Aron Times

I'm not sure how strong cipher souls are, but Thaos can only possess the weak willed. Or the no-willed, in the case of the hollow born he possessed during the Baelreach Incident. I'm leaning towards the idea that Thaos, being the charismatic cleric thst he is, whipped the crowd into a furor and buffed them enough so they'd overwhelm the Sanitarium and Hadret House. Heck, he could've posed as a regular cleric of Woedica, urging the crowd to take rightful and just vengeance (Woedica's portfolio) against the soul butchers of the Sanitarium and the soul readers of Dunryd Row. He gets to preach his goddess's ideals and take out the two organizations who were best equipped to fight the Leaden Key. Three birds with one stone.

Don't quote me on this, but someone did some tests and found that the lash enchantments (25% bonus damage of that element type) are affected by the appropriate resistance at 25%. For example, if your burning lash deals 4 damage, and the enemy has 4 fire resistance, you deal 3 fire damage to that enemy (since 25% of 4 fire resist is 1 fire resist). My answer is inaccurate. Look at the posts directly below mine for the right answer.

There's so many things you can try in PoE, like Triple Crown or even Triple Crown Solo. To date, no one has managed to do the latter legitimately, as everyone who has done it has admitted to exploiting the ability to quit while in combat to be able to reload. Even Josh Sawyer admits that TCS might be impossible to do legitimately (Josh Sawyer allegedly admitted exploiting to get the achievement for himself). Triple Crown might be easier (relatively) to do legitimately, though. By the way... Triple Crown = Path of the Damned + Expert Mode + Trial of Iron Triple Crown Solo = Path of the Damned + Expert Mode + Trial of Iron + No Companions Other Than Calisca/Heodan

Some classes don't get a lot of class-specific dialogue options, but NPCs will react to their class. It's just that you have no way of knowing which NPCs react to your class/race/background/culture/etc. without knowing ahead of time. For example, the only time I got a [Fighter] dialogue option was in The Old Queen and the New King quest, where you had to get the lion and the bear to fight each other. Fighters have a dialogue option which says, "If the bear/lion isn't willing to leave his/her favorable terrain and engage the other one, he/she doesn't deserve to be the Champion of Galawain." For Merchant, it came up three times IIRC, first with Calisca, second with Vicenzo the Vailian merchant, and third with Ondra. The third time was quite unique because Rymngrand was pissed off at me for solving his quest peacefully, but Ondra intervened because she loved how I was rules lawyering the situation like a real merchant.

QFT. I've had several fights end in my favor because the enemy caster CC'd his/her own party and my frontliners managed to make their saves (or rather the caster failed to beat their defenses).

And Thaos indeed led the charge. He probably buffed the mob and allowed them to overwhelm the ciphers in Hadret House. Lady Webb was the last to fall, either because she was the most powerful or Thaos saved her for last. The only survivor was the halfling orlan cipher who just happened to be out eating at the time (it was either his day off or he was on break). If you return to Hadret House later in the game, you'll find him trying to recover the documents left behind. Presumably, there are other Dunryd Row agents scattered all over Dyrwood that he can regroup with.

Dunryd Row IS heavily guarded. All of the NPCs there are ciphers, including Lady Webb herself. It's just that they got overwhelmed by the combined forces of the angry mob + the Leaden Key (who probably steered the mob towards Dunryd Row). It's one of the main concepts of the World of Darkness. An individual vampire/mage/werewolf is powerful, but will go down to 1039848739 mortals attacking him at the same time, especially if those mortals have access to modern technology like explosives, machineguns, flamethrowers, etc. That's why vampires have to rule behind the scenes instead of out in the open. I'm pretty sure that Dunryd Row tried to defend itself during the riots, but eventually fell to the sheer number of rioters and Leaden Key agents blending in with them.

You get to affect the lives of people you encounter along the way depending on how you act. They don't get mentioned in the ending, but simply appear as background characters as you progress through the game. Nonton and Ingroed (he killed Ingroed's abusive husband in Gilded Vale) - If you took the benevolent option and let them go and let them keep their money so they could move out of Gilded Vale, they later show up in the Brackenbury Inn. They thank you for your kindness, and how it has allowed them to start a new life together. Seren (the high class hooker) - If you paid her the full price for the Glanfathan amulet, without using any of the persuasion options, you later find her in Brackenbury, having quit her job and moved to the fancy neighborhood. Gordy (the kid who wanted the March Steel dagger) - If you handed over the dagger without having Survival 4, the town crier later mentions a tragic accident involving a kid who lost several fingers because he played with a very sharp dagger. If you teach him how to properly handle a dagger (Survival 4), you later encounter him and his father, with the latter asking Gordy where he found the dagger. Gordy tells him that he got it from you, and his father rightfully gets angry at how irresponsible you've been to give his son the equivalent of a Damascus Steel blade in real life. I took the Diplomatic route and convinced Gordy's father that I was in the right, though he did tell the kid that he was going to keep the dagger until Gordy grew up so he wouldn't accidentally kill or maim himself (which is exactly what happens if you didn't have Survival 4 when you gave it to him). Danielle/Danica/Whatever her name is Doemenel (the woman that wants you to kill Vicenzo the shady Vailian merchant) - If you defend Vicenzo, she'll attack you and you'll probably kill her. Much later, you encounter her fiance, who is rightfully furious that you killed his love. IIRC, he doesn't say anyting about how you shouldn't have messed with the Doemenels, simply that he's going to kill you for killing the woman he loved. That's right, even evil has loved ones. Remember, folks, it's not just the destination that matters, but the journey as well. The game reacts very well to your choices all throughout. They just don't get mentioned in the ending because they're no longer relevant by then.

I think I got the good animancy ending because I had a high Honest reputation (either Honest 2 or Honest 3, probably the latter). When you spill the beans about the Leaden Key to the trial, someone asks (probably the Dozens rep), "Why the **** should we believe you?" and I answered, "My word/honor is my life." and then the reaction text was [Honest 2/3] Although most people would consider what you said to be utterly ridiculous, your reputation for honesty made the people at the trial actually take you seriously.

Pantaloons!

Here's a list with minimal spoilers on how the companions are unique in their own way. 1. The wizard companion's armor increases the AoE radius of abilities. 2. The fighter companion's armor revives the wearer 1/rest or 1/encounter (can't remember which). 3. The priest companion starts with an enchanted staff and an intriguing backstory. 4. The chanter companion starts with the first real gun in the game as well as a nice hat. 5. The ranger companion has a unique animal companion. 6. The cipher companion... Um... has a real interesting backstory? 7. The paladin companion is of a nonplayable race and paladin order. 8. The druid companion has a unique spiritform.

tl;dr: The biggest threat to a Triple Crown party is the game itself. The Order's first ever combat encounter started poorly, much like the real Order's first encounter in On the Origin of PCs (the first prequel book to the series). In OOPCs, the party was unused to fighting together and ended up dealing a ton of friendly fire damage to each other. In PoE, my party almost died due to poor positioning, with the ranged fighters stuck in front and unable to retreat because the melee fighters were blocking them. Also, if they tried to retreat, the wolves would get disengagement attacks against them. Eventually, I prevailed, and managed to take out not just the wolves, but the bandits that held the Tenfrith hostage (he's the cook of the Black Hound Inn). I then went into the bear cave to finish a side quest. Again, my main enemy was poor positioning and accidental disengagement. The latter is caused primarily by the difficulty in telling apart which party members are selected or not. Selected party members have very slightly brighter green circles under them compared to unselected party members. They also have a very subtle golden outline on their portrait, but this isn't very noticeable in the heat of battle. I kept moving several party members by accident and triggering disengagement attacks because I didn't know that I had them selected. I absolutely hate having to fight the game mechanics like this, and this needs to be changed. It should be more obvious which characters you have selected and which ones aren't. Also, the left click to select and left click to attack or move control scheme (Command & Conquer style) is terrible because it's too easy to order a character to move and eat disengagement attacks when you're trying to select another character. I know it's classic RTS controls, but there's a very good reason why modern RTS games (as well as RPGs which use RTS controls like PoE) go with a left click to select and right click to attack or move control scheme (i.e. Warcraft style) because it makes it much harder to screw up. In Magran's Fork, I ran into a large group of wolves. It wasn't much of a challenge, and the only reason I had a downed party member was because of accidental disengagement (I thought I had someone else selected when I ordered him to attack another target). I've found that Elan's summoned spectre synergizes very well with Haley's Sneak Attack, allowing the couple to pick off tough targets one by one. For the nth time, I lost a party member because of accidental disengagement. I then ran into a wizard and her mercenary paladins. They weren't much of a threat. Vaarsuvius's Slicken spell pretty much ended the fight before it even began, though the wizard did manage to take out Haley with a Necrotic Lance right before she got killed. And finally, the Order encounters a pack of boars. I actually took out a lot of them but the survivors managed to surround and take out Roy and then kill Durkon. With my front lines down, the boars managed to take out the rest of the party. This was harder than it should've been because the non-transparent trees blocked my view of my party members. When Durkon was about to fall, I tried moving Elan to the front lines because he's my third tankiest character. However, I didn't notice that Elan was using a scepter and not his rapier, and that he was all the way in the back of the group, thus, Vaarsuvius and Haley tried to tank the boars while Belkar and Elan stood in the back. To sum it up: The reason why the Order of the Stick died wasn't because they had terrible builds. Their builds were actually pretty good, and could easily take out all of their previous encounters if not for stupid interface and control elements. From the difficulty in telling apart which characters are selected, to figuring out where each character is standing due to lack of background transparency, to the accidental disengagement due to the left click to select, left click to move controls, truly, the group's greatest threat wasn't the monsters that it faced, but rather the game itself.

I think it's hubris to think that your character's actions matter all the time and always get the desired result. You don't always get your way even if you did everything right. Also, sometimes, doing something that seems monumentally stupid at the time (blowing up the Heritage Hill tower) actually results in a good ending. We've been spoiled too much by games where our character's main quest directly affects the entire plot and that doing the right thing always results in the right ending. That's not how real life works. Heck, you're not even THE Watcher but rather A Watcher. There are three Watchers in the game that are known to exist at the same time: the PC, Maerwald, and the unknown "fake" Watcher that knew exactly where to send Sagani so she'd run into you. There's even several Watchers mentioned in the collector books, some who even worked for the Sanitarium when it first opened. Watchers are rare, I'll give you that, butk their existence is common knowledge. It's just that the fake con men who pretend to be Watchers far outnumber the real ones.

The stat distribution is a compromise between lore and functionality. Also, I have a rule of never dumping a stat, which means no stat below 10 at all. And finally, the journey matters as much as the destination, so if this attempt fails, then it simply means that I need to try something else. Unlike some of you, I'm doing this both for myself and for bragging rights with others. I've always played legitimately in my TCS attempts, and after four failed attempts, I decided to go for the lesser achievement that is Triple Crown, which is much less luck based than TCS.

I actually swapped Haley's and Belkar's starting weapons. Haley started with dual daggers, while Belkar started with a hunting bow. It's not a war bow, but I'll switch Haley over to a war bow once I get enough cash (right now I blew all my money hiring the rest of the party: 1250 gold). The screenshots are from the end of character creation, right before I click Done and the new adventurer pops in in the game world. I also bought a greatsword for Roy at the start of the game. Big mistake, as going for a one-handed weapon, especially the mace, with its 3 armor penetration, would've been better. I found myself regularly missing with the greatsword, whereas in previous Path of the Damned playthroughs, I consistently hit with my single mace.

I mentioned this in my first post. Roy is a statistical anomaly, in that he has high stats all around. I simply don't have enough stat points for him in PoE, so I decided to build him as a traditional PoE tank fighter because I actually want to win the game. I'd like to point out that the actual Order of the Stick is made up of very suboptimal characters, and wouldn't be viable for a Triple Crown attempt if I made them as close to canon as possible: 1. Roy is a single-class fighter in a world where taking more than two levels of fighter is a trap. On the other hand, he either got lucky with his stat rolls or his player cheated, because he has no dump stats at all, like one of my older characters when I first started playing D&D. IIRC, I didn't roll anything lower than 14, which is insane. 2. Durkon uses a weapon his class can't normally use (warhammer), and he wastes his abilities on healing spells when he could go full CoDzilla and wtfpwn the enemy. 3. Elan is too stupid to use his class's plethora of mind-affecting abilities and spells to their full potential, and he wastes his time trying to do chip damage with his rapier which could be better used to crowd control and disable the enemy and buff his party to finish them off. 4. Haley uses a weapon her class can't use (longbow) and can't get the full use out of even if she took a feat to learn how to use it, since Sneak Attack is limited to 30 ft. (which wastes the longbow's range advantage). 5. Vaarsuvius specialized in the weakest school of magic in D&D 3.5 (Evocation) and can't cast Conjuration and Necromancy spells. Conjuration is pretty much the most powerful school in the game, able to replicate the effects of other schools with little to no effort except for Divination (which it doesn't have to since you can't choose Divination as your prohibited school in the first place). It isn't as painful to not have access to Necromancy, but it denies her the use of some potent debuff spells (Ray of Exhaustion, Ray of Enfeeblement, Enervation, etc.). 6. Belkar has a downright terrible build, and the fanon explanation for his combat prowess is that his player is cheating and fudging the dice. He's a halfling ranger/barbarian who fights in melee and has a housecat as an animal companion. Halflings are terrible melee combatants, and his uneven multiclassing gives him -20% XP penalty (though not as bad as Drizzt's -40% XP penalty). He also doesn't have enough Wisdom to cast spells.

There's actually a pretty good balance of creature types in this game that it's truly difficult to settle on which slaying enchantment is best. I will agree that kith enemies are the most common, but they typically aren't the hardest to take out, as they're only human. Or elf. Or dwarf. Or whatever. I would go with vessels, because while these monsters aren't the hardest to take out, they have a nasty tendency to bestow status conditions on your party. Also, in the endgame, most of your enemies are vessels. The end boss is kith, but has two vessels protecting him with over 500 HP each, and he can't die until these two vessels are destroyed. Once they're destroyed, the end boss goes down very quickly.

I've given up on Triple Crown Solo and decided to go for Triple Crown instead. Meet the Order of the Stick! Roy Greenhilt - Lawful Good Human Fighter Roy Greenhilt is the main character and co-founder of the Order of the Stick. Roy hails from Cliffport, a mercantile city-state on the Northern Continent. Roy's skin color (black) suggests that his ancestors hail from the Western Continent, but his family is culturally Northern. Basically, he's an Aedyran Ocean Folk. The main plot of the Order of the Stick revolves around his Blood Oath of Vengeance, which is thematically similar to the past-life issues between Thaos and the Watcher's former incarnation. The Blood Oath of Vengeance was sworn by his father, Eugene Greenhilt, to kill Xykon the Sorcerer for killing Eugene's mentor, Fyron Pucebuckle. Upon Eugene's death, it was passed on to his eldest child, namely Roy. Eugene is the equivalent of a lost soul in Pillars of Eternity, a soul that is stuck in what is essentially heaven's waiting room. Roy will also share this fate if he fails in this quest, and so on until a descendant who inherits the oath fulfills it. In PoE terms, Eugene cannnot return to the Wheel until Roy or someone else fulfills the Blood Oath of Vengeance. Roy inherited Eugene's mission to slay Xykon, while the Watcher inherited his past life's unresolved issues with Thaos. It makes perfect sense for Roy Greenhilt to be the Watcher. I was conflicted as to how to build Roy. Should I try to get him as close to his OotS stats as possible, or should I optimize him according to the PoE rules? In the end, I went with the latter, considering that this is a Triple Crown attempt (Expert Mode + Trial of Iron + Path of the Damned). Furthermore, Roy has unusually high stats which cannot be recreated using the point buy system of PoE; he doesn't have any dump stats, in fact, he has high stats in everything. Roy is the equivalent of a D&D character that rolled really well during character creation. I'd have to cheat using IEMod or iroll20s to replicate his absurdly high stats. Roy wields a greatsword, like in the webcomic. If I ever go for Weapon Focus/Specialization/Mastery, the greatsword goes well with the arquebus, so Roy can fire an opening volley, before drawing his sword and charging in. Durkon Thundershield - Lawful Good Dwarf Cleric of Thor Durkon Thundershield is the other co-founder of the Order of the Stick. He is a dwarven cleric of Thor from the northernmmost part of the Northern Continent. I couldn't find any playable god that fits Thor's personality or portfolio (Ondra would probably be the closest), so I went with the god that matches Durkon's personality: Berath (Stoic and Rational). Again, I optimized Durkon based on PoE mechanics. Had I built him according to OotS stats, he'd have high constitution, perception, and resolve, and not much else. I'll have to get him something more substantial than his starting padded armor, though. Elan the Bard - Chaotic Good Human Bard/Dashing Swordsman Elan is the first member of the Order of the Stick other than Roy and Durkon, and was instrumental in helping Roy recruit the rest of the party. He is pretty much impossible to perfectly replicate in PoE because he relies on illusions, which are quite lacking in PoE. After giving it some thought, a summoner chanter would make sense, because most of Elan's illusions are illusory monsters (celestial lion, celestial tree sloth, sexy female half-orc, sexy female chimera, etc.). The Drifter background is the closest approximation of Elan being a traveling minstrel. Also, he's been kicked out of every group he's joined except the Order of the Stick. He has since grown more mature and more competent without abandoning his whimsical and carefree nature. While his hometown hasn't been revealed, the wanted poster in the Western Continent for his twin brother, Nale, describes him as being a Northerner. Haley Starshine - Chaotic Good Human Rogue The second in command of the Order of the Stick, thanks to her conning Roy into giving her the position and co-founder Durkon having terrible Charisma to serve as such. She actually turned out to be not that bad at it when Roy gets killed, and manages to run part of the Azure City Resistance after the fall of Azure City. Before joining the Order, Haley was a member of the Thieves' Guild in Greysky City, and city state on the southern edge of the Northern Continent. The Guild is the de facto power in Greysky, and Haley was stupid enough to announce her plans to leave the guild to her boss. Her boss's right hand Halflings saved her life by telling her to leave town before the Guild's enforcers came to take her out. This means that she can't safely return home ever. These make her a good fit for the Dissident background. As for weapons, I'm thinking of keeping her as a ranged rogue who snipes at enemies who have the right status conditions. I can even have her use a longbow/war bow like in the webcomic, as it's actually a pretty decent rogue weapon in PoE. And finally, I made her a Savannah Folk because Meadow Folk don't have the right shade of red hair for the Starshine family. Vaarsuvius of Ivyleaf - True Neutral Elf Wizard (Evoker) I made Vaarsuvius a woman because I have always seen her as a woman before I discovered her canonical ambiguous gender. Having reread the series multiple times, I now believe that Rich Burlew intended for V to be male, as evidenced by the very early nickname of "V-man," but quickly made him ambiguously gendered after his friends and his early fans got into arguments on whether V was male or female. Or perhaps V was meant to be female, and he had the Order call her V-man to confuse readers. Anyway, Vaarsuvius is an Evoker, a blaster mage, and her stats reflect her focus on damage dealing. As for her background, Scholar isn't available to Aedyrans, so I went with Aristocrat for the +2 to Lore. As for her culture, Vaarsuvius comes from Ivyleaf in the Elven Lands, which is in the northern part of the Western Continent. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any culture that fit her, so I just made her Aedyran to keep things simple. Vaarsuvius is simply named as such because I could only fit "Vaarsuvius of Ivylea" in the name field. Just one letter to many. Belkar Bitterleaf - Chaotic Evil Halfling Ranger/Barbarian And finally, the last member to join the Order of the Stick, and only because he was fleeing the jurisdiction and needed a group to blend into. Not much is known about Belkar, except that he is an escaped slave. He didn't find anything morally wrong with slavery other than the fact that he himself was enslaved, and actually had some ideas on how to improve their business model. I thought about whether to build Belkar as a ranger or as a barbarian. In the webcomic, until very recently, he has rarely used his ranger abilities (Animal Companion, Wild Empathy, Track, etc.) and often just killed everything in sight. In the end, I decided to make him a ranger with a lion companion named Mr. Scruffy. Lions are cats, after all. Roy is level 2, and everyone else is level 1. I'll be updating this thread as I make my way through the game.

Hm... This is similar to my stance towards voice acting: No voice acting is better than bad voice acting. And my stance towards PnP RPGs: No game is better than a bad game. I'd rather not be able to play than force myself to play with a bad DM or group. Edit: In other words, get it right or don't even bother.

In Neverwinter Nights 2, you had the option of dealing with Mephasm, a rather mild-mannered fiend. You can try the following: 1. "Can I sell Grobnar's soul (the annoying gnome bard)?" "No, because your willingness to sacrifice him means that he means nothing to you." "Drat." Shift towards evil and you lose influence with Grobnar. 2." Can I sell my soul?" "Tempting, but (Mephasm makes up an excuse not to take your soul)." You do get a massive shift to Chaotic, and you lose a ton of influence with Ammon Jerro. 3. Give Mephasm a weapon that you've used for several levels = Mephasm gives you something I can't remember. 4. Craft a wondrous item that doesn't do anything = Mephasm gives you a slotless item that buffs a specific stat (simply having it in your inventory gives you the bonus). For #3, chances are if you've relied on that weapon for several levels, you've come to value it both in-character and out-of-character because it's useful, powerful, or both, making it a real sacrifice for you and your character. For #4, the fact that you're willingly crafting a wondrous item for the sake of dealing with the devil means something (you sacrificed rare crafting materials, gold, and XP for it).

What I'm saying is that even fantasy games like PoE are not completed divorced from real-life issues. The game doesn't exist in an vacuum, and thus cannot blindly follow the lore without regard for its real life implications. Racism is annoying enough in real life, and it'd be annoying in game as well. Perhaps a bigger problem with NPCs reacting with extreme hostility towards death godlikes and other pariah races is that their gameplay experience would have to be very different from those of the standard races, which is a lot of added work for not much gain. Even the Nosferatu path in Vampire Bloodlines still followed the exact same critical path as the other normal clans. For the Nosferatu, if the game were more realistic, the Nossie PC would have had a completely different path through the game and never interact directly with mortals. If a Nossie revealed himself as often to mortals as the Nossie PC in Bloodlines, he'd have whole pack of Hunters with a capital H on his trail. Basically, a realistic gameplay path for pariah races would be beyond the scope of Pillars of Eternity. Maybe in a future expansion... Time will tell.

Okay, but is there any practical difference in how your two countries handle dual citizens, or is it simply a technical distinction? It's primarily a technical distinction which rarely comes up except during complicated international incidents. IIRC, Philippine law official recognizes dual citizenship (and de facto encourages it), while American law doesn't, though as a matter of course, it's recognized unofficially due to pragmatism. But we've gone off topic too much already.

Read it again. Out of practicality, the US government recognizes that dual citizenship exists, but it isn't de jure part of US law. It's kind of like how driver's licenses are only legal in the state you got them, but out of pragmatism, the other states honor them. Edit: Here's the relevant sentence:

That's because everyone hates the Lannisters Doemenels. Also do note that you can use your money to get past some obstacles in the game. There's one quest where the most expensive bribery option (the one where you don't try to persuasde/intimidate) results in the best outcome for both the quest giver and the main antagonist. She's only in your way because she needs the money, and once that problem is solved, she happily helps you. In fact, later in the game, she moves to a classy neighborhood to begin a new life.

It's a memorial for our TCS attempts, silly! To remember those that have fallen. Kind of like in Dungeons of Dredmor or other roguelikes where the high score screen is a memorial to how far your characters have gotten.