Crucis

I'm not sure why they'd think it would affect playability one way or the other. This is only my second play through. And I've made a concerted effort to use some different companions and sidekicks this time around. In my first party, my preferred party comp most of the time was my PC (a fighter), Eder (rogue), Xoti (priest), Maia (ranger), and usually Pallegina (paladin), though I would rotate Pallegina out for other Companions for their personal quests. But when I sided with the RDC, I ended up using Rekke in place of Pallegina. Now, in my current party, my core group is my PC (Swashbuckler), Eder (Fighter), Xoti (priest), and Ydwin (Cipher), and I rotate different companions and sidekicks through the party pretty aggressively. I'm currently using Merke (pure Monk) in the floater slot while I work the Beast of Winter DLC. If I do another run through, I'll probably try to work yet another core party mix. Regardless, I don't see why any of this should affect replayability.

Ah. I didn't know that. Still, I can't really get too excited about her. She seems sort of boring to me. From a role playing standpoint, do I really want Shop Girl/Apprentice Mage out in the real world, covering my Swashbuckler's back? Of course, I suppose that I could have said the same thing about Ydwin, except replacing an Animancy Researcher for Shop Girl. But for some reason, I get a little more of a quiet, "I'm more of a bad azz than people think" vibe out of Ydwin. Maybe it comes from her being a Pale Elf. I don't know.

No, it shouldn't affect … AFFECT … gun damage either. Why would strength AFFECT melee weapon accuracy? Your strength would AFFECT your ability to wield a heavy weapon easily. Take a weak person and give them a greatsword and they'll be lucky to get it over their head, let alone swing it, let alone swing it with any degree of accuracy. Strength affects your ability to wield melee weapons and swing them at all and to swing them with some accuracy. And the stronger you are, the lighter some weapons will feel and the more dexterously you'll be able to wield them. As for swinging an ax, if you don't have the strength to lift the ax, you're not swinging it at all. If you have enough strength to wield it with a degree of nimbleness, it most certainly will AFFECT your ability to hit where you intend. Obviously, skill has something to do with it too, but that's factored into each character's level. As for "anti-might bias", maybe we cling to it because we think that it's stupid. (Right up there with not knowing the difference between "affect" and "effect".)

Wisdom affected the power of a Cleric's or Druid's spells, while Intelligence affected the power of a Wizard's spells. That seems to make more sense to me. Of course, with the current 6 attributes in PoE1&2, there really isn't a parallel to Wisdom, so I think that we'd be left with using INT for Priest and Druid spells as well. Ditto for Ciphers and Chanters. Or possibly a mix of Perception and Intelligence. If I had my druthers, Might should just equate to raw physical strength. And part of me would prefer to see accuracy be a more fluid thing. That is, rather than strictly basing it on perception, maybe have it be split into ranged accuracy and melee accuracy. Ranged accuracy might be perception based. And melee accuracy could be split between either being Might or Dex based. Light weapons (i.e. rapiers, daggers, stilettos, and fists) might be Dex based, while all other weapons might be Might based. This sort of split would be an incentive to build a wider variety of characters, rather than having it seem like all characters desperately need perception to get good accuracy across the board. It might also be interesting is weapons had strength requirements or penalties associated with them. Light weapons would have no penalty, while heavier weapons might have a penalty to accuracy linked to how heavy the weapon was felt to be by the devs. Medium weapons, i.e. one handers, might have only a minimal to moderate penalty, while heavy weapons, i.e. most two handers, might have higher strength penalties. Staffs might not have such a high penalty, since most staffs I'd think would be made of wood rather than metal. And arguably, I could see crossbows and regular bows having strength penalties too. For crossbows and arbalests, the penalty would be reflecting the weight of the crossbow and the user's ability to lift it and hold it in the firing position while aiming it. Heavy arbalests might be more difficult to hold on target than lighter regular crossbows. And with regular bows, the strength penalty would reflect the strength of the bow's draw. Anyways, I seriously doubt that any of this would ever get into the game, so what I've written is just what I'd like to see but don't ever expect to see.

I guess that I have to disagree. The devs are telling a story. The companions and the class or classes that match them are a part of that story. If you want to mod in this level of story breaking class choices, knock yourself out. But I think that it's a good thing to limit the class choices to those that fit the nature of the character as imagined for the story. I agree, I think. As I said above, each companion/sidekick has a character concept within the overall story. And IMO each of those companions/sidekicks really should have an official class or, in the case of Deadfire, 3 options that are fairly close. Personally, I don't even agree with all of the options the devs selected for the companions and sidekicks, though I do understand that they probably made those choices in a way to create some level of even distribution. For example, I don't see Merke as a Monk in any way. Monks seem to me to require a great degree of discipline that is the exact opposite of how one would think of Merke, the perpetually drunken pirate. She seems more like a Rogue to me, with rogue/fighter or possibly rogue/monk being options. I also don't particularly like Konstantin as a character either, but part of that is that I'd rather have a dwarven male who was a more stereotypical dwarf. A somewhat deep voice with a gruff attitude. And probably some combination of Fighter, Fighter/Cleric, or Cleric, or maybe Fighter/Barbarian. Fassina does nothing for me. I think that it would have much more interesting to have a second wizard who was had a more interesting background than some bored apprentice who ran a magic shop for an archmage. A wizard who was a Fire godlike who had the options of Wiz/rogue or maybe Wiz/fighter or Wiz/Paladin might have been interesting. Possibly having her 3 options all be multiclassed without any pure wizard option. Or possibly a wizard/priest of Magran combo (a fire priest or priestess). Heck, Xoti doesn't really do that much for me either. I suppose it was nice to have a "nice" priest for the party after having the nasty Durance from PoE1. But after a while, the sweet farm girl thing wears on me. It might have been nice if the priestess of Gaun had a little more edge to her. Ah well. It's still a nice game.

It seems like a given that if POE3 is set in Yezuha (aka "Rekke-land"), then Rekke will be coming along, since it seems to me that the preface to such a story would probably be the Watcher taking Rekke home.

I want to see a very stereotypical dwarven male, who would probably be a fighter or priest or fighter/priest. IMO, he ought to be a bit surly, but not so much so that he comes off as evil or nasty. But on top of that, a dwarven male companion would need a voice that really, REALLY sounded deep and rough, sort of like John Rhys Davies, though not necessarily with the Scottish accent. For a new godlike, I'd prefer to see either a Fire GL or maybe a Moon GL. I get a little tired of having GLs companions that are not player playable. I'd kind of like a Fire GL to be of a class or multiclass where fire synced up well with the Fire GL subrace, maybe a paladin or wizard, or possibly a monk. As for a Moon GL, maybe a priest or a Kind Wayfarer or Shieldbearer paladin. As for a pale elven female, I'd just keep Ydwin around and promote her to companion status. She's interesting.

I have what I think is a full bench, which makes any ship boarding actions amazingly easy. My Watcher could practically sit back and watch her crew mop the decks, given how powerful they are. Anyways, I don't rotate every single bench character through my party. I have a core of 4 characters in my main party: my Swashy PC, pure fighter Eder, pure priest Xoti, and pure cipher Ydwin. And then I will rotate various companions or sidekicks in depending on whether a certain quest suggests including them or if a certain upcoming series of battles favors having a particular companion, such as Pallegina to deal with famyrs and their charms. Right now, if there's no specific reason to include a certain companion in the 5th slot, I'm bringing Mirke (built as a pure monk) because she really seems to kick butt as a pure monk. But there are some that I almost never add to my core party, such as Konstantin or Tekehu. Of all the companions and sidekicks, the only one I've never picked up was Fassina, because I never wanted to lose her as a merchant while she still had stuff I might want to buy. Maybe it's just me, but I think that having a potential companion/sidekick start off as a merchant seems like a bad idea from a game play perspective, at least if as a merchant the potential party member sells anything really useful. I suppose if the merchant/companion sold nothing but normal clothes or food, that might be another story. But when one is selling significant magical equipment, I just would be loathe to lose such a merchant.

Interesting party. So, does your Waelite prefer to shop at Wael-Mart?

So, are you "mike'd up", Mike? Sorry, just had to do it with that handle! I don't do custom parties in PoE1&2. I prefer using the Companions and Sidekicks, because so much of the charm of PoE1&2, as well as the old BG1&2, was from the Companion interactions. I will say though that if I had a gripe about the PoE1/2 companions it'd be the lack of a good, gruff dwarf companion. In PoE1, Sagani didn't really exude any sense of being a "dwarf". And I don't recall Konstantin in PoE2 exuding that either. Maybe part of it in his case is being the class choice. I wish he'd been something that felt more "dwarf", like a fighter or a fighter/priest. Maybe it's just that I like the fantasy dwarf stereotypes, but I do. And having a dwarf that doesn't feel like a dwarf makes me feel like there isn't a dwarf companion. Heck, Durance felt more like a dwarf than either of these two. Crap, the devs could have made him a dwarf, with a dwarven avatar, etc. and I don't think that anyone would have batted an eyelash. Maybe part of my problem is that I really like the fantasy stereotypes, and it seems like the devs like creating companions/sidekicks that go against the stereotypes, which makes them less enjoyable to me. But I'm going a bit far afield from your question. I'm enjoying my current party quite a lot. My PC is an Aedyran Wood Elf drifter who is a Swashbuckler (Black Jacket fighter and no-subclass rogue). And my core party is my PC, Sherwyn, Eder (pure fighter), Xoti (priest), and Ydwin (pure cipher). And the 5th slot I use to run different companions through, depending on what quest I'm working or what enemies I'm going to be facing. That is, certain quests are "best" done with a particular companion, like each companion's personal quests. And in other cases, certain companions are better suited to the enemies you know you'll be fighting, such as having Pallegina along to help deal with the vampires, er… I mean, the fampyrs. I'm to the point where I don't really have a single fall back companion for the 5th slot, though I do prefer to fill the slot with a melee fighter, since I use Xoti and Ydwin as archers, and my PC Swashbuckler I use about evenly in melee and at range. My Swashy's primary weapons are the sword Modwyr and the double-barreled arquebus. She's far and away my best damage producer. And I love to have Ydwin buff her with that 9th level cipher spell that enhances penetration. All in all, they're a fun core group to play, at least for me.

I guess that I'm not one of those players who wants combat to be excrutiatingly difficult "for the fun of it". I enjoy Normal difficulty as is. I don't play to optimize every single aspect of each party member, to know every single detail of every single spell, potion, food, drug, or drink, and so on. I just enjoy playing and role playing. And honestly I find these new mega-bosses annoying as hell due to their extreme difficulty. But thankfully they seem to be 100% optional, so I can avoid them. I didn't particularly enjoy the adra dragon fight in PoE1 because it felt too cheesy, while the other dragon fights felt tough but fair, in that they didn't require massive amounts of cheese to defeat those other dragons. Or in some cases you could avoid the fights entirely with a more "diplomatic" solution. (Come to think of it, you could avoid the adra dragon fight too with a diplomatic solution.)

Yeah, I've noticed some weird and inconsistent issues with walking and running.

I guess to me, it's not that big a deal, because I like rotating characters through my party. I tend to go with a core party of 4 people and treat the 5th slot as a floater. Right now, my core party is my PC (a Black Jacket/generic rogue Swashbuckler), Eder (pure fighter), Xoti (priest), and Ydwin (pure cipher). After that, I tend to rotate other characters though on for a couple of reasons. One, because I'm working a quest that's related to the character. Or, two, I'm working a quest where I think that I need a specific character's unique abilities. For example, right now, I'm in a place with a lot of fampyrs, so I've added Pallegina to the party for her Aegis of Loyalty ability.

It wouldn't be "punishing those who like to craft their own parties". It would be incentivizing people to play the Companions and Sidekicks.

I agree. I think that it would be bad to change Pallegina's or Xoti's subclasses, and frankly story breaking. What might be a better, more story controllable option might be to assign each companion or sidekick subclasses. I'll even go so far as to suggest that for a character like Eder, I could see the following. If you chose a pure fighter, you might get one subclass of fighter, but if you chose swashbuckler, you might end up with the fighter subclass being different than for the pure fighter. Pure fighter Eder might be an Unbroken subclass, while a Swashbuckler Eder might be a Black Jacket fighter (plus the rogue subclass). As a side note, let me say that I believe that they should do away with the generic "no subclass" option, and do what they did with druids where the devs created a specific subclass to full the "generic druid" role. I think that that's what they should have done for all classes that don't have this. For example, a subclass to fill the "generic fighter" role might be called something like an Armsman. An Armsman might have nothing different from the current no-subclass Fighter, or maybe give the Armsman some benefits and downsides that are relative, well, generic yet useful enough.

Personally, I wish that they'd have done it more simply and just have all of your companions and side kicks have the exact same XP as the main character, regardless of whether they're in the primary party or on the bench. Regardless, I haven't paid too close attention to the actual XP totals of my bench players, though they do fall behind in levels if you don't occasionally rotate them into the main party, if only at an inn so that you can level them up, before putting them back on the bench.

am thinking this were the intent and the point o' the faction choice. were no clear villains and unimpeachable heroes. obsidian wanted the faction choice to be a selection 'tween relative evils. HA! Good Fun! Part of me wishes that there was a somewhat obvious "least worst" choice. Somewhat obviously, I'd think that neither of the Principi options would be anything other than bad. It was just a choice of which flavor of "bad" you preferred. The charming slaver supporting pirate or the anti-slavery, insane pirate. The Valians are also charming for the most part, but on some level they support slavery, whether it's officially or just certain leaders. And while they're certainly capitalists and that doesn't bother me, something gnaws at me over the thought of mining the luminous adra. It's hard to compare it to any natural resource on Earth. The adra seems so special and a part of what makes Eora "Eora" that mining it and converting it to adra dust seems sort of sacrilegious. So, that's a turn off for me. I can sort of sympathize with the Rauatians. They live in a land wracked by storms and have to import most if not all of their food. At the same time, they're certainly imperialists who are out to "civilize" the Deadfire's natives. And they're not above using nasty means to do it. The Huana are probably the most noble of the bunch, even if they can be a bit pushy at times. I guess it's safe enough to say that some of their edginess comes from feeling like everyone's out to take what belongs to the Huana. The thing is that they don't really seem to be strong enough to stop from being conquered. The only thing that prevents it at the moment is the balance of power between the contending forces. But if the Valians or Rauatai gains an advantage over the other in the Deadfire, they'd probably be easily able to conquer the Huana. I don't really see the Principi being in any position to stop this, though arguably they might prefer it to remain as is, since having either the Valians or Rauatai in control of the DF could mean an end to the Principi. Part of me would like to just say screw it and go it alone. Of course, one of my personal things would be that I'd want to destroy the storm machine on Ukaizo because from what I can see, it affects more than just the Deadfire, but a large portion of that part of Eora. I sided with the Rauatai in my first run. I'm not entirely sure which faction I'll side with this time, though it won't be the pirates. I'm leaning towards the Huana though. Or going it alone.

Part of it may be that Hammers have a higher base penetration than flails. Different weapons have different pen values. https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Weapons_(Deadfire) Also, Flails are a single damage type weapon, but Hammers are a dual type (blunt and piercing). And on top of that, the Hammer special ability allows you to increase piercing damage penetration.

.... Yeah, people who want to actually make MONEY, they don't get to go 'Tough cookies, IDC if my customers don't like it.' That's... yeah no, you don't get to do that, especially not in a competitve industry. Maybe if you were the only donut shop for fifty miles or something, but Obsidian sure as hell doesn't get to do that. Hey, the people who made the Baldur's Gate series had a set "official" story and they did just fine, I'd guess.

I think that your poll question is a bit loaded. Don't take that wrong. It's not a criticism. I think that there are (at least) two different ways to look at the question "which faction did you like most?" You can look at it as asking which faction did you like the most from a political point of view (within the game, of course). And then you can look at it as asking which faction did you enjoy playing the most because it had the most interesting characters or most interesting story lines, etc. I myself could see how the Principi could be fun to side with in some ways. OTOH, they also seem like the most obviously evil faction, due to some of their actions, etc. They are pirates, after all. I would just be hard pressed to enjoy siding with them because I like the good guys, though in PoE2, even the other three factions are rather tainted, each in their own way.

Sorry for this thread necro, but it's an interesting topic and I am starting a new run through and trying to decide which faction to choose. (Chose the RDC in my first run when the base game was released.) As for the primary question, are the Huana the worst faction, I don't think so. I think that the Pirates are, if one bases "worst" on which faction produces the overall worst outcome. Let's also remember that none of the factions are pure as the driven snow. They all have their faults, as the developers intended. And as for faction choice, there is no easy answer. The choice is all about trade-offs, and possibly some role-playing. In fact, I suppose one could say that making the decision based on role playing the Watcher's home culture might be the easy way out. After all, if you're from the Deadfire and you're a Raider, your Watcher might have a natural inclination to side with the Pirates, regardless of the player's own personal feelings. Or a Ruautian Watcher might side with the RDC for the same reason. An Old Valian Watcher might also side with the Pirates. Or a Deadfire Watcher might be Huana and thus side with the Huana. And so on. Of course, as a player when you're creating this Watcher, you might be making the faction decision in your head and deciding on a culture and background that will allow you to roleplay the decision. Back to the factions and their faults, if you're making the decision separate from a role-playing choice, it really is about trade-offs. It's about looking at the pros and cons and balancing them all out to see what best fits what you can accept.

I'd say that this is a minor bug in that it doesn't actually break (and I mean that in the most literal sense) the game. The game doesn't crash. It doesn't fail to do fairly important things it should be doing, like say, not adding a damage lash when it should. It's just characters walking a little faster than they should. Mind you, I'd prefer them to be moving more slowly while in stealth. My primary reason is that when I'm in stealth in a dungeon, I'm searching for traps. And I intentionally turn off "fast" mode, because I want to give myself plenty of time to stop the party when I spot a trap. And sometimes if I'm in fast mode, I might not get the party stopped fast enough to avoid the trap. So, having the party or a single person moving at normal walking speed while in stealth could cause me to accidentally trigger a trap. But overall, it's not the end of the world, so to speak. I just hope they fix it, because I like the immersive value of being slow and sneaky when in stealth. It just feels right.

I agree that this does represent an ignorance of harpsichords. But I expect that most people would make the same mistake. Regardless, IMO, it's only immersion breaking for musical instrument purists who would know this fact. Those of us who don't know this fact wouldn't even notice.

As for it being "close to not being possible to create another viable PoE sequel", I have to call B.S. D&D was able to tell many, MANY stories in their Forgotten Realms setting over the years. There is no reason that the PoE devs cannot do that same. Yeah.... That's not at ALL how story telling works. Not even slightly. Just because X setting cane be used Y times, doesn't mean EVERY setting can be used Y times. That's not how it goes. It's entirely possible to back yourself into a corner with story telling if you aren't careful, and Obisidian really has. Also, D&D canon doesn't take into account your campaigns. POE 3 DOES have to take into account ALL the possible endings of POE 1 and 2 and the effects they've had on Eora. That makes it FAR harder for Obisidian than for D&D right there. Tell me, go through ALL the ending slides of POE 3, and see where you can find the overlap between all of them. What could really be called the 'canon' result, without invalidating any end slide, of POE 2? That means canon for 'What happens to Eothas?', 'What happened to Ukaizo?', 'What happened to the Wheel?'... Among other things. And since all three of those are world-altering things, and all have different endings... What is Obsidian to do? If they say, 'Rautai took Ukaizo', well that affects Rautai and everyone near the country, every country they interact with, and possibly the countries that interact with those countries. It's not a small thing to control that level of technology, and have all that influence and power over the Deadfire. But wait... What about ALL those people who wanted one of the OTHER factions to take Ukaizo? Well suddenly they're told that's not canon.... Which has visibly upset people in the past when other games have done similar things. Deadfire was a huge, cataclysmic sequence of events for Deadfire itself and Eora as a whole. You can't pretend it didn't happen in the next game. The Wheel and the Gods affect EVERYONE, you can't just shrug it off. So, what do you do? Either you canon-ize one ending, and risk angering the people who don't like it... Or, you've story told yourself into the corner. Oh, I'm all for canonizing a single ending. Pick a "good" ending and go with that. And if there are people who complain about it, tough cookies. The devs are the authors of the "official" story, not the players. Regardless, I still say that it's B.S. that they can't go forward with the Eora setting.

1. I'd rather it wasn't set in TWTW. To me that'd make it too much like Icewind Dale and PoE1's White March expansions. Enough with the wintery settings! 2. Why are we stuck on Eora? Because we like to explore a world, a setting. Because it's familiar. I don't want them making new worlds every time they make a game. To me, it's a waste of time, effort, and resources that could be better spent on playable content. It's much better to save the time and effort and stick with a familiar game world and keep expanding on it. I agree with that... To a point. Eventually, you can't keep expanding. Eventually you've hit a point where any additions you make stop being reasonable. Right now, you have the OP Watcher sitting around somewhere.... If there's a big issue, why wouldn't they intervene? If they did intervene, you then need to either come up with an excuse to nerf them again, or you need to come up with something that is somehow more threatening than POE 1 and 2. If they don't intervene, you need an excuse as to why they didn't intervene.... Which is nigh on impossible. Because the back story of Eora is so developed, you can't place a game in the past, because you'd lose the free choice and multi-endings that are so great in 1 and 2. You can't set it in the future without having to canon-ize one of the multi endings for POE 1 and 2, especially 2, which is specifically a turn off right there. If you can't use time as an excuse, what then? Distance? No, the Watcher has traveled vast distances already. An area the Watcher doesn't know about? Maybe... Except they can speak to the dead to find it, and it'd have had to somehow be unaffected by the events of POE 1 and 2. Given that 2 breaks the wheel.... Plus, they'd have to not know... AND it'd have to be important enough of an issue for a game, but not important enough for the gods or the dead to seek out their best problem solver, the Watcher. That's a tricky thing to pull off, something that's important enough for you, the Player, to care, but not important enough for you, the Watcher, to be told to go deal with it. You could BS with 'The gods feel the Watcher deserves a break'... Except the gods are mostly entitled jerks, so they wouldn't say anything of the sort. I think it is technically within the limits of possibility to make a good lore setting for POE 3 in Eora. I also think it's so close to NOT being possible that it's just more viable for them to make a new and/or better world. I'm not asking for them to turn to sci-fi, I love the high fantasy style and classes.... Just don't keep beating a dead horse. Don't be that company that makes sequels just to make sequels, even if you don't have a good story to tell. Is the Watcher OP? Heck, he or she had to restart at level 1, even after PoE1. I still would prefer that they do a story that's not nearly so centered on the Gods of Eora. As for a setting, I still maintain that the best place to go would be what I've called "Rekke Land", though its proper name is Yezuha. The known part of Eora isn't the entirety of Eora. There are lands on the far side of the great storms of the Deadfire, with Yezuha being one of them. Furthermore, at least in my opinion, Rekke's inclusion in PoE2 as well as his extremely isolated location on the map absolutely SCREAMS that the devs are seriously considering Yezuha as the location of PoE3. One idea that someone floated earlier was that perhaps there was a fledgling god in the making or perhaps some megalomaniacal mortal who wants to ascent to godhood over in Yezuha. I know that I'd prefer a less gods-centric plot, but this might work. As for it being "close to not being possible to create another viable PoE sequel", I have to call B.S. D&D was able to tell many, MANY stories in their Forgotten Realms setting over the years. There is no reason that the PoE devs cannot do that same.