vistani

I maxed resolve, int and perception on mine.. with the free resistances from being faithful, I'm ok with having lower fort because its still really high. The pal does everything I need her to do, tanks like a boss, has auras. I did this because the biggest strength of starting paladin is the ability to raise the skills that matter for dialog options and still be ok.. so thats what I did. I use a chanter atm as an offtank. He also gives resistances and healing auras and stuff so it seems to be working very well. I'm playing on hard and doing just fine

IE mod worked fine for me. I restarted as pal because I missed some resolve dialog I really wanted and knew it was going to keep happening and figured I could just make the other chars, didnt matter to me if my PC was the boring tank, i got 5 more. I then started feeling kinda bad about having no official NPC flavor dialog so I grabbed IE Mod and stuck all my favorite people in the party and made em what I wanted them to be.. a bit of a pain in the ass modifying every single attribute (add to this one, take from that one to keep in line with what points I weould of had) and I had to change eder to a cipher which annoys me slightly but I really wanted a cipher. Ended up running eder (cipher), sagira, durance and Kana.. will also use mother when I get her.. The wizard guy got on my nerves so I opted out of him so I'll have to reroll mother as my wizard or cipher when I get her. I doubt theres anyway to keep achievements and have the party you want without hiring an entire party from the inn but I care nothing for achievements so I jumped all over IE Mod for the better gameplay experience

Aloth is underpowered severely because of his low might. Wizards are amazing but Aloth just isn't so I would suggest either making your own wizard or using IE mod (found in the poe nexus) to change his might. One might be able to do this with console commands too. I'm only just now starting to look into how exactly I'm supposed to do this myself so I can't offer much advise but I cannot suffer having 0 companion related story nor innefficiently built chars. I'm playing on hard and I'm not sure I shouldn't be playing on potd but using vanilla Aloth as my wizard for even normal difficulty is just not acceptable unless all I cared about was his supporty control spells and considered dmg a secondary concern.. I do not. As for slicken, easiest way would be to make a wizard at the inn and pick it then just give the book to aloth and learn it from it. Would cost a mere 350 gold.. 450 if you want chill fog or something too.

would you care to elaborate on what chanters have that makes them invaluable? Right now I'm only playing on hard and my comp is currently a pal tank, a fighter tank, a druid, wizard, ranger and cipher. Druid runs around with a staff, rest are ranged. I'm assuming I'll have to drop someone for a priest sooner or later but I'm wrecking stuff so far. I know chanters summon but so do druids and chanters have aoe buffs but so do paladins but I've only ever played with the companion chanter up to about lvl 5 on my other save so I'm not real sure why I need one that bad. My pal is such a hefty tank that I guess I could make a chanter be my offtank instead of the fighter for more aoe goodness but I sorta want to know first since that save is almost broke from making people already

i like the way the ranger class is setup but I admit that I would of prefered it if they just didnt have a pet because it doesnt really seem to contribute in a very meaningful way. I took the lion and it roars over a large area with a nice enemy debuff then just kinda gets in the way. Also, whoever said they didn't like paladin, I think your wrong, I really like mine as far as tank calsses anyway.. all of them are boring but pal seems the best of the lot in many ways and the absolute 100% best pc char if you want to have the stats for dialog options. Granted, fighter prolly main tanks better and chanter might be a more interesting alternative but pal has stupid high defenses and gives nice stuff to the less hearty team mates to keep them alive on harder difficulties. I doubt even the fighter has the defenses of a properly faithed paladin, he just regens better

I roll rogues often in games but cipher just looked more fun this time around

I too am interested in this since I'm about to reroll. I got to lvl 5 and I may keep playing that char but I've missed some dialog I really wanted and I've did some minor things concerning leveling up that I regret. Anyway, I can't find a good way to spec a char like this. Lets assume I needed 18 in perc, res and int because I don't know how much I actaully need and want to be safe. That means I have to strip points from dex or might which might be ok considering a tank doesn't really need to attack fast or do damage but the problem I see is how will I even be a good tank? If I take it out of dex then my reflex save I get from perc is canceled out by the terrible dex. If I take from might and can't afford to invest hardly any into con anyway then my fort save will be bad as well as me having fairly low hp. Any thoughts about this would be welcome such as what saving throws are more important and why or if my stats can go lower anywhere and still accomplish the desired result.. or anything else that might be useful

No idea what the soloer guy was even trying to say but whatever. I won't cut the combat down because I like a good hard challenge and I love the game but idk, I don't remember feeling this playing icewind dale, baldur's gate or even dragon age. Its been 4-5 years since my last playthru of BG but I think I would find rooms with few enemies, no enemies and larger packs of enemies all in the same cave or whatnot. I bet world density in those games was designed by hand and since enemy numbers are linked to difficulty in this one, I think it ends up being a little too formulaic. I don't typically complain about stuff and this is a very small matter in a great game but it does break my immersion to some degree, feels too much like computer generated enemy population instead of a cave or whatever populated by natural inhabitants. Even if it ramped up the deeper I got it would maybe feel ok but its like if I can kill 1 group in the place I'm at then I know i'm fine because every other group is going to be almost exactly the same, not really an oh this is getting harder the deeper I go feel but more of a lets see if I get 1 or 2 archers this time in my pack of 6. Just doesn't feel right, I can't help it.

I enjoy the combat and such but it feels a lil off that every single room in every single place I go has a fight in it. With the experience system in place, it doesn't need enemies in every room and it sorta feels off that every single room in this abandoned whatever has 6 guys trying to kill me. I think it would appeal to my RPG senses more if I didn't know 99% of the time that the room I'm walking into has dudes and I was rewarded with some exploration for explorations sake so it wasn't such a grueling pace. I don't know how to properly express it but idk, I enjoy fighting, looting and stuff but would this place realistically really have this many things in it? Mostly all split up into relatively equal size packs in every room? Just feels kinda wierd to me.

I'm happy with the rest mechanics. I haven't ran myself out of camping supplies yet on normal and my wizard spells seem to last about as long as my tanks health does. I mean I could explode the !@#$ out of 1 encounter and pew with my wand for a few fights so I feel like im getting my camping worth I guess but if I'm going to blow my load, it better be some scary stuff after me.

The quick and dirty way to assure success is to run over to the stronghold and get the chanter guy and down to that other zone and grab the priest for a team of 5. I managed somehow with many trips to the inn to clear the first floor with just my cipher and wizard because I missed the fighter dude. I made me a lvl 1 fighter at the inn because I was not going to clear another floor the way I did the first because that was stupid but with the shiny new fighter, I managed significantly better. My spells were mind wave, whisper of treason and shockwave. The wizard spell I remeber doing the most work for me was ray of fire but rolling flame or whatever would of been better imo if I had it then. I also may of got mental binding before I finished the temple on my cipher and that spell is so so good. I will say that that place was the worst of the places I have cleared until I started clearing the stronghold which had more freaking shadows. Hate them so much

I like fighter as main tank then 1 more beefy dude of your choice which could include paladin, barb, monk and maybe even chanter. After that I feel you must have a cipher for the high dps and crowd control, then a priest becaue I think you just have to but idk, druid might be able to replace priest if you don't want both but druid is prolly the most OP calss in the game so.. anyway, thats 2 melee tanky dudes, a cipher, a priest and a druid. For the last spot, I'd run wizard because even if you can't blow everything up every fight because of his limits, when you need everything to explode, nobody does it better. If your cipher is melee then you might fit a ranger in somewhere for high ranged dps and if your cipher is ranged then maybe you'll want to work a rogue, barb or monk in instead

I don't feel the wizard needs to be changed. Did gandalf magic everything all the time or did he sit back and smoke his pipe as the lesser beings scurried around tirelessly until he had to act? Point I'm making, no class can wtf destroy everything mercilessly like a wizard but if you try to do that to everything you fight, its going to suck but its nice to have the wild card avail when you need it. Don't get me wrong, my pc is a cipher and I love it the most but my spells just aren't as strong as my wizards. I got tons of CC and stuff but cipher seems most reliant on attacking will where wizards have flexability concerning resistances and cipher seems to have a lot of crowd control but the best crowd control of all is when everything suddenly explodes into flaming giblets.

Cipher is what I picked and I love mine. It doesn't do the once per encounter nonsense or the 4 spells per rest crap.. you start with enough 'mana' to cast about 2 spels every encounter, you punch things and get mana to cast more spells. I am dual wielding on mine for the ultra fast attack speed but blunderbuss would be pretty good too I think if what I read about each pellet counting as a hit so each would give mana from soul whip and one could offset the slow attack speed with lighter armor than I use. Ciphers also have basically every status effect in the game avail to them, some relative dmg spells and more. Anything I can stun, I can chain stun to make it never able to touch me or mine. They do seem to have a lot of spells that attack will though so some enemies with high will might be a pain. Having said that, I don't know the first thing about a monk but if they got to get hit to get mana then that sounds kinda bad. Druid is supposed to be the most overpowered class in the game so its prolly a solid choice and chanters.. donno how strong they are but the NPC one I got pretty early has been pretty cool. I wouldn't do wizard since you get 1 right out of the gate and a priest shortly after. Rogue looks pretty fun but I'm not currently interested and am even less interested in making any of the heavy melee classes. Would rather my main be a class I enjoy and just hire some tanks at the inn or whatnot. The chanter and the warrior you get almost at the first are good enough of a front line for that matter if your not picky.

I wholeheartedly agree, I adore my cipher and even the fighter gets stuff I can tweak on unlike old baldurs gate where warriors got almost 0 buttons to push except go or stop pretty much. Having access to the stash anywhere, being able to roll chars in the inn.. ive not seen that since might and magic games.. the ability to speed up time if I'm just waiting for the party to get across the map or to counter the sneak move speed.. love it

someone out there may of done the numbers but I'd say do what you want to because its prolly close to the same. Do you want to attack much faster with weaker hits or harder and slower? 2h would make missing more painful but damage reduction off of every attack may end up blocking a larger % of your dmg with fast weaker attacks. I'm not a numbers guy but it sorta makes sense that it might work that way. Only other thing I can offer is I know the dual wield talent gives 20% attack speed on top of the rest, no clue what the 2h one does. One also has to take armor into account because heavier armor has high recovery speed debuffs which does seem to include attack speed and I certainly don't know how thats calculated but if its a % slow based on the current attack speed then it might more heavily impact 2h idk. I got a dual wield cipher because atk speed is directly tied to my mana but for a fighter, your on your own

I'm not that far in but I picked this up when I seen it released and hadnt heard anything about it prior to that in like 2 years just because I loved BG, IWD, etc. So far, I love this too.. sorta wish that perception or something spotted secrets when I wasnt sneaking but whatever, the game speed thing works fine. As for everything else.. I adore my cipher so far and all the classes feel nice with unique mechanics though I haven't tried a monk yet but the classes overall seem to have more customization than the old black isle games did. I love the stash and all the ease of use features like hiring at the inn.. idk that theres nothing for me to complain about but I'm having a hard tme finding it so far.

I'm doing dual wield atm for faster attacks and thus faster soul energy buildup and more bonus dmg from soul whip.. Also, I like whisper of treason pretty good.. mental binding is amazing though, too strong

I made a cipher as a moon godlike with 21 int, 14 dex and 15 might.. I dual wield and I took mind wave and whispers of treason. I wish I had of focused on dex instead of int atm but I am only lvl 4 or 5 so far and maybe I don't realize just how much the condition duration is actually helping me but it seems like my stuns and such didnt need the duration as much as my attacks needed the attack speed. Its working well enough so far regardless but considering ciphers don't have a set number of spells per day and are only limited by that soul power stuff you get from attacking.. it seems like having more of that faster is the best way to do the class esp since soul whip does bonus dmg per hit further leading me to believe attack speed is most critical. The spear build or whatever seems like it makes sense for defense and all but your sacrificing atk speed for it but may be able to make up the difference by wearing little to no armor.. same with a bow or something i suppose but fastest attacks possible is going to be dual wield. I also like the accuracy type fast 1h's because you get no soul stuff if you miss. I strongly suggest getting mental binding as the first lvl 2 power because its so powerful I just don't even.. also, whisper of treason has come in useful in some fights despite its long cast, taking 1 enemy and making them fight and die for me is kinda hard to argue with but it seems to be resisted more than other spells. Mind wave's knockdown is almost useless.. not going to say its a bad spell but the knockdown is very hard to use correctly. I also got some shock thing i cast on my tank that hurts enemies around.. its pretty good but cant be cast on self so you need a tank in the middle alive to make it work. I'm not saying to do anything I do or whatnot but thats my thoughts so far.. oh and if you do dual wield, theres a 20% atk speed increase in offense talents you'll get.. as well as a talent to make each hit add more soul power.. I opted for those 2 first.