TheMetaphysician

Yeah, I'm using Kana too. I wanted to do one more run that would be a kind of preparation for POE 2, that is would be my "head-canon" run. So I wanted to use my favorite RPG class for my main character (paladin), favorite characters (Kana, Eder, Aloth) and the ones that would show up in POE 2 (Pallegina). But I'm happy to use the IE mod for stuff, including the 25% xp nerf and changing character classes so that I can use the builds I want with the characters I want. I'm going to try out the new option in the IE mod that lets chanters start with enough phrases to cast an invocation at the start of the fight, and I expect that will make Kana a powerhouse. I might actually use some of those invocations I never use, like the attribute buffing invocations! I've always built him as a tank with Dragon Thrashed (kinda like your build, without the charming emphasis), but I think I'm going to build him this time as a scroll-using, quick-switching gunner focused mainly on the fire lash chant and (later) the healing chant. I'm a little worried that I'm too heavy on support/tanky characters and light on dps, but that might be the best way to approach PotD anyway. I'm more worried that I'm light on intra-party synergy, which prompted my question. I really like your idea of using a knockdown-focused fighter with the Counselor. That would allow me to leave Eder as a fighter instead of changing him to barb. I was thinking of changing him to barb just because, like you've mentioned some on these forums, I find straight fighters kind of boring to play. That Golden Dragon build sounded like a blast (Dragon Leaping into a crowd and using HoF with a bashing shield sounds awesome). You mentioned that you found a fun way to play fighters -- charging into the back lines, acting as a monk-style disruptor -- but it sounded like that playstyle depends on Charge, which doesn't come until level 13. How did you build a fighter like that, and was it fun to play before level 13? Was that the same party as the Counselor? How close is that build to the Lady of Pain build (low-res and associated on-crit items, high attack-speed)? More generally, what have been some of your favorite, most fun multi-character (party) synergies in this game? The speed-character (monk/paladin/fighter) plus the cipher beam-spell is an obvious one. Others? Edit: that question about favorite party synergies is for anyone reading this thread, not just Boerer. I'd love to hear anyone else's favorites.

I'm going to use a version of this build for my next run. I love the build, because I always play paladins in RPGs (it fits what I like to imagine myself as in a fantasy setting), and I love the Sworn Enemy/Munacra Arret combo idea, together with the Darcozzi Forward Observer stuff with Marking and Coordinated attacks. I think I'm going to finally use Pallegina too, and use 2 paladins so I can skip a priest (which I've always found boring). I have a couple of questions I'd like to pick your brain on, though. First, I'm trying to figure out party synergies for this build; what characters fit best with this? What are the best dps/cc characters to capitalize on the Marking/Coordinated attacks combo with? I'm planning to use Zahua as a Juggernaut-type monk with on-crit triggered gear (shod-in-faith, sanguine plate, nature's embrace, swaddling sheet - love that stuff), use IE mod to change Eder to a barbarian and build him like your Golden Dragon build, use Pallegina as you've suggested with Penetrating shot, missile spells/scrolls, blunderbusses, scion of flame and fire spellbind items, and I'm debating whether to build Aloth as a melee wizard or your Hurtstacker build. Do any of those seem like especially good recipients of the coordinated attacks/marking bonus accuracy? Or are there other build types I'm missing that would benefit more? I want to maximize my party synergy; your builds have really helped me think through synergies between abilities on individual characters, but I'd love to hear what you think through cross-character synergies too. Relatedly, does marking/coordinating increase the accuracy of spells too? Lastly, do you think it would be possible to build Aloth to be able to shift as the situation calls for it between the melee wizard playstyle and the Hurtstacker playstyle (with the Golden Gaze, Blast, missile spells etc.), or are those incompatible? I'm trying to add up the abilities that are really necessary for both, and I'm having a hard time figuring out whether I could combine them. I like melee wizards, but I want to try the Hurtstacker stuff (plus the great synergy with the missileer version of Pallegina), and I only want one wizard. All PotD, upscaled content -- basically as hard as possible, without doing Iron Man.

Is the Annihilation property on weapons fixed? That's a big one, and I don't see it in the notes.

I doubt it is the same bug (though I'm computer-incompetent), because the mourning gloves/executioner's hood are supposed to affect the wearer. They are just supposed to heal the wearer, not hurt him.

On a hunch, I consoled in Executioner's Hood and tested it. It has the same bug. Supposed to give you 20 endurance per kill, hurts you on kill instead.

And Executioner's Hood has the same bug.

As per the title.

I was shocked to hear this, and thought "that can't be right!" I went and tested it, and I think you are right! I hadn't noticed it before, because I have sanguine plate on the monk with these gloves, so his health is often hidden from Frenzy, and he has a bunch of healing effects that counteract the damage (silver tide, shod-in-faith, veteran's recovery, ancient memory/beloved spirits on my chanter). I got rid of the healing effects I could and took off sangine plate, and it does appear that each kill hurts him a little bit. Sucks -- and makes that item suck. Has to be a bug. I'll go write it up in the bug forum.

This was a blast to follow. Thanks for writing it up!

Anybody know how to change the level of spells? I'd like to change reaping knives to a lower level so I can use it for more of the game. I assume I could use the unity assets bundle extractor somehow; is that right?

Anybody enough of a modder to know how to change the levels for spells? I'd like to mod reaping knives to make it an earlier spell level, so that I get to use it for more of the game. Anybody know anywhere I could look to find that info?

I'm playing the White March for the first time, and just met the Alpine Dragon at level 9 on POTD. Got my ass handed to me. If I leave him until WM part 2, will he still be there? Like, that map doesn't get overwritten or anything during the transition to WM 2, does it?

Each kill doesn't just refresh the duration on Mourning Gloves; it adds 20 second onto the existing duration. So with a 10 int character, if you kill three guys at once, you'll have 60 seconds of duration left on the effect. And Mourning Gloves bonuses, like the +5 to defenses and +10% to attack speed, stack with all other buffs, whether from spells or equipment. (I tested it and posted in another thread.) Really good! I love them on my monk.

Hey, it does get the damage bonuses from Sneak Attack and Deathblows! Apparently I was right the first time. Very powerful, especially in combo with that priest's painful interdiction that you are such a fan of. (I've taken your advice on that strategy.)

It also seems to apply sneak attack and deathblows damage mods. So yeah, great on a rogue. Edit: nevermind, I was misremembering this.

There is a way to toggle on the scaler using the console. And it doesn't disable achievements. Search the forums for toggle scalers and you'llfind it. If you can't find it, post again and I will tell you how.

I think normally it does. But the one from the cloak doesn't! It is the best stronghold item I know of, when you put it on a low deflection character. I put it on my low deflection monk with shod in faith, and that cloak goes off every fight and pretty much wins every fight it goes off in. Lots of damage, long duration stun, hits usually all of the enemies. It is now officially my favorite item. One time it went off when my monk was charmed, though. Killed my party and didn't touch the bad guys. Oh, and the wave reflects off walls. In small rooms it absolutely murders everything.

Issue: the crowd of angry villagers (with the Marshal) are still in front of my keep entrance even after I finished the Battle of Yenwood. The Marshal is also still in my Great Hall. I can talk to him and initiate the Battle; the cutscene happens and I can go through all the dialogue options, though the ones I've already chosen are greyed out. Then when I select the "charge" option, it loads the Yenwood fields map, which is empty (as appropriate, because I already fought the battle.) Not a big deal. Livens up my stronghold a bit.

That is an interesting, deep point. The "role-playing" we do in these games is not playing a realistic role; you are right about that. So what is it? I can only speak for myself. I think what I'm doing is playing a role as I would want it written in a fantasy book. I still remember the first time I played Baldur's Gate in middle school, and was totally blown away -- what blew me away is that I felt like I was somehow inside the fantasy books I loved so much. I think I've been trying to recreate that feeling ever since, which is probably impossible given my age and experience differences with middle-school me. And, of course, what happens in a fantasy book is quite far removed from realism. It has its own rules.

This is hilarious. Had me cracking up reading it.

Well, I guess it is both a tactical and a role-playing game. Hopefully those two elements reinforce each other and feed into each other. We eviscerate both parts if we make the game about just one or the other.

Yeah, I think it is just that role-playing games don't lend themselves all that well to replayability. We want new stories, new adventures.

This is a very good argument, Braven. I think it does show that a simple time-penalty is not a sufficient condition even for a "soft" fail, though it might be a necessary condition. So SilchasRuin's original idea is incomplete. I tried to handle that problem by adding the immersion-breaking condition, as many of your examples don't involve immersion-breaking. There may be other options here, too, to figure out what a "soft fail" might be. This is really interesting. I think you may be right at least that min-maxing that doesn't fit your view of your character (say, giving him 3 intellect when you think he is actually really smart) is a kind of failure, a failure to play the role. Lots of min-maxing and ideal character building doesn't violate role-playing, though, like just picking the best abilities as you level up and planning that out in order to synergize your party's abilities with each other. That's bad news for me, since I'm a min-maxer. But I find the idea of "soft failure" convincing enough that I'm open to the possibility that I've been playing the games somewhat incorrectly -- or, perhaps more precisely, I've been taking a game that is designed to be one thing (a tactical ROLE-playing game) and turning it into something else (a purely tactical game). But if I'm doing that, I don't get to complain that the design isn't to my liking, since I've wrenched the game away from its original purpose. It is like using the console to create characters I like (which I am currently doing, actually), and then being unhappy that the balance isn't right for those characters. If I turn this into a different game, then I am now the creator of this new(ish) game, and I am responsible for the balance issues and design decisions. I wonder if role-playing games automatically bring with them this issue of soft failure -- because one way to fail is to fail to play the role, and they have to give you freedom to fail in that way without giving you a game-over screen (which isn't really freedom). So it may be that the concerns you have will automatically apply to any role-playing game. Does that sound right? I'm not confident of that conclusion, but it feels right. One thing I've noticed about myself is that the more times I play through the game, the less I'm interested in the role-playing and the more I try to turn it into a purely tactical game. That's because I've heard the story already. I think we compulsive re-players just have to remember that this isn't supposed to be a purely tactical game; it is a role-playing game, and the design is appropriately focused around that. If we treat it as a purely tactical game, some things which are designed to feel like failures won't feel like failures to us (like abusing resting). But that's a problem with us, not with the game. Thanks for this conversation! I'm learning a lot and getting to think through why I love these games so much and how best to play them in the future. I think I'm going to go back to my playthrough and try to get into the role-playing better than I have this time through. That might actually enhance the tactical challenge.

This is helpful, and I think you make fair points. I agree that the lines are somewhat blurry; I think that was actually SilchasRuin's point when he drew a distinction between "hard" failure (a game over screen that forces a reload) and "soft" failure (having to backtrack to town to rest). It isn't absolutely hit-you-over-the-head obvious that the "soft" failure is a failure at all, which is probably what makes the lines, as you said, "blurry." What he really helped me see is that the soft failure (like having to backtrack to rest) IS nevertheless a kind of failure. He said it is a failure because it is a time sink (which is basically all the hard failures are anyway; a 'game over' screen just forces a fairly quick reload, after all). But I also think it is a failure in an RPG context because it is immersion-breaking, just as a reload is. You have very nicely pointed out that backtracking to rest and then coming back to no change is not very realistic. So if you are forced to that, you've had to break character because of your battle-managing failures. And that's a kind of failure. I wonder if RPGs really are better set up for these kinds of "soft" failures, and those of us (I'm guilty here too!) who are min-maxers and play Trial of Iron are sort of trying to turn an RPG into a non-RPG tactics game with only "hard" failures that are relevant. Hmmm...I'd have to think about that more.

Regarding the resting mechanic, I recommend checking out a series of posts by SilchasRuin on an old thread: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/76011-lets-talk-class-balance. I found his posts cumulatively to be an utterly convincing defense of the resting mechanic. His posts begin on page 13 and continue for a while. Ignore his annoying, unsophisticated interlocutors. Posts #263, #265, #267, #272 are important, but the final paragraph of post #249 is especially important. (You only need to read those five posts. His is a really sophisticated take on the mechanics of this game system, the most sophisticated and insightful I've ever seen, and it is buried in the middle of an old forum thread. Pretty funny.) That paragraph in #249 helped me understand why I intuitively preferred RPGs with resting mechanics over RPGs where the resources reset after every battle (like Dragon Age Origins).