Crucis

It's the same thing and it's all relative. If you have 5 races and one race's abilities are a lot stronger than the other 4, some might say that the stronger ability is "too strong", while others might say that the other 4 abilities are "too weak". In the end, it's all relative. I agree. It's absolutely a matter of opinion. I would rather have more stuff (and therefore more complexity and more engagement with the mechanics) than less stuff. That's because I tend to believe that "stuff = interesting." That's a personal taste, and I apologize if my earlier post came across as an attempt to state objective fact. No prob. As I've said before, I don't like these racial abilities that only trigger when you reach 50% END. The way I look at it, I don't want to ever get that hurt in battle, so having abilities that only trigger when you're really hurt seem like desperate situation abilities. The only END triggered ability I do like is the Moon GL's because it's meant to heal you, which seems to me like good synergy. (Though even the Moon GL's ability seems rather OP, and probably should be for the injured Moon GL himself and not those near him.) I wish that the low END racial abilities were replaced with ones that were more constantly on. I personally like the Moon Elf, Island Aumua, and Boreal Dwarf abilities for this reason. Technically, the Pale Elf's ability is always on, but it seems rather bland. Ditto for the Coastal Aumaua and Mountain (?) Dwarf abilities. I wish that the Mountain Dwarf's racial ability was similar to the Boreal Dwarf's, just for 2 different monster groups. BTW, the Boreal Dwarven ability looks like 2 slayer Talents, while the Coastal Aumaua ability is a single Talent. Maybe the simpler solution here is to just let all characters pick one or two non-class Talents (i.e. Offensive, Defensive, or Utility) at creation. And then instead of trying to come up with fancy racial abilities, give each race an additional attribute point. Dwarfs: CON Aumaua: MGT Orlan: PER Elves: DEX Humans: RES Godlikes: INT (or get really cute, and give the bonus based on the body form your GL chooses) Anyways, just some wild thoughts for forum fodder....

It's the same thing and it's all relative. If you have 5 races and one race's abilities are a lot stronger than the other 4, some might say that the stronger ability is "too strong", while others might say that the other 4 abilities are "too weak". In the end, it's all relative.

I don't see the need for a class to have special per-encounter or per-rest abilities for said class to be "fun". But that's just my opinion.

The Security and Prestige levels of the stronghold affect the possible ending your PC can get at the end. It can range from Caed Nua being seen as a dump to it being seen as a beacon of hope in the Dyrwood (that may be laying on a little thick).

Let me ask this question. How good, useful, or effective would Chanters be if you focused almost entirely on getting the most out of your chants and didn't worry about building up Chant counts for invocations? I'm not saying that you wouldn't use an invocation if your chant count allowed you to. I'm just wondering how effective Chanters would be if their primary concern was Chanting and invocation casting was a very distant secondary concern. Are the high level Chants good enough (in combination with the Chanters fighting as they chant, of course) to make the class effective members of a party?

Actually, it also helps spellcasters, since accuracy matters to them as well. It can also help ranged rogues, too. The Wood Elven bonus affects more than merely rangers. It appears marksman doesn't work on spells anymore as of 1.05 so it wouldn't surprise me if the wood elf bonus doesn't as well. That's interesting, if true. And would be nice to have confirmation one way or the other. Thanks for the heads up. Honestly though, i never considered taking Marksman for the sake of spellcasting.

Regarding PoE.... They could raise the level cap or even remove it, and the end result would be that after a certain point, you'd just be massacring everything you ran into, including the final battle. Or they could rebalance the awarding of XP so that you couldn't reach the level cap until you neared the end of the plot. But then the result would be that anyone who took a more direct route through the main plot line and wasn't an obsessive compulsive on the side quests would find themselves that much weaker by the time they (quickly) reached the end of the plot. There doesn't seem to be a win-win scenario here. About the only potential time I could see raising the level cap not being a major problem might be in PotD. Given the overall difficulty of PotD, raising the level cap there might not be so bad, though I could be very wrong on that. Flip side, there might be some people who would complain that PotD then got too easy. Sometimes, you can never win.

One way to deal with this is to keep some old save files from just before you level characters up, so that you can fall back if you find that you don't like a certain spell. Of course, this probably does come with some risks, such as not necessarily getting the same random drops along the way, or any other number of things that might go differently. And you should probably make up your mind fairly quickly on whether you like the spell or not since the longer you wait to decide, the more you'll have to do over.

And I do. The question is; Why would your preferences topple mine? Or why would they generalize the ranger when they went for an unique concept? But you overlooked that I haven't suggested getting rid of it. I've suggested making the AC an option to be elected at creation. If you want an AC, you select it. If you don't, then maybe you get to take another class ability. Then everybody's happy... unless you're only happy if you derive pleasure from making others unhappy.

I guess that I wish that Azzuro would just set up shop in the Stronghold, or sell his items to the local Stronghold weapons merchant as they become available. Frankly, I'm not overly fond of random drops of unique items. Random drops of generic items, no big deal. But random drops of unique items, particularly good ones, is annoying.

What's particularly annoying is that his stay is too short. I've missed him on a few occasions when I'm making a relatively long trip from place to place and he's arrived and left before I had a chance to buy what he was selling.

Or maybe there could be an alternate solution to this issue. Actually a number of alternate solutions may be possible. One idea could be to allow Chanters to start battles with a certain number of chants already stored up in their "gas tank", so that they could start casting right off the bat. Another variant of this could be to allow them a certain number of chants in the gas tank PER DAY. Thus, the first battle after a rest would be with a full tank of "chants", but succeeding battles that say would require the Chanter to wait for his chant count to refill. And another variant of this could be that perhaps the gas tank of chants refills automatically outside of combat, perhaps at 1 chant per hour, on the assumption that the Chanter is singing and entertaining the party during the day. (Perhaps the tank shouldn't refill while in scouting mode on the theory that you can hardly be stealthy and be singing at the same time.) Or Chanters could go back to what they were like in BG1/2 where they were a sort of wizard-lite, with a certain number of memorized spells per day. Another option could be to dump the invocations entirely and make them strictly Chant-based. There are a lot of outside the box options here.

1. IIRC, it's the Island version of Aumaua who get the extra weapons slot, not the Coastal version. 2. I honestly wouldn't commit to a 110% ranged-only fighter, particularly if that meant wearing no armor whatsoever, though that's personal preference. I think that a better choice would be for a balanced ranged and melee build, perhaps a little skewed to ranged by going with Wood Elf for starters. A balanced fighter would probably be no less capable at range, except perhaps for a slightly slower overall rate of fire, due to armor recovery speed. I'd probably suggest wearing something between, say, scale and padded armor to get some DR in case you need to switch to melee without sacrificing RoF too greatly. The amount of armor would probably be dependent on how often you chose to switch to melee without actually being forced to do so. As for the weapon group choice, I think that some of that depends on how you envision using the character in melee. I'd suggest Ruffian if one wanted to go with a single handed weapon (saber or club) and shield, or even dual wielding. I'd suggest Soldier, if you wanted to use a Pike and hide behind the front line tanks and stab away using them as your meatshield. Or one might choose Soldier if you wanted to use a 2H great sword in melee. Not sure that I have a particularly good reason for using Knight. For whatever reason, far too many of the good battleaxes and crossbows don't show up until much later in the overall story, so this weapons group can seem uninspiring until then, unless you're willing to use generic enchanted weapons. As an aside, I don't like the adventurer group at all. Oh, I like warbows just fine. But the rest of the weapons group seems like a total mish-mash with no clear theme. Heck, I wonder if it'd be better if this group was dumped and the weapons were spread across the remaining weapon groups. Maybe Estoc and Poleaxe to Knight. Maybe Warbow to Peasant. Maybe Flail to Soldier. And Wand to Noble. Off the top of my head, these larger groups seem to make more sense. (Well, I'd rather put warbow with a different group, but the other groups already have more than enough weapons. And bows just don't seem like a knightly or noble sort of weapon. Soldier maybe. Ruffian or Peasant are also reasonable. But Noble or Knight, not so much.) EDIT: Also, above, you listed the +10% damage as weapon focus, when I think it should really be Weapon Mastery.

Also, while I can't speak for PotD, in Normal and Hard mode, starting off difficult battles with a Fire Seal spell always seems to work wonders at weakening the enemy right from the start, particularly if you can get them crowded together. And the fact that you can cast Seal spells before the battle even starts is a big plus, IMO.

I always give Durance a decent pistol. For the times when his more important faculties aren't needed. But he's invaluable as a party member. Since I'm not into playing a priest myself and don't want to create some bot to replace him, Durance is always with my party and the priest class is absolutely vital for those more difficult encounters. Honestly, I'd give Durance an Arquebus so that he can get the benefit of that Priest of Magran class Talent that gives a +1 accuracy bonus to Sword and Arquebus. That's just too good a talent to let go to waste.

I don't know about that. Do either of them take a -15 accuracy penalty for using ranged weapons, as rangers take a -15 penalty for using melee weapons? That penalty is a pretty nasty hit to any ranger's effectiveness in melee, IMO. Why do you keep repeating that ? You've already been corrected in another thread. There is no -15 penalty for using melee weapons. There probably was at some point. Don't rely on the outdated wiki. Fighter and Barbarian are literally the worst classes for ranged combat. Even Paladins can do crazy single target damage for a few attacks. A monk can use Dangerous Implement talent, Swift Strikes, Lightning Strikes, Turning Wheel, maybe Stunning Blow. I don't constantly re-read every freakin' thread on this forum that I post in. I've seen no such correction, nor have I seen any reason to think otherwise.

I don't know about that. Do either of them take a -15 accuracy penalty for using ranged weapons, as rangers take a -15 penalty for using melee weapons? That penalty is a pretty nasty hit to any ranger's effectiveness in melee, IMO.

What's to criticize? Looks like you had a fun run with this rogue!

This is uncalled for, and actually rather offensive. Not everyone wants to play a barbarian or a fighter or whatever melee warrior floats your boat. Some people ENJOY playing ranged combatants. Some people ENJOY playing a ranger with a bow. Calling them lazy or bad players is absolutely uncalled for!!! Guys trolling anyway, ranged is way better than melee, sure it's lazy, but that's because it's so good. @Topic Ranged fighter is a waste, since he hast all the talents to tank and is not superior to any ranged class, rogue, cipher, heck even ranger is better ranged than fighter... If a ranged fighter is a "waste", it's because the game has pigeon-holed Fighters into a corner. A corner where they're expected to be melee fighters, and about the only two options are whether to lean towards a more defensive build or a more offensive build or perhaps somewhere a little in the middle. About the only way in which the Fighter isn't the opposite of a Ranger (AC aside) is that Fighters don't get a penalty for using ranged weapons, as rangers get penalized for using melee weapons. Regardless, I don't think that a truly ranged fighter build is worth the trouble, if only because the PoE rules just don't let them be competitive with Rangers or ranged Rogues. That said, there's no reason why one couldn't go for a "balanced" fighter who was built to be capable in both melee and at range. It probably wouldn't be that hard. Maybe start by not picking every defensive ability and talent possible. Pick a good WF that fits how you view your balanced fighter, then stick with weapons within that group, and go for Weap Spec and Weap Mastery. Maybe go for Defender and Wary Defender, if only because they're so good that they're almost impossible to ignore even for a balanced fighter. I'd probably stay away from a talent like Marksman because it's a one-way talent. And suggest picking offensive talents and abilities that work with both melee and ranged weapons. Also, such a fighter might want to have more DEX and wear lighter armor than your normal tanky fighter so that he can be able to get more attacks in, particularly when he's attacking at range, or possibly with extended reach weapons. Come to think of it, a "balanced fighter" may be pretty good as a melee warrior who has a preference for using extended reach weapons and fighting behind the tank wall. Just a thought. Of course, this kind of makes picking a WF rather tricky (or not). There are only 2 extended reach weapon types: Qstaffs and Pikes. And Qstaffs are in a rather weak WF group for this sort of fighter, IMO. So you're looking at WF Soldier, and you end up with a choice of 2 very slow loading ranged weapons (arquebus and arbalest), greatsword (2H), pike (2H reach), and warhammer (1H). Not bad, though those ranged weapons are about as slow reloading as it gets. Some will like the high power of those 2 weapons, while I could see others preferring ranged weapons that might not be quite so slow reloading. Another option could be the Ruffian, which would offer you 2 solid 1H weapons, the saber and club (plus the stiletto), as well as the pistol and blunderbus. Not much faster reloading than the Arq or Arb, but a little bit. And no 2H weapons or reach weapons. This option creates a rather different flavor than the Soldier option. And the other decent option is the Knight WF, which offers the 1H Battleaxe and Sword, the 2H Morningstar, and the Crossbow. But no reach weapons. IIRC, a downside here is that good unique weapons in this group are hard to come by until later in the game, which seems to me like a significant oversight on the Devs' part. But once you get the good unique weapons, they're pretty good. I have to admit that I kinda like the Ruffian group best, because somehow it seems like it fits how I'm sorta seeing this sort of build from a RP perspective. Less of a trained soldier type of warrior. Maybe not exactly a swashbuckler, but a less formally trained warrior who might be seen using sabers and pistols. Perhaps with a raider background from the Deadfire Archipelago. Argh, me mateys! Argh!!!!

This is uncalled for, and actually rather offensive. Not everyone wants to play a barbarian or a fighter or whatever melee warrior floats your boat. Some people ENJOY playing ranged combatants. Some people ENJOY playing a ranger with a bow. Calling them lazy or bad players is absolutely uncalled for!!!

It SHOULD BE. Well, it's not. You're free to make a mod of the attributes and see how it works, but trying to replace POE attributes with D&D is futile. Next thing, we'll be hearing about how Dexterity should affect Deflection so it's similar to the way Dexterity affects AC in D&D. You're missing the point and spirit of the thread. People are talking about how they think things SHOULD BE, not how they actually are. Go rain on someone else's parade. Fair enough, I'm approaching it in the wrong way. If Might = Strength and works in a similar manner to D&D, where do you put the spell damage and healing increases that tie back to spiritual power? Why not tie the ability to move freely in heavier armour to Constitution, which is clearly a physical stat? And why do you think players min/maxing to abuse the AI is an issue with the attributes and not the AI? No matter how you adjust the attributes, players will just find another build to abuse in-game rules. Not targeting you specifically, just wondering. I wouldn't mind seeing a slight change to one or two of the attributes either, even though that wouldn't result in a system much better than what we have currently. Edit I see you have Resolve, but wouldn't that just make Might the dump stat for casters and Resolve the pump stat? It would give spell damage/healing and concentration while Might gives nothing because it's just brute strength. Then Fighters take just enough Might and dump Dexterity/Resolve for tanking purposes. Unless deflection goes to Dexterity which would probably make it the best stat in the game at that point. View, thanks for accepting my point about the spirit of the thread. I have no problem with the idea that spellcasters, particularly wizards, would be physically weak or at least close to average. Yes, it would likely mean that Resolve would be a very important stat for spellcasters. That said, I've also suggested that DEFL should be based on the combo of DEX and PER. So this would mean that wizards who are putting points into RES for the power of their spells and concentration wouldn't be getting any DEFL out of it. I will say that priests, might not be so quick to entirely dump Might if they want to have any decent ability to get into melee when needed. And Chanters and Ciphers, I don't know. I have no significant problem with warriors focusing most on the top 3 physical stats, though it's worth noting that PER would still help DEFL. And furthermore, if Will saves were still linked to both INT and RES, if warriors were ignoring those stats, they'd be making themselves highly vulnerable to Will-based attacks. It's also worth considering that I wouldn't mind seeing there be some penalties associated with heavier armors, perhaps a penalty to DEX. How can one really use one's agility when wearing heavy armor? And if DEX was linked to DEFL, wearing heavy armor for its high DR would conversely reduce one's agility and thus one's ability to avoid being hit. Thus, the armor you wore would be a trade off between heavy armors which protected you better from damage at the expense of being more likely to get hit, vs. lighter armors which weren't as protective vs damage but made it a little easier for you to avoid being hit in the first place. Regarding CON, I'd like to see some logical way to improve its value. One way would be to make CON the only stat that improved Fortitude. But as Sro pointed out, there are two different groups of attacks that target FORT. Those that attack the target's "stability", his ability to stay on his feet or something similar. And those that attack the target's inner physical resistance to things like disease, etc. CON based Fort saves seem more appropriate to the latter, while one could argue that a target's "stability" should be either based on Might, Dex, or both, since it seems to me that there are components of strength and reflexes in such attacks. Personally, I do think that it'd be possible to end up with something better, though what that "better" is may depend on one's PoV. I'd prefer something more logical without being too, too obsessive about realism. Reasonable realism?

Which is why it shouldn't be imagined as "Fortitude." It isn't hard to imagine a Might-based saving throw. For example, if something is trying to knock you Prone, it actually makes more sense that a kind of strength would prevent it from happening, as opposed to simply having a lot of health. As I edited my post, Stability is a better word. We'd be going more for the concept of immovability and/or unstoppability than having a good immune system. Health is ALREADY a numeric representation of resistance to damage, to include damage-over-time. So Stability or whatever would apply to avoiding Prone, slogging through Stuck or Hobbled, fighting through Paralysis, or conquering Weakness. It wouldn't make much sense against Sickened, but that's about it. Stability could be applied to strength/might and/or dexterity. And yes, I agree that it's different than Fortitude. Frankly, I'm look at fortitude as being more of an internal physical toughness thing. How resilient are you to certain kinds of damage. What you're describing is a different thing, which is fine. I suppose that Stability works as well as any other word for what you're describing. And this "Stability" save could indeed be something to use against attacks which seek to make you prone or hobbled or similar things. It seems entirely logical to me. Of course, one could argue that these anti-stability attacks could be changed to attacks against one's Reflex save. It's not a 100% match, but it's sort of close.

And you'd get to build your character pretty much exactly the same as every other character. *golf clap* My heart bleeds for you. (Not). Wow, it's easy to play the snarky insult game. It's a pantload of bovine fecal matter that every character would be pretty much exactly the same as every other character.

Scro, honestly, FORT should be linked to CON. Constitution and Fortitude seem very interrelated to me, and much the same thing. I agree that there is a bit of a "realism" issue with such a system. A lot of this could be fixed with renaming...Fortitude becomes Sturdiness Constitution becomes Vigor Will becomes Logic But as I said earlier in the thread, a game isn't supposed to be a reality simulator. At the end of the day it is the gameplay that matters, and although it feels wonky my system offers more meaningful choice than the present attribute system. Sorry, scro, but I'd rather that things were rational, rather than made up with no rational underlying basis. Thus, I'd rather that Fort was tied to CON because it makes a lot more sense, rationally speaking. Please note that I'm not looking at this from some hyper realism point of view. Just a relatively moderate and reasonable one. Linking Fort to Might makes no sense whatsoever to me. Period. Might (pardon the pun) as well link it to Int or Perception. Makes just as little sense. IMO, Fort should be linked to CON or nothing at all.

It SHOULD BE. Well, it's not. You're free to make a mod of the attributes and see how it works, but trying to replace POE attributes with D&D is futile. Next thing, we'll be hearing about how Dexterity should affect Deflection so it's similar to the way Dexterity affects AC in D&D. You're missing the point and spirit of the thread. People are talking about how they think things SHOULD BE, not how they actually are. Go rain on someone else's parade.