JONNIN

I had "family of the prisoner" pay like 700 copper for one. Security only really seems to help against bandits eating your taxes. It does not seem to help when your keep is attacked -- I have had structures destroyed with over 30, so it does not help there, and as noted here it does not help prisoners either. The dungeons are not worth it. Over the entire game you will be lucky to break even in the cost of building it by a few ransoms.

go to magran's fork and get the priest before you do the temple. Yes, its doable without, but IMHO the temple is someone's idea of a sick joke. "Hahaha lets give em a 2 hit point wizard and enemy that can teleport in the very first area, after an easy bit that will lull them into the trap..." A full party of 6 really helps until you know the game well, and even knowing the game well its a lot more fun with a group for me. *anyone* can be stealthy and mechanical but no one can do BOTH well. You sort of need 3 points at least in athletics or you will get the stupid tired debuff too often. And you need a LOT of mechanics to find the hidden items and disable the traps. Its not going to fit to get 10 in both stealth and mechanics and 3 in athletics all on one toon, due to how skills were set up you really need a party expert in each field instead. Or you can make do with less mechanics if you are willing to miss a few items and eat a few traps to the face. I have a damage themed orlan fighter that is focused on mechanics, for example, as my current play-through. Much more durable than a rogue, and does plenty of damage with high accuracy. A KO rogue does 0 damage. If you can keep your rogue up, sure, it will out damage the fighter, so its just a choice between full bore damage of rogue/ranger/caster or durability and balance. Ranger is not that hard to learn. Mostly, you stand there and shoot, with a few per-encounter clicks. Durable, interesting classes.... monk?

don't forget crits as well -- crits are a high % of hits in this game (not 1/20 like vanilla d&d, its more like 50% for some builds..). DR is flat -- you subtract it. Bypass is flat too. So a weapon that does 20 damage and crits for 30 and the other does 17 and crits for 25 is going to favor the harder hitting weapon after all the DR is computed. These numbers are too close to see it, but as the gap widens (enchanted, higher quality weapons and more piled on) later in the game that 3 DR will remain flat but the damage difference will grow by leaps and bounds until the harder hitting weapon is significantly superior.

The priest has a lot of really good spells but to be honest you do not need him in about 90% of the combat. That can be increased to 100% of the combat if you burn potions and scrolls instead, or if you have alternative healers like a druid or paladin. I don't recommend anyone who does not understand the game very well to face the major boss fights without a priest (does not have to be durance, you can roll your own, but durance is pretty good). You can always swap party members. Try it!

1) The game sort of guides you to areas that are suitable for you, but if you go exploring too much you can get squished. Roughly, do guilded city first, then defiance bay, then twin elms. Areas "near" those towns are "mostly" on par with the levels of the town nearby with a few exceptions. If you find yourself in an outdoor zone full of enemy you cannot defeat, leave and come back later. An obvious example of this would be the searing / dragonlet outdoor area near defiance bay. One word of warning: the endless paths are NOT to be done all at one "go". You can do a couple of levels, then leave until you gain a level or two, then come back. It increases in difficulty significantly after the ogre level. 2) this is a three part question lol: 1) every store in the game has good rare items to buy. Go shopping! The stuff is expensive, and you will find tons of good stuff too, but some of the best items are bought only and well worth the coin. Start right in the first city, hit the blacksmith and do a quest for him then see what he has to offer.... defiance bay has a TON of vendors -- a market place+ indoor vendors in many places + a few others... 2) enchant your stuff when you can. At lower levels you find plenty of the basic elemental enchants. DO NOT enchant standard items up to FINE. Unique items to fine or exceptional (if not already) is good to do. Or find "fine" and better items and enchant them instead. But don't waste the materials on standard unenchanted items (there are a couple of exceptions: some guns are hard to find and a basic may be all you can get for a long time, and there is a neat robe that has good deflection with low penalty, but most other standard quality gear is just vendor junk). 3) kill everyone you meet! I am only half kidding. Ok, it may break your immersion and role playing and personality so use some common sense here. But when you have conversations, often you can avoid a fight --- lets take the basic starter town, you discover a murder and can let the murderer go free in exchange for a crappy reward or you can kill him and get the money and his gear. And one of the most important ones, you meet some rival adventurers that are jerks at you ... you can pick their pocket and make them look stupid with a pacificst approach or you can cut their heads off and take their high quality gear...

Can I play PotD on any difficulty level? POTD *is* a difficulty level. You can play it "not hardcore" so that you can save and reload the game. You can play it with the nice features turned on, like "anywhere stash". POTD does 2 major things: it locks your difficulty so you can't set it to easy for boss fights, then back to POTD for trash. And, it ups the difficulty in 3 ways: first, every fight will have MORE enemy, every enemy will have higher stats (harder to hit them, and they will hit YOU easier), and every fight will have possibly tougher enemy (example, instead of a basic skuldur you get a skuldur king, or instead of a bear, you get an elder bear, or something). Also, you can't carry as many camping supplies on POTD, I think it limits you to 2 at a time. I do not recommend it until you have played the game through at least once, maybe twice. Its not that much harder if you are not on trial of iron (by the way, you can play trial of iron on any difficulty, maybe that was your question?) but it will make some boss fights nearly impossible if you do not know the game mechanics, where to find the good gear, and how to build a team that can debuff and kill while staying alive. If you know the game mechanics, its just a small step up in coordinating your team and working through the fights. If you are new to the details, it is going to be brutal.

Random thoughts: Might affects everything, including healing and damage spells. intellect affects the duration of buffs and debuffs. If your primary weapon is a sword, you will charge the enemy and try to cut on it. If your primary weapon is a bow, or a gun or wand etc, you will stay in the back and shoot instead. Shooting is much, much, much safer than running up to things. Every character can use armor. Putting plate mail on your casters is not only useful, but *extremely* useful in the early game before they gain some survivability. Mage spells are about 85% debuffs and about 15% damage dealers. FUBAR the enemy so your melee damage guys can kill them easier is generally more effective than trying to fireball a group to death. That way, one spell can win a tough fight, whereas with damage spells, you may need all 4 casts to take out the group.... aloth is poorly rolled. His stats are very bad. This is not BG. There is no automatic spell casting, you have to click on the character and cast any spells you want used. Read each spell description and figure out where your healing, buffs, and debuffs are. Study what the debuffs DO --- what does BLIND really do, what does paralysis do, what does stuck do? The effects of magic usually have an effect on the target's ability to avoid damage, making it easier to hit them. If they are easier to hit, they are ALSO eaiser to crit. Reducing the target's deflection will cause a melee damage party to simply flat out destroy the enemy in short order. Reducing their will or reflex will allow a caster damage heavy party (like druid, mage, cipher in the back) to wipe out the enemy in short order. And while on the topic: ciphers can cast spells every fight without resting to regain them. Early on, when your wizard has like 3 spells, the cipher is 100 times better. Later, when your wizard has like 30 spells between rests, the wizard is more flexible and worth having.

I could have said that better --- right, you hit the stronghold and with a slot or two, swap out the companions, do their quest, and trade them around. As their fighter and priest are pretty good I often have those 2, 3 of my own (including main) and rotate out the final slot to handle the side quests. Correct, it is not a lot of xp for the companion quests, you can skip them if you prefer. I think people have literally soloed with each class now, or nearly (?). Party makeup can be literally almost anything up to POTD. POTD needs a deep understanding of the game, and a silly party of all wizards or something takes more skill than a balanced party. If you are having trouble, balance makes it a lot easier, at any difficulty level. 750 gold for 3 inn-created sidekicks is selling the disappointer, all your excess gear from the scripted "must do" fights, and most of your crafting materials that you found in the first 2 areas including all that vessel flesh at the machine. It does not include any sideline stuff as I would save all the sidelines (xarip camp, bandit camp, bear cave, ooze / hidden wall eyegem, grid of traps (good chunk of xp here), etc) for after you have your party assembled. Inn-created party is always 1 level under the main character. Because of this you *may* want to "xp farm" before doing anything serious at the very beginning. XP farming is basically getting some free XP by doing things like all the intro stuff I listed, + unlocking every lock you can find in the first town (it is NOT stealing to open MOST locks in the game, just don't loot the container after popping the lock for XP) and hitting every map you can get to without a risky fight (map unlocks give xp). Pick up durance, do the blacksmith crate, those sorts of things. In short order your whole team will be level 3, and able to safely do the more risky intro stuff like the temple and raderick's hold etc. That is not necessary, but it can help get things rolling on harder difficulty settings.

This should not be. If POE 1 is successful and profitable, then a portion of the profits should fund the creation of POE2 which would presumably also produce a profitable game. If POE 1 is not successful enough to fund this, the project is not worth doing. I would not mind either an expansion to POE or a more NWN2 setup where players could add adventures and content... It would make my day to have an open world from this game...

Stats that have no use for a particular character/class build. Such as INT for Fighters in the old D&D system (not sure what the new on is like). Or, as an example, in IWD2, you'd build (if you're powergaming) your Fighters with max STR, CON, and maybe DEX. You'd dump all other stats to the lowest possible. For Wizards, you'd max INT, DEX, and maybe CON. You'd dump all other stats. Ah. That *barely* exists here. Every stat is worth having, and kicking any stat to 2-3 has a negative effect, whether it is reduced saving throws or lower health or whatever. Int is the only real stat that can safely be dumped by a number of classes, but even those suffer a reduced duration or range on many skills, and for the main character, your soul abilities suffer with reduced int as well. All the other stats have an acceptable penalty if you drop them below 10. I never played D&D that way, we rolled dice for the stats and that was that... but it did not matter. We had a lot of "roll vs" --- you might be a wizard that has a 2 strength, but you would still find yourself trying to lift or pull on something and roll 3 d6 less than your strength to accomplish the task... or roll 3 vs your intellect to etc... real role playing uses all the stats on all the players to get things done and a combat oriented max/min player was going to suffer badly at everything outside of combat. Very badly.

Its a fighter in the back -- it is not being hit much, and dangerous implements is a very small damage. By the time I need to rest on my main tanks up front, the ranged fighter in the back is still at 90% health or better. The dangerous implement *ranger* also has a pretty solid health pool and can make a decent build, but the ranger will be hurting in a long fight. DI is a toggle, though -- you can turn if off if you need to do so. Worth it? It probably is better to use guns or xbows to be honest. But it is something I did, just to see how it would work. The best thing you can say about its you can use all 3 damage types and do pretty consistent, decent damage with it. Its not the dps powerhouse I had hoped for.

I have not tested it in a while because I prefer other spells on my cipher to the weak early damage dealers. It was hitting the friendly toons, last time I tried it. I much prefer the aoe blind and low level charm, or if I did build a damage themed low level cipher, the cone RAW damage attack is easier to control, hits more stuff, and hits hard. Honestly my latest ciphers have followed a different path. I stack up on skills to buff the weapon and soul whip effect to produce a hard hitting ranged character that does damage the old fashioned way between launching the potent debuffs. The cost of spells going up as they increase in power, I find that I launch a number of rank 2 paralysis/stuck attacks as my core ability on the class, and use the others as necessary (often, a puppet or similar charm on anything that got to the back to bother the casters, charmed enemy obligingly walk back to the front lines before turning red again) for additional debuffing or to control the combat. It has been a while since I tried a pure damage cipher, trying to actually kill with its spells. Silent scream is a good nuke at higher levels, I use that one from time to time.

you can't have a "build" without customizing something. What do you call min/maxing? You have like 4 variables, and you can adjust them as you see fit (my suggestions included). race -- orlan (hits to crits bonus is potent), dwarf or amuana (high might damager), other (whatever you want for RP or stat reasons?). stats -- dex and might are good for hitting often and hitting hard. starting class choice -- I like hobble because you get 2 of them each encounter instead of 1 blinder. But it does not matter much cause your caster will debuff after you hit town the first time. starting background --- I like to get 1 mechanics and 1 athletics which is laborer background (might be a second with this set?). If you want stealth, get some stealth. That is all you can really "build" at creation. After this, try for 3-4 points in athletics and either a hard mechanics build or a hard stealth build. Or be the oddball with lore so you can do emergency spells is valid as well. As for choices when you level up, ... there are too many good combinations to list. Narrow down what you want to specialize as -- 2h weapons? Ranged? Dual wield? What weapon specialty do you want? I like to pick a weapon type that has something+crush, as crush is one of the least resisted, so pollaxe is a favorite of mine, but you can make a go of a lot of types.... you *know* you can make a custom spear later... you know what some of the rare weapons are ... pick something, specialize in it, get your accuracy up into the 50-80 (as you level) and higher, crit everything to death, and win

They should have put in a few recipes for each type, and rounded out shield and helm enchanting (so many neat looking hats that you won't use once you have enchanted hats..). The system has the feel of something that was not finished.

^^^^ This. D&D had only a few classes. Fighter, rogue, cleric, and mage. That is ALL it had. Everything else that was added to it over the decades were derived from this small group, growing from the original 4 into many, many "classes". Druids were in the manual as an EXAMPLE of how to make a specialized cleric. Barbarians were an example of a specialized fighter class. There were the multi-classed hybrids as well -- ranger is a fighter/cleric variation that became a fighter/druid. But the heart of D&D was about makeing your own from their examples, not just blindly using the example templates. The stuff in the DM and player guides was boring, a starting point to get the creativity flowing, nothing more.

What do you mean by dump stats? If you mean disallow the ability to decrease stats below 10, well --- who is to say that my fighter is not a moron or that my wizard is frailer than rastalin? Or did you mean that some stats are just better than others?? The balance is decent, but some stats DO help combat more than others. I like the old roll systems better, where you have to accept a roll at some point, but the temptation to keep hitting reroll hoping for better was always a temptation... I remember rolling a party in wizardry 7 took hours to get that fairy ninja.

I have tested Ectophysic Echo over and over and it seems that the power doesn't affect my allies. What am I doing wrong? It is a strange skill. There is another one that is high single target damage but targets an ally. Understand: these are ATTACKS that DAMAGE the enemy, but they TARGET a friendly player and from there leap or aoe or beam or whatever to hit the enemy. Ecto targets a friendly, and forms a beam between you and your ally, and from there, it zaps anything in between (including other friendly.... ). This skill is difficullt to use, to say the least. Phantom should drop flanked regularly. But the save for flanked may be easier than the other effects, I do not know off the top of my head. FWIW The rank 2 spell that does stuck & paralysis is one of the strongest -- it costs little and does much, esp if your int is high enough to make it a large aoe.

I advise against an entirely player created party. That might do for the final fights on hardcore mode, but IMHO you miss out not doing the companion quests and should have room in your part for at least 2 - 3 of the default companions at all times. Range is a little dull, but the companion one is not terribly well crafted. Mostly, you have a couple of special attacks to click once in a while, and you stand there shooting and reloading the rest of the time. Player created party works like this. You make a MAIN character. You play thru the intro to the first inn, and from there you can roll companions for a fee (250 per level?). You can roll 3 right away from the money from the intro items you found, maybe even 4 if you did more stuff, 3 if you did the bare minimum (includes the dissapointer vendored). You can only add these to the current adventure, you can't roll charactrers to use in multiple adventures. Its probably hackable, but thats another story. In general you do not make them outside the adventure, but inside each one, see? as for a class, do something different. A monk? A druid? A cipher? There are a lot to pick from... Party makeup is your own choice. This is just my opinion: the fighter and priest given to you are pretty (very?) good. The wizard, cipher, chanter, and paladin are exceedingly poorly rolled or have poor default abilities from their auto-level-up. The druid and hunter are OK. Building off 2-3 of those default companions... well I like to roll my own cipher, for sure, with a 19 int for large aoes. If you gonna use a paladin, you can't go wrong with a moongod high con damage sponge. If you gonna use a wizard, you can't go wrong with your own that has 18+ might or 18+ int (and neither of those below 18) If you gonna use a chanter, being able to pop out a phantom right away is good. Kana *can* be fixed/salvaged, but you need 2 levels to do it. If you want a monk, rogue, barbarian, you gotta roll your own. A second fighter can be sweet as well. Races ... for max min, moongod (self heals), orlan (the hits to crits racial is powerful), wood elf (casters or ranged), and amuana/dwarf (melee dps or high might toons) are all worth considering.

Of course. Honestly it looks like old school D&D (advanced era, not current, the 1990s heyday stuff) changed just enough to avoid paying any royalties or being accused of infringement. But the ranger is one of the major differences... its not a fighter derived class (D&D ranger had strong health and melee skills) and gets no spells (not that ranger spells ever mattered.... hey I have 179 hit points at level 10 and can now cast cure light wounds once to heal 5 of them..?!). its obvious as well that chanters are a bard-like concept, that ciphers are the psionic (and kinda similar to the NWN warlock), and that xarips are kobolds with a twist, and the list goes on and on... But there are so many major differences too -- no dual classing, combat mechanics (the chance to hit things and crit things are both nuts compared to D&D which was often a long battle of miss, miss miss..) the idea of health that can't be healed by healers... might on spellcasters.... its different enough that my first 2 characters had to be deleted they were so bad due to the differences.

Yes ? What item ? What items can be used to take care of Charmed, Dominated ? Charmed and Dominated count as the most scary afflictions. If you want peace, prepare for war. No one likes to attack the strong guy. Using your logic, having a gun at home is only good when someone is attacking you. I'd rather have people in the neighborhood know I have a gun and not attack me. If they don't target the Paladin, it's because the ability is doing its job. Righteous Soul is good to have on a paladin, because he can keep enemies from reaching you, and help party members. I'd rather have one of my ranged characters charmed than Eder. Paladin can heal, revive, use Liberating Exhortation. Because paladin is so hard to disable, it's a good idea to make him your party's Lore Guy. Then he can use scrolls to deal with emergencies when everyone else is disabled. Charmed and dominated are mostly harmless. Petrify is the most scary that I know of... you take extra damage while having almost no defenses etc .. even my near immortal moongod pally tank can't survive the master below if he gets petrified by that caster that comes along for the fight.

stealth makes perfect sense actually ... it is unlikely to be able to walk into a room full of enemy, get 2 feet behind someone, kill them, all unseen (without magic). I forget if BG had HIPS or if that was only NWN... but the shadowdancer of NWN for sure was OP beyond belief .. you could solo the game on a dancer with a regen item, just fight until hurt, vanish, heal, return... While the stealth attack is clunky for melee attacks, the "sneak attack" mechanic is very nice and easy to use --- just debuff the enemy and hit it, and your spellcasters were doing debuffs anyway (right?) ... it works out because the sneak attack is so strong.

I tried to build a ranger out of the fighter class. It is viable. It will do a fraction of the damage of a ranger, but it will not die easily. Pick a weapon specialization, marksman, weapon mastery, play either orlan or wood elf, stand near kana with his ranged weapon chant running, pick up gunner if you use guns, confident aim seems to partially work (accuracy bit??) for ranged (not 100% sure, anyone know for sure?), and so on. Mine is a weirdo and based off implements so I have dangerous implements instead of gunner, and noble for my weapon focus/mastery. I start with a gunshot or arebelest and swap over to my rod/staff after. It crits a LOT. But a ranger will easily do twice or more the damage of this build. And a melee fighter will easily do twice the damge as well. It comes down to this: the fighter can't get the ranger's talent to increase loading and shooting speed, and he can't get the class skill to mark the enemy. So you get a durable "pseudoranger" that does half the damage but can take 3 times as much punishment when attacked.

Fighters are really, really good. They are tough, able to heal slowly over time and have a wide variety of choices -- you can build pure damage, pure tank, or halfway between. Often overlooked is the fighter's accuracy which is as good as rogue or ranger etc -- a well made fighter can crit a very, very high % of the time while wading into battle with a 2h weapon and just destroying things. Barbarians are pretty neat, more damage but less durable, and able to hit other enemy with a mild splash aoe. Frenzy is poweful. I did not get super far with a barbarian yet, just a few levels into that class. Monks do not have to be played with micromanagement. You could just let him stack wounds, and pick the talent that increases damage with wound count, and once in a while activate the one that makes him hit faster. It does better if you micromanage and spam his attacks but you might be amazed at what he can do with minimal input. Esp with a 20 dex, faster attack, and 2 weapon style... he will hit stuff 4-6 times to every other character's single hit, and he will do it with no gear, and each fist will rival a fine/basic 2h weapon after mid game. I don't advise the no-gear though. There is this one fight that drops exceptional leather early on.. Accuracy is *critical* to make a bad pun. Accuracy, after you have enough to HIT the enemy, becomes your chance to crit with spill-over. If your accuracy is low you get a lot of "graze" hits that do very little damage. On normal and hard difficulty, accuracy & debuffs can get you 50% or higher crit ratings. On POTD, it is lower but still pretty good. But yes, it is that important. For every class. Your wizard/cipher needs accuracy in order to LAND a spell and have it last its entire duration, and the cipher needs it more to build focus. Only your healing spells do not need accuracy, just about everything else does. A weapon focus talent is huge. For a cipher on POTD, weapon focus + marksman is not amiss (another bad pun).

Not only do those work (except 2h style) but I would say having a couple of them is absolutely necessary if your wizard is going to be doing damage (You can play a low might wizard that is debuff focused instead). I am pretty sure other stuff that is similar works as well -- for example orlan hits to crits racial should work on spells (and I argue that it might beat wood elf out, or at least rival it). I also am *pretty* sure that "marksman" works on spells from afar.

the chanter is really good at summoning nasty things. Kana starts with the ultra weak skeletons instead of the rather nasty phantom, but you can fix this easily enough if you grab him early and level him. Starting your own, just start with the phantom. Most of the other invocations are kind of weak for the amount of time it takes to build one up and use it. They should maybe have made some of those cost a lot less; all the non-summon rank 1 invocations should only cost 2 points instead of 3, and probably do the same at all ranks (-1 cost for non-summons). The chanter is a frontloaded class, growing weaker in actual power at higher levels. By the time you can summon the 3 wurms, you start to feel it, the fights are over and you have 2-3 ticks (of 4 needed) built up --- and this gets worse the farther you go. Most fights at high levels I just summon the wurms for a bit of ranged damage because the ogres will never happen outside of the toughest few fights.