Shdy314

Never ever not once did I even have to consider it.

Your reasoning is still garbage. Skill checks are rare. Rarely needed even if checked. And tend to be quite high. +1 making a difference will thus also be insanely rare. Just because youd make a dumb choice doesnt mean the choice isnt obvious. The only time you should choose a +1 to mechanics over something like +4 int is because you know a check is coming up and what that check is and that +1 is going to be enough.

Its not overpowered AT ALL. Yeah it is an obvious choice. +4 all the way every time. Unless you need a skill boost for something in particular. The boosts are percentage based. Higher and focused beats low and spread out by a mile because no one needs every stat boosted. Having it be cumulative is in no way overpowered. Itd still be pretty weak actually. With various conversation checks and other situations where +1 to different skills would prove useful in succession, I'd take the cumulative stronghold bonuses on many occasions, for convenience. Just not all occasions. So an edge case where youre trying to metagame some dialogue checks means itd be overpowered? Please. And Id love to hear some actual examples where this would be at all useful. I can recall very few dialogues like youre describing. What conversation has within one dialogue high skill checks for multiple skills? Even if that were true itd be useful in those rare situations. Not even close to overpowered.

Hehehe yeah Im going to focus Hiravias on using spears in encounters. EDIT: Oh yeah and forget that stupid spear. I was all prepared for some epic Engwithan artifact. Felt like Id been trolled.

Its not overpowered AT ALL. Yeah it is an obvious choice. +4 all the way every time. Unless you need a skill boost for something in particular. The boosts are percentage based. Higher and focused beats low and spread out by a mile because no one needs every stat boosted. Having it be cumulative is in no way overpowered. Itd still be pretty weak actually.

Wow in those 20 years you must not have played a single challenging game or gotten very good because the Adra Dragon is not hard. The Adra Dragon has high damage including an AOE, high defenses and some adds. Not even very many adds. That's cheap and cheesy? No immunities. No environment effects. No disables (just the handful of Adragans but not the dragon itself.) No special instant kills (The damage is survivable). The damage isnt even raw like your party can make use of. That's it. That's the great amount of cheese you find so impossibly insurmountable. Most people would beat it using buffs, debuffs and disables just like any other fight that might actually require some work but apparently that's cheese now. The adds are a joke and you can take them out the same way you usually take out Adragans and Xaurips. A couple foe only aoes. Especially since you've buffed your party.

You are incredibly naive. Yes talents do need to be "equal." You only get freaking 6 of them. Picking 6 stupid ones leads to a much less fun character. If someone doesnt understand how defenses work and they pick Bear's Fortitude and (big surprise) it does practically nothing for them, then it isn't that the class is gimped. It's that they just wasted one of only 6 limited resources they can never get back. That is in direct violation of Obsidian's stated design goal of not having trap crap. Confused? It's not exactly complicated. Even you should understand the post. The hell is reducing the universal talents down to a small pool that will do something for pretty much any character and that are also much clearer for casuals. Cast spells? Spell Master is obvious and will help them do exactly what it says. 4 separate spell bonus talents that individually are outshone by some rings and require knowledge of what happens at level 9 and 11 to evaluate properly are terrible for new players. Weapon focus requires knowing what weapon you've settled on for the end of the game. That's just stupid. Consolidating them also means a tank build or dps build can actually afford some variety. This would only marginally increase characters powers because the bad talents are really bad. I should also point out I am very much in favor of increasing the difficulty. Some enemies should be either immune or have sky high defenses to some effets. They need to target better, have some more foe only aoe etc. So Im not just trying to argue for characters to be even more overpowered.

I was brainstorming this when trying to make the suckier talents more viable and less boring. This is just idle musing. Elemental Master=Scion of Flame+Spirit of Decay+Secrets of Rime+Heart of the Storm Weapon Focus =Is just +6 Accuracy to all weapons (Cuz use whatever weapons you effing want. Seriously.Alternatively you choose whatever 4 weapons you wanted for your concept. Master of guns? Wizard with Quarterstaff, Rod, Scepter, Wand? IE Wizard with Quarterstaff, crossbow, dagger, wand? But this makes the talent reward metagame information so I decided on making it universal.) Weapon Master =All weapon styles (Same as weapon focus. This really doesnt do anything amazing. Just lets you decide to try out dual wielding for awhile before settling on using a great sword or a sword and shield.) Gunman =Marksman+Gunner+Close Shooter Hard to Kill =Bears Fortitude, Bulls Will, Snakes Reflexes+Superior Deflection Fancy Footwork =Shot On the Run+Fast Runner+Graceful Retreat+Unstoppable Spell Master =Bonus Spell of level 1,2.3 and 4 (By levels 9 & 12 the first two talents are a waste anyways and this puts this talent in line with the rings of wizardry. Honestly this still wouldnt even be very good. By level 12 I had more spells than I could possibly use in a fight. But it's something nice at early levels casuals will pick and have more fun in the class.) Blood Knight =Bloody Slaughter+Hold the Line+Body Control+Mental Fortress Medic =Wound Binding, Field Triage and Envenomed Strike (I still wouldn't take it actually but now at least you heal a decent amount of health.) Loaded for Bear =Arms Bearer+Quick Switch The modals can stay I'd just remove Dangerous Implement but I know it has its uses for edge cases. Hilariously the bad talents are so bad even combining them with the more useful ones isnt much of a boost to a characters power. These should also be a lot clearer for casual players which ones are really going to help your build.

The picture was over you randomly insulting the OP. And now you're randomly insulting me. Double facepalm. You dont know what random means. Which hilariously makes my mockery of you even less random.

<insert stupid image because I have no thoughts of my own> Was there something in particular you disagreed with? Because the original poster decided the Adra Dragon was in their own words "unbeatable" by "conventional" tactics which is hilariously untrue. It has high defenses and does high damage. Thats all it has going for it outside of the mobs that join the fight but because you cant auto attack it to death people keep claiming it's cheating or cheese filled or other nonsense. Therefore it would not be surprising to me if they are then foolish enough to find the use of any debuff, like confusion, to be "unconventional." As such the OP's argument that petrify is leaps and bound beyond other debuffs was highly flawed. It rested on them using 6 traps and then using the barbarian with jolting boots combo to own adra dragon which is a whole other issue entirely. Ultimately I agree that petrify is nearly an insta-kill but it is not leaps and bounds beyond the other disables like prone and paralyzed. It is better than them in that foes take increased damage beyond the extra damage decreased defenses bring but it is a higher level debuff so that is not entirely unexpected. So unless your picture was supposed to represent you having a headache due to your ignorance maybe next time try understanding what is being said.

I get plenty of focus without Draining Whip so I dont bother to take it.

I just kept the dragon confused. Petrify isnt required. Neither are traps. Just because youre not very good doesnt mean the dragon is an impossible challenge. Of course now you'll probably just say confuse is too powerful and obviously not "conventional" for some ridiculous reason. That being said petrify is the ultimate debuff and is practically instakill. There are still 6 spell levels to go in the wizards spell book... Where do Obs go from there?

You cast spells. Very early levels use an arbalest.

This would have made the whole world much less believable. Got a bow fan proving my point right here. Yeah a world where guns have relegated archery to a status and hobby symbol. SOOOOO unbelievable.