draego

Also since you are new. Try keeping a priest in your party. You dont have to have one but they have a lot of get you out of jail abilities. Almost every spell level they get 'prayer against x' ability which makes you or your party immune to some affects. I also like to focus on roleplaying skills but there are better ones and worse ones. Like lore lets you cast spells from scrolls and gives you more dialogue options. Survival can be good for resting bonuses. You will need at least one mechanics monkey in your party for traps and locks. some stealth is nice for front line characters so they have more time to react to enemies. if you dont know the layout one stealthy/mechanics guys can be nice (if one of your characters is going to be the mechanics then really specialize) and then Athletics is not that great to have on lots of people. For scripted interactions and conversations there are some uses for each but i generally specialize with what feels right to role play my character. So do not spread out your skill to each one. i think i would do two on one character and maybe a third with just a few points in the third.

Well there is no one that has to many more spells then druids. With equipment priest and wizards can have more. Later in the game the caster classes get so many spells its fine. The cipher has an interesting mechanic. You have unlimited spell cast but are limited by the amount of focus you can build. So as you attack enemies you gain focus and that focus is used to cast spells. I am not saying you can cast more with cipher its just different. Chanters also have a different mechanic. they have chants that build up without having to cast anything then when x number of chants build up they can cast invocations. If you want a more active character stay away but they have some interesting chants/invocations. If you go with ciphers hint: first spell - whispers of treason

The only thing to stop pick-pocketing would be role playing. Maybe you dont steal in general or you dont steal from your allies but your enemies. I try to come to games like this with that in mind. If they do it like lock picks where it warns you you dont have enough skill to succeed then you wouldnt need save scrumming. "Well, maybe the players won't use it" is a very bad way to balance a mechanic. If it exists, it will be used. Treating pockets as locks would prevent save-scumming, indeed, but it opens up a new problem. Maybe only some NPCs will have stuff worth taking? So it becomes a possible solution to a quest step. As for a dagger that binds with paladins and priests... I see nothing wrong with it, although I am curious as to what its story will be. An artifact of Skaen, maybe? A sacrificial dagger? Ye that would help if they didnt have crazy gear on every character.

The only thing to stop pick-pocketing would be role playing. Maybe you dont steal in general or you dont steal from your allies but your enemies. I try to come to games like this with that in mind. Its basically the same question of if i am god like why dont i just massacre everyone. Just because you can do it doesn't mean you have to. As long as they dont do what divinity did where the economy was so jacked up that its seemed stealing was practically necessary to play the game then its fine. If they do it like lock picks where it warns you you dont have enough skill to succeed then you wouldnt need save scrumming.

This could be interpreted as buffs, crowd control, defuffs i suppose. Priest are probably the best party buffs. They have lot of variety of them for single or group. They also get some enemy debuffs and combine them with buffs for party Druids actually have a combination of all 3. The have a couple of the best CC in the game with spells like Returning Storm and Relentless Storm. A lot of their spells combine CC or debuffs with damage though. Wizards - They have lots of great CC spells to choose from. They have some debuffs as well. They have probably the most versatile spells setups to play different roles in your party. Their buffs are all self buffs i think Paladins - they have nice supports abilities to buff or heal or remove debuffs Chanters - They have some debuffs and CC with their invocations and chants if you dont want them to be a AOE damager. Ciphers - They have some great single target debuffs and buffs and great CCs There are lots of options for you from many classes. They mechanically play differently but they are all useful You can retrain at any inn all your characters build and your companions.

Nope

I just watched this video. https://youtu.be/78V3ziK-0tE?t=323. At the point i set the link to, Josh mentioned something interesting about party skill bonuses contributing to dialogue options. This is not a huge issue for me but can be an annoyance in games depending on how its implemented. The way Josh describes it may end up perfectly fine. Josh basically describes this system that if multiple party members have bluff or diplomacy then you benefit from it in dialogue. After playing games like wasteland 2 and tide of numenera i have come to not enjoy their party based conversations mechanics. First issue: You can design your party to never fail. I get Wasteland 2 is not a single player game you create your party which already bugged me (to play the game i actually had to roleplay that i was one of the characters but its a hard game to do that in) but you could basically design your party to cover nearly all possible skills in the game and never fail anything. So the skills at that point felt kinda irrelevant and not special. It became less about role playing and more about mechanics. At least pillars has hard skill checks, the percentage skill checks in wasteland to me only encourages save scrumming which i tried really hard not fall into in that game (but that is a separate issue) Second issue: I find it weird that my character starts a conversation and in the middle of it my companion says this one line of dialogue because he happens to have the skill check for it. So it seems like this is not what is happening to Pillars the way josh is describing it but this really bugged me in Torment. You would be having a conversation in torment going down a dialogue tree. The person is talking with you but all the sudden a skill check you dont think you can pass pops up and you can just have this random person in your party say this one line of dialogue (that is how i interpret when you click a dialogue but use your companion to pass the check) so you can meet the skill check and then go back to you talking. It always seemed a little weird from a roleplaying point of view and it also had the additional problem that i mentioned above that with a large party you could cover all the needed skill checks so as to almost never fail. I do like the idea of having other characters go out perform tasks that maybe you cant do so like sending one of your companions to save the people in the stalwart burning house (or even a conversation task like pick pocket) but it would feel weird to have them talk for you (which seem not to be happening i think) or that you could design parties to never 'fail' conversation. One saving grace for Pillars is that just because you can use a dialogue option doesnt mean it optimal. This whole mechanic however feels like it diminishes the roleplaying within conversation and makes it into more a mechanical exercise in how to optimize your party skills to win conversations like you do with combat skills. This kinda mechanic seems to encourage you to say something that your character would never say just because you can win the conversation due to your party member skills. I guess one way to let it feel more like roleplaying is to have whoever starts the conversation be the person who is talking so then you can use their skills checks only. That can still be a little cheesy but would feel more like role playing then having your npcs randomly say one line here and there.

Who said their was any ruler left in gilded vale to work with.

Is that idol/statue of a polpovir with boobs? The description of the head, which matches that of a deep sea anglerfish, fits, but um... not sure if those round things are supposed to be boobs or bowls filled with something. Could also be extremely simplified lobstercrab claws, but that's not in the polpovir description. Edit: Actually, the description doesn't say anything about the hands/claws, if it has any. In it's current state though, it looks more like someone stuck an anglerfish head on top of a Venus figurine than a polpovir. @Devs, wanna comment? lol And the reviewers thought Maias companion was a pet parrot of some sort, I guess they didn't explain that to the reviewers. The devs would probably want to check on that for accidential misinformation. Though it's funny that they thought it was a parrot rather than some sort of exotic bird of prey, which generally aren't brightly colored. In the ign video they did correct the host about what the difference is between pets and animal companions. They also mentioned that pets have mechanical bonuses

Ye you can see the schedule here on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaYO4a4SsTs. The interview is less than 20 minutes looks like, but its always cool to hear about it.

According to IGN site http://www.ign.com/events/e3 it looks like there is a Pillars of Eternity 2 talk today at 12:40 pm i believe PT

Ye marking is ok. It was nice boost for my animal. I mean i would prefer wounding or maybe coordinating for ranger but it was just if i compared it to the other polleaxes i liked it better for the build than any other effects the other pollaxes that i had access to. I mean there are better weapons from other weapon types that would have been better for the melee ranger build. To me this whole issue is about player choice and they seem to limiting it some.

Ye i love me some ranger but i usually go wolf. wouldn't mind the bear if it was better. so any love for animal companions would be welcomed. I asked josh in one of the twitches about pet colors and he said maybe basically. It just may not add a ton of value from their point of view for how many players would enjoy it vs the cost of development inclusion. The shape-shifting will come from multiclassing. So you can do ranger/druid and be wolf/wolf or cat/lion for the cat.

Here is a new update on enchantments for josh. https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/161718781511/hi-josh-talking-about-the-revised-weapon

Here is a new update on enchantments for josh. https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/161718781511/hi-josh-talking-about-the-revised-weapon. I don't want to make this a bigger deal than it is. I am sure whatever they design will be at least interesting and the game overall will be fun. I mean i love POE1. I like that they are trying to tie better lore and make more distinctive weapons. It just seems weird to me that any special weapon you find that has a low quality enchantment will have to be discarded for later weapons even though a later weapon of the same type may not contain an enchantment even similar to what you want to use or even be useful for your build. I ran into this will my melee ranger build with pollaxes. I didnt want to use other weapon types and there was only one useful (my perception of useful which is what should matter) pollaxe, Spectacular Spetum (and early game weapon) for the build. Traitors' Merit came way to late in the game to be useful right before the end. Half-Mast was inaccessible to me because i killed the dragon and it wouldn't be useful anyway because i had stunning shots so crits to prone seemed kinda redundant. The Wind's Arm was also a no go, i didn't want to cast spells and interrupts were not as valuable due to stunning shots. This is the point of weapon focuses or their equivalent specialization in POE2 to build your character to use one or two weapon types. In some cases it looks like you will have to use a completely different weapon type to get the same enchantment simply because the quality enchantment cant keep up. In POE1 some weapon abilities were perceived as better depending on your build and that perception whether aesthetically or power gaming or special build driven should drive what weapons you get to use. Not an arbitrary setup by the dev that gimps some weapons will low quality enchantments. Maybe all special weapons will have mid to high level quality enchantment so they dont become gimpy later in the game. Again I am sure enchantments will be interesting it just feels like they are throwing out the progress POE1 made for player choice and going backwards to games like BG2 where meta-gaming was perceived as needed so you didnt make the wrong weapon choices for your build for later in the game. Never played Icewind Dale so dont know how the itemization was in that game

and you better hope you find that sword mid to late game and not early otherwise you cant increase the quality enchantment to anything useful late game

Josh sort of implies it in statements in his tmblr post about enchantments and in statements like this from twitch. But ye maybe there will be a flaming sword and flaming bow for example. Not quite sure. The way it is stated though makes it seem there is only one flaming weapon. I guess i could read it more generously. Below is from https://www.twitch.tv/videos/122368156 around 38:00 minute mark There are other twitch statements but this is the quickest one i could find. There was a thread about this a back in February from the community side: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/91497-from-the-twitch-qa-enchanting-and-ceiling/page-1

The issue is there wont be the same item to find later. They have already stated that there will be one flaming or dragon slaying weapon the entire game. So if the flaming weapon has no or low quality enchantment you can only increase that quality enchantment one level and not all the way up meaning if you built your character with the idea of using flaming weapon you or like AndreaColombo just like the aesthetic of the weapon you are stuck. Its good to restrict a lot of the special enchantments like flaming or dragon slaying. I just dont think its a good idea to restrict quality if you only ever find one special enchantment like flaming the entire game. This means you are at the mercy of the devs who could drop special items your character happens to like or Synergizes well with later the game so those weapons dont become gimpy to you. JerekKruger beat me to it heh.

I really dont take the bonus spells talents. There is equipment and later on per encounter with mastery, you should have plenty spells to throw. It depends on what you want to do with him. If you like certain types of damage then one of the bonus utility talents could be interesting. The ranged talents like +accuracy are interesting for him with implements. Penetrating shot also. The other wizard talents beside the bonus spells are useful. I think the standard use for Aloth is CC but there are plenty of damage AOE spells also. Also depends on if you are playing on POTD. If so then some of the defensive talents to shore up some of the defenses. Apprentice's Sneak Attack, Dangerous Implements for more ranged implement damage. I dont think sneak attack helps with spells though if I remember right. I think i read the interrupting blows works with some spells for extra CC, haven't tried that one though.

There are a couple of trap talents that you can add by cheating. Accurate Traps +12 Trap Accuracy. Passive \ Powerful Traps +40% Trap effectiveness Passive. Not sure they help that much when trap damage is nerfed 10 fold but here you are. but ye the limited number you can place + their low damage is rough.

This was fun read https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/161302725596/balance-in-single-player-crpgs#notes. prob should get its own post

Ye it would be great if they release portraits as soon as they create them so we can make POE1 runs.

There is an update about water color portraits. https://www.fig.co/campaigns/deadfire?update=254#updates. They plan on showing these portraits for conversation

This is not exactly the same but i've seen dominated or charmed enemies walk back to their starting position at the moment they get charmed or dominated. They ignore targets that are near them to do this. And when they return to their starting position they turn hostile again. It seems to happen if i charm or dominate a back line enemy but its really annoying. I have never loved charmed effects their awesome but... they were always aggravating because when a charmed enemy is left standing alone they quickly loose the charmed affect which is dumb because other effects linger on yourself even after the fight is over.

Ye there are 3 subclasses and base class. so lots of variation. Thanks KaineParker my mistake