Boeroer

I agree that it would have been nice to be able to see the respective defense in those spell lists. For Deadfire there are lists of abilities (in another wiki though) which directly show the defense the ability has to overcome. Doesn't help you with PoE of course.

There are also other spells and abilities that target reflex but instead of damage, prone or stun cause a debuff like for example "hobbled". Especially the Druid has stuff like Tanglefoot (hobbles) and Nature's Mark (lowers deflection and reflex) that targets reflex. A stun effect targeting Reflex is more of an exception. Usually stuns (and also weakened, also sickened etc.) are defended by Fortitude. Effects that have illusion and 'mind' vibes often target will. But there are also some priestly fire spells that target will. There is no strict systemic rule to this. Honestly it's all over the place and depends a lot on the whole idea, in-game explanation and "lore" of that spell/ability. Like how does char X apply the prone effect? Does he swipe you off your feet? Then he targets reflex. Does he induce a dizzyness right into your head so you fall over? Will. Does he shove you? Fortitude. And so on. Sowithout lots of meta-knowledge (been there, done that) you cannot know which defense the enemy is targeting with a certain spell/ability. I would just dive into it and not overthink it. Most players restart after a few hours anyway because they understand the game mechanics a lot better then and have a better idea what they want from their character. My first ever char was a Fire Godlike Barbarian on normal difficulty. I scrapped him after some hours and restarted after Act I with a Hearth Orlan Rogue on PotD and so on...

Too far: maybe. Although in my solo Assassin/Bleak Walker run I never experienced this. But most of times I only stacked True Love's Kiss with Gouging Strike and Brand Enemy (maybe finished off some weaklings with Ring the Bell etc. before going invisible), retreated and then waited until the enemies dropped dead. I didn't switch weapons a lot nor did I cast a ton of stuff while I was retreated.

I surely didn't.

Reflex gets targeted by a lot of Area-of-Effect spells such as Fireball and so on. Have a look at this list for example (same stuff exists for Druid spells, Priest spells, Chatner invocations and so on and so forth). If you click on each spells you'll get a description which also tells you what defense it targets. List: https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Wizard_spells Individual spell (look at "Defended by") : https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Arkemyr's_Dazzling_Lights If you don't want spoilers then you can assume that most damaging spells that have an AoE and are not having a disabling component but rather deal direct damage will target reflex.

interesting. Well - for the case of this Bloodmage it wouldn't be a problem though because you can easily prebuff etc. first with Lover's Embrace still in hand and afterwards switch to another weapon, right after walking back in sight I guess.

Huh? Never heard about that. I just tried again and I can switch weapons just fine whenever I want (while invisible or later), no problem. Doesn't matter if I use Smoke Veil or potion. Maybe it's Pukestabber in your case? It has some buffs that work for all daggers (that are equipped) - and maybe on weapon switch it overrides True Love's Kiss or something. No idea. I just switched from Lover's Embrace to Watcher's Blade and nothing weird happened. Combat and DoT went on as expected.

Nice idea. That would have been fun.

It heals for 20 base. edit: that was close. By the way: you can cast Nature's Bounty with Spellshaping, giving it +1 PL. I don't know if that does anything though.

Ah, yes. I now remember that my last Barb/Monk had that Frenzy+Swift Strikes issue. How could I forget? Maybe because it was still useful to use both because of the +5 DEX.

Just checked Lover's Embrace + Potion of Invisibility on Edér in Fort Deadlight: combat did not end once True Love's Kiss was applied.

I've done a whole playthrough as Assassin/Bleak Walker with Lover's Embrace (also Gouging Strike and Brand Enemy) and never did the combat end prematurely. Granted most of the time I used all three on one enemy. I can check later if the True Love's Kiss is an exception. Yes, Lover's Embrace only works from stealth. But you can sneak up tp any enemy with 0 stealth with the help of Bounding Boots and the "cancel action before landing" trick. Important part is that once you applied True Love's Kiss (obviously with single handed usage for the +12 ACC) you drink the potion and retreat. Then the combat shouldn't stop and you can do whatever you like (out of sight). There are some spots where that can't work due to space limitations (e.g. Water Dragon). Other DoTs would also work but most of them don't last long enough to give you enough time for buffing up etc.

You can keep combat running endlessly without Berath's Challenge if you use DoTs like Gouging Strike, True Love's Kiss etc. Endlessly not really because at some point the "dotted" enemy will die - but you know what I mean. Shadowing Beyond and Arkemyr's BD won't work (they break on any DoT tick) but Smoke Veil will not break. You can run away (out of sight) and prepare stuff all day, then return. Obviously Smoke Veil is no option as SC Bloodmage. But Potion of Invisibility works the same, so you could use that: Hit enemy from stealth with Lover's Embrace, retreat a bit (Alacrity maybe), drink Potion of Invisibility and run out of sight. Then prebuff all you want and return.

Are there any speed buffs that get suppressed? Since stacking of speed buffs is different from PoE's (where it had increasing returns so the stacking was limited) I believe there are none that get suppressed. Or are there? At least I didn't encounter those. But I don't use comsumables besides food so maybe I'm missing something.

[open console] iroll20s [hit enter] [reopen console] levelUpSoulbind <character name, if player char just type 'play' and hit tab> LAX03_Robe_Armor_Soulbound_Robes_Of_The_Weyc [hit enter] [reopen console] iroll20s [hit enter] That will do it. It will deactivate further gatherings of "Berath Blessings" points though because that savegame will be marked as cheated.

Right. Except if you're still wearing your Gremlins-Pyjamas.

...he mockingly urged one month later.

*Aloth-voice* "Now that's unusual."

I'm not Obsidian but I'm confident enough to say that it's going to stay as is. Last patch was several years ago. They will not throw any more time and/or money at it. The mod access to PoE is rather limited so I also would not expect any modder to be able to do this properly (with a reasonable amount of resources). In the game options you can define auto-pausing. Maybe that can help you? I prefer turn based myself but it didn't take too long to adapt to the RTwP system of PoE. I guess you can have fun if you give it some time.

Play single class pick Vengeful Defeat, use Effort, Effigy's Husk and Mantle of the Seven Storms and roll with it. Addendum: I wrote about that several times now so I hope I'm not boring anybody but if you export a character with Ring of Reset you can have two. If you stack them in the stash they will refill their charges, giving you 3 knockouts+resurrection without suffering from an injury per encounter. Cheesy of course but it can be fun to play such a suicidal character then. You know with Leaping in, having Barbaric Retaliation, using Heart of Fury and triggering the occasional Vengeful Defeat + Effort AoE attack + Mantle AoE attack.

With the popular* German TTRPG "The Dark Eye" you have attributes like Strength etc. and once you do a roll (skill check for example) there are always three attributes involved (sometimes one is double like STR/STR/CON). You then roll three D20 (color coded for each attribute is best so you can roll all at once) and then use your skill points minus difficulty to keep the dice roll <= attribute so the whole roll is a success. I found that to be a rather nice system - albeit a tad complicated at first. *) Popular in Germany

Sure - you can work around that. But nevertheless it's a bit frustrating that you can't summon a phantom if you don't want to lose the little advantage your familiar is giving you (and for which you pay with a spell use - it's not free like some of the other subclasses' perks like Reflexive Mirror or Evoker's doublecast etc.). If the familiar was implemented like a second pet the conjurer wouldn't have that problem. And this little nuisance only comes on top of the other quirks I mentioned above: that PL bonuses don't have a lot of impact on summonings. You're not raising PEN, ACC, damage... only duration. So you get a familiar which either blocks a space for other summons or you can't use - and you get very little impact from the +2 PL for a good amount of your spells while facing the same drawbacks as all the other wizard subclasses. I don't think the Conjurer is a subclass that was well thought through. Same with the Transmuter's special perk by the way. Form of the Fearsome Brute is a nice idea but the implementation is rather bad. It's neither worth building around nor does it help you being a better Transmuter. It's just a gimmick. But at least most transmutation spells scale well with the bonus PL.

K

You can cast Chain Lightning on yourself. No walls needed. A higher lash than from Crackling Bolt is the result (most of times). Edit: Stormspeakers can also do it, but unfortunately the only playable Stormspeaker in the game has no head slot. Edit2: I have never checked if a Fury's "Storm's Rage" (1/encounter abilitywhile shifted) can be cast on yourself. Edit3: A Fury can cast Storm's Rge on herself when shifted but hehe: I forgot that a Storm Blight is immune to shock damage. But at least a Fury can cast a high dmg shocking spell on somebody with Deltro's Cage Helm on.

Yes, lashes do not multiply with each other - but still with the physical dmg roll. So basically like: (dmg roll + dmg bonuses) * (lash1 + lash2 + lash3). Separate PEN/AR issues ignored. To be fair everything pales in comparison to a prolonged, high value shocking lash from Deltro's Cage Helmet. Wizard is supernice in that regard because he can always shock himself (or party members) reliably. What I missed with a Bloodmage/Boar were some nice attack abilities. It's all about buffing up a ton and then just doing auto-attacks (besides Taste of the Hunt which Blood Sacrifice will not replenish). Stuff like Helwalker/Boar or Forbidden Fist/Boar is def. more fun to play for me. Forbidden Fist/Boar is also fun because you can run through your own Tanglefoot and get a lot of wounds because the rel. short-lived Hobbled afflictions expire all the time (especially with Clarity of Agony activated).