Elric Galad

The more I think about it, the more I believe that spells should be only per rest. A lot of abilities of non-caster classes have been balanced in some ways taking into account that they are per encounter. Take the example of blinding strike or Knockdown : before level 9, they are useful tools for small encounters. After level 9, they suddenly become total lacklusters when wizard start spamming slicken 4x times per encounter. My current party is lvl 8. Spells are per rest and I feel it is more epic this way. It is not even that per encounter spells scale too fast, it is that they kill the thrill of managing ressources, as well as they kill abilities meant to carry small encounters (like chanters support or cipher spells). I think it will be better to have a way to disable them in standard game, but there is an IE mod to do so anyway. So for my next playthrough, I'll choose this option.

For sure 6 wizards would be hard to challenge but I still believe that 6 druids could be better. Druids get a 20% speed boost at high level, and speed boost like DAoM only affects recovery which is about 60% of action time. So that's net difference of about 18% speed. I tend to consider druid spells as slighly more destructive. Their main advantages is that they combine high damages with small CC effects. What makes more difference are the storm spells. Start encounter, cast storm (level 3 or 5 according to your needs), and once casting is done for 6 druids (who didn't have to aim or get a good position), the encounter could be pretty much over. Wizard CC can end an encounter pretty quickly but it is a bit harder to aim while ennemy is moving. Finally, druids are probably better at low level with spiritshift. They also have healing, which is handy. I'm not sure it is easy to decide which one is better. Both parties would be incredibly powerful, so it would be hard to define the right criteria.

Sorry, I realize now that non-monks has lower base damages with fists. So, even if novice suffering is better than transcendant suffering, it is meant to compensate for non-monks base damage. As a result, monks do have better damages with fists. Sorry for the inconvenience...

Which means Exhortations with no recovery time are not affected at all by armor.

I completely missed it ! Thank you for your help !

I doubt it, the thread is a mess of complaints. Maybe send him a direct line on twitter or something. Granted, he'll then get complaints if he moves the malus back to accuracy so it's really just a case of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" for him at this point. Basically the thread consensus says : Without being unplayable, fighters are currently underpowered, and comparable with 1.06 Rangers (who were also underpowered but not unplayable) A minority believes that they are OK. They are described as currently less powerful than Paladin in the Tank role (with better DPS, and without Paladin's support abilities). They are also (in my opinion this is even more crticial) less powerful than Monk in Tanky Single Target DPS role. Then, there are a lot of ideas about how to buff them, without real consensus about how Obsidian should do. The only recurring wish is that they could benefits more from the extra engagements they get. Constant recovery also draws a lot of criticism.

Hello, I've recently remarked that Novice suffering damages were actually higher than monk's one. Unless I'm mistaken (or unless it is a tooltip issue), Novice's Suffering does actually 3 more damages than Monk's Suffering, which does not make sense. Novice suffering is +5 damages at lvl 1 and +4 accuracy/+2 damages per 3 lvl beyond first (4, 7, 10...). Transcent suffering is +2 damages at level 1 with apparently same scaling. See details in the Technical Support thread below : https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/82231-novice-suffering-better-than-monks/ The problem is that I will not be able to check it in-game for a while, and I also don't have a high level monk (and non-monk) to check how the problem scales. I also heard from an old thread that Novice's suffering actually scaled even better at level 14 ! Is there a helpful person who could do the following operations : - Have a level 14 monk in your party - Have a level 14 non-monk in your party with Novice's suffering (you can do this with respec) - Upload your save and log to the Technical Thread above Sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for your help ! PS : That could mean that monk's unarmed damage could finally be intended to be actually better than weapons ! Youhouh !

Hello Aarik, I will not be able to access the game for a while. And anyway I still don't have a Lvl 14 Monk and an level 14 non-Monk to test my second point at high level. (I think it's better if you can get a complete view on the problem). So I am going to ask for a save file to other people in the forum. If I can't get it, I'll do it myself later but it may take a while. I will not forget, I promise !

For me me, something very intrtesting could to imagine thematic parties linked to each god. Like a firearm-heavy party linked to Abydon or Magran. Or a rogue/cipher/Skaen priest sneaky party as a Skaen cult. Or druid/ranger Galawain hunt pack. I think this could be very nice build idea )

I understand your point. I like Wizards but I wanted to avoid them in my current party. So I took Druid and Cipher for CC, and for now it works. (Well, I would be perfect when the storm bug will be corrected. ^^) But currently, I doubt chanters can replace Priest, even with druid and paladin. Part of the problem is you can't really go "full Buff bot" for chanter ; indeed, you can't customize so much a chanter. By the way, even if chanters had around 50% buff capabilities of Priest, it would be ok. You could indeed rely on druids, paladins and paladin multiclass talent to fill most of the gap, and your party would have other abilities to compensate anyway (especially chanters and pally tankyness). Now I would estimate chanters around 25-30% of priest buff capabilities. The gap is still huge is you consider for example priests can get up to +65 party deflection, while chanters cap at +10 with a 3rd level chant.

Associating some gods to favored classes makes sense, but one to one association does not. For example, a Skaen priest is associated to Eothas in your list.

Probably best Single target DPS now (when counting pet). Harder to use than rogue I think. They also have decent utilities like single target CC and their pet's infinite health.

Nothing has ever been mandatory for PotD. One can finish PotD with 1 single character. I'm tired to repeat the same thing on every thread about class balance. "Fighters are fine because I manage to play one in PotD"... The real point is about "playing without a priest without feeling gimped". You're right about tank being at least as much important. But as you say yourself you have THREE class choices (plus monks and maybe even wizards) which can make a tank. You're saying I'm wrong because chanters can also be tanks, but I've said exactly the same thing in the very post you're quoting ! Maybe this is a matter of vocabulary but buffer is a generic party roles, meanwhile infinite duration buff or time limited stacking buffs are just two different ways of filling the same role IMHO. I do not deny that chanters and priest are indeed different. But for buffs, no other class can be nearly as good as priest. That's the point.

Spell accuracy is Base accuracy + level + bonus depending on spell (usually +10). At level 12, most druid spell will be 53 + 12 + 10 = 75. From 2.0, you have to add perception modifier.

SoF does not work on lash damage like +25% fire. SoF does not work on DoT. So I don't think there is any interaction between SoF and 3rd level chants. Sad story, bro...

Bump

I tried at level 3-4 with 6 characters in PotD and it was one of the hardest fights I've been through. In order ro win, I had to put my party in his room and pull with a bow without even speaking with him. Raedric and a paladin didn't come so I had ONLY 8 guards to take down. I took down casters with my ranged characters, then melee, one by one, and succeed. After that, Raedric and his last guard were a pain to finish. I'm glad I did it but I wouldn't recommand.

Why is it unlikely to ever happen ? I think the devs are more or less aware of the gamebreaking risk of per encounter spells. They would have to create insanely powerful non-caster abilities at level 15 to compensate future per encounter confusion... This is a risk of a big amount of work, lot of balance patches, etc... This risk can be managed by adding just one little option. And this option does not even imply possible discontent from players. IMHO, this would be a great cost saver for them. By the way I admit that it is for psychological reason that I prefer playing the official game rather than IE mod. I don't want to be allowed to customize rules by myself, because I would feel like playing against myself ^^

Basically, chanters would need to be able to cast their highest level invocation while singing their highest level chant around every 15s. This 15s stuff is to make it similar to the chanter multiclass talent. On low level, this is true (12s) and chanters works well. How to make it is another problem. Chanters could be able to stack several chants, according to level. The additional bonus would be that it enables them to use more abilities, and using abilities is what makes class cool. I guess this would require rebalancing their abilities a bit, and maybe suppress linger. Furthermore, a couple additional class talents would also be very nice... And finally, chants not stacking with items. It would be more logical if they didn't stack with spells.

An option to disable per encounter spells is in my opinion the wisest way to deal with this. Quite easy fix. No changes for casual players (or players who just don't want to bother with per rest spells). Everyone could play according to one's style. Make also the few per encounter abilities of casters more interesting (seriously, what the point of interdiction once you got per encounter spells ?), as well as bonus spell talents and god favored weapon talents.

I think the most deadly party would be 6 druids. Casting 6 relentless storm followed by 6 returning storm is an auto win. You don't even have to aim ^^ Except maybe against dragons, but you have 6 hold beast to manage this. And Spiritshift would probably help a lot at low level. Apart 6 wizards, I don't think 6 druids can be challenged. Sure wizards have better CC, but when all your party has CC, you have enough CC. Damages capabilities stack better than CC and druids are slightly superior for damages. I recently faced a party of 4 wild druids casting returning storm and they were absoluty deadly. On the fun side, turning all your party into bears would just look so good ^^ PS: sorry not use your template but quoting on a mobile phone is rather annoying.

Actually contrary to what you believe, the in-game bestiary provided an explanation that is the exact opposite, They threaten kith precisely because their reproduction rate is so low. It is kith that hunt them for researching their cipher abilities (hence their brain being an ingredient for enchantment) and they can't risk their young. If they were not as threatened due to low numbers, they probably will be more curious about meat-creatures. Don't know if this is relevant as well, but the Portia Spider is considered to be among the most intelligent invertebrates. They are capable of curiosity. One of their leaders even apologize to you. So they do in fact value meat-creature lives. Since it's a mental link they communicate to you with (and you being a watcher and all), they probably can't lie this way. They don't seem to be interested in conquering anything because they just don't understand concepts like property or greed. Hehe very interesting for Portia Spider. I'm actually very interested in this kind of subject ^^ Well, my post above may just have been about my own imagination after all ^^

I was worried about dragon and Thaos fights too, but if the problem is just a couple of fights, then priest can be replaced by scrolls (scroll of valor and fear resistance in your example). But I fear that devotion for the faithful is a gamechanger is most average to hard fights, so...

The fascinating thing about Xaurip is their bond to dragons. Kobolt were linked to dragons, but not to the same extend. They often serve dragons but they can have autonomous "societies". Their bond to dragons is mostly a pride issue : they are one of the weakest race, ans their only racial pride is their link to one of the strongest one. For Xaurips, it seems to be a mix of religion and biology. They are linked to dragons almost as drones to a queen bee. But they are sentient beings, so this biological devotion has been converted into a religion. This can be spotted by the number of priests and paladins in their ranks. This is a good twist in the usual recurring "hive mind" of so much fantasy and sci-fi universes. I will not be surprised if we discover that Xaurip, even if able to reproduce by themselves, depends on special dragon hormon for fertility. Their lore really seems to be about a symbiosis with dragon. Their biological bond is their fate, and this fate prevents them from being a Kith race, because in a certain way it kills their freedom of acting. Vithrack are also a good twist about the "dangerous alien". They have such a different mindset that they are barely able to recognize Kiths as intelligent beings. At the same time, they are so much more powerful than Kiths that they always frighten me. Their plot twist is that contrary to usual aliens, they can't reproduce quickly. This makes their background very sad. But what if they manage to find a way to reproduce quickly ? They may threaten all other sentient beings. They will enslave them, treat them as animals, or kill them. They will not hesitate too much before doing this because they don't have much empathy for Kiths and think they are animals. So my PC usually exterminates all Vithracks he meets. Too dangerous for the future of the Kiths. But at the same times, their story is so sad that he does this with regrets. And this ambiguous feeling is just so nice ^^ Ogres are quite similar to usual ogres. Unable to unite because they are too brutal. The difference comes from the fact they not stupid as usual ogres. They fate is their brutality that kills their freedom of acting like dragon bond kills it for Xaurips. They are unable to make a society because they just can't bear it. They are like primeval beings, slaves of primeval instincts, but intelligent enough to feel this limitation and express it. The lines from the Dryford ogre makes me feel he was almost jealous about weak humans whose society condamns him to live like a pariah, meanwhile he was absolutely unwilling to be a part of any society. PoE has so much good writing, even when depicting brutal humanoids (and I haven't met White March ogres yet).

The funny thing is that the solution seems obvious : chanters with a little rework could fit the role of alternative to priests. Not as equals, it is not the point, but well enough to make priest not a mandatory choice. Chanters have other advantages : they have great summons and they are also very good tanks. With a little help from paladins and druids (moonwell, nature's bounty...), they would perfectly fit the role. Chanters and priests are also versatile enough to avoid overlap if you take both of them. So basically, it is just another argument to rework chanter IMHO. Priest class itself doesn't really need a rework. It is more a problem of class role distribution.