Crucis

You can always make your rogue a front liner, reckless assault lets them do some nasty front line damage or you alternatively you could try to pump their deflection instead and use riposte, although I've not had as much success with that, that is a build I feel like should exist, but needs work. I kind of like my traps guy as a front liner anyway, then you can set your formation up so they are always in front. Chanters would probably make be pretty good trap guy/tank. On the last part you sort of answer your own question, you say rangers are good against trash mobs, but weaker against bosses, but that using scrolls/gear for abilities is only good as against bosses, so sounds like one plays right into the other; and why not put points in lore? Not like there are many other good skills; a lot of backgrounds add lore as well. Abilities from gear like rotfinger gloves don't even need lore. Actually, Muno, you somewhat misread what I said with your final comments. It's not that I think that rangers are weak against bosses as much as I think that it's arguably better to have 3 casters in a party than 2 when facing bosses. The advantage of 3 vs 2 casters can be seen in a few ways. One, the most obvious is that you can have a salvo of 3 spells rather than 2 cast at the same time. That could either be more damage, or more disabling spells, of course. Secondly, as a fight progresses, occasionally one of your casters may be distracted, charmed, or whatever, thus meaning that in 3 vs 2, you still have 2 active. And thirdly, if you take 3 different types of casters, you probably have a 3rd type of spells available to you, which may be a significant advantage depending on the nature of the battle you face. Still, a Ranger with 8 or 10 Lore will be able to cast some scroll spells, though potentially at the cost of some or all of their potion slots. And this means that if you're looking to drop a Paralyze and a Maelstrom onto a target at the same instant, it helps to have all the available casters possible, even if they're just "Lore casters". As a ranged damage producer, people go back and forth over whether rangers or rogues are better. I think that one might make the argument that in big boss battles, maybe rogues have one significant advantage of rangers, and it's the ability to produce a single massive attack through the stacking of their various abilities (sneak attack, deathblows, finishing blow, etc.) with spell produced afflictions. Being able to drop an attack of over 100 damage points (sometimes well over that) is a great way to finish a wounded enemy much faster than just grinding away those final 100+ END points on the target. (One thing I decided in my last party when I did this very thing was that when I saw a potential Finishing Blow opportunity, I had my Rogue drink a potion of Arcane Accuracy, because I wanted that big boost to accuracy to make certain she hit and increase the chances of a crit. IMO, it's well worth the cost of losing a regular attack to drink that potion right before using Finishing Blow in a really major fight, since who wants to miss on an attack you can only make 2/rest IIRC.) OTOH, Rangers are still great for grinding down big bosses pretty quickly even if it's not with one major death blow like rogues.

Zw, depending on your party comp and weapon choices, peasant might be a better choice. While a bow may indeed be a good option for focus generation, I'd hate to give my best bow to a cipher rather than a better ranged character like a ranged rogue or a ranger. If I have Cloudpiercer, I want it the hands of my very best archer. That said, late game, that Rain of whatever superb warbow with its currently non-functional speed mod can make a solid option for a cipher. Actually, I suppose that Borrsaine could as well. Cloudpiercer is just so excellent that I don't want to waste it on a mere cipher. As for Ciphers and melee, I tend to not want to put GM in close quarters melee unless some shadow or a fampyr gets into the party's rear and she has no choice but to defend herself. And that being the case, as with Aloth, I tend to worry less about damage production in those situations than I do just putting a good 1H weapon and a good shield in their hands so that they can try to limit the number of hits they take while more competent melee-ers help them out. That said, around mid-game, Aloth can become a half decent melee-er in self defense with Hardened Arcane Defense, a good shield, and perhaps throw up a Fire Shield. I kinda like using rapiers with Aloth, not because of the damage, but because ... well ... no one else uses them, they have an accuracy bonus, which is good for a wizard to take advantage of, and they're one handed, so Alth can use a shield to boost his DEFL. Personally, I've rarely been interested in true spellsword style characters. But that doesn't mean that one can't make a few judicious choices when building Aloth or any wizzy, and create a wizard that's capable of defending himself in melee when the melee comes to him.

Zw, for all its power, a downside to all of the guns is the accuracy penalty they all have. For some it's -5 and others it's -10. This probably isn't a big deal if you have a very high accuracy class character using them, but it might be a bit annoying for a character from a lower accuracy class. I actually had GM using an arbalest rather than a arquebus, mostly because if this. The arbalest hits almost as hard as the arquebus, is a little faster, and doesn't have that built-in accuracy penalty of guns. Also, I kinda like the Soldier WF group, because I like Pikes for GM/ciphers since it allows them to engage in melee but hide behind the far better armored front liners. Warbows, OTOH, don't have a reach weapon in their WF group, sadly. Still, I do agree that there's something to be said for higher rate of fire weapons when it comes to taking advantage of afflicting spells, like mental binding. Plus, there's the fact that you don't necessarily feel the need to take the Gunner talent if you choose to use a bow instead of an xbow or gun. Heck, I ended up giving Aloth a warbow in my last party after I picked up that Superb warbow, Rain of whatever. I got tired of all those wimpy wands, etc. And I've gotta say that Aloth made good use of it. And the fact that the Speed mod on that bow wasn't a problem for me, since I kinda just treated it like a generic Superb bow. I was just happy that Aloth was regularly pounding in arrow after arrow when it wasn't casting spells. (I reserved the best warbow, Cloudpiercer, for my ranged rogue, since she was regularly getting crits to trigger the Jolting Touch spellstriking mod. Man, what a beastly weapon in the hands of a ranged rogue!!!)

The thing is, as long as you leave a weapons slot for a melee weapon, you don't really need to select any melee related talents just to enhance their melee abilities, beyond perhaps picking a weapon focus group. Since they have the same high accuracy in melee as they do ranged, they can still be effective in melee if absolutely necessary, say, if a shadow has jumped into your rear. So, you can mostly ignore their melee ability and still end up with a respectable emergency melee combatant. There is one thing that you seem to lose by playing a ranger though and it's related to party composition. I personally think that it's nice to have two good frontliners. Only one needs to be a true defensive tank, but it's nice to have a second front liner that's more offensively oriented, though 2 mostly defensive hold-the-line frontliners can do in a pinch. And I like having a Rogue. It's a personal preference to maximize the thieving skills. And also, at the same time, this rogue can fill the slot of strong ranged DPS combatant. Then after that there's 3 more slots that you can fill with casters, preferably one who can do healing (usually a priest), and then a couple of more offensive casters (i.e. wizard, cipher, or druid). Now, the thing is that if a Ranger takes the ranged DPS slot, you lose the thieving skills character. Yes, it can be filled by someone else, though not as well. Or alternatively, you can still take the Rogue in addition to the Ranger, but at the cost of a caster. In truth, for most of the so-called trash mob battles, this isn't a problem. But against the bosses, it certainly helps to have 3 casters. Of course, I suppose that the Ranger could take a bunch of Lore and turn himself into a bit of a "scroll caster" for emergencies, though to be really useful in those boss battles, you'd probably need 8 or 10 points of Lore to cast the really nasty scroll spells like Paralyze or Maelstrom. Anyways, just a few semi-random thoughts...

Luckmann, speaking for all classes, not just Rangers, I would like to see the class specific Talents moved over into the abilities category (and at the same time, perhaps remove some of the far less useful ones, if there are deemed to be too many). The problem I have with the class talents is that they seem to me to distract from a character's ability to make selections from the general list of talents. Yes, no one's outright stopping you from picking general talents. But at times, the class talents can seem so necessary that they get in the way of picking extremely useful general talents.

I think that the best way to fix/tweak/etc. Rangers would be A) to remove the AC related abilities/talents and make AC progression automatic by type, and B) replace those removed AC abilities and talents with ones specifically for the Ranger itself, with some of them being dedicated to melee abilities. Some could be nature magic-like "spell" abilities, sort of like the entangling root. For example, maybe a barkskin like ability to buff up the ranger's DR. Or maybe some sort of "nature's berzerker" ability that enhances the ranger's melee accuracy, melee damage, and attack speed for perhaps 20-30 seconds, maybe once per rest. Just some ideas....

Except that the leather wearing, offensive fighter in question, wasn't hiding behind the plate wearing tanks. She was on the front line right next to the plate wearing tank (Eder) and was doing almost double the amount of damage he was doing because she was attacking twice as often as he was, and was avoiding getting hit particularly often as well. As for clothes, I can safely guarantee that no character I'll ever play will wear mere "clothes" into combat, unless it's some sort of concept build where the character eschews the wearing of armor for some reason, like that fighter kit in BG2.

Ranger is not weaker in ranged damage, he's stronger, but the problems I see are three-fold: 1) Ranger's damage is not sufficiently better than mages to justify the general lack of spells/activated abilities. Rogues have weaker ranged damage but can switch to melee to do some serious harm. Ranger barely has any activated abilities, it's just sitting in the back doing boring (albeit impressive) DPS and not much else. At the very least, marked prey should be given some juice so that the ranger can be the "ranged assassin" that can take one thing out at the blink of an eye. Or maybe make it give EVERYONE +20% dmg, like it does in Dragon Age. 2) No build diversity. Pretty much one good ranger build, with a limited variety of weapons. Otherwise go play another class for better results. Kinda boring. 3) Pet is underwhelming. Pet builds are underwhelming, the pet cannot do significant damage even if you build for it. I think it should be given much better offensive capability, and some defensive so that I don't have to micro it so much. Streaker, ranged rogues don't seem all that weak to me, as long as they're getting a constant supply of targets to sneak attack. Without that, no doubt that the Ranger is probably better at base damage. Regarding build diversity, this is a by-product of the class being a dedicated ranged combat specialist. It'd probably be more varied if Rangers were able to be developed as melee or ranged combatants. Regarding Pets: Personally I seriously dislike them. Still, perhaps a better way to do them would be to remove the pet upgrade path from the ranger's own personal development path. Have pet upgrades be automatic for the animal selected. And have all of the class abilities and talents be strictly for the Ranger himself.

Agreed, though Pallegina really does look her best in that green ardra armor. It really does match well with her green head feathers, and looks like it was almost made for her. Besides, there's no helmet that really looks all that good with the green ardra armor. Or rather no helmet looks any better with that armor than Pallegina's green feathers.

This is kinda an old thread, but since it's been resurrected, what the heck. I wish that Brigandine's recovery was reduced by 5% and all armors less than Brigandine were also reduced by 5% as well, so that there was a good clean progression. Because right now, I almost never put brigandine on any character once I get past Act 1, I suppose. After all, why bother with regular brigandine when you have looted some plate armor? I can't agree with this at all. I played an offensive fighter who had max STR and very high (though not fully max) DEX, as well as highish PER and RES as my past PC. And she was nasty has all get out when I switched her into leather armor. The reduced recovery time made a big difference in her attack rate, which made her a considerably more dangerous damage dealer with her dualed sabers (using the dual wielding style for more speed). I suppose that you could argue that she'd have had even higher attack speed with only clothes and that'd be true. But she'd have no DR at all either. And as a front liner, rather than a back row archer or gunner, I think that she needed at least some DR to take the edge of the occasional hits that got past her DEFL. I actually think that it's entirely possible to play front line fighters in less than max armor. Oh, I'll agree that a defensively oriented, full on, hold the line fighter is probably best in plate, since the requirements of his role seem to require max defense in pretty much every way possible. I won't say that you can't create and play a successful offensive, plate wearing fighter. I'm sure that one can. But it seems to me that such a character is going to be a bit on the slow side, attack speed wise. And if one is looking for a more aggressive, faster attack speed offensive fighter, I'd suggest one who wears somewhat lighter armor, has a good DEX, and as high a DEFL as you can manage, since the less you get hit, the less you depend on your fighter's armor's DR to keep your fighter alive. Anyways, that's all.

I've always thought that Pallegina looked best in that green plate, Argwes Adra. It goes well with her green feathers.

That's basically just taking weapon specialization and perhaps weapon mastery, assuming that you're a fighter. If you're not a fighter, oh well.

Mad, I was less concerned about its prone ability than the fact that it's an excellent pike and ciphers do occasionally need to recharge their focus. And there will be times in battles when it may be more advantageous for a backline cipher to put aside its ranged weapon, and use a pike to support the front liners, while working to recharge that focus pool. Speaking of Tactical Meld, is that power really worth taking and using? I guess that I've tended to take more offensive nuking powers or those that charm/paralyze/whatever the enemy. Also, it seems like a lot of focus points to spend to simply charge up the cipher for physical combat.... focus points that you'll just have to turn around and re-earn while under the Tac Meld. I will admit that there are other good pikes around that can be worth enhancing. But there don't seem to be nearly enough decent quarterstaffs. There are only two that are ok. Wend Walker, which is excellent, but you get very late. And Llawran's Stick, which you get early in the Endless paths. But the Stick is flawed because it's only mod is "Speed", which currently doesn't work, so right now, it's effectively no better than a generic Fine Qstaff.

For what it's worth, I think that attribute bonuses on weapons do stack with attribute bonuses on all other items. But non-weapon item attribute bonuses do not stack with each other.

Another thought regarding barbarians and the Tall Grass pike. Unless perhaps you're playing solo, I don't think that I'd give the Tall Grass pike to a frontliner. It's such a good extended reach weapon that I'd save it for a backliner that you could have come up and use Tall Grass from behind the melee wall. Ciphers (like GM) or even Rogues might be a good choice here. Let the normal frontliners use the normal range melee weapons, and save the extended range weapons for softer support characters who can assist the frontliners. Just a thought.

Tidefall has a draining effect that heals its wielder. Would that mean that it'd have a AoE drain? That could be one pile of healing for the barb! (IIRC, it may also have a wounding effect as well.)

I tend to look at Arms Bearer as a mandatory talent for almost every character (usually 4-5 out of the 6) in my parties. I like having options. I agree that additional versatility can be a good thing. OTOH, with the offensive fighter I described above, I stuck with the Ruffian group, because the Saber is clearly the best 1H weapon in the game, as long as the targets don't have strong Slashing DR. And if they do, that's why I like the Arms Bearer talent, because it lets me carry a backup melee weapon option (in my Ruffian offensive fighter's case, a club).

I'm a bit late to jumping into this old thread, but having just played an offensive fighter, I thought that I could add some insights. Luckmann, I'm not sure that I'd agree that offensive fighters lack offensiveness. My experience in with my recently completed last party with an offensive fighter PC showed that an offensive fighter can be quite potent, if you make some good decisions along the character's development path. That said, I will heartily agree that their abilities are sadly lacking when it comes to offense (not counting the weapon group choices). Oh, there are some offensive abilities, such as Confident Aim and Disciplined Barrage. And I'd actually suggest that Armored Grace should be looked at as an offensive ability, albeit a minor one. But, yes, there are no standout kick butt offensive abilities that even come close to matching the value of Defender (and Wary Defender). And there's a bunch of abilities that I'd say fall more under the category of support abilities, rather than offensive or defensive, like Unbroken. (And even that one only triggers if you've been getting your butt kicked.) I won't denigrate the value of Weap Spec and Weap Mastery. I think that they're very useful picks for the truly offensive fighter. And the Two Weapon or Two-Handed Weapon styles are also worthy, albeit generic, picks. Stepping away from the class' abilities and talents, I might suggest that a truly offensive fighter should have a higher DEX than you would usually see on a more defensively oriented fighter, and wear lighter armor with quicker recovery times (and add the Armored Grace ability on top of that when available) because the more often you attack, the more damage you'll do in the long run. Two very related questions that I have though is are the various talents that give your attacks a +5 DR bypass at the expense of a 20% reduction in attack speed really worth it? Or is 20% more damage worth accuracy reduction of -5? In the first case, it just might be worth it for fast, low damage weapons that need all the DR penetration they can get. In the second case, giving up accuracy lowers the chances of getting crits, turns what might have been crits into hits, hits into grazes, and grazes into outright misses, just so that for those grazes, hits, and crits you do manage to get do 20% more damage. I'm not at all sure if you do better in the short or long run using this talent. And back to the first case, if you're using higher damaging weapons, I strongly suspect that whatever little (5) extra damage you do to the target isn't made up for by the loss of attacks due to reduced attack speed. Mind you, I wasn't tracking the data on this, but my impression from watching my offensive fighter was that without either of these talents, she was producing a lot of hits and crits and constantly doing a lot of damage with her individual hits, as well as hitting targets really really quickly because she had a moderately DEX (19 at the end of the game, 16 for starters), had taken the Armored Grace ability, and was wearing leather armor for at least the last 1/3 of the game with only a -30% recovery time, rather than a full -50% recovery time. And I suppose that if I'd been really ballsy, I could have tried putting her in even lighter padded armor, though at the end of the game, she was wearing the Kerdhed Pames leather armor that also gave her a +3 bonus to Resolve, meaning a +3 to DEFL, which was hard to ignore. As an important side note, the reason that this build could get away with such light armor was that she had a fairly high DEFL when she was dual wielding, and very high when she went for weapon and shield. If you can avoid getting hit much of the time, you can get away without wearing the most protective, but highest recovery armors. It's also worth noting that at the same time, her ability to wipe out enemies more quickly reduced the time that those enemies had to do damage to her. The offensive fighter isn't meant to handle multiple targets at once. It's better at handling them in smaller numbers, preferably 1v1. Also, for what it's worth, while I had taken Defender and Wary Defender, I never ended up turning it on, because I didn't usually want to take that -20% hit to her attack speed. (In retrospect, I probably should have taken some other talents/abilities, but I didn't foresee at the time I picked them that she would turn out to be such a potent offensive force.) I won't say that an offensive fighter can be as potentially beastly as a barbarian. But I will say that they can be very potent warriors, and would be more so if the Devs had given them 1-2 abilities that seemed to be as potent offensively as Defender is defensively.

Actually, Manty, I did read and pay attention to what you wrote. My point is that my personal preference is to have nothing that looks, smells, acts, or whatever like an AC. I want a ranger to be just like every other class. A character that doesn't have a friggin' animal sidekick, companion, familiar, or pet. I want the character's abilities to be his and his alone. I don't think that I can make it any more clear. But in truth, I seriously doubt that any such change would occur.

In all honesty, the only real choice I want for the AC is to not have one, and have the option to have better abilities on the Ranger him/herself. The AC's are nothing but a pain in the posterior to me. Others may like them. I don't. I guess that I don't like dragging Lassie around, waiting for him to get nuked on the front lines or having him sitting at my feet like a good obedient AC and doing next to nothing but taking up space. Would you like them better if they were more took the form of an ability rather than an actual battlefield presence, and were visually represented like a pet? I think it'd be really awesome to have a falcon AC that you could occasionally sic on enemies, doing some damage over time with random chances for a blind or hobble during the attack. Rest of the time he perches on your shoulder. But that'd require a big mechanics change and is proably unrealistic. First off, note that I tend to suggest that the AC be an option to take or not take. But that said, IF I had that option, I would never ever take the AC. My personal preference is that the Ranger class have 100% of its class abilities be focused on the ranger personal combat abilities. But like I emphasized, that my personal preference. I realize that others like AC's; I don't. It's just as simple as that. IMO, AC's are nothing more than an ability and class talent sink that weaken Rangers by reducing the number of options they have to improve the ranger himself. On top of that, the more I compare and have played both rangers and rogues, the more I see how relatively weak rangers are. The only two advantages that I see rangers as having over rogues are that they have much better overall health, and they have slightly (+5 points) better base deflection. Other than that, the Rogue class abilities and talents considerably outshine those of the Ranger. Many of the best damage related Rogue abilities stack (sneak attack, dirty fighting, finishing blow, death blows, etc.), while it seems that a number of the Ranger's best abilities do not. And right at the core, the Rogue gets sneak attack and what's the Ranger get? Lassie. Woo-friggin'-hoo. --- Sorry for venting, but I've always like rangers and am annoyed at how weak they've been made, and even more so because of a freaking, next to useless pet.

Never to progress, but yes, you have to be able to detect hidden switches if you want to complete "The blade of the Endless Paths" side quest. Searching is only necessary for low level parties though. That's not entirely true. The patch notes say that you don't need to be in search mode to detect hidden things that are 4 or more levels lower than your Mechanics skill level. Thus, if you have high level hidden stuff (traps, compartments, switches, etc.), you'll still have to search to find them. Honestly, I'm not as ... impatient .... as manageri. I don't mind (heck, I ENJOY) crawling through a dungeon looking for traps, and hidden switches and so forth. To me, it's all part of the RPG package. To me, it's not even close to a waste of time. It's the way RPG's are supposed to be, and if he doesn't like it, IMHO, he's playing the wrong genre of game. They're called "dungeon CRAWLS" for a reason.

I gotta say I always applaude the guys who play this on expert mode. Must be tough; I haven't ticket that box yet... the reason for that is that I found not all reputations perfectly represented in the answers. Often, it's hard to tell, for example, which answer is "honest" or just "rational". "Diplomatic" often didn't feel diplomatic enough for me... more than often I felt that the general response was more diplomatic than the diplomatic choice. Sometimes, "passionate" seems to drift into "aggressive" territory for me. Though the worst reputation, by far, was "clever". I just hated the forced jokes. 90% of them just weren't funny or appropriate. The only "clever" answer in the game that I really liked was when you beat Maerwald and the statue asks you if you beat him, and you tell her that you beat many of him... (because of his split personality) I wouldn't say that this is bad writing, it's just that sometimes the tags are oddly placed, which is why I would never play in expert mode. I agree with what you're saying here for the most part. That said, I wouldn't assume that just because something is tagged "clever" that that means that it's truly meant to come off as humorous to everyone (including the characters to whom the speaker is speaking). "Clever" responses often come off as snarky and aren't well received. And I think that's how it's meant to be, though it seems like an odd disposition for paladins and clerics when you get right down to it. One would think that snarkiness and poor jokes wouldn't really make for a worthy disposition. I'd think that real cleverness would be less about snarkiness and bad jokes and more about inventive solutions to problems and at least a relatively funny quick wit. But oh well. Tbh, I haven't seen "clever" from the "snarky" point of view. Now that you say that, it seems that most "clever" choices are actually more into snarky territory... if we interpret clever as just that, then I think a lot of the written dialogue for it actually make sense. ... which is still somewhat disappointing. "Clever" reputation was the perfect way to lighten up an overall grimdark game. I enjoyed some of the funny responses in the IE games... and I was looking forward playing a "clever" character because of that. But it didn't feel the same, as mostly the answers went straight into ****-territory. In the game, inventive solutions, as you say, are more related to Intelligence checks. Which imho makes a lot of sense. I wouldn't want this tied to a reputation. Btw, the severe lack of lore-check dialogue was surprising. From all the selectable skills, I expected lore to have the most impact on dialogue and quests. But it hardly even mattered in the game. I encountered only a couple of lore checks in the entire game. Now, armed with meta-game knowledge, I mostly specc all my characters the same, including the PC: 4 points in athletics to prevent early exhaustion. 4 points in stealth for all melees to make pre-positioning easier. 8 Lore for Chanters, Barbarians and Rangers, which unlocks usage of almost all scrolls in the game. Max mechanics for Priests. Mages and Druids for traps. Max stealth for Cipher* and Rogue, for pre-combat positioning and robbing of houses. *The most powerful cipher spells are heavily dependant on good positioning. I absolutely love stealthing my Cipher behind an enemy pack and opening the battle with Ectopsychic Echo. Zw, I think that you're probably right. To the best of my recollection, the "Clever" responses do seem to be more "snarky" than they are nicely humorous. They're more funny in a snarky way, which means the butt of the joke probably isn't going to think the comment was funny at all. And I think that you're right that it'd be nice if there was room for some humorous dialog options, at least in dialogs where a little levity wasn't going to be utterly out of place. Then again, I suppose that that's what some of the inserted Companion asides in those dialogs are for. "Inventive solutions" tied to INT? Yeah, makes perfect sense. Regarding things like Lore and Survival checks, what I'd like to see is to check the entire party, not just the PC. I mean, if Aloth (assuming that he has sufficiently high Lore) knows something pertinent to the dialog due to his Lore, it'd be nice to have access to his knowledge, though I'll admit that I'm not entirely sure how this would play out in a dialog. Looking over your list of skill distributions.... I prefer to have my entire have respectable Stealth, 3 or 4 is usually enough. Why? Because if I move my front liners relatively close-ish, that means that the back liners are also starting to get somewhat close-ish. And I don't want to have stealth broken because the enemy spots my back liners before the front liners. That's just embarrassing. For Athletics, I've usually found 3 points to be entirely sufficient for exhaustion prevention. I'm surprised to see that much Lore on Barbs and Rangers. I actually do put some Lore on front liners, usually enough for level 1 or 2 spells. Mostly because I find that level 1 spells like Fan of Flames or Jolting Touch are more easily used by front liners than backliners. But I can see some possible value in having a Ranger have max Lore, since he's probably hanging out with the other backline spellcasters, and in certain battles, having another potential spellcaster can be very, very handy. Oh the whole, I find that it's useful to have at least 3 out of the 6 in the party having max or close to max Lore very useful for those certain battles. When I have a Rogue in my party, I tend to have him/her have max Mechanics. I don't mind spending some points on Mechanics for a cleric for the seal spells. But Rogues are the best traps and locks guys. As for stealth on Rogues, that's my #2 priority for them and nearly all of the remaining skill points go there after Mechanics. The one skill that I just don't find necessary is Survival. I honestly haven't made a lot of use out of the various foods and non-healing potions in my 3 run-throughs of the game. I did use some foods and potions for pre-buffing prior to the final battle on my 3rd party, as well as a few in-battle buffing potions. (I used the Arcane Accuracy? on my Rogue right before I intended to have her use a Finish Blow shot on one of the final battle enemies, because I wanted her to have the best chance possible to hit and to crit her target .... which she did for 150 points of damage!!!) While Survival can be useful, I don't find it truly necessary. You can succeed in this game just fine without the duration extensions that Survival provides.

I'm just gonna stop you there because quite ****ing obviously 90% of things in the game aren't "mandatory" by this standard, so it's ridiculous to define it this way. It is mandatory TO find all secrets/traps, and since there's no in game downside you'll want to do it all the time. But there is a downside, you have to search for them. If you don't want to do it - you don't get them all. You either roll with that or do what is necessary to get them. it's a pretty simple choice about the way you want to play your game. Finding them all is not mandatory, even the items you find are not mandatory. FWIW, you don't even get an achievement for finding every single hidden item in the game. Not always. But occasionally there are hidden containers that contain keys and hidden switches either of which may be required to open hidden doors that may be required to progress. I might be wrong here, as I suppose that it's possible that there may be alternative ways to open or get around them to continue your progress.

Perhaps not quite limitless, but a heck of a lot more than I have time to read through. I've been playing on Path of the Damned without min/maxed characters or even "ideal" party (not even using a fighter or cipher) members and it is actually quite easy for the most part. I actually make it a point not to travel back to town to rest up. I conserve fire power and fight smart. However, I know this is a difficulty of my own creation, not really part of the game. Which is a bit sad because it could be have been part of the design and truly be part of the game, not just some hole I filled in locally. By playing in this manner, I have seen for myself that it is quite possible on PotD, without min/maxed characters. So it is definitely not just a few min/maxers running around saying things are too easy. They really are too easy. In pretty much every fight that isn't trivial already, if I were to use all the summon items I have and unload spells like there's no tomorrow then the fight becomes trivial. Aside from it being silly, there's nothing to stop me from waltzing back to town for a nap and reload of camping supplies. A. It's nice that you're playing with in the actual spirit of the game and its rules. Kudos to you. B. But maybe not everyone is as skilled as you are. Maybe some people don't care to (or remember to) use those summoning items. (Honestly, I never buy them, but will keep the ones I find. And even then, I only rarely use them.) In truth, my first 3 full run-throughs of the game have been on Normal, and I won't say that all that many battles have been particularly difficult. That said, I'm not a freaking masochist who's looking for battles to be brutally difficult, like a certain rather large ardra creature that even in Normal mode seems to all but require the use of very high level spells to beat. I skipped that creature in my first two runs after making a few failed attempts to defeat it, then reloading and just choosing to talk my way out of the situation instead. Only on my 3rd run, did I dig my heals in and decide that the creature was going down. Frankly, IMO, this creature was entirely too difficult for Normal level and required too much cheese to beat, whereas the other "creature" of its kind (further to the east, and at a much higher altitude) was entirely manageable. C. As for nothing stopping you from going back to town for a nap, well, nothing but your choice to play by the spirit of the rules. That said, if something was put in place to actually stop you from doing this, it could also stop people from retreating from a location, not because they were running out of camping supplies, but because the player decided that the area was too difficult for his party. Or for that matter, what if you've played by the spirit of the rules, conserved your spells well, used all your camping supplies, but for whatever reason, you've run into a situation where you're out of spells (or nearly so) and out of camping supplies and have characters who are dangerously low on health? Why shouldn't you be able to retreat to rest and heal up, and resupply your party? To my mind, there's nothing wrong from a role-playing perspective with turning back in a situation like that. It seems to me that if you create something to prevent abuse of running back to town for a quick rest, you run the risk of punishing the players who do it right and play within the spirit of the rules. But for yucks, here's one idea that might ... might ... work. Instead of having a hard time limit on completing the mission (let's say, clearing a dungeon and perhaps finding whatever you were sent to find), maybe have the amount of XP you earn tied to the amount of time it takes you to complete the mission, starting from the moment you start the mission (i.e. enter the dungeon the first time). There could be a base amount of XP that you earn no matter how much you abuse resting and so on. But there could also be bonuses for completing the mission in under X amount of time. Also, I'd be careful about which missions were treated this way. For example, the dungeon literally under Gilded Vale. Why shouldn't a arty climb out and rest in the inn rather than rest in the dungeon? We're talking about climbing out of glorified basement and walking over to a nearby inn here, not talking about climbing out of some deep dark cave dozens of miles in the middle of nowhere. And the Endless Paths should probably be treated much differently as well, because of its design. From what I've seen, the EP really isn't meant to be cleared all at once. I think that it's meant to be cleared over several sessions. Go in, clear a level or 2. Leave, go do other stuff. Gain a a level or 2. Come back do more of the EP. Rinse and repeat until the EP is done. Anyways, just a thought....

Give it a rest, manageri. Your arguments in this are really pathetic. If you don't have the patience to deal with scouting a room, even in fast mode, then maybe you're playing the wrong game. Maybe you should go play speed chess or something similar.