Nobear

Boeroer is kind of making me want to try a melee cipher solo, but there are so many classes to choose from! About undead Raedric, I also found that fight quite difficult and it took me several attempts to beat it. However, I think there are some other fights just about as hard, and one of the big differences is that I was level 11 when I fought Raedric. If you wait until level 12 for him, I'd wager being able to open with Amplified Wave would make it a whole lot easier. The biggest problem I had in that fight was the number of fampyrs dominating people left and right, and Amplified Wave is about the only spell that can CC a large area fast enough at the beginning of the fight to let you get into proper position, buff and debuff and get ready to follow up that CC with, say, a wizard's Prone, then have a relatively smooth and controlled fight. With Adra Dragon, however, I wouldn't open with Amplified Wave, because the adds won't be in place yet. Mental Binding would be more likely for my first CC, but keep in mind it's still likely to miss even prebuffed with Tactical Meld. Once you stack more accuracy, though, things should start landing more reliably. If you have a druid for Tanglefoot and Relentless Storm, the cool thing about those is that they will keep rolling for hits, even if they miss most of them. Whenever Adra Dragon is hobbled, her reflex will also be low enough to reliably land more of those reflex-based spells. Your cipher may still be better off attacking other enemies when they come to generate faster focus, and using spells like Amplified Wave mostly to CC the other enemies when they come.

Please enlighten me, where to find those mini adra dragons. lol a grown male dragon squeezed himself through all the narrow doorways while nobody else was watching and made babies with Adra Dragon I guess... only Alexis saw it. TBH I still don't know how Adra Dragon got there. First time I've seen a dragon below ground. It would kind of make sense if the Engwithans grew her out of Adra, but she says she's older than them. Well, I guess it's the wrong forum for lore discussion. Kinda cool videos on this thread, but IDK how much of it would still be possible with the current patch. Having the Scale-Breaker talent before the dragon is even approached the first time... I doubt that was ever legitimately possible. Edit: On the off chance that Alexis isn't purposefully trying to troll, perhaps he's thinking of the other adra scale ingredient which is NOT used for superb enchantments. But hey Alexis, if you want people to trust anything you say and not think you're a troll, please try harder to fact check before you post things as fact.

I never played all the way through on a lower difficulty, so this was my first time. Freaking awesome game! Still some rough edges, but it's got a hell of a lot going for it. The first time I try solo I want to do PoTD and Expert but not Trial of Iron yet. What do you all think is the easiest class to solo for a first solo run? A melee rogue?

Are you aware that you can cast Tactical Meld on an ally before combat? Your cipher's focus will then reset to its full starting value as long as a short moment (less than a second I think) passes before combat starts. I like casting this on someone who will be mostly auto attacking the same enemy as the cipher will. +20 accuracy is the same as if those tough enemies had -20 to all their defenses for your cipher. You can also have a Darkozzi paladin with Inspiring Liberation, which can be cast twice on the same ally and stack to give your cipher another 20 accuracy. With this much +accuracy, Borrowed Instincts should have a good chance of landing, which is another +20 for +60 total. Yikes! Maybe throw a Psychovampiric Shield in there for good measure, if you have enough Focus after your first Mental Binding. Edit: Now, I did beat Adra Dragon with a full party on PoTD fighting all the adds at once, and not trying to perma-CC the dragon or exploit super-long range. This was honestly the only fight in the game where I've seen fit to cast Pain Block on both my tanks. But with a party of four, the CC approach might be a better bet.

1) Consider beating the game first: As gkathellar points out, it'd be a big jump no matter what, and there will be certain strategies from easier difficulties that simply won't work on PoTD. However, finishing the game on Easy would at the very least let you know things like where the best items are found, what types of enemies you'll be fighting at which points in the game, and other pieces of intelligence that could help you plan better. However, some people enjoy the even greater challenge of more or less jumping in blind, so if that's you, good luck! 2) Dealing with bad pathing: One of the most common things a newish player might not fully appreciate or be ready for is the really bad pathing you'll have to deal with in a mostly melee party. My PoTD party doesn't have to deal with this as much because I have four ranged and two tanks, which are honestly more than enough tanks. In the few exceptions to this, more tanks won't help you, because what's more important is going to be CC and focus firing whatever guy will occasionally get past your tanks no matter how many tanks you have. So about the bad pathing, with more than two melee you will often encounter narrow chokepoints where only one or two party members can squeeze in and get right up to the enemy. This is just as big a reason as being more shielded from damage why reach weapons like Tall Grass are popular for, say, barbarians. I would have everyone (with the possible exception of your two dedicated tanks) carry a reach or ranged weapon in their alternate slot, which they can switch to and still be at least somewhat effective in chokepoints, whether the reach/ranged is their specialty or not. There are certain situations where you will, for example, see a door or other chokepoint ahead, and don't think you could get your whole stealthed party past it and into line-of-sight without being detected. For these situations, luring the enemy out is probably your best bet. Formations and pre-combat positioning are particularly important here, and it's also a good opportunity to use a well-placed trap. If you'd like more detailed tips on this kind of strategy, I recommend watching the video linked in this thread from someone who died on a blind PoTD ToI attempt, then scrolling down a few posts for my critique based on how I would have prepared for and played the same fight. 3) About melee rogues: gkathellar has something against melee rogues, but they do have the highest single-target DPS in the game. There are some awesome melee rogue builds and videos out there that show it's possible to (without cheating) kill the final boss on PoTD on a melee rogue solo in only two hits from each weapon (just two abilities used back to back). There is also no such consensus that Strength is more valuable than Dex. In fact, some argue for maxing Dex, Per and Res, dumping Int and Con, and not maxing Str, because Dex will make a larger DPS difference since Str is only added onto the huge natural boosts that rogues get to their damage as a class. 4) The importance of CC: In a full, balanced party, the huge single-target DPS of a melee rogue is by no means necessary, and it's not like you're hurting for more melee characters lol, so he would just be one good option. I'd personally take him over a DPS fighter, but to each his own. A more important consideration for a balanced party, as gkathellar and I agree on, is strong CC. A wizard or cipher would both be good for this. A cipher's CC is strong and fast-casting, and can make a huge difference especially at the start of a fight, but it relies on Focus so can't always be cast. A wizard's spells can be cast anytime the wizard is not CCd himself, as long as you have the appropriate spell in his grimoire and have casts remaining, which can be easily replenished out of combat. In any case, best to you! I am personally planning to go from full-party PoTD to solo/expert PoTD without Trial of Iron yet, and there would be no shame for you in doing PoTD without Trial of Iron first as well. But you've been warned, so as long as you realize the jump in difficulty will be very high, and you will almost certainly die on your first attempt, it could be a lot of fun if those kinds of stakes get your blood pumping. Have fun!

Two things: 1) Doesn't Penetrating Shot reduce attack speed rather than recovery speed? 2) Are you certain that Dex is added to the other recovery modifiers, or might it be multiplied at the end after the recovery modifiers have been added? I don't know which it is. I'm curious. I just assumed Dex would be multiplied at the end to everything, but maybe not.

Most damaging magic attacks Reflex. Most CC spells attack Fortitude, except for mind control spells that attack Will. There are a few spells that target Deflection. The tooltip lists which defense it targets. All physical attacks target Deflection though, so it's still generally the most important defense overall. His PC for that run was a hunter, though, which in a party of six wouldn't make sense to focus on Deflection for at the expense of DPS boosts. His allies were all companions, which some players (including myself) prefer for the RP aspects, even though you can't customize their stats (legitimately). While a custom frontliner might benefit from higher Deflection, it's not necessary for beating the game with a full party on PoTD, and stats don't make nearly as much difference as abilities/spells/talents and the tactics you employ. Second Chance items are a good idea, though. My priest has a robe with Second Chance that you don't get until mid-late game, and he has gone down a couple of times and I've been glad he could get right back up and have a chance to turn the tide. Also, on PoTD there are some things that can one-shot. Early game there are a couple of spells that can one-shot, like Necrotic Lance. Adra Dragon's breath and another move can one-shot. Most or all one-shots can be avoided if you know what to expect and cast the right spell/ability to counter and it lands (and spells miss a lot more on PoTD), but you will most likely have one or another character one-shot a few times playing PoTD blind like Lazarus attempted. Overall, playing on Hard can help prepare you for PoTD simply by teaching you where the best items are etc., but you can't really get an accurate feel for the difficulty of PoTD without actually playing it. With a strong party and good tactics, most of the game can actually be pretty easy even on PoTD, but there are a few fights that stand out and really require you to go in with a good plan.

I'm guessing Crowns of the Faithful, crazy powerful priest buff spell. It also improves Per and Int, but not as much. Note those screenshots do say "fully buffed."

Yeah, especially if you had to fight all the adds at once, I can't think of a class that could make short work of this. Dreamrider has some good ideas, but it'd still be a hell of a fight for any class, if even humanly possible lol.

Ok let me critique based on how I would have done that fight with your party. 1) Formation Basics: First, I would never just "announce my presence" without a plan. I would have set a custom formation for my party long before any fights. For your party, Eder would have been in the space with the crosshair, which means he will end up exactly where you click, with everyone else positioned relative to him, as follows: [] [] [bear] [Eder] [Palegina] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [][][][Durance][Grieving Mother][][] [] [] [] [Aloth] [ranger PC] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] Sorry that's not to scale, but it's the best I could do. Aloth and your ranger are furthest back because they are elves who get bonus accuracy against distant targets. Moreover, check the range on Durance's spells. Some of them are shorter than you'd expect, particularly his seals. The seals can be powerful, especially Repulsing Seal, but he has to have a clear path to successfully place it: I don't think he did in your video. Most of Grieving Mother's spells are long range, but Puppet Master is short enough that she'd also be running around too much (or blocked by other party members) if she were regularly trying to cast it from the very back. Your ranger's abilities have a shorter range than her auto attacks, which is why she couldn't get them off, but keep reading for other advice to help with this. Note that if you hold down the right mouse button and move it with your party selected, instead of just clicking on the ground, your formation will rotate and you can position them at the orientation you want. I bound the Q key to select my whole party, so I can do this quickly. It's conveniently close to the 1-6 keys for selecting individual members. 2) Pre-Combat Positioning: Now that we have the formation basics in place, let's talk about how to take advantage of formations for a smart pre-combat positioning plan. In this case, notice that there is a breach in the wall, which is like a doorway. While stealthed, I would have rotated my formation so that it lined up against the broken wall, with my frontliners facing southwest toward the intact wall. The point is that your front line should be just behind the part of the broken wall left standing, just out of line of sight, which will force the enemies to round the corner and fight where you have no pathing or range issues. Those ended up being a huge part of your problem on this fight. 3) Traps (optional): If you'd ever like to use traps, this is an example of the best candidate for one. Make sure your mechanic, still stealthed, places one right on the corner the ogres will round, and falls back into position immediately afterwards. Since traps have a small radius, this is the best way I've found to ensure they are actually triggered. If she can't pull this off, more Stealth would probably help, or perhaps a move speed item/potion. Generally I tend to give everyone 3 Athletics, 10 Lore (except 10 Mechanics for one member), and put the rest in Stealth. 4) Start-of-Combat Buffing: Finally, this is when you should unstealth and wait for them to come to you! This is the best time to buff: preemptively! Given that Pallegina has Zealous Endurance, Durance should cast Blessing first. He should follow that with Holy Radiance, assuming he has it talented with Inspiring Radiance, which he should: it's a special snowflake among spells in that its accuracy bonus stacks with that of other spells. Buffs of the same type from spells other than Inspiring Radiance don't stack with each other, which means that your Armor of Faith suppressed Pallegina's aura and only increased your party's DR from +3 to +4: not worth the cast. Meanwhile, Aloth could cast Merciless Gaze followed by Eldritch Aim, which are probably worth it for the tougher fights. From level 9 (when level 1 spells become Per Encounter) he should be casting Eldritch Aim at the start of every fight, and from level 11 (when level 2 spells become Per Encounter) he should typically start with Merciless Gaze, since it has the longer duration of those two self-buffs. (Alternately, you could have fought these particular ogres by going around and approaching from the south side IIRC, but there will be situations where the luring element in the above strategy is your best bet.) 5) Staying Informed and Engaged as a Commander: Pause when the enemies are in place. Make sure each of your tanks/offtanks is is attacking the enemy closest to it, and that no enemies have slipped around to hit on your back row. If one does slip by, your best bet is usually to have Grieving Mother cast Mental Binding on it and focus fire it down. If things are looking clean, you either want to pick a druid for your DPS to focus fire, or possibly the enemy that the bear is attacking, since your ranger and pet get combat advantages if they are attacking the same enemy. Take care not to interrupt any party members in mid-cast, say, by commanding them to move or auto attack an enemy. You can tell if a party member has finished casting and reached the recovery stage, because the icon around the spell will still be glowing for a moment as he recovers, but the available spell count in that rank will have gone down. You can also tell at a glance generally what all your party members are doing by looking at the little circle to the left of the health bar over their heads (not their portraits). If they're idle, it will be blank. If moving, it'll show feet. If auto attacking, it'll show a sword, whether they are melee or ranged. If casting, it'll show the spell's icon. With both auto attacking and casting, a bar below their health bar will start at full and shrink from right to left, and the action takes effect when it gets to zero. Sometimes your PC/allies will give up after trying to cast a spell unsuccessfully for a moment (because of range, pathing, or line of sight), but sometimes they will be very stupid and keep trying the same thing expecting different results, so you really do need to stay alert as their commander. That said, if their casting has been interrupted due to being CCd, they will typically resume casting when the CC ends. It's usually best not to touch them in this case, unless a change in the situation calls for it (e.g. enemies have moved and you'd rather delay a spell to reposition it). 6) Tips for the fight itself: Suppress Affliction is absolutely a game-changer. Yes, it doesn't last forever, but it doesn't need to. Keep in mind that you have multiple casts per rank available to you, so for a tough fight, you can chain it so Durance refreshes it whenever it's about a second from wearing off. About Insect Swarm: Sickened is the least of it. The nasty part about it is that it just grinds and grinds away at your endurance and health. That's why no amount of healing could save you. In most fights, you don't worry about your health because it lasts longer than your endurance. In that fight, your healing became more and more futile as health was getting low enough to start graying out a character's portrait. What that indicates is the fact that your endurance can never be higher than your health. So, as your health becomes lower than your normal max endurance, your temporary max endurance also decreases with it until they both reach zero. So, Suppress Affliction is your best friend for these fights. For emergencies to prevent someone's death that is still about to die, priests also get a mid-high level spell called Barring Death's Door. Druids have the Beetle's Shell spell, which can be useful for the rare fight that poses a threat to a tank. I say "tank" because it prevents action, and just when things are toughest is usually when you want your DPS to be doing their worst. As others have suggested, CC is your other best friend. You would have been well-advised to be pausing regularly and checking the remaining CC duration on enemies, and trying to keep them perma-disabled. I tend to prefer Slicken when I need a large area CCd, Mental Binding for its quick cast and DPS boost when I need to focus fire and kill a single enemy fast, and the priest's Repulsing Seal when I prefer a very long duration on a small radius. I hope that helps your future plays!

To me, reloading slower while moving makes RP sense, and I tend to like mechanics that add to tactical considerations as long as they make RP sense. So if you were really agile and really good at multitasking, I guess you could theoretically reload a small weapon just as fast while running, but something like an arquebus or arbalest? If they wanted to make it totally realistic you wouldn't be able to reload these while moving at all. Disengagement is something from D&D (attacks of opportunity), which I think makes a little bit less sense. Would you really be able to instantly attack no matter where you were in your current swing, just because an enemy is leaving and presumably has his back to you? I don't think so. I think, in reality, an enemy stepping away would only present a good opportunity to strike if he actually has his back to you, and if he isn't moving away so quickly that your blow wouldn't end up reaching him. To the OP : First off I only have my two tanks and the rest of my party is ranged, so I less often have that chokepoint issue. For you, I'd recommend giving at least one of your melee either a reach or ranged weapon to switch to for these situations. Even if it's not their specialty, they could still do a good portion of their normal DPS when bottlenecked. I actually have decent stealth on my party, so I can normally get into pretty good pre-combat positioning. Some people prefer letting the enemies come, and some of these players actually start with an "alpha strike," meaning a shot with a ranged weapon before they switch to melee, while they wait for the enemy to come. This is too much micro for me personally, but to each his own. Now, when I see a tight corner ahead and I can plan properly, I will definitely set a trap and lure the enemies out, if I'd be unable to get my whole party through the door before being detected. Some people complain about the small range of traps, but the trick is to set one right at the side of the doorway or chokepoint which is the corner they will be rounding. It helps if at least your mechanic also has a few points in stealth for this. Even better if you give everyone a few in stealth, maybe more for your frontliners. This is quite doable. You can get by with just 3 Athletics for everyone, and Survival is pretty weak, so it's certainly feasible for each character to get 10 Lore or Mechanics and a few points in Stealth as well.

That's certainly a valid way to play, with maybe the excitement of having to be alert all the time to avoid doom, although the double speed I find makes scouting not too slow. You are also likely to miss a good number of hidden items, some of which are uniques or rare items like the good gems for some of the best enchants in the game. Sometimes something looks obviously suspicious and like something you should check under, but other times there is no easily identifiable giveaway.

I can finally look at AD kill videos as I've just defeated it for the first time! It was on PoTD with a full party of companions, no food, only a weak stronghold resting bonus, and fighting everything at once aggroing the dragon first. I also didn't try to perma-CC the dragon, and none of my characters have the 12-yard range of a bow either. I found it to be a satisfying challenge for me, taking a few attempts (and a few tank resurrections) before I prevailed. So now I can join in on the AD discussions... Good discussion in general, but I wanted to emphasize this point, which was my experience as well. Kaylon mentioned he used the console, but I don't know if his experience was partly due to that, or if these mechanics were the norm in an earlier version and got fixed at some point. I will give him credit for cleverness in learning (possibly discovering) and using exploits that may no longer be possible, but the whole point was to make the fight itself trivial, and I would have considered this a cheesy way to do that even if/when it was possible without console commands. One thing that caught my eye is that his superb clothing would have required a scale from the dragon he was fighting to enchant legitimately. Another thing I noticed is that he had two active effects listed on his character sheet with generic names that gave the bonuses you might expect from a shield with the Herald property. I don't know what that's all about. To be fair, I am probably coming into this discussion too late, where it may have at one time been relevant as a way (which no longer seems to work) to trivialize an encounter that would otherwise be very challenging, if possible at all, for a ranger to solo.

I like your advice for the two companions in question, but as far as this statement, speak for yourself lol. I wrote about my experience above. It was so bad, I figured the console commands probably weren't something the devs were even worried about, which is why I haven't made a bug report about it. I couldn't in good conscience recommend to a new player that they risk their game save this way. Well, I think we've convinced Bartlebooth that he doesn't need to worry about companion stats anyway, so it seems like a moot point for him now. To expand about great cipher skills that even Grieving Mother can rock with, here's some that you'll want to keep an eye out for and make sure she takes, in general order of lowest level to highest: Mental Binding, Ectopsychic Echo, Tactical Meld, Borrowed Instincts, and Amplified Wave. I consider those all must-haves that she still regularly uses at max level. Mental Binding is a CC and DPS-boosting enemy debuff, Amplified Wave is a huge radius CC + raw damage power, Tactical Meld and Borrowed Instincts will raise her accuracy through the roof, and Ectopsychic Echo will remain a very high DPS source even at max level. Target a summon with it, march the summon around behind enemy lines, and watch everything melt while GM can resume shooting and regaining Focus. Pain Block can also make the difference between life and death in the very toughest fights in the game, even though decently-built tanks can honestly become practically invincible in all but a small handful of fights from midgame on. Have fun!

We going to get companion attribute respec in 2.0 update? This was in no way promised by the devs. I remember one thread from just after the planned Perception change was first leaked. A dev responded to my request for a respec option, saying it was one idea that had been considered, but that he couldn't say whether it'd make it into the expansion, because it would require significant work and they have a lot of other ideas to consider. This was in reference to the idea of a one-time respec to allow players to adjust their builds to the planned Perception change. There was no mention of companions. We have no idea whether the devs have even decided it was worth implementing a respec option for the expansion, let alone the details of how it would be implemented.

So you're complaining because you chose to power through the game, being much lower level than the average player would against a given enemy, and your spells are missing? This is a choice you made, and it comes with its own set of rewards and consequences. You realize, though, that your accuracy increases as you level? Not being great against wolves/lions/bandits at low level makes perfect sense to me. If you were to suddenly venture out into an African savannah, with little prior shooting/hunting experience, would you expect to hit every lion before it tore you to pieces? With auto attacks being pretty dang decent in this game (which may be all you need for easy enemies), I don't personally see a significant balance problem.

Overall I agree with the above two posters. The only half-compelling reason I could see to respec the companions is to achieve that feeling of "perfection," or to try to get as close to it as possible in this game. As stated above, that's not necessary to do even on PoTD, but if you'd rather seek "perfection" and control over attribute spreads, you can always hire adventurers at an inn. Given that the game is beatable on PoTD with all companions aside from your main, I'd personally rather have their backstories, banter, and dialogue interjections along with me. You just can't have the best of both worlds. It's meant to be that way, you know, because the attribute spreads of companions were designed to make RP sense, rather than to be optimal but unrealistic.

The link you gave tells you how to do it without the IE mod. Scroll down to "31. Utility." Toward the bottom it lists the AttributeScore command. Now, have I encountered problems trying to change things even without the mod? You bet, in 1.0.6 moreover. The first time I ever tried to use a console command, it was simply to remove the Hold the Line talent from my two tanks and add something else for each in its place. I tried over and over, and it bugged or glitched something every time. The glitches did not go away by traveling to a new area, or by saving and reloading. The glitches were that a line on the character sheet would become corrupted with garbled text. Furthermore, the talent I'd try to add in its place wouldn't get added successfully. Ok, sometimes I'd successfully add Cautious Attack to one tank, but adding One-Handed Style to the other wouldn't work. It wouldn't complain that the command was invalid, but nothing would happen and the talent wouldn't get added. So, after that, I just continued to restart my whole game any time I learned something new about the game mechanics and realized I'd been building a suboptimal party. Now I'm in Act 3 and got to the bottom of Od Nua, so I may actually successfully refrain from restarting again until I at least beat the game once. I don't think I'll ever trust my saved game to the console commands, though. Let's keep letting the devs know of our interest in a respec option in 2.0. Last I read from a dev, there were no guarantees the feature would make it. That said, if it's going to be more than a one-time respec for people whose builds will break from the upcoming Perception change, I think it should disable achievements and be unusable with expert mode. Alternately, they could implement some very high in-game cost to using it, or otherwise severely cap the number of times it can be used.

You're most welcome. Beholders... there aren't any creatures very similar in appearance or background, I just meant in the types of powers they have. Beholders tend to mind control and speak telepathically... Anyway, discovering the unique things about this game is part of the fun, so that's as much as I'll say about that!

Right, and then you have spells like Miasma of Dull-Mindedness (mage), Painful Interdiction (priest) and Tanglefoot and Nature's Mark (druid) that all stack for some really major debuffs. On my max level mage, I usually open with the crit-boosting self buff that lasts a long time, followed by Eldritch Aim, and then my CC is going to be pretty effective, especially since my druid has been debuffing the enemy in the meantime. Oh, my cipher opens with Amplified Wave to give my mage and druid time to start shining with their CCs and AoE nukes. This game is supposed to be tactical. If you want a simpler game, there are plenty of those out there. If you want to be rewarded for thinking strategically, that's one of the things PoE was designed to do.

It sounds like you've got good ideas to start having fun with PoE. I won't spoil anything here, but you'll be interested to discover some twists in both the story and the enemy types that make this game unique. So when you mention demons and beholders, there will be enemy types that wreak similar types of havoc to your party, but it'll be fun to discover what forms they take and what roles they play in the story. BTW I'm Nobear. Theurgist is my title that's based on how many posts I've written. Peoples' names show above their titles. About skills: You will eventually have more skill points on your characters than you need just to get them to 10 in one skill (like Lore or Mechanics). I've found it very useful to have 3 Athletics on all my characters. This will let them avoid a few (but not all) of the injuries they could get from failing Athletics checks. It also minimizes the combat fatigue gain. Basically, a character with 0 Athletics will soon get a Fatigue debuff that grows in severity over time and is really bad to fight with. 3 points means you will usually only get Fatigue when you travel long distances, and hardly ever by fighting. Then there is Stealth, which I'm personally a fan of having at least some of on all my characters, a little more on the frontliners than the back row. It will help you steal things of course, but it will also help with pre-combat positioning. Your ability to get into a good position at the start of a fight can make a bigger tactical difference than you might think. Not everyone puts points in Stealth, but I find it better than the alternatives. Survival unfortunately isn't very strong in this game. It only increases consumable duration by 5% per point. Another thing you might find useful to know about skills and stats in general is that the ones on your main character are sometimes checked in dialogue to determine which options are open to you for responding to a situation. Many of the scripted events, unlike dialogue, allow you to choose a party member to perform an action. These scripted event checks are more often physical (e.g. Str, Con, Dex stats and Athletics skill), where the significant dialogue choices tend to more often be mental (e.g. Res, Per, Int stats and Lore skill). About your fourth member: If you're playing with four members, a ranger could be a great choice to put another body on the battlefield. Yes the pet can die quickly in certain situations, but on normal it shouldn't be too bad. If you choose a bear pet and the Resilient Companion talent, he won't be so bad as an offtank. I'd suggest making a custom formation that helps your paladin tank most of the enemies, with the pet slightly off to the side to catch the remaining ones. This setup would have the advantage that your ranger can still do good DPS while adding a workable offtank for normal difficulty. I have not played a Monk, so I will let someone else talk about monks. Edit: There are situations in this game where you can choose to fight a potential enemy or side with it. Even as a completionist who normally likes to kill everything, there are definitely situations where it may be more advantageous to let someone/something live. This game allows you to make these decisions yourself, either based on what you think will be more advantageous, or based on RP or what you feel like doing. Enjoy!

I think your post is full of good advice, but I'd like to mention that my cipher has Mechanics 10, and there are certain traps she can't disarm in the lower levels of Od Nua. I know there are gloves that boost Mechanics further, but I decided that copying the steps to unrandomize "random" loot was a bit too cheesy for me, so I didn't do it and haven't found the gloves. The scrolls that boost skills are also very rare and cannot be crafted. Thankfully, the few traps I've found so far that I can't unlock are not deadly if I keep my party back and send my tank to trigger them.

Welcome! 1) Full vs restricted party size: I have not seen any advice for a four member party over a full party. It depends on how much of a completionist you are, of course. I like to kill every enemy (except when there's some advantage to not killing them), explore everywhere, unlock everything, and do every task and side quest. My full party of six reached max level early in Act 3 (the game has four acts). I've read that not everybody playing a full party reaches max level by the end of the game, but it seems to me like you'd have to skip quite a lot of content for this to be the case. 2) Gaining XP: The largest chunks of XP are going to come from quests, especially advancing the main quest. There's a stronghold you will unlock by the end of Act 1, and one of the upgrades to it will give you access to bounties that also give lots of XP, but you'll probably want to save these for your last few levels because some of them can be very tough. You gain XP indirectly by killing monsters. It's not actually for killing them, but for making progress filling in their info in the bestiary, which happens as you fight them. You also gain some XP for exploring and unlocking things. 3) Any class can unlock things, but some classes receive a bonus to Mechanics, which is the skill that determines what you can and can't unlock. It also (surprisingly) affects what hidden objects you can find by stealthing, making the skill very powerful to have on one character. The only advantage a rogue will have here is that his +2 Mechanics starting bonus will allow him to either get a higher total Mechanics score with the same skill point investment (gained as you level), or save some points that he can put elsewhere. 4) Your fourth member's class: If you're still determined to play with a party of four, it would probably be viable below PoTD difficulty. The PoTD solo runs tend to skip most fights in the game, as some of them would be very difficult on PoTD without a full party. So if you still want to play with four, I think your idea of a paladin tank, mage CC and druid DPS is very good. If I had to pick just one more, I'd take a cipher. My PoTD party has all of these, plus a priest and a fighter as a second tank. Below PoTD, you should be able to get by in most fights with just one tank, but there will definitely be situations where enemies are coming at you from two or more directions at once, and you'll have some challenge keeping things controlled. Well, the CC mage should help there, but the cipher's CC really synergizes nicely with the mage's. Your mage can cast Slicken for a decent-sized area of enemies, and your cipher can use Mental Binding to paralyze a single foe. A paralyzed enemy dies a lot faster due to the debuffs that go along with the CC, and Mental Binding is fast-casting, making it perfect to use on either a caster or an enemy that's running past your tank to attack your weak members. At max level, a cipher can start every fight with a ridiculous power called Amplified Wave, which both CCs and deals raw damage to all enemies in a huge area around an ally (like your tank). That said, the mage's CC will still be useful, as the cipher's powers depend on a mechanic called Focus, so can't always be cast. (I've written more extensively about ciphers in another post if you're interested.) Mages also get a high level spell that AoE petrifies, which is like paralyze, but also greatly increases the damage they receive. 5) Compensating for a lack of a priest: I use my priest mainly for buffs. He has a lot of buffs and they're nice, but not strictly necessary. Priests also do have a spell I love to spam at high levels (when your low level spells become Per Encounter) called Iconic Projection, which heals all allies and deals cold damage to all enemies in a long and wide line in front of the priest, but you can certainly get by without it if you have a druid spamming those good early damage spells at high level. The other thing I really value in a priest is Suppress Affliction, to suspend some very bad effects you will eventually start to encounter pretty often. However, there's a ring that has this exact same spell, so hold onto it if you're not going to use a priest. You may not use it all the time, but switch to it when a fight calls for it. The Lore skill is great to level on anyone (some would say everyone) aside from your mechanic. This will allow these characters to use scrolls, some of which do AoE healing like the priest's spells, although the area will be somewhat smaller than the equivalent spell cast by a priest. Overall, this game offers a lot of freedom to play how you want, especially below PoTD, but even at PoTD once you get familiar with the ins and outs of the game mechanics and develop good strategies for different situations. Have fun!

I took Unbroken on Eder, then I found the adra plate armor with second chance, and I'm half wishing I had chosen a different ability lol! Oh well, now I know for next play through.

If you want to build a main that's optimal for both combat and dialogue, yes. A caster main could get pretty high Resolve if they max Str Dex and Int and dump Per and Con, but the lack of Per would make him significantly less, well, perceptive, in dialogue. Int I'd say would come next in dialogue importance after Res and Per. That's another thing speaking in favor of a paladin tank main since they can get high scores to Res, Per and Int (and benefit greatly from these both in and out of combat), and they don't have to dump Str or Con to do it, just dump Dex. That's not to say the physical stats are never checked in dialogue, they just tend not to be necessary to get optimal results through dialogue. There are, by comparison, cases where you can get a better quest reward, for example, by passing a high check on a mental stat. The significant physical checks in the game seem not to be in dialogue, but in scripted events where you can select the party member you'd rather have perform the action. Stepping back, though, no such differences in dialogue have such a drastic effect on this game as to make it seem like a completely different game, as was the OP's experience with Planetscape. You wouldn't be totally crippled by making your main low on the mental stats, you'd just occasionally have to deal with something "the hard way" or not get quite as good an outcome for a quest.