KDubya

I didn't precise my question about weapon for palladins before, I had in mind POTD difficulty. How about survivability for Palladin as main TANK, WITHOUT SHIELD and no other strictly tank in party squad on POTD? Beside palladins, I supposed that every main(not off tank ofc) tank should have shield otherwise is hard perform on POTD? I only play PotD after my first game on Hard back a few months ago. I also pretty much stick to the story companions instead of hired mercs. My suggestions are based on PotD experience and from that experience I like big two handers on my frontline Paladins. Paladins have great defensive abilities so I augment their offensive use with talents and equipment. Likewise I like to make my Rogues 'tanky' and give them a reach weapon or a shield to help them survive in combat. In general I like a 'tanky' team. What is your team for PotD? One guy out front with or without a shield will not hold the enemy. I like to have three or four frontline combatants up front. They might be Paladins, Rogues, Monks, or Chanters. With my Juggernaut Monk (fists and plate) I had Zahua (TideFall and plate), Devil (Sabre and shield), Kana (axe and shield), Pellagrina (Strikes Hard and Pally shield) and Sagani (stormcaller). They went to White March at level nine, chose the upgraded difficulty option and cleared everything. No casters no priests, no problems. My Kind Wayfarer (TideFall and plate) team has Zahua (fists and plate), Pellagrinna (Estocs and plate), Kana (Pikes and plate), Sagani (Hold the wall) and Grieving Mother (Quarterstaff and hunting bow). No one has a shield, but I do start off with the two paladins hitting the other with reinforcing exhortation for a +25 deflection buff. In both games I have high DR and run the Paladin Zealous Endurance for hit >graze conversion. I still get hit since my deflection is around 60 on the monks and around 100 on the Paladin team but with 20+ DR grazes do around minimum damage and that is easy enough to take for a long time. I also have high defenses to avoid CC or at least push it into the graze level.

I did not catch that Firedorn was referencing the poem until I read this thread. I am glad that the Devs wrote Firedorn in to poke fun at the whole perpetually offended crowd. Nobody is special and people need to go to Home Depot, buy a bag of cement and harden the eff up.

I also prefer fists for a Monk. That said a Monk will still be better than a Fighter with both using Estocs. With my Monk run I used fists and had Zahua use TideFall just cause no one else was using it. He did great with it. On that run my two monks were the frontline with Pellagrina so I liked the heavier plate for the extra DR and used Zealous Endurance as well. If I had a others establishing the frontline and could use the Monk as a flanker then lighter armor or even those robes that get that wizard spell on crit would boost the damage a lot. In plate with swift strikes I think it is 20/20 frames adjusted to 20/21 and in robes it'd be 20/14 or 17% faster. With regards to the engagements with my Monk team - Zahua, Pellagrina, Sagani, Devil, and Kana, no one had any extra engagements and I never thought at any time 'boy, wish I had some additional engagements'. Once the two Monks started zipping across the field with flagellant's it was just mass chaos with the enemy running after the monks and then eating the return flagellant's and then a few Torments just for fun.

Here are my suggestions on Monks http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/82367-class-build-the-juggernaut-a-heavy-armored-monk/ The Juggernaut concept can be applied to Zahua and using Two handers as follows: 1.) Skip Hold the Line - engagements don't make any difference at all, especially not worth a talent. 2.) Zahua starts with Torments Reach - a great AoE damage booster. The next important abilities are Swift Strikes, Lightning Strikes, Adventurer Focus, Two handed style, Turning Wheel, Savage Attack, Vulnerable Attack, Apprentice Sneak Attack, Duality of Mortal Presence, Crucible of Suffering, Flagellant's Path. 3.) Put him in heavy armor for the DR 4.) Set his AI to aggressive and defensive auto attacks. If left alone he will spam out Torments as fast as he can, just check to make sure that he keeps Swift Strikes active as well. 5.) Use Flagellant's if you wan to engage a caster or archer in the back or if there is a big mob of enemies that you can zip across. This attacks and debuffs everyone in between where you start and where you end. Using this does not incur any disengagement attacks against you. Enemies that were attacking you tend to run after you setting themselves up for a return Flagellant's path back through them. 6.) AoE attacks and stacking lash attacks are where you get the damage output from. A Fighter will hit one target for approximately +38% damage from weapon spec, mastery and confident aim. One wound for Lightning strikes gets you a +25% lash and +25% attack speed which will have you out damage a Fighter. Every unused wound will add a 5% fire lash. Torments can hit several enemies at a time with a +50% crush damage adder. Flagellant's Path can hit many at a time. 7.) For that first attack just have Zahua run towards the enemy. Hopefully a mage there will fire off some sort of missile strike and get Zahua five or so wounds to start off with. Use one to activate Swift Strikes and then either start the Torments spam or zip through the front line and kill the mage with a Flagellants Path. Beating on their backline casters tends to make the enemy chase after you instead of going after your casters. Once you get used to how Monks work you will realize just how pathetic Fighters are.

The current system promotes lots of build diversity, why change what we currently have? It's not as if the Devs are going to consider making any sort of huge changes at this point anyway. The Perception change in 2.0 was how it was in the Beta, they changed it and then realized their mistake and went back to where it was originally, or at least more or less. To me a Cipher wants good Perception, Might, Intellect, and Dexterity. I personally do not like to dump Con or Resolve so that means I'd have all 10s with three at 15 with 3 left over. Maybe that'd be 15 MIght, 15 Perception, 15 Dex and 13 Intellect for a quick acting balanced attacker with above average duration. You don't need all 18s or 3s to make a good build.

I like to go with big two handers for my Paladins, especially if I have a Paladin main as well as Pellagrina. I can start each fight with a reinforcing exhortation that each Paladin casts on the other for a big +25 deflection. That plus Faith and Conviction gives me good enough deflection combined with Zealous Endurance and heavy armor to shrug off what hits I do get. Big two handers put out a nice burst with FoD. They also discourage disengagement since a free high accuracy hit with a two hander is going to hurt. If I was going with a weapon and shield set up I'd look at Sabres - for the big damage - ,Flails - for the graze>hit -, War Hammers - for the crush/pierce - , or spears for the +accuracy. Maces would be up there as well if not for the total garbage that is grouped with maces. If Maces were in a group with any halfway decent firearm, crossbow or bow they'd be a contender but implements look retarded on anyone but a Wizard. Why the Dev's felt the need to include three different implements and to bundle two in the same group as Maces I'll never know.

It'd make one stat that you would have to max and as others have stated you'd lose out on options. If Perception increased your focus as well as your accuracy why would ANY Cipher not max it, unless they wanted to intentionally gimp their build? I think Perception should be high on a Cipher but there is a world of difference between should and shall. Your suggestions would push stat choices into the shall category. Why do you think that a Paladin must max intellect? I'd say you would not want to dump it but I have a PotD Paladin with base 10 intellect and he does fine. Maybe the aura does not cover everyone all the time but who cares? I instead have a higher Perception and I hit more often in combat. My Might is high so my LoH heal more but over a shorter period of time. It matters a lot more to understand the game mechanics and pick talents and abilities that synergize well with your playstyle than to max a few stats. The game is such that you can take any stat spread with any class and come up with a set of talents, abilities and in game strategies to be successful on PotD with a similar party. Solo PotD is a whole different animal.

Perception is important for anyone who needs to hit a target. You can't have too much unless you get to where your accuracy is 100 points higher than their defense and you automatically crit with every attack or spell. I'd say having a good accuracy is more important for a Cipher than for the Vancian casters. A Druid or Wizard who misses with a spell can just cast another, they'll have twenty more spells ready to fire. A Cipher who misses with a power is out of focus and needs to attack with weapons to regain, a Cipher who misses with an attack gets no focus and can't cast until they do. A CC effect that crits gets a 50% increase in duration, that's like having an extra 10 stat points of intellect. For me I'd make Perception my highest stat on a Cipher.

Why make any changes? The only classes that can still effectively dump stats are glass cannon caster builds, they can dump both con and resolve with limited consequences. The thing to change is enemy attack behavior. Make the enemy go after the soft easy targets and people would stop dumping con and resolve.

Give the Estoc to Zahua and spec him for heavy armor, two handed weapons, Swift Strikes, Lightning Strikes, Turning Wheel, Force of Anguish (instead of Torment's), Flagellant's Path, and Enervating Blows. He will be a monster, give him the Greenstone Staff for a different damage type. He'll have 10+ second prones, massive damage adds from Turning and Lightning, +25% attack speed from Swift Strikes, and a 15+ second weaken effect on crit that will help set up deathblows for your Rogue. Instead of the heavy armor you might be able to get by with the robes that cast mirror image on crit. Would make him a lot faster.

If you have an effect on crit or hit on your wand, does that apply to the K-Blights?

I think the 10 intellect gets long enough buffs and big enough auras. I've always gone with the no listing of the dialogue choices and bot had a problem with my Paladin but he is a Kind Wayfarer. So it was easy to pick the Benevolent, easy to avoid Cruel, really easy to avoid Deceptive and just had to sort of guess at the Passionate responses. Not sure how a Darcozzi plays. What team are you thinking of using? Story, custom or a mix?

Perma buff? Is there such a thing? Or do you just mean a buff you can maintain perpetually with food/equipment/rest? Or perma like the +1 stat tomes from the original Baldur's Gate? I meant perma buff in that it is easy to keep it in effect forever, not like a stat bonus or something. Finding, buying or crafting a +2 Intellect item is easy. Buying the ingredients for the casita casserole, or even the finished product is only a handful of coppers and lasts for 300 seconds or so. Additional bonuses can be obtained from specific Inns, Stronghold buildings and prostitutes. These require more effort on your part to keep in effect, but wearing a good helmet and eating a cheap food is no effort at all. I also differentiate between the cheap food that costs 20 coppers and the dragon dishes that cost 4000 coppers.

It makes sense that you need to have intestinal fortitude, AKA Resolve, to make the tough choice, say what needs to be said and let the chips fall where they may. A high Intellect person will be like a lawyer and find some loophole to exploit. A high Resolve person will be grounded and have a moral compass and will do the right thing because it is the right thing. I always think of high resolve as John Wayne in "Big Jake" when he opens the box with the ransom money and it is instead just rocks and tells the kidnapper in a low voice "that whatever happens he (the kidnapper) is going to get shot, my fault, your fault, nobodies fault, no matter what else happens your going to be shot."

It depends on what you want your Cipher to do. Unless you are soloing on PotD you don't need to go with extreme min maxing. The most important things are team synergy, tactics, understanding game mechanics and way down the list would be stats. The high Perception is good to allow you to hit, always useful. If you are going to max something Perception is a really good choice. Intellect gets you a bigger AoE with some powers and longer duration. Many Cipher powers affect a certain number of foes like five, with these Intellect does nothing. Some AoE powers do one thing to the target and something lesser to the area. Some powers last for a long time to start with like 20 seconds. Do you need them to last for 28 seconds (18 Intellect) or is 20 seconds long enough (10 intellect) and have eight stat points to spend elsewhere? There are also dialogue options to consider (I think 19 is the highest check), where Intellect gives you the clever type dialogues. Another thing to consider is food and items. Casita Casserole gets you +2 intellect and is readily available for a few coppers. Items can easily get you another +2. Without any Inn or Stronghold resting bonuses you can easily get and keep +4 in effect. With that you could go with a 15 Intellect and perma buff it to 19 and save three stat points for something else. Might helps you with damage, especially from spells as it is the only modifier. Weapons get soul whip and biting whip for +40% damage, spells only get your Might bonus. If you are only going to CC the enemy with paralysis or charm then you don't need Might. If you are planning on damaging them with powers then Might is what you want to buff the damage up. It helps generate focus as well as more damage gets you more focus since it is based on % damage not per hit like it was prior to 1.06. Also helps with Fortitude. Dexterity makes you faster. faster powers and faster weapons for faster focus. As long as you can hit faster is always better. Constitution is not as important but I don't suggest dumping it. Enemies target weak soft targets now. If you can always keep out of danger and keep all the enemies CC or dead then you don't need much for Con. I'm not that good so I like to keep this at base. Also helps with Fortitude which helps with paralysis and stun which are a lot more common now. Resolve has a lot of dialogue choices, for the strong conviction, force of personality type. Items can get +3, Inns can get +3 and really expensive food can get +3. I think 19 is the highest stat check, maybe a 20 somewhere. Dumping Resolve to a 3 will have consequences such as enemies will have +7 to hit you, your concentration check would be 75-21=54 so most attacks will interrupt you. Plus your Will save will be at -14 which will make you the target of choice for domination type attacks. I'm a big fan of keeping everything at ten, pick three to raise to 15 and then have 3 points left to add to whatever.

Turn based would ruin most of the combat mechanics. no more armor penalties, speed boosters, nothing like that would work with turn based. You'd have Fallout with action points or Baldurs Gate and all the imbalances that 'd come with it. I like a balanced dual wield that is faster but not double the attacks and double damage for a no brainer choice like BG had.

You don't need to fight the bear, in fact Noonan explicitly tells you "Stay away from the bear in that there cave. He's a monster who killed my friend." If you ignore the warning you probably get killed and have to reload the autosave. If you do that on Iron Man you deserve to have to re-start. Not being able to leave an area while in combat or while part of your team is Ko'd stops lots of exploits and cheese tactics and only comes into play when you can't handle an encounter. If you could flee while in combat why can't the enemy follow you as well? The simplest solution is the one that the game went with - you can't leave your team and you can't leave in combat.

I'd suggest just starting over. That way you can learn as you go starting with easier enemies rather than jumping in facing tougher enemies and not knowing the changes made.

Being able to leave a map while in combat leads to lots of cheese exploits like how you could take the lich in BG2 by running in and out of his tomb. You already spot the enemy before they spot you. This lets you avoid combat whenever you want to. Your plan of being able to leave at the cost of having any abandoned team mates permanently killed would be unduly harsh on casual players. As it is a casual player gets wiped and gets another shot from his last save. Iron Man is not for casuals and experienced players should know better. Not letting you hire experienced mercs would be terrible. If you lost your story companions you'd be severely gimped and again casual players would suffer the most. You already are limited to hiring one level below your own. Fortunately Iron Man is an option and not forced on everyone. Getting wiped gets you back to your last save or in Iron man gets you valuable experience as to what to not do next time. Knowing that you could run away and escape would cheapen the Iron Man experience. The risk of having it all end is why people like Iron Man.

They still have to hit you with the stun effect. This is where high defenses can stop the crits and push the hits into grazes. Zealous Endurance helps here as well. Then you just need to have enough endurance and DR to survive the beating while stunned from the graze. Getting critted with a stun is what gets you killed, especially with low DR. The stun debuffs your deflection a bunch so you will get hit and crit'd more as well.

That is why winning on Iron Man is a big accomplishment. If you could do what you are suggesting then Iron Man would not be very difficult. Plus if you can get the enemies to chase you away from the KO'd team mates, and can run far enough that the enemies give up and combat stops, then your fallen team mates will get back up and heal like normal.

I'd suggest picking two out of your three stats instead of going for 18 with three of them. Two is easy, everything can be 10 and you can have two 19s. getting three 18s means that you need to dump six points out of the other three. That means something is a four or all are eights. Low Might, Dex and Con is bad for just about every build. Plus you can't pick more than one dialogue choice anyway. Perception gets you more info, intellect lets you be clever and resolve makes people do what you want them to do. My thought is that if you are clever you don't need to be forceful and vice versa. Both work well with Perception. If you are intent on going through with the three 18s I'd suggest a Tanky Chanter. Boreal Dwarf Chanter Might 10 or 5 Con 12 or 17 Dex 2 Per 18 Int 18 Res 18 Have him use guns and weapon and shield while wearing plate. Long chant linger, big AoE for chants and Invocations, has good deflection.

You do want to pay attention to the turns needed in case you have need of whomever you send. I sent Aloth off on a long four turn adventure as I was finishing up White March. I had left before ACT II ended with the animancy trial and had not done Aloth's quest yet. I was out of quests to do and had one turn left. Had to eat some dragon food to pass some speech checks to solve a quest I wanted to do later. Moral of the story only send guys that you won't be needing anytime soon.

I like the Zealous Endurance aura for the hit to graze as well as the DR, primarily for protection from status effects. With high defenses, monks and Paladins, you can get rid of getting crits from afflictions. The aura helps you to get rid of some hits. Your DR and endurance pool can suck up the damage taken during a graze. Accuracy helps you kill faster, especially trash mobs. DR and hit>graze helps with the tougher fights by letting you survive when things go bad. And drop Eder after you do his story quest, he's a nice guy but everyone else is better. My choices in order to replace him are Pellagrina, Zahua, Devil, Kana. I'd move Kana up a spot if you do a lot of weapon based damage as his fire weapon chant is boss. All can serve the purpose of frontline melee and all bring extra abilities to the team, something that Eder as a Fighter just can't.

Deadfire Archipeligo