Boeroer

So weird those hats I swear 🤠

It's ok for 1 Bond, especially if you combine it with the hunting bow's modal. Base ACC but much faster recovery as log as you have Bond to spend. There's worse stuff to do with your Bond. Note that Takedown Combo also raises the damage of Damage over Time effects like Arterial Strike. So if you hit somebody with Arterial Strike first and then apply Takedown Combo the ticks of Arterial Strike will have double damage (as long as you don't hit the enemy again whioch would remove Takedown Combo). Same with Toxic Strike, Gouging Strike and so on. A great Assassin/Sharpshooter opening is with Watershaper's Focus + Blast by the way and then switching to something like a Hunting Bow or so. Also a Scout with Driving Flight should def. check out St. Omaku's Mercy or Veilpiercer and enchant them with the 50% chance to recover immediately on crit. Rangers have absurdly high Accuracy (if they wish), especially with Accurate Wounding Shot - and Driving Flight raises the chance to crit a lot more per shot. You can raise the dps significantly with those weapons against normal enemies. Essence Interrupter is a great Hunting Bow, too.

It's a separate entry in the combat log. So you won't find it listed in the dmg bonuses of your initial attack. Look a bit further down in the log and you should see an entry that lists the raw dmaage it did. It isn't dependent on the weapon damage (so weapon types like arquebus vs dagger don't matter) so it can't be listed under the weapon dmg bonuses anymore as it used to be. Instead it's a fixed raw damage bonus that scales with Power Level. It is better than the original one (because of Power Level scaling) but harder to spot. The conditions haven't changed. It's still: - have to attack from stealth or invisibility - needs to be a weapon attack from 2 meters distance or less.

Maybe Acina's Tricorn works? It works with Driving Roar and Mind Lance etc. Just a wild guess though. Also the pets that deal bonus ranged damage (Peter I guess is one of them iirc). They used to be a bit bugged and work with spells and stuff. Firethrower's Gloves do +1 Arcana.

Not really. There should be the usual dialogue sequence of searching and finding stuff - and the last thing you should find is the Voulge.

Fortunately there's FTL, so we don't need to have a discussion about what's the best video game. Not only for me, my sweet little innocent naif, but for everone - always and forever. I mean Planescape Torment... pfff. First of all the name is all wrong. If it's about torment its name has to be Painscape Torment obviously.

Hm, with hand mortars and Watershaper's Focus I get absurd dmg numbers because Gambit internally seems to build up a ton of Guile per crit, even exceeding max Guile, which translates into hugh bonus dmg (see description of Gambit which gains bonus dmg from remaining Guile) and only after the execution is complete the refund gets capped. That leads (or lead the last time I tried) to very high bonus dmg on the AoE hits - I got more than +200% often when hitting a lot of enemies. I could look it up in the combat log (with shift + hover etc.). With every crit the dmg bonus climbed up. Maybe I can even find a screenshot, I remember posting one... So I'd say Gambit is especially good with jumping AoE weapons like Fire in the Hole and Watershaper's Focus. At least it was with my SC Assassin back then. Nearly always I could use Gambit with 0 Guile investment from stealth with absurd dmg numbers piling up because of the inner workings of Gambit. It may be that this was changed but I don't think so.

Gambit also makes sense with any sort of AoE weapon (which boils down to rods and hand mortars) and blunderbusses. I mean single handed (for whatever reason). Sun & Moon with One Handed Style can also be viable in combo with Gambit - but that's about it I think. But generally speaking: yes. I never tried if the Chilling Grave from Grave Calling counts for Gambit if you kill a vessel during the execution of Gambit and the Chillfog then crits... Because for all other purposes it counts as weapon attack. 🤔

Usually TB titles don't have (a lot of) trash mob fights. Those are a thing in Action RPGs (where it's nearly all trash mobs) and to a lesser extent in RTwP RPGs. Because TB fights take way longer designers try to avoid meaningless encounters as fillers. In RTwP games players tend to do the "select all, attack opponent x" routine once fights become too easy. I don't see that as an advantage per se - but it takes less real time (not game time) since you don't have to issue a lot of commands via pausing. The outcome of the fight will be suboptimal - but who cares if you regenerate health and resources after every combat anyway (this was different in PoE where even the most laughable encounter could take away some precious health or spell uses). That's also why TB mode in Deadfire is too lengthy for some folks - because the encounter compositions didn't change to accommodate for the longer fights. Luckily Deadfire doesn't have a ton of trash mob fights (for a native RTwP game) so it still works ok. I'd generally say that people who like action games tend to prefer RTwP while players who prefer tactical/strategy games prefer TB. Funny then that RTwP plays less good on a console though. I mean if it's a party based RPG where you control all characters (unlike Outer Worlds and such). Also RTwP is pretty impossible to do as multiplayer version. Another reason why it's not the preferred option of most devs I'd wager.

Minjohr and An Nou fericit from horseback in Romania (dang it's cold up here...)!

I wouldn't say money is unlimited (there's no respawning) but after some levels you usually have more of it than you can spend in a meaningful way. Retraining is rel. cheap - so lack of money shouldn't be a problem.

You can retrain your character in every inn. That means you can set them back to lvl 1 and level them back up. It only costs a bit of money.

You don't have to go back to town, you can camp in the wilderness pretty much everywhere (except in towns where you need to go to the inn). Priests can achieve the same accuracy with certain weapons as fighters can so using a weapon is a valid option. You can look up the "preferred" weapon of every priest. It's a talent that gives them +10 ACC with certain weapons. E.g. Priest of Breath can use a Great Sword or a Mace to good effect. Note that all summoned and soulbound weapons are universal. That means they don't belong to a certain weapons focus group and also work with those priest talents, even if they are not a great sword, mace etc. Also read my answer to your other post - the one you made with the same question basically.

Pretty much. But all casters also have one or two per-encounter abilities which are mostly pretty good an can be used in every fight: Wizard: Arcane Assault (good), Grimoire Slam (meh). Priest: Holy Radiance (great if you upgrade it with Inspiring Radiance), Interdiction (great with Painful Interdiction). Druid: Spiritshift (great) Priests, Wizards and Druids are usually considered to be the most powerful classes in PoE because their spells can have massive impact on the combat and the per-rest mechanic can be used in a way that you can unleash you whole spell arsenal in difficult fights (especially after gaining some levels) while being able to do the easy fights without spells (or only few spells). Wizards' spells can be used very economically if you focus on summoned weapons. They are pretty strong and let the wizard contribute to a fight effectively with only one spell use. Priests have some very impactful party buffs, most notably Prayers and Devotions, that make encounters a lot easier. Druids same. So after gaining a few levels you will have a lot more spells than 2 at your disposal and you can try to only use as many spell as you really need. Spare the rest for later. Of course resting is cheap and if you're not playing Path of the Damned difficulty you can rest 4 times in a row to refresh spells. Also note that Wizards, Priests and Druids get a so-called Spell Mastery. That means: at higher levels you can pick a low-level spell from your arsenal (spell tier 1-4) that turns from per-rest into per-encounter.

Except if the answer is "FTL" of course. 😛

They are equal when it comes to ridiculous outfits though.

Belongs to the 90s: that depends heavily on the implementation of the TB combat. Deadfire's implementation isn't native so it's normal that it doesn't address all quirks. For example the fights have too many combatants in TB mode which makes them take forever. But Turn Based combat is the original way to play all major Pen & Paper Role Playing Games out there (on which cRPGs are based on). So if you "convert" a known Pen & Paper experience to a computer game it's the most natural thing to implement TB there, too. If you don't do it you have to change the ruleset (e.g. the attack speed mechanics). For players who also played Pen & Paper RPGs TB mode should be the most convenient way to play a cRPG. Because they know it. People who started with Infinity Engine games will feel that RTwP is the most convenient way to play. It's about familiarisation and what you're used to. RTwP leads to faster combat of course - especially if you let AI handle things - which is great if you have a lot of enemies and/or party members. But it also tends to be a lot more messy and obscure. That's the reason why Obsidian had to implement stuff like visual effects transparency on pause and take away a party member: it became too messy (higher difficulties with more enemies). One of the core complaints about PoE was how messy the combat was. Why was it messier than the infinity engine games? That has to do with another complaint that many (non-D&D-grog) players had with them: fighters, rogues etc. can't do much besides auto-attacking while casters get all the cool stuff. So in later cRPGs and also PoE those "mundane" classes got more active abilities. But having to execute more abilities in RtWP makes it more messy. You will pause a lot more and you'll also have a lot more vfx during fights. The more active abilites you have to trigger as a player and the more you have to pause the more the game gravitates to TB mode. You'll have dedicated phases for taking action and move and the following vfx fireworks which won't interfere with the movement and action taking of another character. Add some action points or something and you'll also have a more tactical approach vs. the more action-oriented one RTwP gives you. With a good AI you can help RTwP to regain footing: less pausing is needed, you loose less time and the combat feels more fluid again. But the AI has to be good so that the player doesn't feel the need to constantly correct its decisions. I personally prefer Deadfire with RTwP (without AI since it can't compete with my decision-making at all even if the scripting feature is awesome) but I can hardly see why TB combat in general should be inferior. Would Deadfire have come with TB mode as native implementation (and taylored encounter design etc.) I'm sure I would have used that. Because I would have learned to play the game that way right from the start. Here's an example of RTwP vs. TB from the same developer (Subset Games): "Faster than Light" uses RTwP while its successor "Into the Breach" has TB mechanics. It doesn't feel absurd nor like something from the 90s at all. It's just a game that works best with TB mechanics. Imagine "Battle Brothers" with its 12+ party members as RTwP game instead of TB. What a wild mess that would be. It wouldn't work. After all it boils down to personal preference. I guess if you like Action RPG mechanics in general you also don't have much problems with RTwP. If Diablo and stuff is too hectical for you I assume you'd like TB better. Just a random thought though... Deadfirewas build as a RTwP game. That it works ok with TB mode is a sign how robust TB mechanics generally are (or can be due to the rigid slices into which combat gets divided). RTwP can be fun but it's definitely not as robust. A few changes here and there (more abilities, more vfx and more combatants) can make it unpleasant to play - it becomes more chaotic. You have to fine-tune it a lot more then. So any addition to the combat can mean you'd have to tune the RTwP mechanics again. I presume that is difficult and resource-hungry and that may be a reason why developers prefer to implement TB over RTwP (partly answering the question "why oh why?"). I can only speak from my own experience as a software engineer though. I haven't implemented RTwP not TB combat - but I have experience with real time vs. sheduled systems or asynchronous vs . synchronized systems and the first ones aren't nearly as robust - way more prone to errors. Also - and this might be the biggest motivation to push TB in many different games: it plays a lot easier on consoles. RTwP is not nice when played with a traditional console setup (TV + controller on a couch).

It's also good to use opening volleys if you have one (or more) Priests with Inspiring Radiance. It's absolutely awesome to have an all-stackable +10 (or +20/+30 depending on the number of Priests) accuracy buff for everybody - but it's also rather short-lived. My preferred use of the +10 ACC is to apply hard CC of course, but not everybody has that and those who have not can shoot a high dmg projectile with improved accuracy into enemies' bodies to great effect.

"Sounds great on paper" is actually the name of my new membranophone band.

..and asnjas like "I'll take 'absurd change of subject' for $500, Alex!"

Yes. Metaknowledge is very valuable because of that. Of course you can try to equip your characters with a broader variety of dmg types. For example not only give sabres but sabres in weapon set 1 and hammers in weapon set 2. This is often better than focusing on a special weapon type and try to raise PEN via modals (which have drawbacks). Certain character ideas with certain unique weapons may collide with that approach though. But from a mechanical perspective flexibility usually is more valuable than specializing (when it comes to weapons and PEN). Even a Devoted can profit from that because fists do always get a proficiency and can be a good backup option (if you picked a non-crushing weapon as Devoted - like sword or battle axe - and if you take Monastic Unarmed Training). This is from the perspective of PotD difficulty (since enemies' AR is +2 there). On lower difficulties you can get away with less optimized weapon use since you will encounter over-armored foes less often.

Good question. Never used it long enough to have experience with it, but its description reads like it, yes.

Most of the time I don't bother with a ranged volley before switching to melee setup. It is effective (no doubt, especially when using arquebus - or blunderbuss against low DR enemies) but it's also a lot of tedious switching that I try to avoid. I will use it though if I have to take out certain enemies asap in order to avoid even more tedium - like taking out a Lagufaeth Broodmother or a Xaurip Priest before they can cast some stuff that may prolong the fight unnecessarily.

You should see Riposte as a nice addon, not as the centerpiece of your whole build. A rogue with Badgradr's Barricade is pretty sturdy (for a Rogue anyways who else is squishy as hell) but can never compete with a fighter or paladin when it comes to tankyness. You should still play him offensively and not dump everything into defense. Several attack abilities as Crippling Strike and Blinding Strike etc. work very well with a bashing shield since offhand strikes first. By the way: Riposte also gets triggered by misses and grazes from Disengagement attacks. There are some talents (like Graceful Retreat) and items (Nightrunner) that give you a bonus against disengagement attacks that stack with any other deflection bonus. You can then run past enemies, trigger disengagment attaks that will most likely miss or graze and eventually do a Riposte. This shouldn't be used a a core technique but it can make running past enemies in order to reach backliners rewarding.