Boeroer

Try Whispers of the Endless Paths (WotEP) with Offensive Parry(!) as a Steel Garotte/Trickster (basically any combination with Steel Garotte that gives good defletion bonuses will work, but Trickster is a great mix of dmg bonuses and deflection bonus). You need to stack deflection as high as you can (Resolve, Bracers of Greater Deflection, Cloak of Greater Deflection, Nomad's Brigandine, Deep Faith, Entonia Signet Ring and so on) and use CC and debuffs to lower enemies accuracy (Inspired Beacon, spells from other party members like Devotions for the Faithful and Desponent Blows and such). Pick Riposte, too and Presistent Distraction. Stack AR as high as you can, too (with passives like Inspired Defenses, Stoic Steel, Exalted Endurance, Blunting Belt etc.). Don't pick too many strikes from the rogue tree - you want to spend most of your Guile on Mirrored Images and Llengrath's Displaced Images (to keep up the Defenses). Instead use passives like Persistent Distraction, Deep Wounds and Deathblows. One or two strike abilites are ok though because with WotEP you can apply stuff like Arterial Strike or so in an AoE (cone) to all enemies inside that AoE. The trick is that Offensive Parry triggers not only on 100% of melee misses but also dazes the enemies. This results in -4 PEN - which is great to let enemies severly underpenetrate but also unlocks the draining of the Steel Garotte automatically. Offensive Parry and Riposte do stack so often you will "retaliate" twice. The draining is very potent - especially if you are surrounded you can dish out a lot of damage "passively" and getting healed without actually doing anything. You can cast Inspired Beacon to unlock Deathblows for all your parries (its +40% dmg stacks with Sneak Attack and Deathblows) and even use Sacred Immolation without too much risk - the draining + Lay on Hands usually make sure you won't die from it. If you have a Priest with Salvation of Time you can also prolong the delfection bonus of Escape (+50). It's not like a super turtle tank - but it's combines a lot of tankyness with great damage. You have to be attacked in melee though to make it shine - so melee mobs are the most fun. Against single foes you won't profit that much from the parry (but still a good effect) - but you are still a tanky guy with the damage output of a rogue. Switching to another Great Sword will improve your single target damage then. For example Karabörü.

Can you show me the wiki entry? It is clearly wrong and I want to edit it. I can only find this passage here:

3. Show him your your opening post, have a great laugh together and then invite him to some Sex on the Beach and maybe Screaming Orgasms. After that we would be in the right mood to write an entertaining essay about people who can't tell the difference between annoyance, offendedness and sexual harassment.

Wait - wasn't it "Anal Minmaxing Fools"?

Fighter/Ranger can be neat with Karabörü. Due to the Ranger's high ACC and the Fighter's Disciplined Strikes you can crit frequently which can trigger a cone-shaped AoE attack from Karabörü. Combine with Clear Out! There's also the Great Sword "Effort" which has a raw DoT lash which unlocks Predator's Sense automatically like in PoE. Whispers of the Endless Paths can be good if you combine its Offensive Parry (riposte 100% on enemies' melee misses) with Stalker (+5 deflection, +1 AR), high RES, deflection gear (bracers and cloak), Vigorous Defense, Conquerer Stance, Superior Deflection and Beast's Claw. The cone attack of the sword can get you multiple stacks of Beast's Claw per attack and the increased defenses make it easier to parry (or with other words: let enemies miss).

By the way: "Sexual Archetype Force" is the name of my new Manowar coverband.

Ah right. Forgot about that little detail.

ROFLMAYO - the most hilarious thing I read all day. Even comes before "Somebody asked if I'm dating someone before making an inquiry about my sexual orientation and now I feel harassed and offended".

Why did the Chanter cross the street?

Sorry, had to edit my post above heavily because of formatting nonsense with the spoiler/img tags. Now it should work properly.

The only reasons to go Single Class Rogue are Vanishing Strikes and Gambit. And maybe Kalakoth's Freezing Rake for Trickster. Vanishing Strikes because its invisibility will not break(!). This means as long as it lasts you can do free Backstabs (and Assassinations as Assassin). Its base duration is rahter short, but you can prolong it with lots of stuff: Salvation of Time, Ooblit pet, lots of INT, items and food which prolong benefical effects and so on. So basically you will dish out lots of damage while being untouchable. It's quite expensive though so you can't spam it. That's where Gambit comes in: Gambit will refund its Guile cost if you crit. It's a Full Attack so it's best to use two weapons for having the chance to crit twice. If you even use a weapon with multi-projectile or multihit attacks like Sun & Moon or Hand mortars then it's rel. easy to do a lot of Gambit attacks because you will have a lot of chances for refunds. Gambit also gets a damage bonus based on the Guile you have left. Funnily enough Gambit refunds Guile "internally" when you crit while using it but will cap the refund to 4 afterwards. But while your Guile climbs up internally so does the dmg bonus. I had mortar shots with Gambit gettng over +200% dmg (just from Gambit alone) because I shot at a lot of weak enemies with an invisible Assassin (because I activated Vanishing Strikes before). The other PL8/9 abilites of Rogues are meh in my opinion and I would say that most Rogues are better off as multiclass for over 75% of the game. Here's an example of a lvl 20 SC Assassin with the setup I mentioned above (he kills the dummies really fast. Those have a ton of HP) :

What did Elric do again? Explain it to me like you would do to a five-year-old. I really liked that Brillant "fix" @Noqn suggested: Brilliant gives more spell uses like Grimoire of Vaporous Wizardry. Could be even +2 instead of +1 for all I care. And make Blood Sacrifice cap at x per encounter (maybe 3... or up to 5?), but let it give back +1 spell uses for all tiers simultaniously instead of that random regain we have atm.

Yes, I would try to just pick up Oswald. It also works if you didn't get the quest from Kahn before (like when you first sail to Oathbinder's Sanctum and then to Nekataka) so I guess it might also solve your problem (just don't nail me down on this ).

Eh shoot! I totally meant that and not Draining Touch.

It's not regeneration of resources per se which breaks the game. Else Cipher, Chanter and Monk would break it all the time. It's the very special situation where the replenishment effect restores an ability that prolongs the replenishment effect. Divine Retribution is totally fine. I would even argue that Rogue and Ranger desp. need some form of resource replenishment at higher levels to keep up with the aforementioned classes that already have replenishable resources.

If you don't want to use Empower to boost spells then by all means pick Bloodmage. In that case it's strictly superior. Doesn't matter if multiclass or single class. Helwalker/Bloodmage is doable but I wouldn't dump CON too much because at 10 wounds you can one-shot yourself with Blood-Sacrifice. Concelhaut's Draining Touch Corrosive Siphon is great in the earlier stages and later, once you get Wall of Draining you just need some good source of healing-over-time to be safe (Wall of Draining will prolong that). Blood Sacrifice generates a hell lot of wounds at higher levels. An very potent combo is Fighter/Bloodmage once you get Unbending: because Wall of Draining will not only prolong the Unbending status itself but also every instance of healing-over-time you get when you receive damage. That can lead to some hundreds to thousands of HP regenerated every 3 seconds. You become unkillable (save for one-shots), can cast Blood Sacrifice without risk at any time and recast Wall of Draining and all other spells endlessly. I personally enjoy SC Bloodmages most at the moment. But I also had great Geomancers, Battlemages, Sages, Spellblades and so on. So just go with what speaks to you most.

I do skip one or two or even all DLCs in a playthrough from time to time - once I hit lvl 20 the urge to go further may evaporate because I have proven to myself that character idea X works well - and that's it. So yeah: why not leave them out? I mean if one has already played them before and knows the content there's no big loss (unless you desperately want to use a certain item from the DLCs).

That's all somewhat correct, but the biggest problem is that most players will play a RPgame once - and if they even finish it that's unusual. So if you introduce elements like you suggested then there is the real danger that players form a party that doesn't work in some situatios. This might lead to frustration. Giving every class some form of single target dmg, AoE etc. and balancing all classes makes this less likely. So that's good for one-time players. But it's also good for players who replay often because you can build a class in many different ways that are still viable. What might be lacking is uniqueness and distinction then. I personally don't think that's a problem in Deadfire but it surely is the case that you can play the game successfully with any party composition. Which might feel more... mishmashy (is that even a word?). More little gimmicks that value unique aspects of the different classes would have been welcome though. Like getting rid of that cursed item without having to search a priest but have one yourself and whatnot Also giving parts of the game which are not combat more room and more interesting mechanics would be awesome. I personally don't like puzzles too much, but a few more could be nice in general I would assume. Deadfire (and PoE) don't seem to provide a nice "framework" for those out-of-combat things which you do in TTRPGs mostly (where only a small part is combat usually).

Praise to Wael, patron of the utterly confused. Behold his divine workings, admire her smooth subtlety, praise its encompassing perception and embrace their multifarious goofyness.

I don't really understand what's happening there. Why is the game skipping the enemies' turns (or not ending your turn)?

Good idea actually. Because I thought about how a nerf of Brilliant (+3 PL or whatever) would nerf the whole Tactician Subclass too much. But this way it's still great for non-caster classes as second class and okay for casters as second class. Power Pool classes don't have any prolonging abilities afaik so they can't turn Brilliant into an endless resource generator "for free".

I personally would always pick Balanced Shield: +1 Deflection per Wound, +1 Reflex per Wound instead of Outward Spikes: 20% Chance on being missed by a Melee attack to strike back instantly Because Outward Spikes is not a Full Attack like Riposte but pretty weak actually. Also defense bonuses have increasing returns - and having +10 deflection and +10 reflex (which stack with everything) is pretty great. The other options "Precision Striker" is not strictly better than "Pugilist" but I'll still take the first. Note that Tuotilo's bash itself counts as unarmed attack so it profits from both. I often use Swift Flurry and Precision Striker can help with that. Also helps to apply afflictions more reliably and helps to crit with Stunning Surge more often. +10% additive dmg bonus from Pugilist is not breathtaking. It simply means +1.65 dmg per hit with Monk/Monastic fists and +0.9 dmg per hit with Tuotilo's Palm. To me +5 ACC is more useful in general. But as I said there's not that much of a difference.

This is also why publishers/developers try to avoid releasing a game at (roughly) the same time as a direct competitioner.

Yes. It is wrong. I mean what were you thinking? It's obviously wrong... so so wrong... There are no transgender characters in Deadfire. Did you confuse "bisexual" and "transgender"? There's an early option to tell him that you are not interested. Pick it and he will stop to hit on you immediately and will never try again. Maybe there was too much curiosity on your part so you missed it? Lets do a test: Let's imagine Tekehu was a pretty girl, let's name her Brunhilde. Brunhilde: "Hey ekt0! Are you dating anyone?" etk0: "Uh yes, I'm dating Peggy from accounting." Brunhilde: "Oh too bad - I wish I had met you earlier, tehehe." *wink-wink" Would you imply that this is sexual harassment? If your answer is "no" then you are applying double standards. If your answer is "yes" then I'm asking myself how you want to achieve any sexual intercourse with another person without the help of Tinder... in addition maybe have a talk to somebody who actually got harassed - to put things in proper perpective. PS: I know: don't feed the troll. But I can't help it: I will take every opportunity to post some gifs of The Rock.

Of course Brilliant itself is not OP - as long as you assume that is has a finite (and not too long) duration. Salvation of Time itself is not OP either obviously: +10 seconds of any benefical effect is nice but really not jawdropping. It's the combination of both: A "replenish ability uses over time" (Brilliant) + B "extend time" (Salvation of Time) = C) "replenish ability uses, including the ones that extend time for replenishment" (infinite resource replenishment). It's a bit like recursion. You have to change either A or B to prevent C from happening. Doesn't really matter which one (if it's only about the outcome). However, judging from a software engineer's perspective I wouldn't want to introduce exceptions like "replenish ability - but only if that ability isn't x,z, or z". It's not a robust approach and it's also not easily explained to the player. It's more robust, systemic and straightforward to remove Brilliant's replenishment over time. Of course that's mostly helpful when there's still changes/additions to the system which is not the case atm. But still... bad practice imo. Besides that: how would you want to implement what you suggested? Brilliant is not refilling SoT/WoD directly. It merely restores spell uses for the respective spell tier. How would you make sure that all spells of that tier can get cast again after Brilliant got applied - but NOT WoD or SoT? Sounds very complicated rather than pretty simple - but maybe I'm missing something.