Darkbridger

Are you certain all parties had the same max Mechanics skill level when reaching that room? The spot that key is in has an above average Mechanics requirement if I remember correctly.

Yep, that right there is the biggest problem with the Chanter. Given how quickly combats resolve, I stick to the level 1 chants. I am only playing on Hard, not PotD or anything, but I really like having the Chanter as a second tank. Both he and the Fighter benefit from the chants, and the 2 archer rogues, cipher, and firearm toting priest do a very good job of killing things. Even if I wanted to replace him, I'm not sure who could fill that role. Paladin maybe... haven't tried one of those yet. But two full tanks work a lot better than my previous tank + reach weapon wielder in the middle. Dial back the damage across the entire game, and Chanters might become more useful, but then combats would become more of a tedious slog. Ichthyic, even if you want to be a tank scroll user, Int will only offer marginal use. Enemies will be clustered around you as a tank anyway, so I don't think the AoE benefit would be all that great. I guess if you want to open with a scroll, added AoE can be useful, but I'd still consider it marginal to the point that a 10 Int would be sufficient for most instances. Given the problem quoted above, I really wish Int had more of an affect on Chant times... it would go a long way toward making the higher level chants more useful.

My tank Chanter maxxed Con, Per, Res, and completely dumped Dex. Mig and Int were left at 10 I think. With a 15 Int, that's (I believe) a 15% increase in AoE. Personally, I don't find that useful. My Fighter and Chanter team up and as long as I can affect those two and/or the enemies meleeing us with base AoE, that's good enough. More health and endurance is far more useful to me. Your experiences may vary, particularly depending on your planned party composition.

Another reason your Chanter doesn't need Int: Your selection of Chants and Invocations is limited. Even if you do have the range to hit multiple things, you won't have multiple things working at the same time (beyond the few seconds of linger). Buff your ranged characters OR buff your meleers OR debuff the enemy. Trying to do all of those will only lead to frustration. Int might help your Invocations, but again, it depends purely on which ones you plan to use as some will benefit from Int and others will not. A ranged Chanter will probably benefit more from Int than a melee/tank Chanter. I have two tanks, a Fighter and my Chanter. My other 4 ranged characters do quite well (so far) at taking care of themselves, even if something slips past the front duo.

A better example of the weird item lingo is one of Fulvano's items... Of Healing. Which healing? Healing I recieve... Healing I perform? So vague.

Why do people keep saying this? You can only have 1 summon active at a time... you can never have an army. Well, unless you take a group of 6 Chanters.

Was able to get into character creation the first time, but it locked up my entire computer when I tried to change hairstyle (changing faces worked fine). Since then, the game is unable to load character creation at all from New Game and simply hangs during the load screen.