people blame Trump for a lady feeding fish tank cleaner to herself and her husband, and mainstream outlets did, then it seems inevitable that someone refusing hydroxychloroquine would be attendant to all the bad press. We can pretend that Trump's praise of the drug will cause people to clamor for it but the media hating on it won't, but that's too clever by half. As for policies? I think border security is important, although I don't like how he talks about it and much of his language. I think his identification of China as a global threat was not only right, but also timely in light of recent events. As far as the economy, I don't like the isolationism, but I do like the the tax cuts and the supreme court picks. Ironically, while I think the Kavanaugh attacks based on decades old unsubstantiated claims were despicable, I actually don't think he was the best pick. Mostly, aside from policies, I see Trump as the way to break and then remake the media landscape. It's still a longshot, but it's possible. Either we have to have a media that isn't so absolutely vainglorious and partisan or we need people to be less invested in the media and searching for facts and being better at sifting through what they hear. Frankly, Trump has a good chance of crushing the media. In the long run, it's almost certain to happen. My worry in that regard is what would replace it. To borrow from the famous quote, I don't want to see the four or five media tyrants in New York torn down only to be replaced by four or five million media tyrants from across the country. Anyhow, I've derailed this long enough. I'll let my comments stand and look forward to reading replies as I have the chance.

I agree with you completely, thelee. Ideally the game would be balanced in a way that doesn't sacrifice playability at any skill level. I find this discussion fascinating as it relates the metagame experience which I am only just beginning to understand. I also agree that fighter resource regen on interrupt is great for tactician. But this feature is also a bit mysterious. I try to interrupt with knockdown/mule kick when an opponent is beginning to activate an ability or spell. However, when the attack is successful and I knock them down, I do not always get discipline back. This may be due to timing, but it does not seem very reliable when attacking a single opponent. Needless to say, it clearly works better with AOE attacks, such as a mule kick with Citzal's. This points to what is probably an obvious point, that tactician is best in multiclass builds.

He has been pushing the drug for a while now and the only two responses Trump has to pretty much anything are to double down on it or to deny it. He's never wrong just alternatively correct. Apparently we have to accept this and it's okay because... reasons. No idea where he got the idea from in the first place but I'll give him credit for volunteering himself to be the guinea pig.

37 Senators voted against an amendment that would have stopped the FBI from being able to seize your internet search and browsing history Wonder how many of them own stock in VPN providers.

sure. it doesn't even need to be an AL9 spell. if the #1 spell you need to cast is another slicken, then that's what you're better off doing. in magic: the gathering there are plenty of effects that cost you mana and a card to get another card. they can be extremely powerful because they effectively thin your deck into the cards you actually want. similarly, a psion with ancestor's memory is an extra copy of N number of your best spells and effects and the cost is minimal (hence why i keep saying psion instead of generic cipher - psions have close to absolute resource generation, whereas a normal cipher has greater possibilities of getting screwed and unable to generate focus). They are your best spells and effects regardless of what they actually are - you can decide at the time what they are, whether it's just to spam some high level wizard spells, start off a priest combo, or just give your fighter/rogue extra interrupts. I'm not making an absolute argument here. Changing brilliant down (or increasing the cost somehow) reduces that N and can bring it into line: at 12s (or with restrictions) it's merely very good instead of the best cipher power available. Even just making it AL9 (that would constitute increasing the cost) would make it more balanced simply because you limit it to single-class ciphers (on top of the extra focus cost). (edit - but this all still dodges around the fact that Brilliant is the only tier 3 inspiration that requires such balancing - i would argue virtually noone would think a 12second robust inspiration with cast time on a single ally target would be so very good as an AL9 cipher effect) edit - as a historical note for the unaware, Brilliant used to regen a resource every 3 seconds. Imagine this on a chanter invocation that affects your entire party and one a multiclass chanter could even pick up - chanters in 1.0 were stupid (along with all items and consumables being OP). Given how much I generally respect JE Sawyer and the OBS crew, it was frankly stunning that anyone thought this was remotely balanced at any point. The six-second resource was the extent of OBS's efforts to balance it for when it came back as Ancestor's Memory. i appreciate this perspecitve but i want to use an analogy to blizzard's balancing efforts. they recognize that there are multiple "levels" of play, ranging from just-starting to esports-player. Different skill levels will get wildly different things out of e.g. starcraft 2 or warcraft 3 - rookie or lower-level players may play games/units/strategies that don't even register for esports players. They don't skimp out on a nerf or a buff that affects one tier if such skimping negatively impacts another tier. similarly - even if there are many (even most) people who are really unable to take advantage of a degenerate combo, it doesn't mean we should just ignore it if it poisons the metagame at the top. the best solution would in fact be to tweak tactician s.t. it still gets great rewards for newer/rookie players while not being degenerate for min-maxers. this is what shops like blizzard (and to a certain extent wizards of the coast) do when they're at their best - going back to magic: the gathering, wizards will make tons of cards they know will have no impact whatsoever on pro constructed play because they know it'll work great in scenes that lower-skill or more casual players play in (like commander, drafts, pauper, etc). but i would argue even without resource regen, tacticians really have a great ability already - fighter resource regen on an interrupt. this even works great in multiclass. though this all really hypothetical anyway because OBS isn't going to do any balance patching here, so like you say we're just talking about making voluntary balance mods.

AMD to create "one way ticket" BIOS upgrade path for X470 and B450 motherboards to support AM5 Zen 3 CPUs.

Ok, I must have misread that as meaning they don't count toward the 5 member limit. I was guessing that the whole reason for the 5 member limit was that you could add Sidekicks on top of that.

Balanced shield is great for monks. You get a big boost in tankiness at the expense of only a slight dip in DPS. It's definitely worth having for the more challenging battles.

As a noob myself, perhaps it's worth pointing out that this isn't really a problem except for those with in depth understanding of game mechanics, and who thus have the know-how to exploit opportunities such as those discussed in this thread. For example, tactician/bloodmage is one of my favorite combinations to play. And this is not because it is particularly OP for a noob such as myself. Indeed, for noobs builds such as arcane knights are much more OP, since they are so durable and yet dish out serious damage. I like tactician/bloodmage because it presents a challenge, at least for those of us with less depth of understanding. For one thing, it is a somewhat mysterious build. For example, why does my tactician/bloodmage begin ship battles with brilliant, only to have it cancelled out almost immediately? It is also somewhat of a challenge, at least for someone with middling experience like me, to trigger brilliant. There are many battles in which I have not gotten it to trigger until the last enemy is dead; it triggers and then is immediately cancelled out. There's also some risk in this build, since you have to be careful about being flanked. I understand how to trigger it, and often manage to do so, using chillfog, phantom foes, etc., but there are still some mysteries, for me at least. For example, I do not yet fully understand how summons affect my chances of triggering brilliant. Importantly, brilliant is easiest to trigger when it is most needed, when fighting a single boss. So while developing a mod to tone down brilliant might be a great idea, and those who are interested could download it, such changes are not necessary for many of us.

I mean, now I think you're just being willfully obtuse. Brilliant isn't that relevant apart from megabosses solely because the rest of the game expects you to be able to beat it without using Brilliant, so yeah, you don't need it. It doesn't change the fact that it's super good. 70 focus and casting time - you can do that basically at the start of a fight on a wizard or priest or druid and just spam the #1 spell you have the rest of the fight; unless you're a level 20 party against xuarips, it's not bad action economy it is optimal action economy because now you can cast the perfect spell over and over, isntead of going from your #1 spell to your #2 spell, etc. Brilliant isn't borderline OP, it is OP. I don't think you fully thought this one out - this makes tactician even better than before. A wizard with slicken will have an effect far stronger than anything brilliant could've given them.

cipher is more balanced around regenerating resource - a caster like priest or wizard is not. so "just" transferring the regenerating resource is powerful. A standard SC psion takes 15 seconds to regenerate an AL9 spell - which are already weaker than other caster AL9s because they are balanced on being able to use them more than a couple times in one fight. Another caster with brilliant will regenerate an AL9 spell every 6 seconds and their AL9s are like Magran's Might, Call of Rymrgand, Missile Salvo, Corrosive Skin, Petrification, Tornado, Maelstrom, etc. We shouldn't be making balancing decisions based on megabosses. They are so far the pale of a typical encounter. The fact that you can use brilliant to make fights against them feasible says more about just how stupidly good brilliant is, because no other inspiration will carry you in a fight like that. To your point, these days for every megaboss fight, I bring along a chanter (or occasionally a cipher). I would not consider most of the chanters or ciphers I run with or provided by OBS to be very powerful or obscene (except for the one time I ran a herald), it's solely because chanter's ability to have infinite sustain and summons that overwhelms all other factors when you're talking about doing literally thousands of damage to an enemy. It says very little about the rest of the game, because most other fights don't last long enough where being able to summon a dragon or animated weapons umpteen times matters at all. Heck - I equip everyone with xbows or arbalests against HoW, and I literally would never would do that in the rest of the game. Megabosses shouldn't be considered normal, or really even fights - they're puzzles.

Dont let the door hit you.

When I saw the Duos in the beta I was wondering if they'd get unique dialogue or something. Glad to see they will! This is the most beautiful thing I've seen all year. xD

That's a good question. While the game's setting is an "original" one, it uses DnD 5th edition. I am not familiar with the system, but doesn't it grant bonuses to higher ground? I remember BG3 mentioning a double roll if you have a high ground, but I don't know if it is their addition, or comes from DnD5. In the demo they released when crowdfunding the game, the verticality seemed pretty important in both exploration and combat. The end of the demo had a combat enounter with spiders, who could climb the walls, using it to flank the backline and attack from shadows. Light sources seemed pretty important, with characters in darkness being harder to hit. EDIT. I hope they will work on optimization before the release. The beta they released a while ago, was unplayable on my laptop. Speaking of optimization. I started playing Shadow Tactics before Desp3 release, and I was pleasantly surprised by how well it run. On release, I could barely run it with all settings on low and smaller resolution. Now it runs smoothly with all settings high. I didn't expect that. Hopefully Desp3 will get a decent optimization from a get go.

I suspect it will still trigger since the attack roll should still be done? Not sure though. A good cipher weapon is Bittercut. It has dual dmg (corrode/slash), its +20% dmg from Spirit of Decay always applies (even for the slash dmg), it comes with +20% dmg as all sabres and if you also put a corrosive lash on it you profit twice from Spirit of Decay (first you'll get +20% additive dmg bonus and then the lash gets raised from 25% to 30%). Anything with speed and dual damage is also good (Last Blade of the White Forge, Strike Hard). If you later equip a shield with Durgan Steel you can reach 0 recovery with Time Parasite, Vulnerable Attack and durganized mail armor. Which is a great dps boost and at the same time you benefit from the shield's defense. I personally also like Hours of St. Rumbalt because it's obtainable early and stys being good. Cipher's don't have Full Attacks so picking a two handed weapon is ok. Justice (Raedric's Blade) has a "secret" second 10% crushing lash which stacks with its 25% crushing lash. Since lashes (except wounding) also generate focus this is a good cipher weapon. Often the smaller lash can't make it through enemies' DR so lowering it with Body Attunement helps a lot in the long run. But usually I think speed enchantments are the best thing for ciphers. Keeping Fireband as backup is still a good idea. It works with any weapon focus and once you are in White March it can be of great effect againt all those iceish enemies.

<ignore>

Just ending a long weekend here in Canuck-land. Grieving the death of one of our Canadian Snowbirds and grateful for the many ways in which the curve is flattening in my context ...

I liked the Silmarillion much more than Lord of the Rings (which I also enjoyed). As long as you know what you're getting they're pretty good. As Gromnir likes to point out, it's Tolkien's idea of what he wanted British mythology to be and therefore differs from usual (fantasy) novels. Like apparently everyone else here I used to read a lot as a kid. I was particularily fond of Story Teller magazine because it helped me to learn to read early. Story Teller and playing on a bootlegged Atari 2600 knockoff ar some of my earliest childhood memories. Everything else that I read was very much non-fiction. I had books about a wide variety of subjects, from space to biology to the at the time inescapable dinosaur craze and of course my favorite, a book called "How does that work?" - a couple hundred wonderful pages detailing how various day to day technology works, from ballpoint pens to locks that I must have read tens of times. When I was nine I didn't read War and Peace like LC, I read the MS DOS 5.0 manual. That was a long and dry read too. Heh. Probably not much easier to make sense of at that age either. Yeah, I was that weird kid at school that even the other weird kids made fun of. *shrug* Still read a lot. Lots of tech stuff too, mostly for work.

I've checked. By the way, there is also my Dire Straits cover band : the Direballs.

I was an avid reader from a very early age. I think I was around 9 when I found parents copy of War and Peace and managed to read and mostly "get" it (not my fave book tho). Tried to read bro's copy of The Silmarillion at maybe age 10-11. Didn't get it at all, didn't finish. My memory says I then tried his copy of The Hobbit and it was too dull so I put it down. His style annoys me. Even reading LotR as an adult, I enjoy the story and some of his craftmanship (if that makes sense), but the writing style ... is annoying. Edit: interestingly, Guy Gavriel Kay helped edit The Silmarillion ... who is the author of one of my fave stand alone fantasy novels (Tigana).

And then Bruce Dickinson screamed at the end.

By the way: "Sexual Archetype Force" is the name of my new Manowar coverband.

Here's a thought that may be unpopular, but I'm going to share it anyway. One of the things I loved about POE 2 was the diversity of the characters and the uncompromising representation of foreign culture. The focus on the Huana, the Rauatai, and the Vailian Republic presented factions which were almost completely ethnic as the focus of the player's journey. The accents were all foreign, the Huana sounded native, so did some of the Rauatai. The most underrepresented accent and phenotype in Pillars of Eternity 2 were the usual euro-centric characters. In talking to some of my peers what I kept hearing was how DIFFERENT everything was, even Xoti's southern American accent was commented on. I think the story and character development of POE2 is superb, more so because of the attention to detail for these factions. Critically, it has also been recognised as having very high production values and attention to world building, environment and storytelling. Looking through this thread there is a lot about this difference, and talk about traditional Fantasy settings. POE2 is a Fantasy/Sci-Fi setting that is extremely popular now and has worked very well for several franchises. I'm proposing that this talk about " Setting" refers to something else. The one area where POE2 deviates from the norm is a massive underrepresentation of eurocentric, hetero-normal characters. So when so many people talk about the setting one has to wonder If this is what they really mean. In all other ways Pillars of Eternity's world is as fully realised as a new IP can be and was an interesting philosophical journey across Eora. I think perhaps the team needs to start looking at some uncomfortable realities about their market and the work they created. Replace the Huana with white elves, the accents with either British or American, the Vailians as eurocentric bankers, and the male characters not trying to jump the bones of a male protagonist at the drop of a hat and I think the reception would have been a bit different. I'm putting it out there that this was the reason the audience did not take to PoE 2. When people talk about "Setting" or "Different" this is what they mean. And it is something that most persons either would not realise, or simply would not admit. However in discussing it with several people, it's one common theme I've found between the complaints, and the thing that most have great difficulty in articulating.

So someone I know on Facebook posted this crazy theory. They are a school counselor. Granted they are are a school counselor in Florida, but still...

The only reasons to go Single Class Rogue are Vanishing Strikes and Gambit. And maybe Kalakoth's Freezing Rake for Trickster. Vanishing Strikes because its invisibility will not break(!). This means as long as it lasts you can do free Backstabs (and Assassinations as Assassin). Its base duration is rahter short, but you can prolong it with lots of stuff: Salvation of Time, Ooblit pet, lots of INT, items and food which prolong benefical effects and so on. So basically you will dish out lots of damage while being untouchable. It's quite expensive though so you can't spam it. That's where Gambit comes in: Gambit will refund its Guile cost if you crit. It's a Full Attack so it's best to use two weapons for having the chance to crit twice. If you even use a weapon with multi-projectile or multihit attacks like Sun & Moon or Hand mortars then it's rel. easy to do a lot of Gambit attacks because you will have a lot of chances for refunds. Gambit also gets a damage bonus based on the Guile you have left. Funnily enough Gambit refunds Guile "internally" when you crit while using it but will cap the refund to 4 afterwards. But while your Guile climbs up internally so does the dmg bonus. I had mortar shots with Gambit gettng over +200% dmg (just from Gambit alone) because I shot at a lot of weak enemies with an invisible Assassin (because I activated Vanishing Strikes before). The other PL8/9 abilites of Rogues are meh in my opinion and I would say that most Rogues are better off as multiclass for over 75% of the game. Here's an example of a lvl 20 SC Assassin with the setup I mentioned above (he kills the dummies really fast. Those have a ton of HP) :

Heh, I started playing Final Fantasy XIV yesterday (the free thing). Just wanted to check it out, because boredom, but now I'm kinda starting to dig it. Main issue right now are all the fetch quests, though. Kill this, kill that, walk here, walk there,... However, the main quest seems interesting, so I've decided to follow it some more and ignore all the boring filler.

What is the future of the US Marine Corps The short answer seems to be a return to it's roots as a rapid reaction force. The Corps was never intended to be a self contained war fighting entity. Beginning with WW2 it became that and has performed well at it. But it is a small service. A tool for a specific purpose. IMO it makes sense to use a wrench to turn a bolt and a hammer to drive a nail.

I don't disagree with the OP that an answer saying to Tekehu that he is not your Type/Genre/Specie could have been better, but I agree with the previous post that the level of rant is a bit exagerated for such a minor problem. I still feel a bit forced that every NPC is bisexual. I have troubles to imagine Eder or Xoti as Bisexuals, even if I can imagine a drunken Serafen to be open minded. However, we might have to consider that being "straight" is not a thing on Eora, and all this is about preferences toward individuals rather than a clear line. A reason for this would be that a large part of the potential sexuality on Eora is non-reproductive cause of the different Kith Species. So people might be a bit more open-minded about same sex preferences because it is just another kind of non-reproductive sexuality. There could have been a Taboo on both, but it's believable that if there is no Taboo on relashionship between species, or even that no one seems to notice them, it could perfectly be the same for being attracted by a specific gender. EDIT : not to mention you can potentially carry the soul of someone from the opposite sex. Aloth doesn't even complain that Iselmyr is a woman. He just complains that she has bad manner.

Those are similar concerns I have for DOS1, actually, which is a bit disappointing. I wouldn't have expected them to drop that items themselves have levels, and as such are that powerful; e.g. a dagger from Level 2-3ish does like twice-ish the damage than its level 1 counterpart. However, perhaps in terms of exploration I would have them expected to do a bit more open. It's the same in DOS1 really, as you can see from These level maps. If damage/items scale this hard, it's no wonder that the game plays like it does. Possible spoiler inside: https://imgur.com/a/uK4zS#KEJXSrE I'd like DOS1 probably better as a tactical combat experience akin to Blackguards. No less as the inventory management and looting is perhaps the most tedious I have ever seen in an RPG, personally -- and this includes pre-Infinity Era 1990s games. Each char has ist own inventory (being a co-op game) plus you are constantly going through all that stuff as your gear eventually breaks or is being outlevelled. I'd like to see a timer of how much minutes an average player spends on the inventory screen and compare that to your average RPG. I'm betting all I have it would go through the roof. Good thing is that they seemed to have improved on their world building, that unlike the first part the freedom isn't as much about how you tackle combat due to reworked dialogue and quest systems -- and honestly, their presentations of it all in terms of "pen&paper like freedom" (which is their end goal) are amazing. All that praise they've received for the 2nd game in particular has to come from somewhere, which why I'm still interested (and have serious hopes for BG3). DOS1 was a make or break game developed on a budget; on BG3 they can go all-in now (plus have to stick to WOTC's rules).

Finally scored some powdered yeast! HUZZAH!

How on earth do you become a fanboy of a faceless brand? Why not just do yourself a favour and purchase whatever is the best at the moment of purchase? Right now the overwhelming majority of tech experts recommend Ryzen, your fanboing won't change that. I just recently switched from Intel to AMD myself. It's not that difficult, I promise.

I solved it. For everyone else with the problem: I needet to inspect the item (Triangle button) in the inventory. After that I could interact with the incinerator.