Crucis

Yeah, I probably am. Sue me for being .... over 40 ... and liking this sort of game. I should say that I recognize a few other people here whose handles I recognize from back then. Gromniir. Wanderon. And some others a bit more vaguely. There are plenty of people who liked the DnD IE games from back then. And heck, it wouldn't surprise me if some of those are old enough to have played the even older SSI gold and silver box DnD computer games as well.

This . People who does not agree are simply low level "theorycrafters" or speculators . Or they just prefer to use a different weapon and aren't so bothered about efficiency. I use an Arbalest on my Rogue and don't care about the faster rate of fire because it works well for me. Very true. And I often use a warbow on a ranger or a rogue when others insist that I should be using something like an arquebus or other higher damaging weapon. I don't play the game to worry about maximum efficiency and maximum DPS. And these arguments by min-maxing powergamers get really annoying to those who don't subscribe to this attitude. They were annoying back when BG1/2 were new and are no less annoying today, except perhaps that their arguments are filled with gamer geekspeak that I don't understand, like proc or kiting and so forth. (Back when BG1/2 were new, I don't recall any of that sort of gamer geek speak. As I remember it, we actually spoke regular English back then.)

Sabers are great, but if you have Eder in your party, his weapon focus is Ruffian, which includes Sabers. And if you have your Barbarian PC hoarding the sabers, you might be hurting Eder by denying him his best weapon type. I like trying to spread around the best weapons and not have multiple characters with the same weapon focuses for this reason. Also, while sabers are excellent, it's really worth paying attention to the slashing, piercing, and crushing DR's of your melee enemies so that you can switch to the weapons that target their weakest DR of the three. The best example are kith enemies wearing plate armor, which has strong DR vs slash and pierce, but weak against crush. If I see plate wearing enemies, I switch to crush weapons. It's best to have weapon options for your melee warriors so that they aren't attacking an enemy's strongest DR. And to take this to an extreme, while you can't switch weapons in and out of the weapon slots while in battle, if you're using a well-stealthed scout, you can make some weapon switches prior to battle, assuming that you have some other weapons in your character's personal stash or the party stash.

How can you call that build the "human bomb" when you suggest using an Orlan? I mean, shouldn't it be the Orlan Bomb?

I guess that I have to disagree, because I flat-out do not like abilities that are based on the character falling below a certain percentage of their endurance, with the possible exception of the Moon GL's healing ability. I vastly prefer decent abilities that are always active.

This really seems to make "Marking" a LOT weaker and less valuable than one might think from reading its in-game description.

I sort of assume (perhaps wrongly) that when one says "alpha weapon" what they mean is a "high alpha weapon", which in turn would mean a weapon with a high amount of damage, such as an arbalest or a gun.

Yes, but despite being available in Gilded Vale early on, it's far too expensive to reasonably afford for quite a while. And I agree with you that slow reloads are boring. And what is "Kiting"? I don't do gamer geekspeak.

You just have to see for yourself how fast the reloading is stacking Gunner with Kana's chant. I still micro a lot in the sense that I require a Marking weapon user (Kana for me) to aim the same targets and make sure Pallegina's close by for her buff. What are the underlying details of Marking? How long does the effect endure? Is there a requirement as to how close you have to be to the marked target for the effect to affect your ranged weapon user? And so on. Regardless, I have to admit that long reloading weapons don't hold much appeal to me aside from Durance who gets a +10 acc bonus from his Magran talent, and as an encounter opening weapon for my frontliners (who then switch to melee weapons, so reload isn't really an issue for them). It's probably just a bias of mine, but I like faster reload weapons because they let me switch targets and respond to emerging threats and opportunities much quicker. Also, I don't worry much about power-gamey things like DPS. I just semi-role play the game and enjoy it in that way. And I don't particularly like Chanters in this game, so I only keep Kana around long enough to finish his quest and then replace him with a Companion who is more to my liking and play style. I have mildly considered trying a Chanter PC who I could mold into more of a ranged sniper chanter than Kana seems to be. Kana just seems too beefy to play the back row sniper, in the way a ranger or a rogue might (not comparing their relative abilities to produce damage so much as just a general impression). Kana just seems built to be more of an off-tank than a sniper. BTW, I have noticed that Chanters get a +1 in Mechanics as a class, so it seems like they'd be a decent alternative to a rogue as a dedicated trap and locksmith (particularly if you built the character with a background that gave them another +1 to Mechanics).

to clarify. my view of rogue is to have a good alpha and kill or severely hurt a monster. i also view them as a class that doesn't need micro as much. warbow hinders the 1st thing. guns quickswitch helps but is just 1 more character to switch too. crossbow offers the practical middle ground as enchants are easy and crit mod is not hurt either. plus it reloads at half the time. ps ty for the civil comments.. hope that clarified. pps on tab. hope it reads ok. edit: Kilrach looks really good too... i'm not sure what to comment on tho. If you mean dps i use the attack speed spreadsheet. I'm not so sure that ranged rogues don't require that much micro. Seems to me that if you want to maximize the value of their sneak attack ability, you have to micro your party to produce some of the various effects that create sneak attack opportunities. Of course, if you're not going to worry about them, and just let them fire away, more power to you. I agree that Crossbows do offer an interesting middle ground between warbows and higher alpha arbalests, arquebusses, and pistols. In my last party, I had my custom ranged rogue carry a high alpha weapon and a warbow. She'd open battles with the high alpha weapon but switch to the warbow after firing that first sneak attack shot. And while she was about half a level behind my PC throughout the game, until the PC and the companions had hit the level cap, my ranged rogue still was second in the party for damage through out (behind my PC monk). It's a shame that there aren't more unique crossbows and arbalests, though. Only 2 each.

Perhaps, but Fighters get a constant self-regen that makes that pretty beastly when they're not taking many hard hits and have time to let that slow regen take hold.

Larsenex, personally I prefer higher ROF weapons for Ranged Rogues, except for their first shot from stealth, which I like using a high alpha weapon. Then I switch to a faster firing weapon, because I like the flexibility of being able to switch targets more quickly due to the faster reload. But that's personal preference. I also enjoy Cloudpiercer's spell-striking Jolting Touch effect. (I also added a shocking lash to the Cloudpiercer bow for RP reasons.) Also, regarding Arbalests, given that they have a somewhat reduced Crit Hit multiplier, perhaps they're not the best choice for Rogues if you expect to get Crits regularly. You might be better off using normal crossbows or arquebusses.

I don't recall that the Exceptional enchantment required you to be at an extremely high level. High-ISH, but not exceptionally high, I think. The Superb enchantment certainly does though. And the ingredients for a Superb enchantment are extremely limited!

The thing is, I thought that poison did RAW damage, so how can there be a defense against it in the first place? But I agree with your sentiment about the Mountain Dwarf racial benefit. The Boreal Dwarf one seems a lot more useful. And IMHO, mountain dwarfs would be better if they got a similar racial benefit, just for 2 different monster groups.

I find GM's personal quest a little annoying. On one hand, I sympathize with her personal problem. And yet OTOH, as a player, I sorta feel like I didn't sign up to play psychiatrist to some of my Companions. At least with Kana's personal quest, it's entirely action oriented. Just have him along as you do a good chunk of the Endless Paths dungeon until you reach a certain point, and he's good. I have to admit that I long for more of the personal quests being closer to the Kana style than the GM and Durance style. And speaking of personal quests, it bothers me slightly that once you've completed Sagani's quest that she doesn't want to leave to head home right away. After all, she's been away from her home and family for FIVE YEARS. You'd think that the first thing on her mind would be to leave. Or at the very least, there might be a dialog option where she wants to go home but if you ask it of her, she'll stay with your party until the end. But the one option I really have a hard time seeing her accept is to go back to the stronghold and hang out. It seems to me that there should only be two options for her after completing the quest. Stay in the party or go home.

Monarch, no, you won't miss out on any quests that I recall. Her personal "quest" is nothing but a long string of conversations with her to help her past her personal issues. As a combatant, GM as a cipher is more than effective enough to replace Aloth and not gimp the party noticeably. Indeed, a cipher can be a nice change of pace from a wizard in a party, plus given the way that ciphers get their spells, you can be more aggressive in your use of those "spells" than you could with a wizard. But if you're jonesing for Sagani and Itumakk, go for it. Sagani can be a very effective character in her own right.

Umm, maybe you haven't see the helmets. I won't say that the helmets are super powerful, but I wouldn't dismiss so cavalierly the ability to wear a helmet that gives a +2 bonus in an Attribute. There are some darned nice helmets in the game that help enhance those characters who are able to wear them. And it does seem to me that the racial benefits of the godlikes (with the possible exception of the Moon godlike) don't really balance off with best of the enhancements that wearing a helmet can give you. I won't say that the godlikes should get more or better powers, but perhaps giving them an extra +1 to an attribute would be a mild enhancement. Regarding godlikes in general, I feel no desire to play one because they're just too damned fugly. (Yes, Fugly.) And on top of that, in spite of the verbiage in the godlike descriptions saying that GL's are generally looked down on, I don't recall seeing many or ANY conversation options relating to the various GL subraces, positive or negative. You'd think that as despised as Death GL's supposedly are that this would be reflected in their dialogs. For that matter, you'd think that this animosity towards godlikes would be great fodder for a secondary quest. Well, maybe in an expansion or a sequel.

It's not about confusing the two. It's about believing that some of the design choices (relative to attributes) seemingly made for the sake of differentiating PoE from DnD were and are wrong. I don't disagree entirely. I was thinking more about the stereotypes that seem to be thought of here on the forums. Such as people disputing that Barbarians shouldn't have high Intellect, because they're Barbarians. Also, people refer to might purely as a Physical trait, whereas might can refer to intellect just as readily as physical might. Not sure what the actual description for might is in-game, but a lot of opinions seem to be based on the old DnD style tropes. PoE may not have got attributes entirely right, and they're clearly based on DnD foundations, but I appreciate them more than I do DnD's system. The problem isn't there couldn't be the occasional intelligent barbarian. The problem is that the way the attributes are constructed, INT becomes a near must-max-out stat for barbarians, due to its affect on certain barbarian abilities. Frankly, I don't see intelligence as a critical attribute to your average barbarian. Your average barbarian is all about physical stats that enhance combat, and perhaps things like perception and resolve (in a theoretical way, not a managing stats way). The occasional intelligent barb is more likely to be one who becomes a successful leader of the clan, because he's smart enough to understand how to run things effectively. As for Might as a physical trait vs a how it's viewed in PoE, I think that this idea of Might as something other than raw physical strength is a pantload of fecal matter. As for your final sentence, I guess that I like the DnD's system a little better than the PoE one. Strength/Might, Con, and Dex should be the foundation for physical combatant classes. And I find it galling how CON has been so reduced as an important attribute for those physical combatants. I will say that a decent enough case can be made that PER/INT/RES is a better combo than INT, WIS, and CHA, but only if those PoE attributes were used in a more intelligent manner. For example, rather than PER and RES being used to determine DEFL, it seems to me that DEX and PER are more appropriate. I don't really see how RES should have anything to do with it. DEX should contribute since a highly dextrous character will be able to nimbly avoid blows, while a very perceptive character will be able to read his opponents and be able to anticipate those incoming blows to be able to avoid them that way. And maybe RES should be an important stat for some spellcasters since it'd seem like a spellcaster like a priest with a high RES value would have great strength of purpose which would make them more potent than those who didn't have such a high level of resolve or strength of purpose. I could go on and on, but I think that I've said enough for now. Interesting discussion though.

It's not about confusing the two. It's about believing that some of the design choices (relative to attributes) seemingly made for the sake of differentiating PoE from DnD were and are wrong.

Rangers are not "unplayable" even with weak AC's. Just don't send your AC charging into melee at the start of every battle. Hold them back until your front line is fully engaged, then consider sending them in to flank those enemies. Or if you're fighting Shades, just keep them in the rear to attack the inevitable shade teleporting into the rear. I will say that I'm not a fan of AC's because of the AC death accuracy penalty. I wish that AC's were an optional talent to select at the first level up, rather than a fixed requirement of the class. Also, given the total lack of nature magic, PoE rangers don't seem nearly as much of the defenders of nature as they do in DnD and the old IE games. The PoE rangers, except for the AC, seem more like dedicated ranged fighters than anything else. And I don't think that the AC's make Rangers unplayable. They're just annoying to have tagging along, given that the rangers can't afford to have them in melee constantly without having the AC get killed far too quickly.

Not everyone wants to fight that way. I prefer to bring my party stealthfully just into ranged weapons range before unloading with a tull team salvo, usually on just one or two enemies.

Stealth useless? Untrue. Very, VERY untrue. Survival useless? Not true, but also not absolutely necessary either. Aside from a good high stealth scout/thief, you don't necessarily need HIGH stealth on the rest of the party to position for a fight. Of course, it does depend on what you mean by "position", or rather how aggressive those positions are. If you just want to be able to get the entire party into ranged weapons range, you don't exactly need HIGH stealth on the entire party. A moderate amount of Stealth will do. But the key is that you need it on everyone. If you have 5 characters with decent stealth and one with none, the no stealth character will stand out like a light house at night to the enemy. Regardless, you don't need a high amount of stealth for it to be reasonably useful for getting your entire party into a useful combat position prior to initiating combat at range. (OTOH, if one's idea of a good position to start combat from stealth is to be in melee range, well then you probably need very high stealth for those characters.)

Agree 100% While one can create an excellent high DEFL frontliner who avoids taking hits rather often, in the long run, unless you've made an extreme min-maxed ober-DEFL character, the character will take hits from time to time. And having the best DR he can get at the time will help reduce the damage the frontliner takes and increase his long term survivability. High DEFL, but low DR types aren't probably intended to hang on the front line for the long haul. They're probably a mid or back liner who was forced into melee due to the situation. Characters who would prefer to kill whatever's in front of them and fall back to the rear to get back to their normal duties.

The description of Might has nothing to do with it's actual application. You need Might to lift people up. You need Might to push boulders out of the way. You need Might to break down walls. You need Might to threaten people with physical violence. Might is Strength. There is good argument that Might also has a strong spiritual component to it, and I can see the argument of a healthy mind in a healthy body, and so on; maintaining your physical fitness helps you focus your force of soul and will, and so on. But anyone that says that Might has nothing to do with physical attributes at all will be shot down during the first hour of play, and then blasted with flak cannons for the remainder of the game. The issue of the non-intuitive, lopsided Attributes and their bonuses is really not so much about High-Intellect Barbarians or Muscle-Wizards being inherently wrong. It really isn't. The problem is that, because the lopsided Attributes are as they are, the min/max is incredibly apparent. If Resolve served a purpose for Wizards (say, +AoE) and the whole set of bonuses were actually balanced, it wouldn't be so apparent that hey, a Barbarian will do really, really, really great with Intellect. Want to do a "classical" wizard? Dump Might, go for Mid-Dexterity, High-Intellect, High-Resolve. But right now, that'd be utter gimp. If things were remotely balanced. Want to go for a "classical" barbarian? High-Might, High-Constitutiton, Mid-Resolve or Dexterity, Low-Intellect or Dexterity. If things were remotely balanced. The attribute bonuses in the game are terrible. And Obsidian knows that they are terrible, because they keep moving the CNPC stats away from their roleplaying basis in order to make the CNPC:s better. In 1.03, almost all the CNPC:s were changed from "bad" spreads to "less bad" spreads, even when it compromised who those characters are. Why? Because the Attributes are lopsided and favours min/maxing. In 1.05, Grieving Mother, a perceptive but rather simple-minded Cipher, is going to get her Intellect switched for her Perception. That's 12 Intellect switched with 17 Perception. Why? Because Perception doesn't mean anything to her, mechanically, and is a useless Attribute for the overwhelmingly vast majority of Ciphers (Tanky cipher? Just no.). Does it make sense for Grieving Mother to have a Perception of 12 and an Intellect of 17? Lolno. But they know that 12 Intellect and 17 Perception is a ****ty setup for her, so knowing that the Attributes are crazy lopsided, they prefer to compromise mechanical/roleplay congruity than to actually fix them. Luckmann, I disagree with your highlighted post, and yet agree with all the rest. I'd much rather have a "traditional" barbarian whose general stat mix was high Strength, good CON, probably good DEX, probably good Resolve, and low INT. I don't like the idea that the strength/power of a spellcaster's destructive or healing spells is linked to Might. I think that a mental stat like Resolve would be better for this purpose, if one was even going to have a stat that modified the power of spells at all. I could possibly see Wizards having the power of their spells linked to INT, but only wizards. Or if you wanted to get really cute, link it to Lore with the understanding that wizardry is a learned thing and the more learned you are, the more powerful you are. Or another way to do it could be to link Wizard's power to INT, but any # of spells per level bonuses to Lore on that same theory that Wizardry is a learned thing and that Lore is a measure of education, and in a wizard's case, the measure of his education in the arcane arts. Of course, this could all get a little twisty and complex. I agree with your comments on Grieving Mother. A high INT really doesn't seem right for her from a character perspective. I think that this is yet another reflection of how tying spellcasting destructive/healing power to Might or its duration and AoE to INT (ditto for non-spellcaster special abilities with time and AoE's) is a flawed concept. IMO it creates characters who seem very much out of character or out of sync with traditional stereotypes of certain classes. But the thing is that I'm not entirely sure that tying those things to any of the other stats would avoid similar out of character or out of sync with stereotype situations. Here's one other option that comes to mind. What if those things were tied to your character's level? That is, you'd get X% per character level to any spell or abilities destructive or healing power, Y% to its area of effect, and Z% to its duration. This way, as your character grew in experience (as reflected by his character level), his spells or abilities would become more potent. And this way, you don't end up with PC's and NPC's whose stats seem out of sync with their character or the stereotype of their class. Of course, one could argue that this way of doing it doesn't allow for any differentiation between characters of the same class. However, I'd counter that by saying that, at least with min-maxing powergamers, there's not that much differentiation anyways since they're just maxing out the important classes for the build. Having said that (just had an idea as I was typing), one way to create the possibility of some differentiation could be to have a talent whose purpose was to give the character a boost in power similar to being +1 or +2 levels higher than their actual class level. This would only be a boost to their existing spells or abilities/talents that have spell like effects, and not a real level up across the board. But it would be one possible way to create the potential for differentiation. Or you could split them out into 2 different talents, one for destructive/healing power and the other one for duration and size of AoE. Anyways, that's all for now.

Last I noticed, there were plenty of armors and more than a few different sets of robes and clothes to wear, so there's hardly any lack of "costumE" choices.