Crucis

Scro, honestly, FORT should be linked to CON. Constitution and Fortitude seem very interrelated to me, and much the same thing.

It SHOULD BE.

I don't see what's so exciting about wasting points in dump stats once and then never doing so again once you realize they're dump stats. Dump stats are simply bad design. Certain character have dump stats. Its normal. Its impossible to have every stat matter for everybody. PoE is a good example why this cant work So you actually prefer to have a system like in the IE games where half of the stats essentially don't matter at all? Okay, that's fine (doesn't make any sense to me), but please drop the line about the possibility of making mistakes being exciting because of dump stats hmmm, should I dump WIS, INT, and CHA on my fighter and max the rest or not? Tough choice, really exciting. And frankly, it's not any different here. It's just a different set of stats being dumped. And a sillier looking set of stats being dumped. At least with the maxed STR, CON, DEX characters, the maxed and dumped stats made some rational sense. But there are builds in PoE that make no rational sense are are only meta-gaming builds that I find extremely annoying, the prime example being the min STR, max DEFL fighter builds that are designed to completely abuse the game's AI by creating characters who are too weak to even carry the armor they're wearing, let alone the weight of their own bodies. Honestly, I like how the old DnD stats were used better than the way the PoE stats are used. That said, I think that the PoE stats might have more potential, if they were used in a more rational manner (as least IMO).

I think I'd have to agree with KDubya on this one. This kind of implementation would be a terrible idea, as it would just serve to make all builds end up in a very narrow range of ability scores. No, it'd force you to really, really think about whether you want to be dumping points in a given stat beyond a certain point. Oh boo-hoo! You can't build that extreme min-maxed uber OP character. My heart bleeds for you. (Not.)

I think there should be dump stats but w/e I like Might being important for Mages and Int being important for Barbarians but maybe they should have stopped there. Sawyer tried to mess with it too much (make every stat important for everybody which just isn't possible), so eventually he killed all the fun of char building due to focusing on convenience and balance at all costs Ironically, he still couldn't escape dump stats haha Personally, I hate the idea of Might being important to spellcasting. Hate it with a passion. Might should be nothing more and nothing less than physical brute strength. If you want to have a different stat for determining the strength of one's spellcasting, making it Resolve. One's resolve is a matter of mental and spiritual strength. One's conviction. And so forth. By combining physical and spiritual strength into a single stat, it becomes impossible to separate the two for other reasons. Like pushing down that wall in the tutorial dungeon. Or determining encumbrance (if one wanted to be doing it).

Mad, I was making no comment regarding whether the Elven class benefit was too strong, etc. I was only pointing out that that bonus affects more than just rangers. No need to get your panties in a twist.

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.

Seems to me that the Dangerous Implement/Constant Recovery combo is a bit , I don't know, risky? combo to use. Sure, you'll be able to quickly regain the END lost, but you won't be able to recover the Health lost until you rest. And if this character is built around a high DEX and light-ish armor to maximize how quickly you shoot your magical implement, you could be taking a pretty hefty amount of damage to your Health pool each battle, even against the proverbial trash mobs. Is it really worth it?

Looking at the mix of Companions, there is one godlike ... BUT .... Pallegina looks a lot less like a godlike and a fair bit more normal human than the 4 playable godlikes. Even in her personal quest, IIRC, Pallegina makes no comments about the difficulties of being a godlike. In one way, I suppose that it's nice to have a Companion who wasn't miserable about something. And yet OTOH, it seems like having a godlike from one of the 4 playable GL's who was having to deal with the difficulties of being a GL was a missed opportunity.

Some thoughts on this topic. 1. Might: I think that it was a mistake that Might was defined as it was. I think that it should have been left as pure physical strength, and then use it to limit how much a character could carry. (I don't care if the Stash is treated like a bag of holding for the sake of ease of play.) One significant effect here would be that if someone tried to dump Might too greatly, they'd find it increasingly difficult to EQUIP all the various items they'd need, though primarily this'd be armor for most characters. 2. Perhaps the penalties for going below 10 on "Save" stats, should get increasingly large the more you go below 10. I don't mean a straight line progression, but something more penal. -1 for 9, -3 for 8, -6 for 7, -10 for 6, and so on. And this is only a base. One could multiply these number by 2 or 3 to make them more penal. But don't do the same thing in reverse on the positive side. Don't make it so that adding 6 points to RES can offset the penalty for taking 6 points from PER. 3. I think that it'd make it more painful to dump stats if stats were re-tied to things like accuracy and skills. Right now, your accuracy isn't tied to any stat. But if it was tied to DEX, for example, dumping DEX on a character would make them increasingly impotent in combat because they'd have a hard time hitting anything. And frankly, IMO, DEFL should be based on DEX and PER, not PER and RES. And arguably, one could simply merge both DEFL and Reflex, as I think a logical case can be made that the same things that add up to a character being able to evade blows in combat is essentially the same as those that let you dive out of a fireball's AoE. I could probably come up with a number of other things as well. But at this point, I doubt that we'll see any significant changes to the PoE system.

There's nothing stopping you from, let's say, making an Undead Hunter paladin, by taking at least one or both of the talents that give +25% damage vs the 2 undead monster groups. Plus you might also take a talent or two to improve your Undead Hunter's Will Defense. That said, I won't disagree with you that this would be better if there were kits in the mix, since kits could have specialized class abilities beyond the generic class' abilities and talents. For example, with an Undead Hunter, the character might have a special ability to enhance Will Defense beyond the normal talent that's generally available so that it can resist famyrs' charm attacks. There are plenty of possibilities.

Fair point regarding Ciphers. You can get a Mechanics bonus from Chanters as well. Personally, I still like having a real rogue around, but that's personal preference.

I feel the same way towards having a rogue in my party. Frankly, it's annoying that there's no Rogue companion in the game (outside of the tutorial). Perhaps even more than the other two missing companion classes, I feel that the lack of a rogue for locks and traps duty is a glaring hole. I'm so glad someone agrees. Starting out with a +2 to mechanics is pretty big, especially since we are running into level 8 locks (near as I can tell) in the temple of Eothas that is smack dab in the middle of Gilded Vale. +3 if you take a background that gives you a +1 in Mechanics. (Almost can't imagine not doing this for a traps and locks specialist rogue.)

What's so interesting about fighters in D&D? Barbarians? Bards? Clerics? Wizards and Sorcerers? You just picked the most boring class in PoE as a point of comparison... Meh. What makes any character in D&D or PoE isn't their class, but the character itself. The character's backstory, personality, motivations, and so forth.

In POE, you can build Rangers as you wish. I'm not sure why people keep saying they are "just boring archers with a pet" when you can easily make them your ideal D&D Ranger (dual wielding, swift aim, two weapon fighting, Weapon Focus, lore scrolls that give Druid spells, talents that give damage bonuses against specific enemy groups,etc) and you're not forced into any specific build unless you're one of those players who sacrifice themselves on the alter of "optimal play". If you're worried about "optimal play" then you're only limiting yourself because the very same thing can be said for any game. All I see in these complaints are "POE classes are not like D&D classes". If you want pre-made D&D classes then play a D&D game. If I want to make a POE Ranger similar to a BG2 Ranger kit, I can easily do this. For the record, the IE games didn't do the ideal D&D Ranger very well either. For important discussion, I really hope Obsidian adopts the idea behind the IE mods fix to NPC Paladins/Priests being affected by party reputation. It's a no-brainer decision, imo. You can build Rangers as melee combatants, rather than as ranged combatants. HOWEVER, PoE Rangers' melee accuracy is 15 points lower than their ranged accuracy. Beyond that, PoE Ranger's abilities and talents are either aimed at enhancing their animal companion or enhancing their ranged combat abilities with few exceptions. So if you choose to build a melee ranger, you're going to end up with a very weak character compared to if you'd stuck with a ranged Ranger. If the Devs would just get rid of that melee accuracy penalty, it'd go a long way towards making Rangers moderately competent in melee, even without any melee focused class abilities or talents.

I feel the same way towards having a rogue in my party. Frankly, it's annoying that there's no Rogue companion in the game (outside of the tutorial). Perhaps even more than the other two missing companion classes, I feel that the lack of a rogue for locks and traps duty is a glaring hole.

Elemental talents (like Scion of Flame) don't seem worth taking just to enhance weapon lash effects. They seem more worthy of taking to enhance the damage of a spellcaster who happens to like casting spells with that particular elemental effect. The flame Seal and Pillar of Fire being the two biggies for Priests, and a big pile of fire related spells for wizards.

There's something that I'd rather have. And that would be more dynamic behavior for general NPCs in the towns and cities relative to the day/night cycle. I'd like to see the cities and towns have their people (the NPCs) go inside for the night in most areas, except perhaps for The Gift area. It seems a little silly to see everyone completely ignore the day/night cycle, particularly outside.

This is the kind of thread I'd like to see more of. Threads that discuss various builds for each class, without getting too hardcore on extreme min-maxing of stats. Talk about what are the good abilities and talents for the class in general, and more specifically for the different build variations. What kind of weapons, armor, and other items are good for the various builds, without arguing about which is the absolute perfect max DPS weapon, etc., etc.

The Withdraw thing is a good point. Also, I'd suggest trying to keep the AC next to whomever might be wearing the boots that have the Consecrated Ground spell bound to it. And/or next to any front line Moon Godlike. Any of those could help keep the AC on its feet.

If there was a sequel, I'd honestly be happy if they went with all new companions. For starters, the ending of PoE basically had all the Companions going their own way. Having the Companions around for the sequel would seem to contradict the ending. Furthermore, at least with Sagani, it doesn't make any sense for her to hang around, at least if you've completed her personal quest. Frankly, I find it difficult to justify having her not want to leave the party to head straight home after completing her personal quest. Oh, I suppose that some of the Companions could logically decide to say with the PC post-ending, aside from any Ending stuff. Eder seems like a prime candidate. I suppose that Kana might be, because he seems like an adventurous sort. And so on. But those Ending snippets just seem to make keeping the Companions around difficult to justify. As for adding 3 more Companions to get one of each class, I fully agree.

I can see where the Zealous Endurance aura would be nice for an AC. Yet at the same time, ZE wouldn't be my preferred Zealous aura to be choosing. I prefer the Accuracy enhancing one, generally speaking. Of course, I'm also not a fan of wasting any ability or talent points on the AC, though I suppose that Resilient Companion (bonus to DRs) isn't utterly horrible. And yet it seems so much less valuable than any of the talents that would enhance the Ranger's own offensive abilities, and thus a wasted talent selection.

Pick another class? I mean; I figured that was the use of having different classes, so they're all unique in their own way. Not having 12 flavours of icecream... oh but they're all chocolate just cause. And then there's that chocolate-vanilla, and here swoops in the 'delete the vanilla immediately cause I want chocolate!' without, you know, acknowledging you already got 11 of those or so. IMO allowing Wizard to also melee properly is beyond stupid, but that's me. No, because Ranger has always been just about my favorite class in the IE games, and PoE. But I just don't like the animal companion feature. I wasn't overly fond of the spells that were part of the Ranger mix back in the old DnD IE games, but if I didn't want to use them, I could do so without any penalty nor require any additional micromanaging due to not using them. But with the AC, you have no option to not use it and you need to micromanage it to prevent it from dying too quickly and nerfing the snot out of the Ranger's accuracy. And what's a "chocolate just cause"? Many causes are just, and many are unjust. But what's chocolate, rangers, or classes have to do with just causes?

I haven't made much use of normal traps thus far, but it's really, really useful to have some stealth on priests so that they can get close enough (which really isn't all that close) to cast one of the seal spells. I've gotten to the point that I see the seal spells as near must-cast pre-battle set-up spells when the situation allows. At least for tougher battles.

Yes, IMO, you should invest in some points in Stealth on everyone in the party, if you're going to use any stealth at all. If you have a party stealth crawling near an enemy, and you have 5 party members with good stealth and one with very weak stealth, the weakly stealthed guy will stand out like a searchlight. You want to have all party members with a similar level of stealth, except perhaps for a very high stealth character you can use as a scout. Of course, it helps if the scout is also the one looking for traps, since it stinks to be nicely stealthed and scouting ahead, and not be able to see any traps in your path.