Elric Galad

Another idea : Finishing Blow. BPM already changed it so it counts health loss from 100% instead of 50% with the same cap value. But something still bothered me and I rarely used it. It is a pure damages ability costing 2 Guiles that starts becoming interesting when the target is around Blooded or below. Sometimes 1 Guile Crippling Strike was enough as a damages ability with benefits. Finishing Blow is specialized to get some cost effective modifiers vs very low health target... But in this case, all "Destroy on Near Death" abilities provide better results. So the easy fix would be to add a Destroy on Near Death (EDITED) to Finishing Blow too, which would make a lot of sense. But not 100% chances because : - destroy on near death Vs Deflection is quite powerful. - this would make bonus damages insignificant - you can get 2 (or more) rolls. First attack can put the target under 25% health and the second would have a chance to kill it outright. If the target is already below 25% before the full attack, it makes having 2 chances more significant. It also has nice synergy with blunderbusses. I think this is an interesting mechanic. My bet is 33% chances for Finishing and Eliminating Blow and 50% for Devastating Blow. Not as reliable as circle of death but does a lot of damages anyway. Would it be OP Vs Bosses ? I don't think so. Rogue has access to Marux Amanth which get the job done most of the time in my experience. Putting a boss under 25% is usually a short term death sentence.

Well, there is "treated as weapons" property, the actual object category in the attack gamedata bundle and some property in item files too (I can't check this week though). Fury weapon can't bounce either and I wasn't able to fix it for now. I will double check all that because I've learned a couple of tricks since the last time I tried. Maybe, we'll see when the mystery above is solved.

If you prefer melee, just go melee. If you have troubles in crowded area, the easiest way to do is probably to get some mobility abilities for a couple of your melee characters (escape, charge, leap, flagellant path and evasive roll). This won't allow to abuse choke points, but at least your melee won't be blocked. And if you really want to abuse a particular choke point, nothing prevent switching to ranged weapon from time to time. Even melee heavy builds are often decent with ranged weapons (bar maybe Devoted).

Could I incorporate this file in BPM ? (You'll be credited as usual) Gameplay apart, it is super annoying to do. Adding an extra ability to an existing table is easy, removing one (or changing its Tier) requires overriding the whole table. Anyway I think that the Tiers are fine for Arcane Archer. I is quite varied, without too much redundancy and Imbue : Death still bring some unique stuff to SC AA. Imbue : Death only has in common with fireball to be an AoE damages ability. They do different damage type, target different defense ; Imbue Death is foe only, has a 4 times bigger (2 times larger) AoE and Destroy Vs Near Death. For a character specialized in AoE damages, it makes sense to have 2 AoE abilities, at least to avoid immunity and high defenses issues. That said Imbue Death being the same cost makes Imbue Fireball almost obsolete. That's why I think Imbue Fireball should cost 2 bonds ; which won't be broken for a mere Tier 3 spell (because even with bounce, targeting with Imbued spells is harder). Fireball would be optimal for tight groups of foes, as long as friendly fire is not an issue. Imbue : Missiles is also too expensive at 2. 1 bond would make it a fairly good 1 bond single target damages ability, but it is the point for Arcane Archer to have better special attacks and worse auto attacks. BPM tweaked a lot of stuff for SC ranger. SC ranger feels very special compared to MC. That's why SC AA unique ability has to be special (foe only big corrode AoE), but does not have to be super special : there are many other reasons to go SC AA compared to MC AA simply because you will also get all SC ranger unique stuff. Thanks, I will look into this, at least for the ranged weapons.

Good point. Don't hesitate to share a list of you have one. Although PEN 0 is easy to check in gamedata files (default value is 7 for pure CC)

I think my main grip is that they didn't go for an Active Time Battle system similar to Final Fantasy X, where everyone acts in sucession but where there isn't a notion of "round" that... well... round up or down all things linked to duration or time taken by actions. Basically a slow action cause to act later. This kind of system would have allowed much much smoother translation of RTwP ruleset into Turn Based. And I don't believe it is more complicated. Only a few adaptations would have been necessary. But well... people seem usually happy. Some like TB and play TB, and some don't like it or feel that the rules fit better RTwP and play RTwP. I think that there is only few people who absolutely wanted to play TB and felt disappointed by it to the point no mode satisfy them.

TB is a mode of play that was added for free by the devs, and there are plenty of people that are quite happy of it. I've read tons of people stating it. The ruleset is not designed for it so I believe it feels weird and poorly balanced for hard core gamers, yes. Basically, you have many abilities that are bad in TB (this is true for RTwP, but not to the same extant), so one has to minmax and build for it.

Not false. Could go slightly back with following imbue table : Imbue : Missiles 1 Imbue : Web 2 (because Energized could lead to similarly broken results) Imbue : Fireball 2 Imbue : Eora 3 Imbue : Death 3 Also I'm thinking about giving Hardy Companion the Hardy inspiration for 15s (healing would still be 6s), because I usually find pointless to go Heal Companion route for a pet-only Lay on Hand and a 6s inspiration.

It is known, yes, and I addressed it by my Balance Polishing Mod Deadfire Balance Polishing Mod at Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com) Unfortunately, I couldn't find a better solution than replacing the second priest by a copy of the first one. I don't remember if I made a separable file for this particular change.

+3s, it is meh Carnage Indicator mod by Noqn. Balance Polishing Mod nerf package does nerf Troubadour Don't hesitate to suggest some other nerfs. Vanilla Game stag carnage is an activable ability. Community Patch made it an actual carnage.

I'm currently thinking about removing the Potion ban from Mage Slayer (but keeping Scroll Ban). BPM Mage Slayer has -25% Hostile and Beneficial effects duration (instead of Spell resistance). Therefore, Buffing potions are already suboptimal for them. Barring access to Healing Potion is harsh especially Luminous Adra because there are no renewable ways to remove injuries in combat. And of course Potion of Enlightenment (BPM ressource renewing potion for long boss fights). Granted that Beneficial Effect malus is probably more annoying than Hostile effect barring is useful, I would say that the Subclass would still be balanced overall. Also, I think it would be fair to add to Auranic the effects of Potion of Enlightenment. Just because your whole party could use this while Auranic will ultimately run out of spells, and it isn't very fair.

I tried one of them with a summon once, and it didn't work. I don't remember the details...

Yeah, elemental offensive invocation were working. Non elemental ones were the issue.

Nice to hear ! I even wonder a bit if I've buffed Barbarians a bit too much, but I don't feel they are especially broken when compared to Battlemage, Spellblade or Sage in comparable situation. I just tried to make Barbarians more defined (and Corpse Eater). In this partcular case, Immune to engagement is neat but you had other means to get it for Barbarians. It won't save you life and you have to manage your health (and/or to put a couple points in CON ?) to keep it above 75%. Lions Sprint isn't super optimal for Warlock/Corpse Eater because Wiz has plenty of access to Dex Inspirations and Corpse Eater pays this 2 Rages. But sometimes, +15 Acc on a CC spell is precious. Interrupting Carnage is possibly the boldest change I've made, but I think Barbs really needed that to feel like the martial Crowd Controllers they are supposed to be. When compared to the virtual immortality of Fighters, Damages bonus Galore from Rogue or Monkness of Monks I think it fits the class quite well without making them broken.

Weird, The gamedata files do not seem to exclude the chanter. I'll check in-game.

Another idea, a nerf this time. I tend to consider Mercy and Kindness a no brainer for Chanter builds. +50% healing is massive, equivalent of 16,67 points of Might when healing is considered. You can read it as basically 50% more survivability for your party on the long run, provided you can manage spike damages etc... I almost always pick it as a late game chant (which in addition to be OP in its own, make cause other chants look meh in comparison...). Even for a Tier 7 chant, I believe this is too much and should be lowered to a more reasonable value. I propose +30% healing done (twice the value of Practiced healer, party wide). And it would still be an excellent Chant.

In addition 2 changes for next version : Stag Companion : The AoE damages now also affects main target. I've changed this because it required having foes close to main target AND high crit chances (which is not obvious for the pet). This was quite annoying to get both conditional, especially with an 1.5m AoE and 5 INT. Now this version only require high crit chances. Having foes very close will make it better but is not necessary. This is still more conditional, but more rewarding than the 2 other "offensive" pets (lion and wolf) Protective Companion : +1 Engagement -> +2 I made this change to address 2 problems : - First, Ranger requires a lot of Talents to get their perks. Protective Companion is needed to get the Stalker's Link perk that is one of the main interest of ranger (stacking accuracy). And Protective Companion is really meh. I though that if a ranger has to spend so much points to get their prime speciality working, they deserve Abilities that are at least a bit good. - Second, multiclassing. Rangers aren't so good at multiclassing with casters because their main perk (Accuracy bonuses) only work vs single targets (that's why Seer is a good MC). With this change, it mitigates a bit this issue, granting Ranger a bit more interest for AoE users.

Ouh, that might explain why Arcane Archer/Chanter get an accuracy malus for their Invocation. Arcane Archer accuracy malus is filtered out for spells using all Spell KW.

Ahem, does it means that any pushing attack works this way ? Namely Llengrath's warding staff ?

Alias the Skyward kicker build (Skyward Kick is vs Fortitude) Works with Force of Anguish but a bit less convenient due to push.

Twinned Shot probably. Hitting vs Deflection is usually easier. But cost-effectively, I would say that speed increase are probably the way to go. But the real answer is probably Wall of Draing.

Whirling Strikes do work well with it indeed. I used the melee -10% variant and usually stacked 6-7 charges per use. Whirling Strikes do work with Driving Flight, that's why it is arguably optimal. Please note that the -10% stacks "additively" as stacking +~11% recovery speed.

Community Patch introduced KW specific to weapons. I don't think some BPM stuff could cause that.

Yeah, you're right, I read to quickly. I will increase Boar regen to 2hp +0.5/5 levels per 3s.

Boar regen scales as an active HoT : its healing value and duration (Spiritshift duration) both get a multiplicative bonus from PL. It starts above fighter's, even with rapid recovery and ends up around the same level for SC druid with some PL bonuses. So I think it is already good enough. I could tweak again to harmonize with Bloodmage and Fighter regen, but current version is harmonized with standard HoT instead.