Fimconte

you mean... like a scepter? becuause those are, in fact, what blasting skills are attached to already in this game: wands, scepters, rods. there is no need for a modified staff, because they already did that. maybe move rod from noble to peasant (since noble has scepter already), and make unarmed a general class everyone gets at startup. then your staff users can use a staff, or a rod, and the rod gives them the blast ability if they are a mage. No. I don't mean a one-handed silly looking fat metal wand thing. I mean like a wizard's focus/battle staff. f.ex.

'Eh, ideally it would've been two different weapons; A 'normal' Quarterstaff for monks, fighters & matrim cauthon wannabees. A 'blasting' staff, ala Dragon Age / Guild Wars. Perhaps we will see mods in the future, that add 'staff' skins to rods/wands and custom animations.

Not necessarily, weapon swap isn't that slow without the talent.

Some Greatswords also look really nice, especially with shocking lash.

You know what they say, a party that sleeps together, stays together~!

There's a +4 Int rest bonus. I don't remember if courtesan buffs stack with rest one.

Double Drain weapons is pretty obscene, it's funny how you see your endurance rush back up to full after taking a hit.

Uh, upgrading the fortress should be an afterthought. Picking up good magical items (with great 'unique' enchants) is worth it, because you can upgrade them later with fine-exceptional-superb. You should also get Vulnerable Attack/Penetrating Shot.

Resolution is from Endless Path, somewhere in the first five floors I think.

One Stands Alone grants +20 damage if engaged with 2 or more enemies afaik. Not sure if WAD or someone made a typo.

You are seriously undervaluing Carnage and Frenzy. The aspd multiplier from Frenzy is quite considerable, might is just gravy. Threatening Presence and other -Fortitude effects combined with Brute Force is also quite nice. The Fighter might maybe have better single-target dps (I haven't done the math), but make no mistake, with 2 or more targets in Carnage range, the Barbarian is the king in melee damage.

Two handers are definitely not worthless. Rolling with an Estoc is quite viable. Fighter/Barbarian work best.

I'm not sure why you think he won't reach front lines. If you go with a custom character or IEmod Kana, you can get high Int. Place them in the mid-ground and they'll reach both front lines and the ranged just fine.

Spam rest in stronghold.

Even with the nerf, Ila's is still quite strong. As long as you have at least 3-4 reloading ranged characters, I'd bring a chanter still.

Fighter with Defender+Wary Defender, +10 deflect ring and a few other defensive items (+5 pierce/slash DR belt) = you're pretty much done in terms of defenses. It's not like you need 140+ deflect, that a shield fighter ends up with. This leaves you with plenty of room to do noticeable damage, either with dual-wield or 2h.

Since you can copy from grimores, spell selection isn't all that important. Pick the crucial ones and you'll get all the others sooner or later.

It's not really necessary to tank so stack so much defence on tanks really, you're just trading free damage for survivability that isn't really needed.

Vulnerable Attack (5 DR penetration) and Deep wounds (Raw dmg dot + it reapplies it on every strike for instant tick = ~4 raw dmg on every hit) are really good. Crippling Strike is better than Blinding, because you get 2x per encounter and you want it for the 1.25x full attack for burst damage, not for the debuff. That said, Ranged rogue is better imho, since you don't have to worry about HP that much. A barbarian fills the melee striker role better, due to Carnage and much higher HP buffer (you don't want to get hit on your striker either way, but unless you stack deflect on either class they're not going to have super-high defense. As such, Barbarian works better as melee striker imho). The main thing with dual-wielding is that you really want -DR weapons (Stilettos/Maces? and certain weapons with 'unique' enchants).

Both are viable on Hard if you want either for some thematic reason. Dual-wield/2h or Arbalest/Gunpowder weapons are better in terms of damage though.

Chanter class talents are indeed lacking. But this just means you can go Penetrating Shot/Gunner/Weapon Focus/Marksman. Yay for shotgun party!

Just IEmod?

Retaliation items don't stack, at least with Sanguin+Hiro's, one gets 'suppressed'. Hiro's is also obtainable quite early. It's also not mentioned, but deep wounds does damage on reapply. Has anyone tested if Vulnerable Attack is applied on Riposte full attack (don't see why it shouldn't). The problem I can see is that you need to be actually hit for Retaliate to work, while Riposte works on miss. With High deflect, you're not going to get a lot of Retaliates. It should be fine, you're can just pick up normal dps talents early game and play it like a standard dps rogue.

Getting all the elemental talents is a bit of a waste, because you're can't spam spells. Blast and Penetrating blast also kinda meh, since they limit you to wand/rod which have weak average damage against most targets due to DR. It's much better to go Arquebus/Blunderbuss and Penetrating Shot, Gunner, Weapon Focus + Marksman. Mostly because auto-attack damage is such a huge component since you can't spam spell in most trash mob fights. If you're bringing a chanter, ranged weapons with reload get a nice boost once you get Ila's (level 4) as well. Wood Elf for the best race due its +5 Accuracy also affecting spells.

IEMod Aloth into a Cipher if you want to spam spells, Druid if you like AoE boom and debuffs or Priest if you want a various heals, shields and support buffs. I think Wizard needs some useful/fun per encounter abilities. Arcane Assault doesn't fill that role.