Emptiness

You don't need a 24 Int. I happen to have the chanter companion at 24 Int because of a bug, but it doesn't really matter because the extra range is unnecessary. As long as you position your Chanter in the right place, even a 10 Int will probably be enough. I can understand not wanting to micromanage combat, but positioning a character is a two-click process. If you don't manage your characters at all then you're not so much playing the game as watching it happen. If that's what you want, then okay...for my part I prefer to be actively involved in my party's victory.

I would say Two-Handed Style, Savage Attack, Barbaric Blow, Bloody Slaughter. In that order because I favor always-on bonuses over triggered attacks over situational bonuses. Before I took any of those I'd take the +6% Accuracy talent that applies to the weapon I was planning to use.

Here's an example of what he's talking about: I turned off ligatures because I found them distracting and didn't feel that they added anything significant to the feel of the game. To each his own.

If that's the translation then Vailian must be a very efficient language.

This is probably just my overactive imagination at work, but when I hear Pallegina's battlecry "Hreche de ayekk!" (sic) I can help but think that's Vailian for "Go for the eyes!"... File is: ..\Pillars of Eternity\PillarsOfEternity_Data\data\audio\vocalization\vo wav files\pallegina\companion_cv_pallegina_voice_set_0046.ogg

Support for Pillars of Eternity: Royal Edition - GOG.com

The early design of Monks had some of the damage inflicted on a Monk converted to wounds (ie they would take less damage from hits against them). Then, if they did not expend the wounds to fuel special attacks, eventually the wound would be converted to damage to the Monk. That design was changed to the current system. Monks take full damage from attacks against them, but earn wounds based on the amount of damage they have taken. They can use or not use those wounds as they see fit. The wounds mechanic is not an inherent source of damage mitigation.

Phrases do overlap, in that their effects last for a time after you stop that phrase and begin the next. You can put the same phrase into a chant more than once. If you position your Chanter midway between your melee and your ranged lines you will probably be able to affect them both with your chants even with a 10 Int, unless you have some crazy long ranges on your weapons. 12 meters is the longest range I know of, and if your ranged characters are 12 meters from the enemies fighting your melee characters, and your Chanter is in the middle, then you'll be chanting for everyone. You are right that invocations come late or even never in most fights. This is (or should be) okay, because the main contribution of Chanters is through their chants. (They are named Chanters, after all, not Invokers.) If a fight is tough then Chanters get to be the ones who shift the tide of the battle. Choose your invocations carefully and when the opportunity presents itself throw out one that will push the odds in your favor. For example, I find that paralyzing all the enemies for 13.6 seconds really messes up their chance of beating me, and I consider that a pretty strong effect that is worth the wait.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZrgxHvNNUc

Uncheck "Show Unqualified Interactions" in the game options to remove the irritation. Personally, I find myself wishing that there were more dialog options at times, because sometimes none of the available options really match what I feel my character would say or do. Fewer options would just make that problem worse or more common.

My main character is a dps monk, and I'm only using the standard companions - so Eder is my only fighter. I'm playing on Average difficulty and doing fine. Sometimes my monk gets mobbed and goes down, and I have to finish the fight without her. It's annoying, but it's going to happen. Yeah, if I had 3 fighters in the party then most of the enemies would be locked down and she might never get into that situation...but that's not the same thing as needing 3 fighters for the party to succeed. We are successful with just the one fighter. So, I'd say that if you are upset that your main character gets knocked out in some fights, and calculating that you need to have 3 fighters in the party to prevent that from happening, then the real issue is not that you don't have enough fighters and instead that you are playing the wrong class or class build. Make a tankier character for yourself (a fighter, maybe, since you seem to respect their durability) and maybe then you'll be tough enough not to drop.

I've never used Metacritic, and based on that single data point I don't seem to be missing much. You should be able to review and rank the game as you like. If your views are in the minority it shouldn't be necessary for the majority to attack you; the game's composite score will still fall in line with the majority's views. Trashing your reviews of other games is just childishness. Early on I lost one of the companions. Later, I met a companion who - though interesting to me - did not really click with my main character (so I didn't recruit her). The personal quest of one of my companions doesn't really seem to be progressing. Another companion I invited to join me but then ended up just leaving in my stronghold to run quests and escorts. So, at least for me, that's four companions that I effectively haven't really gotten to experience fully on this playthrough. That will give me an incentive to play the game through at least one more time. On the same note, there are sections of the game that I ended up skipping, because my character didn't feel a strong incentive to go adventure in those areas. I don't seem to have suffered for skipping them, and they are another incentive to play through the game again differently. I don't remember the exact quote, but I seem to remember one of the developers saying that roughly half of the content is optional. So, really, how replayable the game is may depend somewhat on how much of a completionist you are. If you do absolutely everything there is to do on your first playthough then the game may not seem very replayable because there is nothing new to see. This is less a flaw with the game (because no matter how much content there is this same situation will exist) and more a flaw with compulsive completionism (in terms of how it kills the replayability of games). I haven't experienced long load times. I have the game installed on a SSD and I have to refer to the chat log to finish reading the messages on the loading screen because the load finishes before I can finish reading them. I suspect that this is not as much a performance failure of the game itself as it is a performance failure of certain types of hardware. It is understandable that people are comparing PoE to the IE games, since they are its inspiration, but it should not be necessary for PoE to be strictly better than them in order for it to be good. Baldur's Gate (+ sequel + expansions) is an amazing game and big shoes for another game to fill. There's a lot of room for a game to good with having to be better than BG. Personally, I really like it so far, but I can't really say yet whether I like it more or less than BG. I think I'll hold off on that comparison until after PoE has and expansion, and a sequel with an expansion, before I brave the waters of trying to make that sort of judgement. Considering the fact that I'm a fan of this style of game, and the industry had gotten out of the business of making this sort of game, I'm just really happen to see another game like this made - even if my final opinion of it ends up being mediocre (which is unlikely, because as I said I really like it so far). That's probably part of why people are reacting so negatively to your negativity. We (fans of this style of game) want this game to be a success so that the industry will make more of them; some of us (the people trashing you) are probably just being overzealous in their desire to see the game succeed. That doesn't justify their actions, however. I don't think 7/10 is an unfair rating to give PoE (especially considering the fact that how one rates a game is very subjective). I think I might rate it higher myself, but giving it a 7 isn't exactly trashing it, in my opinion. As for BG, I wouldn't give even it a 10. If we're talking about the whole series then I might go with 9. Just Baldur's Gate with no expansion? Honestly I might give that just a 7. Anyway, the point of all this rambling is carry on expressing your views freely, play what you feel like playing, and don't let the masses get you down.

I certainly don't regret picking up the Level 2 wurm summon. The enemies that are left alive by the time I get to four phrases are usually the ones with good DR, and the wurms' fire attacks generally do a good job of burning them down quickly.

Even the base radius of chant allows for a reasonable amount of separation between your front line and your back line, if you position the chanter in midfield. With high Int (outer circle is radius with 24 Int) you could have your back line so far away from the front that they wouldn't even be able to hit the enemies that your front line is fighting.

There's a Stronghold upgrade that will make crafting ingredients available for purchase. I think that the merchant doesn't have some of the ingredients for the highest-level enchantments, but the selection is larger than I remember seeing on any other vendor. Aside from that, I think there's a vendor in Defiance Bay that sells some crafting ingredients.

It doesn't have that flame effect until you add Burning Lash to it.

Here's my monk in mutual engagement with an enemy. Rooting Pain has a base radius of 1.25 meters. In the screenshot I have a priest targeting Divine Terror centered on her; that spell has a base radius of 1.25 meters, so the red circle shows the area that Rooting Pain will affect when it triggers (if the Monk has a 10 Int). A 3 Int will give you -42% Area of Effect, so the radius of the circle of your Rooting Pain will be just over half the radius of the one in that image. I can't be sure without actually testing it, but it looks to me like my opponent would be just barely outside of that smaller radius.

I don't think this is a problem, but you probably want to steer away from AoE abiliities and focus on single-target stuff. Definitely don't take Rooting Pain...the area is tiny and with a 3 Int you might not be hitting anyone with it.

I wish there was a penalty for using ranged weapons while engaged, because I would like to be able to force enemy bowmen to switch to a melee weapon when I engage them. That way I would be able to actually protect my backline people by engaging ranged enemies. It is very annoying to have enemies ignore the person crushing their face while they continue to lob arrows at my Wizard.

I started playing a Rogue, but until Reckless Assault is fixed he's on the shelf.

I have Durance using a wand, so by all means have your Wizard use a gun. Edit: Also, see Wizards.

This is how it is supposed to work now. If it isn't, that's a bug. Personally, I think they should change the way they describe dot damage from "x damage over y seconds" to "z damage per second for y seconds". That would make it more clear that Might increases z and Int increases y and both of those are good things. PS: I realize I just said the same thing you did...this is my odd way of agreeing with you.

We all have studio-quality sound booths in our homes, so this will totally work.

Focus as many party members' attacks as possible on one enemy at a time. Once an enemy goes down they stop recovering endurance and they stop dealing damage to your party.

and dies 2 seconds later, in any kind of challenging fight when backstabbing a key enemy would actually matter Endless Paths are a nightmare with a rogue, unless you make it ranged, not to mention dual wield (staple rogueish combat style) is terrible compared to two handed because most enemies who dont die from one hit have a high DR Give your fighter high stealth too and the fighter and rogue can attack together. Then the rogue won't be facing the entire enemy team alone at the start of the fight.