PizzaSHARK

Dude. If it's too hard just give up. I've completed PotD twice. I'm just re-encountering how stupid some of the design choices were, since I figured I'd play through again. I like stuns and hard disables when you can play against them. You can't really play against Skirmishers, Phantoms, etc other than having complete immunity (which usually means a high level Priest or high level scrolls and knowing ahead of time which prayer you'll need) or just hoping you get lucky rolls. Removing the ability to activate their control effect on grazes would, honestly, be a good idea. I don't know how much it'd help on PotD since their Accuracy versus average party Deflection is kind of retarded (which is the point, of course), but it'd probably make the lower difficulties a lot more enjoyable. It doesn't feel rewarding when you **** them over with stuns before they can, or if the deciding factor was just you rolling better than they did. Using fore-knowledge of enemy placement to unload a 6 arquebus opening salvo on them stinks of cheese just as badly as dropping a dozen traps on top of Firkraag before pissing him off did in BG2. As an example, there's an encounter in early act 2 where you fight a collection of lions, a delemgan, and an adragan. In my experience, the fight goes one of two ways: you stunlock the adragan into the dirt (good rolls), or the adragan gets to use its abilities and you're probably going to have to load from save. That's not to say the lions or delemgan aren't relevant (if you can't stun the lions with a druid spell, they can be quite dangerous in fact), just that the fight feels incredibly binary - you lock down and murder the big nasty enemy and the rest practically takes care of itself. Or the big nasty enemy rolls high and blocks your disables, gets to fire off a couple of spells, and things rapidly go to ****. This is hardly the only example - they're quite common throughout the game, and that's kind of the point. "Save or suck" is a major, very common complaint among players of D&D, Pathfinder, and related games and I know JSawyer has mentioned that stuff in the past. So it's really weird to me that a game he's put so much effort into is absolutely flooded with "save or suck" mechanics, to the point that enemies with save or suck on-hit effects are common. I don't think, in most cases, these are even tactically interesting engagements. The adragan example above, for example, has nothing of interest. It takes place in a wide open field with no opportunities to take advantage of terrain (not that Pillars has much in the way of terrain mechanics to begin with) or anything like that - it's just a pure brawl and whoever gets better rolls wins. While some degree of hard control is necessary to make turn-based RPGs interesting (as well as Pillars, whose roots are in those turn-based systems), I think such spells and effects need to be carefully husbanded and doled out sparingly, tied to powerful abilities and items with limited uses or high costs. There are people who complain that reducing the amount of hard control would make the game too MMO-like, but Pillars is already very MMO like with very smooth damage curves, a system designed around units taking very frequent bits of smooth damage, stats that are uniform and have no relevance to what your character can do, etc. It may not be designed around the holy trinity, but Pillars' system feels very, very MMO-like compared to D&D and Pathfinder based games. Dude. If it's too hard just give up. Or just turn down the difficulty. I really don't get acheivement hunters I already have the achievements. I just felt like playing through again, and had apparently forgotten how ridiculous the save or die spam in PotD is.

What's your point?

Constitution is a physical attribute? Per the in-game description yes - Constitution is a combination of the character's overall health and endurance. Although it is not used much in interactions, it is sometimes checked to withstand pain or endure a physically taxing ordeal. In combat, it affects maximum Health and Endurance and contributes to the Fortitude defense. Health and Endurance. Physically taxing. Might - Might represents a character's physical and spiritual strength, brute force as well as their ability to channel powerful magic. During interactions, it can be useful for intimidating displays and acts of brute force. In combat, it contributes to both Damage and Healing as well as the Fortitude defense. Might is both physical and spiritual, but there's no way to divide the two - if you are spiritually mighty you also have all the benefits of the physically mighty. Like you, I'm not bothered by the abstractions but the complaint/concern has been there since the stats were announced. The problem is almost purely because all of the scripted interactions revolve around using Might for physical tasks, not mental ones. You aren't using psionics to bust down a wall, you're pushing on it. You aren't lifting someone off their feet with your Force powers, you're physically picking them up (which is already a monstrously difficult task for even someone as large as an amaua, and would likely be utterly impossible for a dwarf or orlan... but you still get the option.) You end up with a substantial disconnect between the abstraction and its implementation... which is probably why people take issue with it so often. By comparison, replacing Wisdom with Perception and Charisma with Resolve is a smart move, since that's often what they amounted to in regular D&D play anyhow. In regards to the OP 10 pages ago, I can agree with a lot of it. Pillars lets me down in almost as many areas as it makes me happy. Maybe it was just a case of expectations being set unreasonably high. I do feel that lack of modding support is a huge issue, particularly since - let's be honest here - Obsidian games tend to have really bad gameplay balance. If modding is accessible for players, then it doesn't matter what the vanilla game's balance is like - the developers can design it the way they want to make it, and if that makes it too easy for some players (or too hard)... hey, they can mod it to the where they like it. XCOM2, for example, is a game that is so easy for experienced players that it quickly becomes boring... but because Firaxis put a lot of effort into making modding accessible and easy, you can adjust settings to your heart's content - to say nothing of the numerous mods that add, remove, or change entire sections of gameplay. WeiDU mods, in particular, are what made BG2 so memorable for me. The base game was fine and I loved it, but I stuck around for SCS, for Ascension, for Solaufein, and all of the other wonderful things modders were able to do with it. Pillars lacking that is a huge black mark against it, although I understand that Obsidian was already stretched in twenty different directions trying to get all of the promised content into the game and getting the game out the door. Pillars is a good game. As with basically everything Obsidian touches, I'd give it a solid 8/10 at bare minimum - everything Obsidian makes or is directly involved with seems to be at least that good. But it's frustrating to play in many cases, because you can see what it COULD have been. I sometimes wonder if devoting so much effort to the Endless Paths was a smart design choice. I know both players and Obsidian themselves wanted a sort of sequel to the stellar Watcher's Keep from BG2, but I can't help but feel like it might have been better to devote some of that energy and effort into polishing the rest of the game. Maybe they could've added new floors to the Endless Paths later, or something.

Playing through Pillars 1 again on PotD and I'd apparently forgotten about just how retarded the amount of stun or other hard control spam there is in this game. Phantoms that stun on hit, every hit. Returning Storm and Relentless Storm that stack with each other, do high damage in an AOE, and stun on every hit. Wizards can paralyze for a long duration at low level with high accuracy, Chill Fog blinds and damages in a massive AOE at level 1. It's kind of insane. I don't know how anyone that plays tabletop games consistently could possibly have thought this was a good idea - "save or suck" is one of the most enduring problems in tabletop RPG design, and it's like they tried to maximize that problem in Pillars. Maybe it's just a PotD thing, when monsters have enough HP and stats that they don't just fall over when the player farts in their general direction. Regardless, has Obsidian said anything about this? I recall reading that they admitted that Phantoms were a mistake, or at least that they appeared too early in the game... but the stun-happy Phantoms are just a symptom of a larger problem. Do we know if they'll be focusing on addressing that problem for Pillars 2, or can we expect it to also be a game with awful gameplay balance like Pillars 1 and Tyranny?

Perhaps you should go back to school so you can learn to use terms like "high probability" in a proper context. A wizard with 18 might and 18 perception does better damage than wizard with 12/12. I really don't appreciate your dishonest arguments. No one every was arguing this but you. So i dont why you keep saying this stuff. If you go back, this line of inquiry started due to an assertion about Aloth being less-optimal as DPS vs control wizard based on stats made against an argument that he was as good a DPS as anyone else in the party, which is where the 12/12 & 18/18 example comes from. Ultimately I'm not sure arguing a normal distribution really gets anyone anywhere. If you follow the system, the statistics tells us that a 12 perception 12 might wizard will deal less damage than the one with 18 in both on average. The formulas will provide a range and if the RNG is truly random that range will provide a normal distribution which, when compared, will have the normal distribution shifted higher on the 18 character when compared to the 12 one. This again assumes the RNG is indeed random. The problem is I think that while the argument made was statistical ('Aloth is just as good at DPS'), I think the argument on hand wasn't about statistics, but about whether the character was "good" or not. Or to put it another way, I think the problem lies in an argument about whether being less optimized for a specific role is a value judgement about that character in that role. If Aloth's DPS is the same as my rogue's DPS, then my rogue - like Aloth - isn't built in a way that maximizes the characters for a DPS role. That to me doesn't mean the character is bad (unless your goal was to build a high DPS rogue). Given the make-up of the party, the difficulty setting, etc., the character may actually be quite serviceable and fulfill a role within the party. So that Aloth is less-optimal in a role doesn't mean that he couldn't have utility in that role relative to the party. Further there's the question of whether the ability to create less viable builds is inherently a problem within the system. I'd argue that its a natural consequence of trying to build characters to not have dump stats. If the effort is to devalue min-maxing, then the value is going to be either towards jack-of-all-trades where the skills show limited variance or building a character towards a specific goal in mind and applying the stats in ways that will least penalize that role. This. I also find that people fixate on the stats that directly affect the role they are going for and neglect other parts thinking that they just want to specialise, not realising the problems that can cause for their role. Someone (I can't remember unfortunately it was some time ago) on these forums once said "You can't DPS if you're dead" and they are right: having maxed out stats for doing damage is great but if you spend most of the battle faceplanted then it is not doing anything. This was something that gave me a headache in the early days of release: people stated that armour was of no use to ranged DPS characters and others who stayed in the back because they would never get hit and the recovery just slowed down their attacks, then complained about the wraiths in Caed Nua teleporting past their meatshields and attacking the squishes behind... Not sure this is all that relevant to the discussion at hand, but I haven't spaffed on the forum for a while so... spaff! That's just a matter of tactics. It's a temporary problem. I wouldn't consider CON a dump stat, but nobody but your tanks really needs more than 10. Back line characters generally shouldn't wear heavier than leather or so.

A properly built Wizard will typically have high INT and MIG both. You don't need PER so much because you have self-buffs like Eldritch Aim and Merciless Gaze (or, better yet, can just drink potions of the same) and because virtually all spells have Accuracy bonuses (which is stupid, why even bother giving Wizards low base ACC if you're just going to compensate for it by giving all of their spells a huge ACC bonus?)

This was a bigger problem in BG2, where players would select companions based on their stats rather than their interactions. With PoE, that is less of an issue. Most discussions seem to focus on the persona of the companion. I'd say that's a win for the PoE approach. I agree here. I don't have a problem with characters having "realistic" stats rather than optimized ones, so long as they can still perform their role. Stats being generally less important in Pillars (for better or for worse) does make it easier to fit most any NPC into any party, but I never had a problem with characters with questionable stat distribution (Aerie, freaking Khalid, etc) in the BG games, either. Maybe because it was a lot easier to 'fix' their stats with items and long-term buffs. So you want proof that a wizard with 12 perception and 12 might deals less damage than a wizard with 18 in both? You need proof that a character that can engage two enemies and has lower deflection (Pallegina) cannot tank as effectively as a charcter that can engage 4 enemies and has higher deflection (Eder)? Or that either of those could even hold a candle to a properly min-maxed fighter tank build? I mean seriously?high probability does not equal concrete truth only that it may be more likely true than not. It remains as such unitl observable evidence is presented to take it out of the realm of probability. Dude... come on. Do you really need someone to run the math for you why a character with 18 Might and 18 Perception is going to deal more direct damage than a character with 12 Might and 12 Perception? No I dont, it was more making a point about him asking the same kind of ridiculousness from others on something that its value is totally subjective in the first place. He was assigning concrete value to his opinions as being fact without presenting any evidence but then requiring others to provide evidence for their claims and that their lack of(or unwillingness to provide) evidence was proof of his own opinion as fact. You don't need to present supporting evidence if your argument makes logical sense. A character with higher accuracy and a higher bonus to damage is naturally going to deal more damage than a character with low accuracy and low bonus to damage.

Right, but I find Pillars stats are terrible for roleplaying because they're so meaningless. A Fighter with low Strength requires a different feat build and plan than a Fighter with high Strength - but can still be useful, particularly where archetypes (a Pathfinder feature that replaces some class abilities with others) are concerned. For example, a Tactician Fighter highly values Intelligence because they get more class skills, more skill points, and have a lot more use for those skills - if you want to invest in Diplomacy (one of the skills they gain as a class skill), you'll also value Charisma. Pillars is better in some ways than the *old* D&D games but I find it to be incredibly weak compared to Pathfinder and even 5th Edition in most ways. Maybe Pillars 2 will address that. I hope so.

This was a bigger problem in BG2, where players would select companions based on their stats rather than their interactions. With PoE, that is less of an issue. Most discussions seem to focus on the persona of the companion. I'd say that's a win for the PoE approach. I agree here. I don't have a problem with characters having "realistic" stats rather than optimized ones, so long as they can still perform their role. Stats being generally less important in Pillars (for better or for worse) does make it easier to fit most any NPC into any party, but I never had a problem with characters with questionable stat distribution (Aerie, freaking Khalid, etc) in the BG games, either. Maybe because it was a lot easier to 'fix' their stats with items and long-term buffs. So you want proof that a wizard with 12 perception and 12 might deals less damage than a wizard with 18 in both? You need proof that a character that can engage two enemies and has lower deflection (Pallegina) cannot tank as effectively as a charcter that can engage 4 enemies and has higher deflection (Eder)? Or that either of those could even hold a candle to a properly min-maxed fighter tank build? I mean seriously? high probability does not equal concrete truth only that it may be more likely true than not. It remains as such unitl observable evidence is presented to take it out of the realm of probability. Dude... come on. Do you really need someone to run the math for you why a character with 18 Might and 18 Perception is going to deal more direct damage than a character with 12 Might and 12 Perception?

which is objectively not true its hard to take you seriously. And i suspect like i mentioned you cant imagine you could have a role in a party without having the most optimally perfect stats because you are married to systems where stats are the end all be all of builds, but that is the fun thing about POE you can build like you like and play almost any role. stats are for roleplaying in many ways just as much as mechanics so if you wanted to be a 10 might wizard damager you could be and still be good at it. And to be honest i thought making might the single source of damage was a nice change to past DnD systems from BG to NWN. I'll qualify that as "Aloth can never be a damage Wizard compared to a custom Wizard designed for the role." Basically, a Wizard with low Might and high Intelligence is designed to be a control Wizard, not a damage Wizard. Yes, you can use them as a damage Wizard, but they will be sub-par at that role because of their inefficient stat distribution.

Suffice to say, Pillars 1's reputation system and party NPC interactions feel a bit anemic. Ostensibly "good" characters like Kana and Eder don't seem to mind your Bleak Walker slaughtering an entire town or torturing people in front of them, other than a short "this might not be a good idea..." quip. I chalk that up to Pillars' very limited NPC roster (as compared to BG1's large roster and even BG2's was fairly sizable in comparison) - you can't really afford to "lock out" NPCs when the player really only gets one per class and they're fairly widely spaced. But that also makes NPCs kind of boring, or at times makes them seem to be behaving out of character. But given how it sounds like Pillars 2 will feature even fewer NPCs, BG-style "you're too goodie two-shoes/evil for me" won't work. Tyranny, however, showed us it doesn't have to be like that. The favor/fear system (which operates on separate scales, so you're not in a tug of war - this is important!) allowed NPCs to have their own opinions and wants without the player completely alienating them unless they tried to (for example, Barik will hate you if you don't fellate Graven Ashe but can be talked into sticking with you.) I feel like this also works well for player reputations. Instead of having a tug of war system or a simple "1 this, 2 that, 1 of that other thing" system, you could have separate bars for each personality trait, with opposites loosely linked. If you're consistently behaving Passionate, it's still to progress along the Stoic path (which seems to be the most direct opposite of Passionate), but it will be weighted against you. You aren't tugging against Passionate... your character's history of passion won't go away... but you're slowly working towards a new pattern of behavior, which feels and seems much more natural and believable. This may be how it already works in Pillars 1 (I seem to recall reading that the reputations were weighted in such a way), and it's just simply not expressed well with the game's simplistic UI. Basically, I'm hoping that NPCs in Pillars 2 will be a lot less static and two-dimensional. Their lack of reactivity towards player/party reputation and behavior is one of the biggest let-downs of Pillars compared to the old Infinity Engine titles, and it's one I'm hoping is a focus for correction in Pillars 2.

Definitely! So in essence you're not using it as a tank, but rather a bait, and have created a party that doesn't even require a tank. Definitely an interesting approach, and one that can't really be easily compared with a tank based setup. Damn, now I actually want to try that out. Have you tried/considered this approach with other classes besides chanters? How intensive is the micro-management required as opposed to having a strong front-line? Thanks Oh, there is one slight error in your assessment of fighter tanks that I have to correct: if you take the talent that adds knockdown to your disengagement attacks, even a low damage fighter is definitely not dead weight in most situations. Mostly you want to have on-hit properties on such a fighter rather than damage. I use Kana as my party's tank. As mentioned elsewhere, chanters honestly don't lose much by taking nothing but defense/utility feats. My build typically works out to be something like Veteran's Recovery, Sword and Shield Style, Hold the Line, and then typically feats that boost Fortitude and Will saves as well as the feat which gives a bonus to saves against Prone and other hard control effects; I typically include a Paladin, so I don't usually worry much about Charm effects (since the Paladin will have extremely high defense against those effects and I frequently take the feat that lets them slap someone out of Charm effects.) You can use pretty much any weapon you'd like... since there aren't really any melee soulbound items for Chanters, I tend to not bother with the weapon focus feats. Shatterstar is great to give you three engagement slots, Hearth Harvest gives you the +5 Def from hatchets plus tons of bonuses, etc. With Overbearing Guard being so good, it feels criminal not to make Fighters damage oriented. I usually build Eder along the lines of Two Weapon Style, Confident Aim, Ruffian focus, Ruffian specialization, Overbearing Guard, Ruffian mastery, etc. Open with a pistol or blunderbuss shot, proceed to mulch things with your choice of weapons (usually a saber and either a club or stiletto.) Probably even better with a two-handed weapon (I'd probably go Soldier focus and use Tidefall for that early superb weapon), but I tend to put my Paladin on the front lines with a two-hander. You'll want to pick up Hold the Line at some point to give you more chance to get Disengagement attacks.

Simply giving scaling etc is some way of making sure low level summons remain useful. Skeletons are wonderful in act 1 and still relevant in act 2 (the AI tends to like targeting them due to their low deflection and DR, and they're great for tying up enemies for a few seconds), but you basically have to retrain out of that skill by act 3 because they stop being useful even for tying up enemies; the phantom, at least, still retains its bull**** overpowered stun-on-hit and can actually do substantial damage with sneak attacks against enemies with low freeze DR. I suppose an alternative might be to allow invocations to be used early, for lesser effect (and vice versa)? Use the skeletons with 1 or 2 chants and you get 1 or 2 skeletons, respectively. Use it with 4 or 5 chants, you get improved or dramatically improved skeletons (but still only up to 3.) For single summons like the phantom, I'd probably just adjust its stats and abilities; reduced defenses and accuracy at 1 chant with no stun; gains stun at 2 chants but still has the stat penalties; gains stat bonuses or damage boost etc at higher amounts of chants. Damage, buff, debuff, etc invocations would scale in a similar manner. I think flexibility is the big thing that chanters are currently lacking in Pillars - as the OP mentions and has been discussed elsewhere, it's really only PotD or maybe Hard where fights actually last long enough for chanters to accrue a decent number of chants.

Because in this game wizards dont need INT but in BG at least, i am not familiar with pnp pathfinder, Wizards had to have int or else you couldn't play them. That is a huge difference. Also priest, druid had to have wisdom for same reason but in this game they dont. And dont give me the companion stats sucks. That is the beauty of this game stats are not as important as you are making them out to be. Hiravias with the right build could spirit shift and do more dps damage than any melee character and he has 14 might. The stats are secondary to ability, talents, and gear. If you cannot see what is different about the two systems then like i said you lack imagination for builds that are possible in this game as oppose to a game where Strength determines you damage and hit. Where int, wisdom were only really useful for casters. Where there were dump stats for every build because some stats were utterly meaningless. That is the description of an inferior system. I know some of that exist in POE but not to the extent of past games. Also the arguments about realistic stats are pretty ironic considering we are talking about a fantasy game. "It's a fantasy game" is one of the dumbest, most pointless arguments ever made. Stop making it, it makes you look incredibly foolish. I don't lack imagination, I just have broad enough experience that I can see there's little functional difference between the systems. You said you don't even know what Pathfinder is, so you honestly don't have enough experience with other systems to have a good opinion. Go play 5E, go play Pathfinder, go play Shadowrun and a World of Darkness (old or new) game. Go play some of the games JSawyer mentioned as inspirations for the tabletop version of Pillars they're working on. The reason you're unable to see the obvious parallels between Pillars and those other systems, and why Pillars isn't particularly different, is because you don't have enough experience with other systems.

Right, but how is this different from Pillars? Even without min-maxing there are stats that are obviously superior to others for specific classes. Not only that, but the stats themselves don't make any sense. How is the wizard with 18 Might strong enough to kick down a wall when the fighter with 14 Might isn't, even though the Fighter has trained with arms and armor their whole life while the wizard mostly just studies books? How does increasing Intelligence increase the duration of a fighter's Knock Down or the AOE of a barbarian's yells? Shouldn't Resolve be the stat that affects the barbarian's yells, since that's the stat that's tied to having a strong personality or presence (intimidation)? Like I said, the stats feel very MMO-ified compared to traditional D&D stats. Pillars is probably the least RP-friendly old-school RPG I've ever played, and the stat system and anemic feat/talent system has a lot to do with it. Its vastly different. Saying a stat is superior for a class (like in POE which is arguable for lots of classes) vs necessary for the class to even function (like in the BG games) is totally different. I really liked what the stats tried to accomplish. It makes build diversity within classes viable and more fun in POE. Hope they go this route even more in POE2. Just polish it. Polishing may be good enough, but I don't see any difference in stat assignment. Are you a direct damage dealer? Max out your Might, no questions asked. Tank? Probably don't need Might, but you'll probably want to pump Resolve and Constitution, and probably Perception while you're at it. Focused on buffs or disables? Intelligence. I don't see how this is fundamentally different from "all Wizards use INT" or "all Bards use Charisma." The only difference might be that your role in Pathfinder is determined by spell choice (and for martial classes, feat chains) rather than your stat. In some ways, Pillars' system is worse because of how the stats work. Aloth, for example, will always be an utterly horrible choice for a damage Wizard because he only has 12 Might; instead, you need to run him as a control Wizard to maximize the impact of his 16 Intelligence. Pallegina is kind of awful at everything because of her stats being all over the place - not enough CON to be a good tank, not enough MIG to be good at damage, etc. This isn't necessarily a problem with the system so much as it's a problem with the companion design, though (compare Eder, who at 16 MIG and 16 CON is both acceptable as a DPS and as a tank, if not ideal for either.) I do agree that the system has merit, and that it can become good if refined further, but in Pillars 1 I think it's categorically inferior to Pathfinder in terms of class customization as well as roleplaying.

Right, but how is this different from Pillars? Even without min-maxing there are stats that are obviously superior to others for specific classes. Not only that, but the stats themselves don't make any sense. How is the wizard with 18 Might strong enough to kick down a wall when the fighter with 14 Might isn't, even though the Fighter has trained with arms and armor their whole life while the wizard mostly just studies books? How does increasing Intelligence increase the duration of a fighter's Knock Down or the AOE of a barbarian's yells? Shouldn't Resolve be the stat that affects the barbarian's yells, since that's the stat that's tied to having a strong personality or presence (intimidation)? Like I said, the stats feel very MMO-ified compared to traditional D&D stats. Pillars is probably the least RP-friendly old-school RPG I've ever played, and the stat system and anemic feat/talent system has a lot to do with it.

I don't even understand why they felt the need to do away with D&D-style stats. Pathfinder has stats that are core for classes, but that doesn't make the classes boring. A Fighter may typically prefer Strength, but you can quite easily make a Dexterity Fighter instead (and this is quite common with limited rulebooks, where you want those Fighter levels to improve your Rogue's health pool, attack bonus, get some extra feats, etc.) Pretty much all Wizards are going to pump their INT, but there's tons of wiggle room for other stats - do you want WIS so you can dip for some divine spells, do you pump CHA so you can be the party's face, do you want to pump DEX or STR for a back-up weapon when you're out of spells or against enemies with high spell resistance, do you invest heavily in CON to offset your class's small hit die? I really just don't like the stat system they came up with for Pillars. It feels excessively bland and MMO-like, especially since talents/feats have no stat requirements or anything like that.

There are other games which should also know this by now... *cough*tidesofnumenera*cough* For the most part, I trust Obsidian. But something I was thinking about this morning: I hope they don't try to get too clever with complex plots, conspiracies, and past life touchy-feely crap again. You know what moves a story along? A villain with a clear motivation. If the villain has a clear motivation, then the hero also has a clear motivation (to stop them). This prevents leaps of logic plot points like "Hmmm... I might go insane soon. You know what I should do? Renovate my castle, then go investigate the Leaden Key. That seems logical." Pillars aped BG1 in so many ways, including the overall plot structure. BG1 was incredibly open-ended. It was mostly about doing typical tabletop RPG things while also trying to figure out who murdered your step-dad (and has also been trying to murder you), and while there was some impetus to resolve the core plot, it wasn't the primary focus. It's the same thing with Pillars - sure, catching up with Thaos and doing the climactic showdown is a thing, and the end of act 2 does sort of push things forward and make it more pressing, but up until that point... it's as open-ended as BG1 was. In BG1, you get around to solving the iron crisis; in Pillars, you get around to solving the Hollowborn crisis (even if the people aren't aware of it at the time.) What I'm expecting is that Pillars 2 will be much like BG2 was - you have a reason to be pressing forward after the main plot (we'll ignore the fact that you could do like 70% of BG2 while Irenicus waited before the almighty if/then block), you have a distinct, detailed villain, and it's a more "personal" journey than the first game was.

For Pillars 2, they really just need to copy Pathfinder mechanics and just have Mirror Image, Displaced Image, etc the typical "one in X% chance of missing" function. I think that's what the current large Def bonus is intended to emulate, but it doesn't. Don't give them a Def bonus, just change it so that a hit has a chance of failing, and consuming an image in the process. Weaker effects could simply convert hits to grazes, and so on. I feel like Pillars in numerous areas is two steps forward, three steps back (or two forward and two back.) They were trying to fix things that, IMO, weren't broken to begin with. In regards to the overall topic - I think casting should be allowed out of combat, and they should delineate between powerful in-combat buffs with short durations and weaker buffs or utility-oriented buffs with long durations. In particular, I think long-duration buffs should generally be single-target (or caster-only, such as Pillar's version of Mage Armor, Spirit Shield) or through consumables (scrolls, food, etc.) I'd also start giving spellcasters Spell Mastery MUCH earlier, since almost all spellcasters are extremely heavily penalized on base stats in exchange for having a number of generally powerful per-rest abilities. This ties into a larger problem with Pillars being absolutely horrible at telling players what buffs do and don't stack, and HOW they stack. They need to take a page from Pathfinder and list bonuses as a specific TYPE of bonus, and then say whether or not that TYPE of bonus stacks with others of the type (or if they just override each other.) For example, in Pathfinder affecting your Armor Class, you might have: - Armor Bonus, generally from worn armor or spells like Mage Armor; does not stack - Circumstance Bonus, generally from specific circumstances (I have the high ground, Anakin!); stacks, except for the same source (you don't get two "high ground" bonuses, this is usually GM discretion) - Deflection Bonus, from a myriad of sources such as a Ring of Protection; does not stack - Dexterity Bonus, from your Dexterity modifier; "stacks" in the sense that increases to your Dexterity also increase this bonus (but worn armor can impose a maximum) - Dodge Bonus, from a myriad of sources (most often feats or class abilities); stacks - Enhancement Bonus, typically from magically enhanced armor (Chainmail +1, Mithral Full Plate +2, etc); does not stack on the same source (a +1 on your suit of armor and a +1 on your shield will stack, but not if you were wearing a +1 on some padded armor underneath your +1 plate armor) - Shield Bonus, typically from a worn shield or a spell like Shield; does not stack - Luck, Insight, Morale, Natural (creature with a thick hide or scales, like a dragon or golem), Sacred/Profane (good/bad juju respectively); none of them stack with like It's important to note that all effects stack with other sources, though. So your AC bonus from your leather armor will stack with your buckler's bonus, and they also stack with your Deflection bonus from a feat. It seems confusing, and to an extent it can be, but it's important because once the player learns the various categories, they don't have to ask "will this stack?" If you already receive a Luck bonus from a racial trait or feat, you already know that a spell that gives you a Luck bonus of equal or lesser value is effectively useless for you. Pillars' system already works fine, the problem is they don't have any of it categorized so that's why posts asking "why doesn't this stack" or "what's going on here?" are so damn common.

I'll chip in my own thoughts as I play through PotD again (after several months since my last playthrough), and with some recent Pathfinder tabletop experience to freshen my memory of how tabletop systems handle things. - I don't think that HP and END need to be separate. I like that END and HP are linked. I do, however, think that HP is a little too limiting on harder difficulties. Either reduce the amount of damage that gets transferred to HP, increase total HP pools (especially for the squishy classes), or something else. - I do think that Wound Binding and Field Triage are incredibly underpowered for their cost. At bare minimum, the two abilities should be combined into a single feat. Better yet, they should be default abilities (heal yourself OR heal an ally, 1/rest) and you can take a feat to improve them in some way (multiple uses per rest AND improve the amount healed, maybe.) - An alternative to the above might be allowing players to craft potions or other consumables which restore HP. Even on PotD I don't find myself using consumables all that often, besides a few potions and scrolls which are drastically better than the others. - The focus of HP/END is to limit how far players can go without resting, but that makes limiting how many times the player can rest an odd choice. There is no penalty whatsoever for resting, and all quests are stymied by the mighty if/then block; the entire planet waits on the protagonist and apparently pauses while they're sleeping and praying. Additionally, there is absolutely nothing stopping the player from leaving a dungeon, fortress, or whatever and returning to town to rest at the inn and restock before going back. As a result, the system in Pillars (particularly on PotD, which restricts you to just 2 rests) just wastes the player's time more than anything. There is no tactical or strategic element to deciding when and where to rest - you rest when someone is about to die or when you're out of spells, and that's basically it. Another option might be to just chill the hell out on how much raw damage is spammed at the player (and vice versa.) The player deals and receives an absolutely ridiculous amount of damage on higher difficulty levels, which is basically completely opposite of how most tabletop systems handle things. Maybe Obsidian were aiming to reduce the "save or suck" element that plagues tabletop games, but if so they didn't do a very good job of it considering how common "hard" control methods like stun, prone, etc are in Pillars. PotD, in particular, is crammed full of "save or suck" encounters, especially early in the game due to how front-loaded giving all creatures a flat +15 defense/accuracy boost makes it.

Because they provide things that Fighters and Priests don't. They have stats almost equal to the Fighter's (best base stats in the entire game) with their passive defense bonuses, while the Priest has some of the worst stats in the game. Their auras provide substantial permanent bonuses to everyone in range, and with the class specific boots and some INT, that range is easily large enough to cover all front-line characters and even characters using mid-range weapons. Exhortations are per-encounter abilities with extremely fast cast times, and at least in Liberating Exhortation's case, it doesn't care what type of effects they're under, it's all suppressed. Prayers are great for eliminating specific conditions, but they're PR abilities, not PE, and they only affect a small number of conditions for a short period of time. Paladins also get access to an extremely potent short ranged heal which is ALSO PE rather than PR, and powerful passives like +10 ACC to the nearest ally attacking their target, the ability to instantly end any Charm or Dominate spell with a quick punch to the affected ally, a massive +30 bonus to all defenses against Charm and all similar afflictions (on top of their already stellar Will defense), and extremely powerful late game abilities like immolation. A Paladin with Flames of Devotion, Intense Flames, immolation, and Scion of Flame can produce absolutely absurd damage output against enemies that lack high Burn DR, especially with the Forgemaster's Gloves item to allow access to the Firebrand spell (or Durance's Quarterstaff, I suppose.) I mean, it's fine if a person doesn't find Paladins to be fun to play with or play as. I can understand that. I'm not big on Ciphers myself, despite people talking them up a lot. But to say that Paladins are weak or are pointless is just flatly wrong. I can't think of many parties that aren't substantially improved by having a Paladin around. Much like Fighters, they may lack another class's throughput or specialization, but they're incredibly reliable and consistent and generally have the highest base Defense in the game thanks to Faith and Conviction.

Kdub, I think that you're being a little over the top when saying that Fighters do nothing for the team. Sure, they may not be the highest DPS characters. OTOH, my experience is that their durability and strong if not spectacular damage output makes a fighter a rock in a party's front line. Also, if you want to try to find ways to minimize or at least reduce your micromanagement of the team, fighters tend to be fairly hands off compared to other front liners, like monks. Mind you, I'm not dissing Paladins when I say this. I like having a paladin around as well, even if I don't expect him or her to be a spectacular damage producer. Fighters are probably the most reliable class in the game, and also have the highest base stats. They're ridiculously tanky at mid levels, even without using a shield. Unbending is ridiculously good and with up to three uses in a single fight (boss fights), the Fighter basically can't be killed. Confident Aim and Disciplined Barrage let them reliably hit even high Deflection monsters, and they have a wide variety of control abilities, most of which are PE rather than PR. Fighters don't have the highest throughput, but they're almost entirely self-sufficient. They don't often need healing, they don't often need ACC buffs, and you can even make them permanently immune to Fear and Terrified if you'd like. Personally, I'm a big fan of a damage-oriented Fighter that uses Defender and Overbearing Protector. You can easily bait the enemy into breaking Engagement by sticking someone squishy nearby, which allows the Fighter to proc incredibly powerful and accurate Disengagement Attacks. Defender (and optionally Hold the Line) just make it even more powerful, though taking Defender means you won't be able to use any other modal abilities at the same time (no Savage Attack, Vulnerable Attack, etc.) Giving Fighters some points in Lore is also really great. It's not a class skill for them, but honestly... skills still aren't very useful except for one mandatory Mechanics class and the required 3 Athletics to remove Fatigue from the game. You aren't out too much by going for 4 or so Lore to be able to use some basic scrolls (particularly buff or CC scrolls.)

I'm personally a big fan of Wael. Yeah, Skaen gives you a baby sneak attack, but I think people may underestimate how good reach weapons can be; (Wael's incomprehensible revelation talent gives you +10 quarterstaff and rods). Skaenites might do more damage, but a priest of Wael can do that damage safely. Just stand behind someone with good engagement (fighter, or some other melee fighter with hold the line) with a good quarterstaff (hint: steal Durance's; Gromnir is right, it's pretty good, one of the better quarterstaffs in the game), maybe put up that Holy Power aura (+3 might, +7 resolve in a tiny area including your priest) and you can do alright early on (and buff your tank in the process). Sneak Attack applies to ranged attacks as well as melee ones, however. You won't have that +10 ACC, which will hurt early on, but the extra damage will outweigh the ACC in most cases later

I'll chip in with my pet peeves and wants. - UI improvements to make it easier to understand specifically what's going on. I have an extremely tough time determining what's going on or even WHERE my units are in the middle of a large-scale, AOE-heavy fight (full party versus 6+ enemies, particularly if there are spellcasting enemies.) The big brawl on the 7th floor of Od Nua by the locked door was an absolute cluster****. I pretty much just spammed AOE spells and hoped my immunity buffs and healing spells would outweigh whatever AOEs the enemy units were spamming and the inevitable friendly fire resulting from selection circles being almost impossible to see. I definitely feel like selection circles should override any spell effects, models, etc when that unit is selected or being targeted. It's very frustrating to try and locate Sagani's pet Ituumak, a small white fox, in the middle of bright blue, white, gold, etc spell effects in the middle of a pitched battle. I feel like PoE has a lot of potential to be a tactically complex and interesting game, but when I can't tell up from down in the middle of a fight due to the presentation of the game, I don't see it happening. Even on PotD, large fights devolve into "spam AOEs and hope I come out on top, because I can't tell what the hell is going on." - Related to the above, I'd like more information about spellcasting. When an enemy is casting a spell, I'd like to be able to hover over that itty bitty icon to be told what spell it is they're casting. Add a Spellcraft skill or something like that if you want to prevent the player from magically knowing everything about spells they've never seen before, or make it function like the bestiary: the more times you're exposed to a spell or spell-like ability, the more you're able to understand it. - Add filters to the combat log. It's very frustrating to be in the middle of a huge brawl and then suddenly Pallegina gets hit for like 80% of her HP instantly and I have to stop everything and spend two minutes carefully poring over the combat log, line by line, until I can finally locate what hit her. If one of my dudes gets obliterated by something an enemy did, I want to be able to quickly find the line that explains what happened, so I can prevent it in the future or come up with a means of handling it (especially if it means I'm gonna have to load a save and try the fight again!) I probably don't need to be advised of basic attack rolls: those could be safely hidden behind a filter. Basically, I want to be able to customize the combat log to show me only information that I find important or relevant. If the developers have played World of Warcraft, their combat log and how it has filters enabled might be an example of what I'm asking for. - Add a "sell all" button to the trade panel. Clicking it will place everything in the current page of the Stash into the trade window. Allow us to mark items as "favorites", which will not be added to the trade panel unless added manually. I just murdered my way through 80 xaurips, and I want to turn those piles of shields and bows into a little bit of spare change. It took me something ridiculous like five minutes to do this. Slowly adding them to the trade panel, one by one, with a couple seconds of lag between each transaction because of how the Stash works (instead of having discrete pages, it simply pulls an item from a subsequent page to fill the vacancy.) Alternatively, just have monsters drop raw cash roughly equivalent to what their equipment is worth. If that adorable little xaurip I'm scraping off my bootheel was carrying equipment worth 15cp to a vendor, just have him drop something like 8-18cp or something. - Ideally, dial back on-hit effects of the "hard lock" variety: stun, paralyze, etc. I don't find it particularly fun or even all that interesting to watch someone get stunlocked by a Phantom or permanently paralyzed by a Xaurip Skirmisher, and watching Sagani stunlock the enemy mage from across the room with her "chance to stun on crit" bow also isn't that interesting. I'm okay with minor debuffs being on-hit effects (and even substantial ones like Weakened, if it's a very powerful monster), but I think that "hard lock" on-hit effects should be limited to self-buffs with limited durations, not just an intrinsic part of the creature's attack or weapon properties. Like the Xaurip Skirmisher coats their weapon in poison, allowing Paralyze on hit for a few seconds, usable once or twice per encounter. Phantoms can empower their attacks to Stun for a few seconds, once or twice per encounter. That sword will apply Stun on a crit, up to four times per encounter. Stuff like that. - Rework the entire resting/Health system. I like the concept, but find it to be very boring in practice, rather than interesting. I don't like the idea that it's totally okay for the adventurers to waltz out of the dungeon with pretty much no health or spells remaining, travel 2 days to the nearest town (without ever worrying about being accosted by bandits or slavers, which we're always hearing about) and sleep in the inn (and maybe buy more camping supplies), and then travel another 2 days back to the dungeon and pick up where they left off. I'd almost like to see a system vaguely similar to how Darkest Dungeon handles resting. Rather than resting automatically restoring all health, curing injuries, restoring all per-rest abilities, etc, I'd like to see camping supplies be a much larger element. Maybe you can carry 12 supplies instead of 2, but a "full rest" (which fully heals everyone, cures all injuries, restores all spells, etc) costs 9 supplies. You could do a quick "half rest" or "breather" or something for fewer supplies, and with appropriately weaker effects. I feel like the current Health/Rest system is just too binary and this results in it being an annoying chore rather than something that's interesting and which adds depth to the game. - Similarly, make travel more dangerous. Bandits will harass low level groups who look like easy pickings, but will be less likely to tangle with obviously well-armed groups... unless those groups look like they're only a few steps shy of the grave as it is. After all, they might be wearing some powerful equipment, but if they're already half-dead, you stand to make quite a tidy profit if you can help them make it all the way to dead. Ideally, tie these random encounters into the overall narrative. If the woods are going crazy because evil Druids are doing typical bad guy stuff, make encounters with aggressive wildlife common. If it's like BG1's Nashkel setting and quality iron is almost impossible to find, throw bandits and even desperate townspeople at us if they see us walking around with good steel. If I've done a lot of good things, throw assassins at me, paid for by folks like House Doemenel who have become concerned that I might impact their operations. If I've done a lot of bad things, throw the regional equivalent of the FBI after me. I want travel to be a consideration, a risk.

Priests are pretty awful at low levels because of their terrible base stats, similar to Wizards and other squishy classes. Their buffs are proportionately more useful at low levels than at high levels (compare +4 DR vs a hit for 15 as opposed to a hit for 40) to compensate, however, and they DO get a handful of particularly strong spells. Barbs of Condemnation, Halt, and Divine Mark are all excellent nukes, and Consecrated Ground is probably the best healing ability in the game. By the mid game, they come into their own, but at their core, they're still always about buffing and debuffing more than anything else. The various Prayer Against X spells are, predictably, situationally useful. Having immunity to Petrify is quite valuable when facing down an Adragan, and immunity to fear effects makes fighting powerful monsters like Drakes and Dragons much easier since your team isn't suffering from a virtually permanent ACC penalty. Keep in mind, however, that their buffs DO suffer from suppression - the +5 ACC from Blessing will be suppressed by a Paladin's Zealous Focus (+6 ACC) aura, for example. Armor of Faith will be suppressed by Zealous Endurance, and so on. It's worth noting that Priests are much stronger as the player character than as an NPC. While Holy Radiance still scales for NPCs, it's far weaker than with a PC. A PC with maxed out dispositions can do literally hundreds of damage to Vessels and heal for nearly a hundred END, which can quickly trivialize many Vessel-heavy encounters (like 8th floor of Od Nua.) In many cases, fights against Vessels amount to "move Priest forward, press Holy Radiance, begin looting." Especially with respecializing available, the various god-specific talents are highly recommended. +10 ACC with a specific weapon type helps out quite a lot at compensating for the Priest's awful base ACC and can make them capable of actually contributing in early game fights. You can keep the talents later in the game if you'd like (+10 ACC is significant), but only Skaen's provides anything particularly useful apart from the ACC bonus - the baby Sneak Attack (+15% damage, if I remember right; compared to a Rogue's +50% and a Ranger's +30%) is pretty much always useful, which makes a compelling case for a Priest of Skaen PC if you're okay with playing an evil/**** playthrough. My PC is a Priest of Eothas and is actually my group's only dedicated tank. I have Eder and Pallegina available for additional tanking, and I guess Ituumak can function as one in a pinch, but my Priest does most of the work. I focus him heavily on defensive talents (including Hold the Line, Sword and Shield Style, Cautious Attack, Superior Deflection, and various other similar talents) and mostly just use him as a portable wall to hold things in place for the rest of the group to destroy. My spell use similarly follows a defensive mindset - find a convenient place, lay down auras, and Hold the Line. You can find a pair of boots that automatically cast Consecrated Ground when crit, once per encounter, and it's pretty funny to watch two separate Consecrated Ground spells ticking simultaneously - pretty much nothing dies when under that effect, especially on top of the various auras and defensive spells I can bring to bear when needed. The only downside is that wearing heavy armor does increase Recovery time substantially, so my PC is not well-suited to using spells reactively. For that reason, I could also easily see making a case for a ranged Priest using light armor and some sort of fast ranged weapon (such as the soulbound scepter.) I think it's all about how you plan on using them. I do agree Priests feel very underwhelming at first, especially if you're used to D&D Clerics, who are almost as good as Fighters at taking the hits and dishing out the pain at low levels. On the other hand, PoE Priests have much more potent spells than D&D Clerics, I guess it evens out