Crucis

I don't know if ranged rogues can surpass rangers. Let's just say that they're comparable. I agree that rangers do crit a lot. OTOH, when a rogue fires a ranged shot in the first 2 seconds of combat it is (IIRC) 100% certain to be a sneak attack, in addition to whatever chance there might be for a hit to crit. And it's worth noting that rangers and rogues start with the same base accuracy. So when it comes to a battle opening (i.e. first 2 seconds) alpha strike, Rogues should out damage Rangers simply because of the Sneak Attack damage bonus. That's why I favor rogues over rangers as a class to use the arquebus for the first shot, bow for rest of the shots tactic.

Dudex, it never hurts any combatant to have alternative weapon choice (of a different damage type) for those times when your preferred weapon's damage type happens to be your target's strongest DR. For a Monk, that would probably mean carrying a piercing or slashing weapon as a backup option to their (blunt) fists. Speaking to the OP's questions, having just completed a Monk PC party, I have the following advice. Early in the game, I'd probably suggest wearing some medium armor. The trick with monks is that you'd like to get wounds to power up their special abilities, but at the same time you don't want to take too much damage and get massacred in the process of getting those wounds. Medium armor, such as leather or scale, is a decent choice since their DR is usually enough to take the edge off incoming damage without slowing the monk down too greatly. Later in the game, you'll find better, more enchanted light armors and robes that will give you about the level of "taking the edge off" protection, while having lower recovery speeds, meaning that your monk will attack faster. I personally suggest carrying a ranged weapon on a rogue, because there just might be some times when you don't want to go into melee immediately, and hanging back and taking a few ranged shots keeps you contributing. Also, consider that unlike a fully tanked out, plate wearing fighter, monks aren't really so well suited to holding the line in melee. They're better suited to engaging a single target, smacking it down fast then finding a new target. If they have their druthers, they're better off not being engaged by multiple enemies in the front line. Better to let a couple of real tanks be the front line and use the monk to flank around the edges, laying the smack down on one enemy at a time. Or sometimes, if the enemy frontliners are fully engaged with your frontliners, you can have your monk run around the melee and rush into their rear area and deal with their archers and spellcasters up close and personal. Also, don't forget to take WF Peasant for the +6 accuracy to fists. Also, IIRC, two weapon fighting applies to fists (well, when you're using both fists), so that can be worth taking. Another feat to consider taking for a Monk is Fast Runner. I didn't even consider taking it with my monk, because it didn't occur to me. But if you like the idea of a monk sprinting into the enemy rear and wreaking havoc on their squishy backliners, then Fast Runner might be well worth considering. +1 to movement speed makes a difference. But if you're just going to have your monk hang out near the melee wall, it's probably not worth taking. Just a thought.

The problem with your argument here is that the ranger has to crit to get this incredible damage, whereas with a ranged rogue, they only have to get any sort of hit to get their Sneak Attack bonus. IMO, the concept of having a character carry a high alpha weapon for a first strike is far better suited to a rogue than a ranger for this very reason. On top of that, the rogue could get in a crit on that sneak attack and stack those damage bonuses. And IIRC, the Rogue could also use a similar type of DoT shot for this first strike and pile on even more damage, though at some point, it may be a waste to expend a limited use attack in this situation, due to potential overkill on the target. (Target type dependent, of course.) BTW, for what it's worth, I'm not trying to rag on you or diss you, Constantine. I just have some different opinions on the matter.

WF's. They're a waste for a ranged combatant if you want to carry more than a single type (i.e. from different WF groups) of ranged weapon, since you can only use a single ranged weapon at any one time. There are other talents that give plenty of value that you lose out on by expending a talent on another WF. Put another way, WF's don't stack with each other. You can stack Marksman with any WF bonus. Or you can stack a WF acc bonus with Envenomed Weapon (synergize may be a better verb to use here), or probably most any other ranged focus that's not another WF. Multiple WF's just mean that you have a wider array of weapons that you're skilled in. And if you're a ranged weapon specialist, you're wasting talent points taking more than one WF because each of those WF groups isn't just about a single weapon. It's about a group of weapons. But you're only taking it for the single ranged weapon. (Well, maybe 2 ranged weapons if you chose Ruffian or Soldier.) I just see it as an egregious waste of talent points to take more than a single WF for a ranger. OTOH, for someone like a Fighter or some other melee combatant, I *can* see value in taking a second WF group to widen the number of weapons that you're skilled in. Actually, this may be of more value to someone like a non-Fighter class melee combatant than a Fighter, because a Fighter may want to spend a talent point on mastery of a single weapons group than on skill in a larger number of weapons. Non-fighters don't have access to weapon master, so they don't have the choice of a narrow mastery or a skill in more weapons, thus making skill in more weapons a rational choice.

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.

Honestly, using an Arquebus for an opening shot then switching to a warbow is a tactic that I think is better suited to a Rogue, so that he can get in a high damage shot while the battle opening sneak attack is active. Since Rangers don't get a sneak attack in the first 2 seconds of a battle (nor ever), I don't much see the point of doing it. But I suppose that that's a matter of personal preference. As for taking weapon focus for both the warbow and arquebus, not a chance (at least for me). I really dislike taking more than one weapon focus, with rare exceptions. I'd rather spend those very limited talent points on other things. And much as I love warbows for rangers (sue me, I love the longbow using ranger stereotype!), I loathe the WF Adventurer group of weapons. In my last party, I had my ranged rogue custom NPC not pick a single WF because I didn't want her to be tied to any single WF group, and be able to use whatever ranged weapon she wanted without feeling tied to a WF group. WF groups just don't seem to work very well for characters who intend to be ranged combat specialists, unless you intend to always use a single ranged weapon type, which can be very limiting and doesn't encourage much experimentation. It's too bad that there wasn't a WF composed strictly of ranged weapons, perhaps without the magical implements.

Only for the PC not NPC Paladins or adventurer created Paladins. Faith and Conviction doesn't apply. While anyone in your party can be a fighter that is the same as the PC fighter. And the F&C isn't even noted in the 1.05 Patch Notes. I haven't heard any info from Dev's about it yet. And the Paladin doesn't have fear or charm immunities. He can take an ability that gives him +15 but its almost exactly like the generic talent that any class can take except the Pally class adds posion resistance in it too. Plus Defender & Wary Defender give every Fighter: +15 defelection, +10 fortitude, +10 reflex, +10 will, +2 enemies engaged and penalty of -.2 attack speed. NPC with Faith and Conviction & Deep Faith: +7 defelection, +15 fortitude, +15 reflex, +15 will How is a Fighter Defender not better then NPC F&C? I'm a little ignorant on some of the details here, so bear with me. I realize that F&C doesn't work fully with NPC's, just don't know to what degree. But regardless of that, the problem that any Pally is going to have with F&C bonuses is that are only maximized while the pally is abiding by his faith's favored dispositions and avoiding the disfavored ones (unless you take Untroubled Faith, thus burning one of your limited Talent choices). OTOH, fighters aren't (pardon the pun) "troubled" by anything when they choose Defender and Wary Defender. All they have to do is turn it on and they're good to go. Also, pallies aren't going to get F&C's maxed bonuses immediately no matter what. A pally is going to have to build up his reputation and disposition scores before he can maximize his F&C bonuses. This seems to make F&C even weaker thAn the Fighter Defender talents, which are strictly a fully on/fully off activation. So yes, I don't think that anyone could honestly say that the Pally F&C is better thAn a Fighter's Defender abilites. That said, let's not pretend that paladins are better than fighters either. If someone's looking for a frontliner with maximized combat value, they're certainly not going to pick a paladin. If they pick a paladin, it's almost certainly for other reasons.

I've only gotten the Boots of Speed very late in the game. And I don't know if I've eve seen these Gauntlets of Puissant Melee. Honestly, I'm not a big fan of having unique items in random drops. You can put all the generic items you want in random drops, and it's no big deal. But it bites that I've never seen the Gloves of (+2 in Mechanics) or these Puissant gauntlets. Or gotten the Boots of Speed earlier. (Oh how my monk would have loved those if only he'd gotten them when he could have actually gotten some good value out of them.)

Every class has the opportunity for micromanaging. The problem is that the people who want to do a lot of micro managing equate micromanaging with having a lot of active abilities that you have to click to trigger. I, OTOH, equate micromanaging with constantly picking and choosing a character's targets and positioning. Such a character might not have any active abilities that need triggering and yet still be entirely capable of being micromanaged to maximize its combat efficiency. And I don't equate a lack of need to MM with boring. And for what it's worth, I'd say that a ranged rogue probably need more micromanaging than a ranger, because if you want to maximize the rogue's chances of taking sneak attack shots, you need others in the party to be doing things that create the sneak attack afflictions, whether it's a fighter knocking down an enemy, or spellcasters hitting enemies with afflicting spells, or whatever, and then you have to have the rogue shooting the specific target or targets who are properly afflicted. Sounds like a lot of MM right there for a rogue who desires a lot of sneak attack shots. Of course, as I've said before, I don't mind at all having some people in my parties who don't need me to babysit them constantly. Rangers (aside from their AC's) are nice this way. You can just let them aim and shoot at whomever they want and they'll just pile up damage. Or if you're willing to put a little bit of MM into them, you aim them at a specific target, like an enemy spellcaster or archer, and let them deal with that enemy while you're off babysitting your party's own spellcasters. Anyways, I agree that Rangers are not weak. They may not be uber-powerful, but they're not weak. Their ability to provide a solid amount of consistent long range fire support is a very useful thing to have, at least in my parties.

If you add the pets damage, possible flanking bonus and the bonus for ranger attacking the same target together, you should have ranger doing a lot more damage than a ranged rogue would. People think of the pet and ranger as a separate entity way too much. The pet is one of the features that makes the class, you cant just calculate their damage and ignore the pet altogether. Its like comparing wizards damage to cipher but then tell cipher they can't use their abilities and announcing wizard as the winner. So yeah, they might actually be one of the most powerful classes around. They just have drawbacks in that power just like wizards have limited number of spells and ciphers need to generate focus every now and then. For ranger that drawback is having to manage their pet and make sure it does not die while still gaining the benefit of its presence (flanking & other bonuses). As for the topic at hand. Lets take vicious aim versus merciless companion. Vicious aim might be bad for a ranger using a hunting bow or war bow since you'd rather want to use Penetrating Shots modal, rendering most ranger Talents useless to you (as you can only have one modal on). Instead you can have a talent that increases your pets damage output. Now you're comparing a talent that does nothing (unused modal) to an ability that increases the companions damage a little. To me it sounds like the animal companion talents are actually useful. Are they as powerful as other talents (such as arcane veil from wizard)? Probably not. But they're quite good compared to some other things ranger has to offer. Then there is also the talent that increases accuracy when you're attacking the same target as your pet. Thats bound to give a decent bonus to any rangers damage output and it increases the pets damage too. Together those bonuses should make the talent quite good. Better overall damage than say, blinding shot from rogue etc. It would be nice if the AC's damage was added to the Ranger's own, OR it was calculated, stored, and included separately in your ranger's damage stats on the personal data page. It'd would be nice to know how much damage the AC was doing on its own. Still, I'm not a fan of AC's, nor was I one who was clamoring for AC's back in the old IE games. The life long animal buddy thing just doesn't do it for me. I'd rather rangers focused more on their own personal combat abilities. That said, I wouldn't mind if AC's were a selectable class ability so that people who did want an animal buddy had the choice to have one. I just wish that I had the choice to NOT have one.

Please tell me what this "kiting" means. I don't speak gamer geek. As for keeping the AC alive. I don't so much worry about keeping him alive as much as I don't want him instantly charging into melee and dying in the first couple of seconds of battle and causing my ranger to be gimped almost instantly with the accuracy penalty. Holding the AC back for a bit before letting it go in is usually good enough.

I think the only thing wrong with Rangers at the moment is that it feels like Obisidian is leading you towards being ranged as the ranger. While that should be the players choice. The players needs to decide what path to take. Not the developer. Rangers aren't weak at all. They are pretty strong. Melee or Ranged. Just a lot better in range then THAN melee currently. Way better passives. And if a ranged rogue beats the ranger its really by not much that a ranger needs a boost. I just think the ranger should have both a melee and a ranged path. And that pet is still a pain in the arese haha Learn the difference between then and than, for crying out loud. As for the rest, I think that if rangers were balanced between melee and ranged, they'd end up being a LOT weaker overall. To me, rangers were always the weak sister of the warrior classes (i.e. fighter, barbarian, paladin, ranger), except in BG2 when you could choose the Archer kit. The Archer kit finally created a Ranger who was actually good. The non-Archer kit rangers were stuck with only 2 weapon slots, couldn't get a fighter's advanced combat skills, and had no other ranger specific combat skills. And they got some generally weak spell casting fairly late in their advancement. Now, I suppose that the PoE devs could dump the AC and the AC related class abilities/talents, dump the melee accuracy penalty, and replace the AC related class abilities and talents with melee ones. But I'd half expect that they'd also drop the class's overall accuracy down to "Average". I suspect that they let the Ranger have a high (30) base accuracy only because it was a ranged only accuracy, and the melee accuracy was 15 points below the ranged accuracy. And if the class was going to have the same base accuracy for melee and ranged, then I just expect that they'd reduce that overall base accuracy. Additionally, say that you've got rangers with both ranged and melee abilites. What's setting them apart from the warrior classes? What makes them different from a Fighter? To me, the idea of slapping plate on a Ranger and sending him into melee is just wrong. All you've done is turn him into "Fighter Lite" (i.e. a Fighter without all the nice Fighter bells and whistles). I'd much rather that the Ranger class have a flavor that stands far apart from the Fighter class. Rangers ought to be "light fighters", by which I mean that a ranger in melee should be seen as one who isn't about standing around in the heaviest armor, slugging it out with their enemies, but rather should be more lightly armored, relying more on DEX for fast attack speeds, and high DEFL to quickly engage their targets and evade damage. Sort of the way that they'd hunt a bear. They wouldn't stand in front of the bear and trade them blow for blow. They'd make a thrust with a weapon, and pull back and evade the bear's paws and claws, and rinse and repeat as necessary. There's nothing inherently wrong with a ranger in melee. But if they're nothing but a "Fighter Lite" class, what's the point? Just play a fighter.

Frankly, I don't think that Mechanics is fine as is. Finding hidden things shouldn't be a Mechanics check. It should be a check against Perception. Any perceptive person should be able to notice and discover hidden stuff without the Mechanics skill. IMO, Mechanics should be about locks and traps only. (And I suppose other mechanical related stuff, if one needed some sort of check on an odd sort of mechanics device that someone in your party needed to figure out how to turn off or on or use properly.)

History is just a part of Lore. Lore basically represents a character's formal education, be it in historical, geographical, magical, etc.

That seems to be the point. It's a one difficulty skill. Next to useless on any other level. I'm not sure that I'd say "useless". "Unnecessary" is probably more accurate, since something can be useful, but not necessary.

Honestly, when I've played a Ranger or leveled up Sagani, I don't bother with the AC class abilities/talents, and focus strictly on upgrading the Ranger him/herself. The AC seems sorta like a little more than a decoy, but nowhere near a full fledged party member. Not bad for flanking or acting as a rearguard to make life more difficult on Shades, etc. who think that popping into your rear and going after your spellcasters is a great idea. I don't like having to aggressively mocromanage them, but OTOH, I don't want them charging into melee and getting nuked and nerfing my ranger's accuracy either. On the whole, animal companions seem like more of a pain than they're worth.

I just might give this self-centered thematic paladin a try tomorrow. I understand that the 1.05 patch is probably dropping tomorrow, so the timing is good. I'll probably go with a Shieldbearer pally, as I don't particularly enjoy playing evil characters. And Bleak Walkers seem evil to me. The downside is that none of the Shieldbearer order talents work with this theme as they're aimed at helping allies rather than themselves. Oh, the price of being a benevolent and altruistic paladin. For a race, I'm tempted to either go elven or perhaps Moon GL (but with an elven form). If I went straight elven, part of me is tempted to play the character as an off-tank, and let him/her use a bow as well as whatever melee weapon he/she chose. I've always found the idea of a bow-armed elven paladin intriguing. I played such a character once in IWD2 successfully. The downside is that what I'd prefer would be to use a sabers and warbows, since a saber seems to most closely approximate what elvish longswords sort of looked like in the LOTR/Hobbit movies, rather than a traditional straight longsword. But that's two different WF groups. (Darn these WF groups. If one's vision of a character doesn't fit a WF group, you're a little boned unless you're willing to pick 2 different groups.) The thing with the idea of a bow-armed elven paladin is that they'll never come close to matching the capabilities of a ranger or ranged rogue, or perhaps/probably even a ranged Fighter. The class doesn't have enough oomph to make it a reasonably effective build, so it'd be more about playing it for the RP value.

Mazeltov, while I have no problem with Estocs specifically, I don't like the Adventurer WF group. It seems like a group composed of all the leftover weapons after all the other WF groups were compiled. I tend to look at Soldier or Knight as being more appropriate and thematic for a paladin, but that's my personal preference. Either of those two WF's give you the benefit of a decent high damage, long reload ranged weapon (i.e. either Crossbow, Arbalest, or Arquebus) for an opening ranged strike by the entire party. This is where the Arms Bearer talent comes in, since with 3 weapon slots you can carry one ranged weapon and 2 melee weapon options. Of course, one could go with an Aumaua and get the 3rd weapon slot free. Another thing to consider is that one could play a Moon godlike and get that self healing benefit, which might arguably make taking lay on hands moot. There are lots of different ways one could do this. Also, I note that you suggested a 17 DEX. This seems a bit odd to me when combined with the rather low seeming PER and RES scores, meaning that the pally won't be overflowing with DEFL. I take it that the high DEX meant to offset any armor recovery penalty? Regardless, I'm not one who looks to play evil types of characters, but this thematic paladin looks like it could work rather well for a Bleak Walker, particularly a Death GL Bleak Walker. Frankly it's too bad that the Devs didn't focus paladins more along this thematic line of pally... the paladin who was focused on enhancing his own combat abilities. Oh well.

As an addendum to my previous post regarding the idea that one might build a Paladin around a theme of taking only those talents and abilities that enhance the paladin's personal abilities in combat, rather than helping allies.... Looking over the various abilities and talents, it appears very possible to do. Well, of course, it's "possible" to do. Whether it would result in a significant improvement in a paladin's combat abilities is open to debate and testing. This is what I've got so far. (Please note that I'm doing this based on info on the gameopedia wiki, and it's possible that there are inaccuracies.) Class Abilities L1: Faith and Conviction L1: Flames of Devotion L3: Zealous Focus (accuracy bonus) or Zealous Endurance (DR bonus): No option at L3 of a strictly personal ability. But either of these does affect the paladin himself, so it's not an outright theme breaker. L5: Sworn Enemy L7: Thematically, Deprive the Unworthy. But Reviving Exhortation is extremely useful outside the theme. L9: Righteous Soul L11: Appears to be only a single option: Hastening Exhortation There are 6 Talents to be picked on the even numbered levels (1 each, of course). Possible Class-related Talents Intense Flames: increases Flames of Devotion damage Deep Faith: Enhances Faith and Conviction bonuses Untroubled Faith: Negates the penalties for disfavored dispositions to Faith and Conviction (does this still exist for paladins?) For Goldpact Knights: Enduring Flames: Enhances Flames of Devotion with a Burn DoT For Bleak Walkers: The Black Path: When pally kills an enemy, nearby enemies are Frightened Remember Rakhan Field: adds corrode damage to Flames of Devotion For Darcozzi Paladini: Fires of Darcozzi Palace: Adds a weak Fire Shield to Flames of Devotion NOTE: There are no class talents that are thematically proper for the Kind Wayfarers and Shieldbearers of St. Elcga. They all help allies rather than the paladin. Possible General Talents Pick a Weapon Focus: Suggest that Soldier or Knight may be the most appropriate for a paladin. If one thinks that Paladins should care about combating the undead, one or both of these may be an option. Ghost Hunter: +25% damage vs spirits Sanctifier: +25% damage vs vessels Arms Bearer: +1 weapon set (I include this one, because I place a high value on having a 3rd weapon set. Others may see this differently, so it's personal preference.) One-Handed Style Two-Handed Style Two-Weapon Style Weapon and Shield Style For a paladin, my personal preference would be for either two-handed weapon style or weapon and shield style. Hold the Line: +1 enemies engaged. Envenomed Weapon might be a decent pick, particularly for the less goody-goody leaning orders. Bleakwalkers, in particular, might really like Envenomed Weapon. There are no doubt some other general talents that could be good fits thematically speaking. As for stats, given the theme of a paladin whose abilities and talents are focused on enhancing his personal combat ability, I don't think that INT would be particularly necessary for the sake of aura size enhancements. As for the other stats, I'll leave it to you to decide how best to choose them, though it would seem that for a front line combatant, you'd be looking at some mix of Might (for damage) and Perception and Resolve (for deflection). Honestly though, looking back at the abilities and talents that are left to work with for this theme, it doesn't appear that such a paladin would be much of a powerhouse. Maybe decent, but nothing special, except for the possibility of just enjoying the challenge of roleplaying this sort of build in spite of its less than stellar combat power.

I agree. The paladin auras are so darned small that the AoE INT bonuses just can't boost their size significantly. Frankly, I find this "paladin as warlord" design philosophy thing to be rather lame. I'd rather that paladins were more like Holy Warriors (though the "holy" part might be a little obsolete, since currently paladins aren't tied to deities) where their abilities were focused on enhancement of their own combat abilities. It might also be nice if some of their abilities were aimed at combating the undead (i.e. spirits and vessels), though I suppose that even now, one could have a paladin take the spirit and vessel slaying talents. That said, I could see this as being the type of paladin ability that would be more favored by some orders over others. Come to think of it, I seem to remember some dev comments that mentioned that pally abilities were generally split into those that helped those around him and those that helped the pally himself. I wonder how much more potent a pally would be if he took only the personal enhancing abilities rather than the ally assisting aura abilities?

Well as mention just above, I play on normal, and since every one suggests to wait a few levels it is what I will do. thank you Crucis. The odd thing, Fessels, is that I waited until rather late in the game to go to this map with my first party (I also play in normal mode). But my wait wasn't intentional. I wasn't aware that there was an area in that location, and never even happened to try to exit the proper map on the south side to trigger this map area showing up on the world map. I simply wasn't aware that it existed in the first place.

Achilles, it took me a moment to remember what Mechanics check you were talking about here. But, herein lies a problem with Mechanics checks. The kind of check you're referring to here shouldn't be a mechanics check at all, but a perception check, IMO. Regardless, you are 100% correct. This is something that one absolutely does NOT want to miss.

I agree 100%. I will say though, that I still think that Durance should be a dwarf. His voice and his portrait all positively scream "DWARF!!!!!" to me. So much so that I didn't even realize that he wasn't a dwarf until far more than halfway through my first run-thru of PoE. So I guess that I wish that he was just plain turned into a dwarf, as it doesn't seem to me that such a change could be a change to his essential character.

The map area involved for the Cinders quest would be a bit ... challenging .... I'd think, for a level 5 party, depending on the difficulty setting of the game and your general experience as a player. I generally prefer to hold off on going to this map area until my party is tougher.

I'm not sure that I agree with the need for portraits for all those NPC's in the spoilers. I'd say that only one NPC really and truly should have a portrait. Everyone else is very marginal, mostly because of how rarely they show up "on screen". Possible secondary NPCs that could be portrait worthy: