Crucis

Ok now we are talking. That is what I have been trying to say for like 5 pages. I agree some kind of say counter attack or ambush type attack or a specific flank attack would help the Ranger to have his own identity. And would make him different from a fighter, rogue or barbarian. And yeah in D&D from the IE era you probably wouldn't have a straight Ranger without a kit or dualed to a Cleric. BG2/IWD you could go archer or stalker or beastmaster. Stalker would be the melee path. Getting thief abilities plus several Wizard spells (Haste, Protection from Missiles, and Spell Deflection). And they get the thief backstab ability. Archer is basically the ranged version. And beastmaster being the weakest unless you dual classes to a Cleric. Original games you would then have access to all Druid and Cleric spells once your Ranger got the Druid spells. And you could either dual wield clubs. Go 2 handed quartstaff or use slings via range. Stalkers could be just as good in melee as archers were in ranged. Stalkers are basically always hasted in combat. And in IWD high level Stalkers level 22 get Iron Skins. Since they get higher Druid Spell level. BG2 rangers were capped at level 3 divine spells. Which are kind of weak. And Obisidian can easily fix this just by changing ranger abilities to make them matter in melee and range. If it makes faster reloading then melee could have faster recovery etc. I didn't particularly like the spells for Stalkers, not that those wizzy spells couldn't be useful. But spells aside, Stalker is probably thematically speaking the closest to what I was thinking in terms of for a melee ranger that has a unique fighting style. In theory, I suppose that they could use 2H'd weapons, but part of me tends to see them as warriors who would prefer a faster slash and run style of fighting, and that doesn't really seem to me to synergize well with big, slow, two handed weapons. And much as I don't like being stuck in forced stereotypes dumped on us by D&D novels, two weapon fighting or even single 1H weapon fighting may be more preferable for a slash and run style of warrior. All that said, I vastly prefer my stereotypical ranger as archer (and I do mean Archer, not Rifleman). So sue me. It's a stereotype I enjoy in these games.

Yes, I always have this character. In my case it's the Cypher/player character. The problem wasn't the spotting, the problem was the location. Since this is a spoiler forum, it's on the third level of the endless paths. I simply couldn't disarm it with a couple of giants virtually parking their hindparts on the trap without getting a good smashing for my efforts. Oh well. Guess you can't get to them all so easily. Honestly, it annoys me that there isn't a Rogue Companion. I intentionally picked up a Custom Rogue NPC in my last party because I couldn't stand not having a Rogue traps and locks specialist in my party, and I happened to want to play a Monk PC. In a way, it's almost like BG2 where you also didn't have a pure rogue NPC who would stayed with the party all the way thru to the end. It's like these same developers have something against rogues/thieves.

It's "less than" not "less then". Regarding overkill, yeah it's an issue. The problem is that we never know exactly how much END an enemy has left. You can know that they are at a "Near Death" state, but on many enemies that can still be a lot of END. It almost reaches the point that you just have to suck it up and blow the Near Death target away, even at the risk of overkill. It's annoying, but without knowing the exact # of END left, there's not much else you can do.

I had these encounters. Problem is, I detected them all right before the fight started. Didn't prevent Eder or some other melee character to make a beeline for the trap, triggering it in the process. If auto attack is on and your attention is otherwise engaged, it's almost guaranteed to happen. Well, there's something to be said for having a very stealthy, trap-seeking rogue scouting ahead of your party to find traps before you get close to them. Sometimes, even traps that are near some enemies. If your stealth is good enough, you can probably disarm them and back away without being spotted. But yes, if your characters CHARGE!!!!! into battle and you're not 10000% focused on the action, you might not spot that particular trap, and your guys will pay the price.

Where did you see that? Apparently, they're doing some rebuilding of the Steam Depots (whatever they are) right now, and patch 1.05 will be live very, very soon (i.e. within minutes or a couple hours, or even by the time you read this). As for where I read this, in the announcements subforum....

I haven't DL'd any of the betas. Just how large a DL is this patch 1.05? Anyone know?

I entirely agree with you, Blovski. Wizards do seem more versatile, and can pump out more spells in a shorter period of time than Ciphers. Ciphers can dump out a number of "spells" in a short time, but once they expend their Focus pool, it's going to be a while before they can pump it back up. And if you drop a big level 6 cipher spell on the enemy, that's going to suck the Focus right out of your cipher in a hurry. OTOH, the Wizard might have a supply of 20-25 spells in his grimoire that he can use without much limit until you've used them all up. Oh sure, once they're used up, it's time for a rest. But until then, that's a pretty ample supply of spells to work with.

Paladin is *excellent* for its intended purpose. It is a tank. It can heal, "resurrect", buff the party with auras, and be virtually immortal. It is not a high damage class and expert players are able to make the higher damage classes tough enough, making the class less desirable amongst the more hard core players. Folks that just want to play the darn game once, casually, might love to have such a durable character that can bring the priest or mage back up mid fight. I have had one in several parties and there is not a thing wrong with it. Ranger has a major flaw in that loss of the pet has too big an impact on its performance. If that were fixed the class would be fine. Even with this flaw, it does strong dps from a distance, which has a lot of merits. Its not a bad class, it just has a flaw. Honestly, worst class award for me goes to the wizard. Small subset of spells in each book makes knowing a bunch of spells moot, and having to rest to recover them stinks, it lacks endurance, it lacks accuracy (making many spells easy to resist), and it lacks for punishing damage dealing magic; you are usually better off to just use debuffing spells to enable melee attacks because magic damage is too low. Paladins: I don't see them as "excellent" as is. They may be decent at what they do, but in all honesty, I think that the real flaw with them is the concept of paladin as "DnD Warlord". I'd rather paladins be more of a Holy Warrior class where their abilities focused entirely on making them more capable combatants, not in making allies better. Rangers: Agree. If that death of the AC penalty was removed or severely reduced, it'd be a great improvement. Wizards: Oh, boo-hoo. Wizards have to rest to get their spells back, and they have to be a little more circumspect about using the spells they do have, rather than being able to dump their entire bunch of spells each and every engagement. Boo-frickin'-hoo. Paladins, again, are excellent at staying alive and providing a secondary healing capability. One can argue how much that is needed, but that is what they are very good at doing. I would say it is perfect for the guy that just plays the game thru one time on normal and then moves on. Wizards: its the package deal. Any one of these issues is indeed a lame thing to whine about, but the total package is weak. It has no redeeming qualities compared to the cipher until very late game, and then only on 2 or 3 endgame boss fights where you do indeed drop all the spells (from a tailored set for that boss) in the one fight. If it could use any spell known but only a few per rest, that would make it more of a useful choice vs a cipher. As it stands, though, the cipher is simply more useful -- I can clear 2 maps without a rest with a cipher. The wizard lasts about 1/3 as many fights, assuming that I cast 1-2 spells per fight regardless of which caster is in the group. The resting aggravation could be changed and that would be fine -- instead of having to have these mysterious consumed items (what are they, disposable tents??) make it 1 rest per 24 hour period, but do it anywhere you like as much as you like. Trucking back to town because you used your tent up for the wizard is just a timewasting mechanic of extreme annoyance. Wizards: I'd say that the thing about wizards is learning how to use your spells in a measured way. Don't simply cast spell after spell after spell every battle because you will go through your available spells rather quickly. Learn the value of using your wand, etc. while biding your time for when another spell casting seems necessary. Heck, there are many battles where a wizard doesn't necessarily need to cast a single spell. I'm content to win low grade battles without having Aloth cast a single spell. It extends the time I can go between pit stops ... I mean, rests. The problem is that some people just cannot get past the idea that they want and need to cast spells as much as THEY want to cast spells, and if they can't cast them as fast as THEY want to do it, there's something wrong with the game, rather than there being something wrong with how they're playing the game.

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Actually, I always looked at Rangers as "Fighter Lite" in BG1 and BG2 (when using a vanilla ranger). There was really nothing special about rangers in combat in BG1/2, except for BG2's Archer kit. That's where my "Fighter Lite" phrase comes from. As for the spells, I never liked Ranger spells. They came too late and were generally too uninteresting. Oh, if one was playing IWD2 in HOF mode, their animal summoning spells could be darned useful, but that was rather situation. I also never really liked paladin spells either. Rangers with spells just seemed like a Druid Lite, just as Paladin spells made them feel like Cleric Lite. Neither held much value for me. I'd just prefer some improved constant or limited use abilities to druid or cleric spells on both Rangers and Paladins. I don't need to see a Ranger as some sort of forest (or some other environment) warrior. I'd prefer them to be "light fighters" (not meaning the same thing as "Fighter Lite", BTW). And for a melee ranger, they should have abilities that encourage a totally different style of combat thAn your average plate wearing tank of a fighter. Abilities that encourage a more light, quick style of combat that favors speed, DEX, and deflection over armor. Arguably, this could end up being some sort of middle ground between fighters, rogues, and even barbarians. Rangers probably shouldn't care about increasing the number of enemies engaged. That's something that Fighters and perhaps Paladins in their nice shiny plate armor would care about. Melee rangers might favor increased disengagement deflection so that they can get in, hit hard, then fall back. One might even make a case that perhaps they could use a sneak attack ability, though if they did, the overlap between Ranger and Rogue might become so great that the differences would become blurred.

Damn. Didn't know there was such an option. Guess what I'll be enabling for my next party......

Exactly correct, Achilles. A key thing to learn is to watch your enemies' DR's closely. And switch to weapons that attack their weakest physical DR's (slash, pierce, or crush). For this reason, it's a good idea to have your melee combatants carry a second weapon of a different damage type. My best suggestion is to go with either a slash or pierce weapon, and a crushing weapon. For whatever reason, there are plenty of enemies that are weak against crushing weapons, so they make an excellent backup weapon.

Something else to consider is that if you're not in Scout mode, you will be moving faster and may walk right into a trap before you have a chance to pause, if you're not paying close attention. While in theory, this change sounds logical, I think that in practice, it's probably not worth moving through suspected trapped areas in anything other than scouting mode (and better yet, in slow mode, to give you more time to hit pause). It may be a little tedious, but it may save your bacon. On a side note unrelated to this specific topic, I noticed that sometimes you detect a trap during or just as combat starts. And while you may be able to hold your party back from charging right over that trap, it's still something that can be worrisome. The important thing is that you can disable traps while in combat. Just a little tidbit worth remembering.

You're basically talking about the difference between an expansion and a sequel. An expansion would be like the BG1 "Tales of the Sword Coast" expansion, whereas a sequel would be like BG2 to BG1. Personally, I want both, but the expansion first. With an expansion, I'd expect it to be simply an extension of what already exists in PoE. More new areas accessible from the existing map, among other things. With a sequel, I'd personally hope for the adventure to take the PC to some entirely new locations far away from the Dyrwood.

Actually, no. I've fought Thaos twice and won both times. Ditto for the Sky Dragon. Never fought the undead lord Raedric. (I should go back and give that a go.) All this on normal mode. The only enemy that's given me troubles is the ardra dragon, whom I've just skipped by taking the easy dialog way out.

Who said that Xaurips don't believe in Love Thy Neighbor?

I think that they were priests of Berath. I didn't use them, in part because I found them ugly. But also because even enchanted to Fine, they wouldn't have enough DR for my taste at that point in the game. I stuck with scale armor, IIRC, for a while before switching to padded armor and eventually some excellent or superb robe. (It might have even been Eder's Scale armor that has the Second Chance enchantment going for it.)

I guess when looking at the existing skills, I see value in gaining high levels of some of those skills. Stealth, Lore, and Mechanics, to be specific. High stealth lets a character get really, really close to an enemy without being spotted, and delays how long the "yellow" and "red" timers take before triggering. This can be very useful for a thieving or backstabbing rogue, or perhaps a monk. And for any character you're using a scout. High Lore is mostly useful for casting high level scroll spells. High Mechanics is useful for disarming high level traps and opening high level locks. And for a priest, is useful for improving one's Seal spells. But I don't see much value in high levels of Athletics or Survival. Oh, I suppose that it's hard to argue that extending the duration of consumables has *no* value. But to get that value, you have to be willing or remember to use those consumables in the first place. And for that matter, other than a few boss or near boss level fights, at least in Normal mode, one hardly needs those consumables in the first place. On top of that, the idea of extending the duration of consumables doesn't exactly fit how I'd view a "Survival" skill. For that matter, I'm not entirely sure that there's much room for a "true" survival skill in this game. I mean, Tracking is pretty much useless after one's first play through of the game, since you'll know where the enemies are without tracking them. I suppose that another way one could use survival skill would be for knowing how to rest in the wild without actual supplies, being able to forage for food and firewood and be able to start a fire (or know when not to start a fire for the sake of safety). Survival might let you know when it was or wasn't safe to perform a normal rest in the wild. This concept of Survival is probably the sort of thing that you'd only need one character to have, sort of like a guide character..... or a Ranger. Someone who knows how to survive and live in the wild. As for Athletics, this seems more difficult. Having a minimal amount of Athletics essentially means that the character is in decent physical condition. Is able to fight a string of battles without becoming exhausted after 2 or 3 of them. For the most part, a character with 3 points in Athletics is only going to become fatigued after long periods without sleep, not from combat exhaustion. But beyond that, Athletics starts to become less about simply being in shape and more about being an excellent athlete, able to perform acts of considerable (pardon the repetition) athletic skill. Being able to climb a rock face. Being able to swim across a fast moving river or stream. And so on. But the thing is that these are probably not about being able to do it without becoming fatigued. They're probably more about being able to do them at all. And it seems to me that to enable this requires creating a lot of situations where the skill would come into play, but doing so in a way where you either have enough Athletic skill or you have no way to get to where you need to go. It should be more about having the skill to allow you to get in some back door, so to speak, while the front door always remains an option.

That seems to be the point. It's a one difficulty skill. Next to useless on any other level. Yeah you barely need consumables at all on normal and hard. And the general audience will be playing normal.But all of the skills are like that. Barely need lore since you dont really need scrolls on normal. Think if you have 4 lore on PC you can pass most speach checks for lore. Stealth and Athletics you only really need 5 and thats if you want your entire party sneaking up to start every encounter. If not athletics just needs 3. Mechanics is the only thing to find traps. And it improves Priest trap/seal spells. That is the only skill to actually be worth something in every playthrough. All the skills barely change game play mechanics. Probably wanted to include it for future dlc or sequels. But 80% of the game would play exactly the same if all the skills were removed completely. I think that there's somewhat of a need for healing potions in battle. OTOH, pre-battle food consumables really don't matter much. I may misunderstand their value, but it seems to me that when you're fighting the proverbial trash mobs, you hardly need them. And against big bosses, the enhancements that food has to offer doesn't seem to give anywhere near enough to represent any major enhancement (though I admit that I could be wrong about this). There are some potions that give significant short term enhancements, but I have to admit that once in battle, I never remember to use them. The only potions that I remember to use in battle are healing potions, and frankly I find those a bit confusing, because there seem to be two different types of them and I don't understand how they differ. (Not talking about major vs minor, btw. A big vs small healing isn't confusing. It's the other differences that aren't clear.)

Honestly, I don't care that much what the in-game definition says. Real Lore would be about education, which in game terms would most definitely include geographical and historical knowledge, in addition to knowledge about the arcane arts and monsters and so forth.

I don't think this is a problem at all. It's the nature of things. Deflection is attacked because it represents how a character avoids a physical attack. The other 3 represent "defenses" against magical attacks. One thing could see is that Reflex seems sort of redundant, and could be merged with Deflection. I think that Deflection makes more sense if it was based on DEX and PER, same as the Reflex save, than PER and RES. I don't understand how one justifies using Resolve to determine one's ability to avoid getting it. It seems to me that it makes much more sense that this should be dependent on one's agility and ability to read opponent's actions (i.e. DEX and PER). Anyways, it seems to me that the same things that create the ability to get hit by a weapon should add up to evading a fireball's damage.

So, no official 1.05 release today?

Raven, the problem I have is that while I have the dialog tips turned on, I'm just not sure that, for example, every benevolent dialog choice adds a point to the Benevolent disposition value. And if that's true, I don't know which ones do and which ones don't. Of course, I suppose if one is playing a PC paladin with Honest and Diplomatic favored dispositions (for example), you can just limit yourself to picking those and only those dialog options and let the chips fall where they may. Also, I have a hard time seeing how +10 to all 4 defenses (DEFL, Fort, Reflex, and Will), on top of what you get for using Defender, is a bad thing for a front line fighter.

Same here, Duke. I'm waiting to start a new game until after I can get 1.05. (Well, I did start a new game last night just to play some PoE, but I'm gonna dump it and start fresh when 1.05 is released.)

Managing a ranger's AC isn't THAT much work.