Daemonjax

If I (or anyone else) can figure out how to swap the stats for: ... then I think that mod may redeem having Sagani in the party.

Not good enough because it would result in stalemates where neither side would move from their most advantageous positions. You'd have to have monsters that have hard counters to certain tactics: charge abilities with knockback, destructable terrain, etc. The game does have teleporting enemies, and that's a form of hard counter. But it would be silly for every enemy group to have teleporters, so they'd have to come up with something new. All this talk is well and good, but I wouldn't expect the game to change in any meaningful way at this point. That's what beta is for.

Yeah, that would be cool, but the encounters would have to be designed differently (paying close attention to terrain) and monsters would need more unique abilities (besides more teleport). I don't think it's something that can be done with mods in this engine (besides adding more teleport), but I'd like for someone to prove me wrong.

They slow down the recovery time (which is only one of four parts of your attack cycle, albeit a large part), not your total actual attack time. The actual game mechanics are obtuse and can't be comprehended by the average gamer. It would have been better to just remove all numbers and just keep the fluff text for everything (imo).

The Hunter's Bow is garbage because it's both fast and can't be dual-wielded, only redeemed by the Lenas Êr unique Hunter's Bow due to its nice stats (including 5 DR). The ranger only hunter's bow is pretty crappy, and I would prefer the stats swapped between it and Lenas Êr in order to redeem Sagani's character and (by extension) the entire ranger class (at least somewhat). I think that could be accomplished with mods one day.

I figured as much, but it's hard to determine a fixed number to use for both delays. I started solving the simultaneous equations and just stopped when I came up with the 2.25 and saw that it worked so well.

I've gathered every npc by level 4, sticking to the main quest line just long enough to get the companion and move on. Weirdest thing about playing that way is go to both dyrwood and defiance bay so quickly back to back. Furthermore, the optimal path is to go to dyrwood (to pick up GM first because you don't have to gain any experience on the way there and then to defiance bay) right after defeating Maerwald when the story is pushing you to to defiance bay first. That's really the only thing that breaks verisimilitude for me. Yes, I don't have to do it, but the optimal path doesn't necessarily have to break verisimilitude, either. It just wasn't a design consideration when developing the story because (probably) no one brought it up at the time. I fully expect mods to come out eventually that let you choose companion level up choices (and stats) so we don't have to choose between verisimilitude and optimal play. Even now, I could use the IE mod to re-level a companion, but I'm a little afraid it might break something. I can wait a year or whatever it takes for such a mod -- I would prefer to make all their level choices in advance rather than doing it when I meet them.

It is a good idea.

Yeah, perception has nothing to do with spotting things.

I think preventing stat adds from affecting dialogue choices is a good idea because it adds weight to choices made at character creation.

Druid wildstrike really only adds 25% more damage (tooltip says 30%), and with Greater Wildstrike it adds a total of 35% more damage (tooltip for Greater Wildstrike says it should add another 15%). It should read: Druid Wildstrike: +25% more damage Greater Wildstrike: +9% more damage Either that or buff wildstrike -- either way it's important to fix lying tooltips. Dexterity: really only adds 2.25% attack speed per point (tooltip reads 3%).

The only real terrible build choice (ignoring attributes) I found was the npc druid's talent choice of having an additional 1st level spell.

I'd prefer they be able to spend talents to make one spell (max limit of one spell per spell level) a once/per encounter cast. That would start being available at level 3.

If con isn't worth raising on the Barb, then it's not worth raising for anyone, which means con is under-powered and should be buffed. Is there a class that makes more use of con than the barb? Monk maybe?

I'd say it's not intended to be played that way, and your lack of success while trying to is a good thing. Consider the alternative: On highest difficulty, you consistently succeed while playing badly. What would that say about the game?

Barbarian.

But that's the game given to us by the developers -- who created the environments and hand-placed the encounters. Any tactic is valid sans exploits, but what each person considers an exploit will differ. Some will draw the line at "what the developers intended" (whatever that means to them) while the counter-arguement is "since we can't know the developer's mind, everything currently possible should be considered intended unless they explicitly state otherwise via official announcement or patch". if we're voting, then I would say it's a valid tactic until they come out and say, "Hey guys, we never considered anyone would try to use choke points defensively in our carefully planned encounters." Which would be pretty silly.

Yeah, it's not going to be perfectly linear because the two delays aren't affected (at least as much) as the animation/recovery frames by dex, but it may not really matter since using 2.25 per dex point is close enough -- and everything else only affects the recovery time. It's not linear at all, no matter what number you assume it will be wrong. With 2.25% at 14 dex it should be 9% faster so it should go down from 84 frames to 77 frames, but instead it's around 57 frames. I can figure out this formula but I need more data. 1h dagger (not dual-wielding, naked): 50 dex: 50 - 10 = 40 ==> 40 * 2.25 = 90 ==> 1 + 90 / 100 = 1.90 ==> 58.5 / 1.90 = 30.79 (29.8 observed) 18 dex: 18 - 10 = 8 ==> 8 * 2.25 = 18 ==> 1 + 18 / 100 = 1.18 ==> 58.5 / 1.18 = 49.58 (49.71 observed) 14 dex: 14 - 10 = 4 ==> 4 * 2.25 = 9 ==> 1 + 9 / 100 = 1.09 ==> 58.5 / 1.09 = 53.67 (53 observed) To get more accurate frame times for the four parts of the attack cycle, we could probably record at 60 fps and set combat to slow motion and use math (if necessary) to normalize. I don't think we really need to go that far, though.

Yeah, of course it's locked to 30 fps during recording. Otherwise, I'd be an idiot. The variations are recorded because that's really what I observe, and it's there for anyone to interpret any way they want, but I think what's most important is nailing the time between attacks, and recovery time. I'll do some armor tests today.

Yeah, it's not going to be perfectly linear because the two delays aren't affected (at least as much) as the animation/recovery frames by dex, but it may not really matter since using 2.25 per dex point is close enough -- and everything else only affects the recovery time.

No way to know for sure until tested, unfortunately. Btw, verified there was zero attack speed difference between: a) daggers (dual-wielding), 10 dex, naked b) daggers (dual-wielding), 10 dex, padded armor (-20%), talent: two weapon style

Bards sucked in all older D&D editions, but they're pretty awesome in 5th edition.

Cipher. Just kidding. Toss the ranger.

That's easily testable. Did you? I'm not sure it's that easily testable. The random element in it appears to me very strong, i.e. one time bandits manage to steal 80% of the taxes, another time only 20%, without any major change in security and/or prestige levels. I suspect there is some mechanism behind it, but if there's that much random in it, it's not easily detectable. Could be wrong, though; I didn't bother to run tests on it. I don't care enough to test it yet. I'm hoping someone else will test it for me before I start caring.

Removing the bestiary and lockpicking/trap disarming exp would be a good first step.