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No, fortunately it isn't Baldurs Gate system anymore From all the info I gathered being able to read high level scrolls is really important later-on against foes like Adra Dragon. In case of priest ofc. Classes with more offensive spells often don't need Wisdom at all.

Hi guys, recently I've been trying various classes solo and leveling Mechanics seemed to be really important. Most of the time I went: 5 Sneaking 11 Mechanics base Wisdom 2 Athletics base Survival But now I'm trying a priest and figured I will need both Mechanics and Wisdom at very high levels, which may be difficult to achieve. Therefore I may be forced to choose which one I want more. Also, may be forced to skip Sneaking completely (which seems important solo). I would like to ask about your experiences with Mechanics: how high does it really need to be? Also, is max Wisdom on a priest worth having for a price of lower Mechanics and no Sneaking? I am completely new to a solo priest and don't want to gimp myself form the start.

It does, actually. I've read somewhere on these forums it doesn't. If that is so my mistake then.

Moving your playthrough backwards in time in order to play the new content would feel a bit weird. The way the game ends is very open for any further adventures so continuing onwards wouldn't brake anything. They can put your team in some inn and give some purpose to explore new areas. This would be more natural, I think. Problem is afaic the game doesn't make save after the boss is defeated. So this technical reason may be enough for them to choose the "back in time" option.

Not necessarily making them stronger. Shaping them would be the more apt word. Having the option to develop them till the end credits roll. Yeah. You put it nicely.

I have also hit lvl 12 just at the beginning of Act 3 and it is true that part of motivation to keep playing and exploring has gone. I haven't done all bounty quests yet, I haven't even started to explore Endless Paths of Od Nua. Now I just feel like getting to the end of the main quest and then maybe start another playthrough. It is very interesting how important is making our game characters stronger for some people, including me. With max out characters game gets a little less interesting. BTW: Killing Undead Raedric gave me 8.000 xp. I was like WTF?! Feels like a bug. (it was solo playthrough if that matters)

Hey guys, I'm doing solo wizard playthrough (normal difficulty) and everything was going pretty well until some enemies with nasty status alignments started to appear. First it was during Undead Raedric fight when I found myself unable to do anything, being constantly charmed by his Fampyre fellows I couldn't cast a single spell once they got onto me. My only hope was to make them fight each other (lvl 4 spell) then get some summons and pray that with couple more spells I can make them kill each other. Unfortunately, too many fortunate rng rolls would have to happen for this to work. Another time it was during Vithrack invastion when I realized that I cannot let them hit me even once or I will be perma stunned/paralyzed forever. So again same strategy: make them fight each other, summons etc... But frankly gameplay became extremely tedious at some point with no hard counters to such effects. In good old BG2 we got tons of items granting immunity to certain effects, but here there is none. The best we got are +10 to save rolls talents, which don't do much at all. Yes, I know, game is not balanced for soloing it but still...no real counters to such effects... After many tries I even had to lower the difficulty to easy for a fight with Undead Raedric, so he came without his summons, because their charm spam was too much to handle. I wanted to beat them so much being interrupted 24/7 was getting ridiculous. So, how do you deal with this all?

I was never an advocate of nerfing things. It just seem bad that shield style is so much encouraged by mechanics. Instead of nerfing it I would rather provide more defensive options alternative to shield. In PoE most weapons have very similar and, frankly, quite boring, attributes. I feel that in good old BG2:ToB weapons were more exciting with great defensive enchantments (magic resist, armor class bonus etc.). This way there was a lot of 2-handed powerful alternatives to weapon and shield playstyle, which didn't hurt survivability but sometimes surpassed shields in certain situations (Carsomyr).

Thank you guys for a lot of interesting input. Like I said the only reason I don't want to go shield are rp reasons. It just doesn't feel right, actually feels very silly. I am already lvl 8 (normal difficulty) heading towards Dyrford Village. I got to this point mainly thanks to figurines which did majority of the tanking (that bridge fight for Sanguine Armor). Hovever I started being afraid that coming closer to end of the game I would need more survivability, hence shield.

Guys, I want to check what you think because maybe it is just me. I am soloing the game with wizard so I am at point where every skill/talent decision matters and I really don't want to use shield because it doesn't go well even with battle-mage theme, like mage with a shield makes no sense to me. But when I was comparing talents Weapon and Shield Style seemed ridicoulusly overpowered compared to rest. For a single point, handling a shield we get massive deflection and reflex improvement, which is around 40 total defense stats (all deflection from shield goes also to reflex)! I have a really hard decision right now because it feels too good to pass up (especially for soloing) but at the same time is bad from rp perspective for caster characters. I am using The White Spire 2h estoc at the moment, which goes extremely well with battle mage theme and has also bonus Blizzard casts. Unfortunatley it gets double-nerfed in 1.05 patch (Blizzard damage down, spell holding casts down to 2, instead of 3 in this case). Please, tell me is there anything worth not having a shield on my mage...

Very inspiring thread! Thank you gochargers2156 Want to try it myself!

Chanters seem pretty solid but is soloing whole game even possible? Let us know how far you managed to get before it gets too hard. Also, if you had to choose one character to keep your chanter company what class would it be? Do you think they would be able to duo whole content?

The BGs were actually easier solo than with a full party ironically. That is somehow true. Even at times when I ran 3 ppl party, everyone except my charname usually was just standing safe at the edge of the map while I was doing whole exploring and fighting. I basically used them only for a support during boss/dragon encounters. Most fights they were just too easily exposed to being focused, cc-ed etc so it was actually easier to leave them behind.

I've recently been playing again through whole BG saga and having it fresh in my memory I have to say PoE combat system is by far more punishing and strategic. One character, even with major xp buff simply cannot do it. Example that shocked me: My 4-men lvl 2-3 party was ambushed by group of wolves in the woods. I died quickly. I tried this fight twice again and finally, with better positioning and using of more cc spells instead of damage ones, I've managed to kill them easily, having a lot of hp left. I quickly checked the difficulty setting because I felt like it switched itself to easy by some mistake. A while later same story happened with a pack of boars nearby. CC is king, positioning is king. In older IE games it was kinda whatever, you just used your strongest stuff first and focused the casters, or just cheesed it with cloud kill spell from afar ;-). PoE combat can be frustrating trial and error, even with full party. Nearly every encounter with more than one enemy feels like an mini-boss fight.

I think the main reason IE games were easily soloable was due to insane xp you were getting solo, making charname's level way above the content, and easily abusable combat system (best armor+haste=killing machine). I don't see any of these things in PoE so I'm afraid soloing this game, even if possible, would be rather frustrating F5 - F8 fest. I would love to be able to play the game solo tho.

I present you with my top 3 of custom avatars I recently used for BG1+2 playthrough. I love all of them. This one was for my mainchar Paladin I didn't like default Imoen one (especially in BG2) so I've found this and I think it fits perfectly to any female human thief character. This one was made for Neera from some photo I found, which I photoshopped for more art- and fantasy-like appearance.

Hi guys, Recently I've been playing through BG saga once more and discovered I enjoy small parties (3-4 people) more than full 6. Mainly due to less micromanaging, less worries about safe positioning of weaker party members. I'm curious how this can work in Pillars of Eternity. Are there some classes that you absolutely need to have in your party? How would the optimal small party look like? If you have some experience (from playing beta) already I would appreciate some suggestions.