Koiju

Thats a good point, I believe power level does affect durations, so it should do? but I cant test that as I dont know of any cheats :S (Ive been testing using the 'start at level 4' blessing)

This is not entirely true, I have done some testing, and put the results in a thread here: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/108151-turn-based-mode-and-troubador/?p=2134678

In my testing it seems to have tried to add the 3 seconds +int bonus onto the 1 round initial duration and rounded it down to 1 round total duration, only on my troubador did it last 2 rounds, I cant remember what int value I had at the time though, I should do some more testing and see at what point that changes, but its definately way easier to achieve on the troubador (which makes sense since they get a bonus to that). [EDIT]: Just tested again, and this is true, even with 20 int a standard chanter has a 1 round total duration on their chants (the linger essentially doesnt happen due to rounding) only the troubador gets the 1 round chant then 1 round of linger. I suspect youd need 30 int (+100% duration bonus) to get a standard chanter to this state, which im not sure is possible. So I'm thinking that letting effects start/finish mid-round is probably a good idea.

Ive been doing some testing with chanter on turn based mode Overall btw, very good job on the mode so far, its looking very good and I like what you've done with how dex affects things, I feel that dex and int are definately still relevent in this mode. (though worth noting that dex is probably more important for casters in this mode due to the casting delays) Anyway, onto the chanter: One of the current issues here is that the chanter is working with lots of very small durations, and thus rounding things to whole rounds is making the balance a bit wonky, specifically im talking about troubador. (In the following examples I will assume a song consisting of 2 phrases that are sung alternately, phrase 1 -> phrase 2 -> phrase 1 -> etc) As it stands, chanters basicly get to chant 1 phrase per round, and the currently chanted phase is only active for that round, ie, they will have phrase 1 and 2 active on alternate rounds, never having both active at once. The only exception to this is for VERY large values of int, where its possible to get them to last 2 rounds each, thus giving permanent uptime on both phrases. Now I noticed that you already changed troubadors linger duration bonus from 50% to 100% in turn based mode, this means that even for lower values of int, troubadors will always be able to maintain permanent uptime on both phrases (while brisk recitation is off). This is good, as its basicly what they are supposed to do (due to the +1 phrase cost of all their other abilities). The problem comes when you turn brisk recitation on, as what now happens is at the start of your turn on every round, you immediately get BOTH songs trigger for a duration of 1 round, as well as gain 2 phrase points (as opposed to 1 per round as is normal for chanters in turn based mode). This means that troubadors can still maintain permanent uptime on both phrases while brisk recitation is on, but will also gain the 2 phrase points per round, making turning it off strictly inferior to just leaving it on. It loses its versatility of having 2 different modes that are good in different situations, as now simply leaving it on has the best of both worlds. A suggestion for rebalancing this is to make it so that with brisk recitation on, you only get 1 phrase per round (as it is with brisk recitation off), but have that 1 phrase award double phrase points (ie 2 instead of 1) this should mean that turning it on remains the choice it is in RTwP, maintain less phrases at once, but get double the resource generation. Alternatively you could do one of the suggestions from another topic, and have them expire (as well as start) mid-round. As to how to do this last one, I would think that the best way to implement it would be to calculate the 'value' of one second at the start of every new round, take the highest intiative value of anyone acting in the next round, and divide that by 6 to get the intiative value of 1 second, then use that to calculate on what intiative count the effect sound expire/start. Ie, if the highest intiative of the next round is 9, the value of 1 second is 1.5, then if you have a remaining duration of 2 seconds on an effect, it would expire on intiative count 3. (Note that ive seen from testing that obsidian is taking all durations in seconds and then converting them to rounds with 1 round = 6 seconds, with any smaller values than 6 left over being discarded, and all effects having a minimum duration fo 1 round. Ie, a duration of 10 seconds would last 1 round, and the 4 seconds left over are discarded, my above example would have it last untill intiative count 6 instead) Anyway, that was long winded, let me know if anything ive said is confusing :S But let me just say again that I greatly appreciate this update and am looking forward to playing through on turn-based mode [EDIT: corrections and formatting]

NM, just saw the dev post, made a new topic in the appropriate forum: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/108151-turn-based-mode-and-troubador/?p=2134612 Sorry

Technically, it takes longer to get your points at higher levels (higher level chants take longer) however, fights also become longer. TBH, in my (admitedly limited) experience of the game and as a chanter, having a chanter and making the most of them requires playing a certain way, at least when it comes to tankchanters. It's worth noting that wearing armour slows down your DPS, but will slow the DPS of the enemy hitting you by more, so a strategy that can work with chanters is to go plate armour on the whole party. All the fights will take longer, but thats a good thing with a chanter or two (it will however, require you to get to athletics 3 on everyone, though I'd recommed that anyway). As for DPS chanters, I've not tried one, so I don't know about that. Generally for alot of 'trash fights' you wont need your invocations anyway, but it can be very handy for a few of the tougher fights. Another tactic I've used is to summon skeletons even when there is only one enemy left, then run them off towards another pack of enemies to aggro those, you wont get your per encounter powers back, but you do get to start the encounter with your skeletons already up! I actually used this in the ruined prison below Caed Nua (which is FULL of spiders) and cleared the entire map in just one encounter, ended up with me and the chanter NPC casting skelletons about 4 times each in all, chaining from pack to pack, took almost no damage at all in the process :D

Fight some and check the hit calculations. +6-8 points of deflection won't help you. Yeah but you are assuming its my only source of deflection, getting some perception, resolve, as well as some + deflection enchantments, combined with the deflection granting spells will alow a wizard to effectively 'deflection stack' like a shield wielding character might... at least, as far as I can tell, I've not actually tested trying to pump deflection on a wizard. If it really had that little effect, then not even tanks would bother, but they do have more effect than just deflection bonuses, seeing as they also boost will/reflex, concentration, and interruption. Concentration in particular I can see being a handy thing to have on a caster for if they do take some aggro, interruption less so, though if it is also rolled on spell damage (havn't checked) it might be usfull to use fast cast spells and potentially interrupt an enemy spell caster. Honestly, in a little testing and looking at the numbers, an extra 3% damage per point doesnt excite me much, Id rather take some out of might and put it elsewhere for better versatility. Id rather, for example, have 16/12 might/con than 18/10, 6% DPS loss isn't much for giving you more room for error. TBH I'd put it down to play style, some people preffer the glass cannon, which is fine, but I don't see anything wrong with taking might down a notch to improve survivability. Damage makes combat go faster, but survivability gives more margin of error. Yes I understand the point of you optimising for the most common senario (ie where the caster isn't taking any damage due to good tactics) but in practice I find this to be frustrating the moment you make a mistake or some enemy has the ability to teleport right into your wizards face (I'm looking at YOU SHADES!) I've been known to put plate on Aloth in such situations, just to give him some DR Note: I'm not by any means saying that going full Might + Int is wrong, its good, just, imo, not the only way to be successful.

I wouldn't always recomend that though, Dex has no affect on the chants, but it still affects their attack speed, which will affect the DPS of their basic weapon attacks, which is most of their DPS, especially for the first 12 seconds of combat. This does of course depend on your build, if you're a pure tank you probably don't care about their DPS ^^

You know thinking about it, im not entirely convinced by the 'resolve and perception is usless to a wizard' line of thinking. Sure early on in the game you only really come across melee enemies and its not hard to keep them away from your back line, but as im progressing im finding range is getting more common, I can definately see having low deflection as a serious problem on your back line characters against a force composed of several archers and some melee, the AI does seem to like targeting your back line for such things as I've noticed with shades. I wouldn't be surprised if this sort of thing gets more common later. If it does get more common, it may explain why Aloth for example, has such high perception.

Chanters eventually get a song that speeds up gun reload times significantly. This is a very good point, the one situation i'd see not putting a chanter in plate is if you go ranged DPS chanter and use that chant with some of the other DPS focused chants and invocations (and/or summons to block enemies from reaching you). You wont be getting your invocations as much (because fights wont last as long) but your gonna boost the ranged dps of both yourself and your party, which could be pretty effective, I've not tried this though, maybe I'll try a 4 ranger/rogue/cypher + ranged DPS chanter + something else composition some time :D

This post is genius, and sums up the OP and most of this whole thread. OP just doesn't like it, which is fair enough, but they will never get a satisfying answer out of this thread, they just don't like its play style etc. I personally loved D:OS, one of the best games I've played, certainly in recent years. It's like trying to ask me why I like spicey food so much, I can give you all sorts of answers, but that wont make you magically start liking spicey food

This happended to me as well when I first got him, it came to a point where I was really confused about how the Chanter class works. Any way then I went down into the Od Nua endless dungeon under Caed Nua, and the amount of enemies per engagement meant he had the time needed to sing the necessary three chants to get to 3 points, and now I love him (or rather I love his skeletons ). I agree with Baleros about the tank/offtank comment. At first I used him ranged with his standard rifle, which worked fine enough. Now I have him in plate armor, shield and sword. That combined with getting him to a higher level where I can prepare two different sets of chants: 1 defensive giving loads of buffs to defense and 1 offensive giving buffs to offense, means he is fast becoming the most useful companion I have. I'm basically on the first half of your progression, just giving him the rifle and leaving him in the 2nd row so his AoE chants impact front liners and backbencher casters, but I feel like the slowness of the rifle is hurting him (although the opening volley is great). Do you know if weapon speed/recovery impacts chants? I know it would impact the casting of the invocation after 3 chants, but does it affect the speed of the chants themselves? Weapon speed/recovery has no affect on chants, infact, I don't think it even affects invocations. I think heavier armour will affect the recovery time after using an invocation (ie, till you start chanting again) but this has such a minimal effect on your overall performance that I see little reason not to stick all chanters in plate.

I think its fair to say that all stats are more usefull in general in Pillars than in the old IE games, it is however, not perfect. I also like the stat distributions on NPCs, primarily because they fit their personalities, certain stats wouldn't make sense on some of them simply because it doesn't fit them, this is important for immersion and roleplay purposes (this isn't just a game of mechanics and optimisation ) However, I also agree that there could perhaps be some improvement. But I don't think that the answer is to give them optimised stats (not everyone will want them in the same roles anyway, maybe I WANT Aloth to be a control mage for my party setup, or whatever). I think the real solution is to tweak the bonuses stats give you, make them more balanced in terms of making all stats good for all classes, and maybe make the stats less impactful, particularly over the course of the whole game (ie, leveling up will alleviate some sub-optimal stats). This last point may already be the case for all I know, since I don't think anyones got to end game yet ^^ Although I certainly don't have any complaints if someone wants to just make a mod that lets you customise your NPC's, afterall, if I preffer the immersion of the base stats, I just don't use the mod Thinking about it, I also feel that having the NPC's too well optimised would also make lower difficulties too easy, because having played on both easy and normal, honestly, their stats are fine. If they were to be buffed, casual players playing on easy would find their main character would feel usless next to the NPC's, so maybe it'd be better to adjust their stats based on difficulty? higher difficulty would give them better stats.... though the fact that you can change between easy and hard on the fly kinda causes problems there... Maybe Obsidians decision to make them this way and just let you guys make your customise NPC mod is infact the best way to go... lol ...or maybe they could have added an option in new game creation that turned on the ability to customise the NPC's stats etc, with it turning off easy if selected, something like that...