Taritu

Ok, short of respeccing her, comments on how to do this? The fact that she has peasant weapons as her specialization is a huge drag: hunting bows, due to the prevalence of high DR enemies, are virtually worthless. And the Fox's stats are bugged, at all 10s, while the Fox's lack of athletics means it's often fatigued w/o you realizing it. So, how do you make her work, or at least be more effective?

One of the main problems with rangers is that Sagani is terrible: the fox doesn't have proper stats and they gave her "peasant weapons", which while it makes sense for her background gives her a hunting bow specialization which is the worst ranged weapon the in the game because of how frequent high DR enemies are. So if you aren't playing a ranger yourself, your first experience of the class is someone who is gimped. (Conan, as written by Howard, in any case, was very smart. And yeah, he wore as much armor as he could get away with. There's one short story where he's sneaking around in chain mail while the Aquilonian rangers are using leather, because Conan has learned how to sneak in chain. Armor = good as far as Conan is concerned.)

I would say Durance is the only one you should play with at least once. He just gives too much info you can't get other ways. The next most appropriate one is Eder, though his quest isn't that interesting. But his reactions tell you a lot about the world.

Principles often pay bills. If people get to know you have no principles they stop doing business with you. As for killing in PoE, I don't recall killing anyone in the game who didn't try to kill me. Yes, you can, just like IRL, but you don't have to. People really have no idea how violent Europe was before the modern era. Let's start with something simple: there were virtually no police, and large cities were particularly violent, while bandits and pirates were a routine problem for travelers.

I have a party with a dual-wielding warrior - sword and axe (with a blunt offset when necessary) and she is doing a lot of dps, while being relatively hardy. As much as a rogue? No. But still #1 in the group and requires less finicky control to keep alive than a melee rogue. (I was going to go two axes, but the magical sword I found was just too good.)

In fact, in the middle ages, culture and religion were more important than skin color, generally speaking. i was very disappointed by the lack of reactivity to my Eothas priest, however, especially as I played her completely "in your face" about it whenever possible. Completely unapologetic, and if anyone's got a problem with her faith, come at her. (Only Raedric cared.) So far Durance hasn't even mentioned it, which is ludicrous.

Anyone have any idea how to fix this using the console?

As it says. My fire godlike priest has a permanent 8 points of battle forged. I've saved and reloaded to try and get rid of it, but no such luck. This is AFTER the patch which is supposed to retroactively fix such issues.

I was thinking less a mage who can hit things in melee, than a mage who can survive melee so it's easy to use the cone spells. Give him a large shield and a hatchet, spirit shield and arcane veil, give him some gear with + deflection. Do let the tank engage first, but then wander on up and let lose those cone spells. Not sure it's worth it, especially that they've increase the range on a lot of Wizard spells, but it's at least theoretically viable and it reduces what happens to Aloth in open areas where the tanks can't control overwhelming numbers -- near instagib as every mob swarms the squishy.

Priest spells are wonderful for buffing and debuffing. Just at first level you have spells to increase the armor of your group, decrease the to hit of the enemies, a significant single target debuff for minor bosses. At second level the heal over time area of effect spell is crazy good. Park Durance behind your tanks and watch them stay up and stay up, or use it in the middle of a clustered group and heal everyone. In general terms priests aren't just healers, they are buffers and debuffers, and good ones. They are force multipliers - drop the attack speed, accuracy, saving throws, deflection of your enemies, while increasing all of that for your own team and watch the rest of the crew clean up. Yes, other classes can buff and debuff, but Durance (or a PC priest) is by no means useless. And yeah, give him an Arquebus and the approriate talent, and he does reasonable damage. Unless your character has high mechanics (unlikely unless you're a rogue), he's also the best lockpicker/searcher amongst the companions, and I put virtually all his points into mechanics other than level 3 stealth and level 4 athletics.